A few days ago, I was checking my EISY's setup in Admin Console. (V6.0.5) I had a scene called "All Lights" that I set up years ago. I decided to update it by adding more light switches and lamp modules. I right-clicked a number of items and selected "Add to Scene" and selected All Lights. After saving the changes I tested the Scene by turning it on and off. All the lights around me were activated as expected. So far so good.

Then awhile later I went to my kitchen and turned on one of the three wall switches. No response. I tried a second switch, and it was nonfunctional as well. The third switch (master switch connected to the load) worked OK. I had to re-link the two slave switches to the main switch again (in both directions).

Later I went to my bedroom and turned on the light switch. A pole lamp on an appliance module formerly linked to the wall switch no longer worked. I had to link it to the switch again.

When I told Alexa to turn off the lights, the pole lamp didn't react. I had to go to the "Bedroom Lights" scene in Admin Console and remove and then re-add that module to the scene again.

My memory is faint, but I believe this is not the first time something like this has happened to me (I've been using EISY and Insteon for 25 years). It's very rare, but then I don't make changes to my Admin Console very often.

I haven't checked all my other devices to see if anything else was messed up, yet.

Why did the simple act of adding devices to a scene corrupt so many links, both in the devices themselves and in the EISY? Rather frustrating.

Edited April 24Apr 24 by IndyUDIuser

Maybe it's because you added several devices in one shot?

IDK. This is first time I've added so many things to a scene. But how is the EISY wiping out existing links within and between the modules? Makes no sense.

Oh, and now when I start up Admin Console I get a pop-up box titled "New Insteon Devices" and shows me the address for an 2635-222 On/Off Module. Sure enough it is the pole lamp's module. Every time I open Admin Console this dialog appear, and all I can do is close it.

This module has been in use for years and worked perfectly until the changes described earlier.

This is reminiscent of problems on several devices I was having before I upgraded to v6.0.5. Now it's happening again. Ugh.

I'll reboot EISY and see if this goes away.

Reboot got rid of the "New Insteon Devices" false dialog.

The I saw your Reddit post. I’ll repeat my Reddit answer here:

(in both directions).

That tell me you were manually linking, but ISY thinks it’s managing the links.

Mixing manual links and having an eisy doesn’t really work. Eisy writes its link with an all off and purposely deletes what it thinks are just trash bytes in the link space. Create a scene for those devices and make all 3 of them controllers. Eisy will link them in both directions but that won’t leave you with the words you linked in both directions.

TL;DR eisy did what you asked it to, can’t combine manual links with eisy links, or you’ll redo the manual links everytime eisy writes the switches links.

1 hour ago, MrBill said:

The I saw your Reddit post. I’ll repeat my Reddit answer here:

That tell me you were manually linking, but ISY thinks it’s managing the links.

Mixing manual links and having an eisy doesn’t really work. Eisy writes its link with an all off and purposely deletes what it thinks are just trash bytes in the link space. Create a scene for those devices and make all 3 of them controllers. Eisy will link them in both directions but that won’t leave you with the words you linked in both directions.

TL;DR eisy did what you asked it to, can’t combine manual links with eisy links, or you’ll redo the manual links everytime eisy writes the switches links.

Well in theory you can do both. The option to keep existing links (when adding a new device) is thre for that reason. I did do that for a while, adding devices which were already linked to an early version of the Insteon hub (2412) and the devices could be controlled by both the hub and the eisy. It takes an ironclad discipline to maintain properly, but it's possible.

The fact that he mentions the messages about new modules being added seems to say that for whatever reason, the eisy was treating the devices as newly added. That's different from adding existing devices to a scene. Could be a bug, a user error, etc. But I think I'd just be careful and add devices one at a time to a scene.

When I discovered the pole lamp was no longer responding to the bedroom wall switch, the first think I did was try to link the wall switch to the appliance module. The linking beeped successfully, but the lamp still did not turn on/off with the wall switch.

So next I did a factory reset on the appliance module and then manually linked it to the wall switch. Just like I've done for years. This got the wall switch working correctly again with the pole lamp. Then I had to remove it from Admin Console and re-link it to Admin Console in order to fix the broken Bedroom Lights scene so Alexa would turn the lamp off again.

Anyways, everything is back to working the way it has for many years.

Going back to the beginning of my post, why would simply adding a device (or devices) to an existing scene (All Lights) in EISY cause existing links in the devices to be wiped out? I just used "Add to scene". It never said anything about wiping out existing links between devices. Annoying to say the least.

