Need Help Troubleshooting

[upstatemike]

I probably made it more "long and winding " than it needed to be but I came out with a better understanding of how things work. I learned (or finally came to understand) that:

 

1- A factory reset does not = zeroing out the registers of an Insteon device, but rather it means setting the first byte to 00 or 22. Knowing this will reduce confusion when viewing a device link table with some kind of troubleshooting utility. (Hopefully I will not need to do this anymore anyway.)

 

2- Foreign links that are preserved by using the third option when creating a device MAY NOT BE DISPLYED IN THE ISY if the link is not understood, but WILL always be written back to the device during a restore. Knowing this makes it clear why problems might not get fixed by doing a factory reset and then restore... you might be restoring an invisble problem link!

 

3- Oddball links can cause a number of problems that you might not expect to be link related including "self activation" triggered by random traffic or intermittent communication errors.

 

4- If you need to use option 3 to discover your existing topology and get it into your ISY, you may want to print the topology and use it as a guide to remove and re-install your devices using option 1 (delete existing links) at some point, to ensure you have a clean Insteon environment. If your environment is small enough, it is better to use option 1 and do a clean install from the start.

 

5- The idea of preserving existing links for coexistance with unsupported devices sounded good in theory but now I have to back away from it as a priority since my own experience has shown me what issues it can raise. Clearly I was wrong in promoting that approach.

 

6- Don't go chasing theories about X10 or signal strength, or whatever, until you try removing the device and re-installing it cleanly using option 1. This should be the first step to set a baseline in any troubleshooting situation. The second step should be to do this with all devices that are a Controller of the device that is giving you trouble. Chances are good that you won't need a third step.

[Sub-Routine]

Thank goodness you finally escaped from that trap

 

Perhaps your discoveries deserve a place in the FAQs.

 

Rand