And the "New modules" dialog box thing is a bug that I've been having since v6.0.0. I have to reboot EISY to clear it out. I'm currently on v6.0.5.

Oh, and here's another nit to pick... When I click Start Linking in console, the Linking In Progress dialog box appears, as well as a small timer dialog box. NEITHER ONE can be cancelled (if I change my mind for instance). The red X in the corner doesn't close either box (which UI standards usually require). But that flaw has been around for years, so never mind. LOL

Thank you all of you for your comments. I'll try to remember this as yet another foible in Insteon programming (which often seems like a Jenga game).

@IndyUDIuser im not really sure why you’re trying to use both methods, eisy links and manual. Let eisy do what eisy does best.. manage your Insteon devices.

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

@IndyUDIuser im not really sure why you’re trying to use both methods, eisy links and manual. Let eisy do what eisy does best.. manage your Insteon devices.

I think he simply wants to keep his established direct, device to device setup working as it does, without needing to recreate all the original scenes in the isy994i.

I link devices directly together for speed. e.g. A wall switch linked directly to a lamp module turns the lamp on instantly. I then link all my devices to the ISY so that I can use programs, see their status, etc.

Yesterday at 7AM all my lights suddenly came on. The same thing happened at 5PM a couple of days earlier. I looked in the ISY Log and there are no entries showing the devices being activated. No explanation.

I gave up and deleted the ALL LIGHTS scene. Hopefully no more Insteon hallucinations.

To follow @MrBill 's line of reasoning, Insteon devices are not designed to have 2 masters. Either the PLM owns link management or the devices own link management. You'll have to do the record keeping to keep it straight and doing both simultaneously is inviting problems like you are experiencing.

There is zero performance advantage to device to device linking versus iox link management. The Insteon management functions of iox push device-to-device links into the devices and they don't require the PLM for operation; they just have the advantage of iox programming.

My set up does that. Device-to-device performance is excellent.. and I can pull the PLM out of the wall and they continue to work that way.

Edited Friday at 09:43 PM2 days by paulbates

Hmm. Maybe you've taught an old dog a new trick. I always assumed if I did linking through ISY then every time I tapped a switch the ISY would recognize my "switch on" action and THEN send a command to the lamp module. Thus a short delay. Next time I have to do any linking I'll use just the ISY and then see how things go. Thanks!

Another question... If I suspect some older devices may have bad link entries in them, is there a way to wipe them clean (like a factory reset) using the ISY? For example, I've never liked trying to pull the little tab below a light switch paddle (air gap) to reset it. Always feared it would break off. It would be nice to tell ISY to "initialize" a device's memory somehow. Or if Insteon could design their switches so you just hold the OFF position for 15 seconds to force a reset.

OK, dumb question... How do I link a wall switch to a lamp module in ISY? Do I have to create a scene?

I think I already know this but want to confirm, before I mess anything up. Thanks.

Yes, create a scene and add them to it. Be careful to indicate controller or responder. Also, you can tell it to erase old links.

A small flat head screen driver makes pulling the tab very simple without fear of breakage.

56 minutes ago, IndyUDIuser said:

For example, I've never liked trying to pull the little tab below a light switch paddle (air gap) to reset it. Always feared it would break off. It would be nice to tell ISY to "initialize" a device's memory somehow.

The tab is a little stronger than you think. I've only had to perform an air gap reset on a few devices and surprised at how it really takes a little effort to pull the thing out. Of course as @hart2hart says a tiny screw driver really helps. What bugs me is having to hold it in until the beeping stops. That's the hard part.

On the IoX side of things in theory when you link a device to IoX it has the option to "remove existing links". While that's not a true factory reset of the device it should overwrite any device links, but many have commented it can still leave ghost links so the air gap method is the best way to reset it.

Too far down the development road to expect Insteon to make a new/different way to reset a switch. But a great suggestion to maybe take to their tech support!

59 minutes ago, IndyUDIuser said:

Hmm. Maybe you've taught an old dog a new trick. I always assumed if I did linking through ISY then every time I tapped a switch the ISY would recognize my "switch on" action and THEN send a command to the lamp module. Thus a short delay.

No, scene commands are broadcasts from a controller to all devices, and all responders recognizing the scene number then do their thing. That the beauty of Insteon, it's peer to peer. The eisy always includes itself (ie: it's PLM) in scenes so it can see Insteon status and control changes, so it can track them and optionally trigger programs.