Where did the links disappear to?

[Bob Stodola]

I just replaced my Houselinc software with an ISY994i. The house has 8 keypads, 17 dimmer switches, 16 inline dimmers, and 3 appliance switches so I didn't want to reprogram everything from scratch. I gave the ISY some controllers to start with and it discovered all but two of the unlinked switches and created over 100 scenes. I had it add in the last two controllers.

 

The I deleted the old PLM (which only had one sunset/sunrise program in it), grouped the keypads, named them all, and put them in folders and went on to look at the scenes. It was down to 20 scenes, and when I did a compare links on one device, it had 42 links and about 60 missing. I'm not sure at which step this happened. Being new to the ISY, I was a little afraid to tell it to do anything as I didn't want it to write back its diminished view of the house to the controllers.

 

So two questions: 1. What caused most of the links to disappear? 2. Is there some way I can get it to rediscover the links (preferably without having to start from scratch since everything is already named and organized)?

[LeeG]

The spider operation would have picked up the links between the devices and the HouseLinc PLM. When you say you Deleted the old PLM, do you mean the ISY had a device definition for the HouseLinc PLM and that is the old PLM that was deleted? If so when that PLM device was deleted it would have required deleting all link records in all the devices that referenced the deleted device.

 

I know it seemed like a lot of work but it would have been a better idea to add each device with the 'remove existing links' option which would have eliminated the 'old PLM' references HouseLinc established. I am not sure what you have now besides a bunch of Scene xxxx definitions that need to be renamed to meaningful names and a bunch of devices added under the Name of the Insteon address rather than a meaningful name.

 

I would make note of all the Insteon addresses and start over by deleting all the devices and adding each back with a meaningful Name. Then create ISY Scenes with meaningful Names. That way the system is clean from the start.

[Bob Stodola]

Thanks, Lee, for your reply. I will start from scratch if I have to, but 1) am concerned that I won't get back to where I am, and 2) given there are 81 controller buttons and 44 responders (= huge amount of work), hoping to find an answer that leaves me roughly where I am now. The old PLM was only involved in a couple of scenes, so not sure why deleting it would have resulted in ~80 scenes disappearing. Hard to believe there is no functionality for "discover existing links and store that in your database" - if no one has an answer for that, I might proceed as you suggest.

 

One side question - I saw the "pro" version supports ... but couldn't find what the limits of the non-pro version are - hoping I haven't run afoul of that?

[LeeG]

Every device added to HouseLInc that can present status (trigger an event) must have a link in the device pointing to the PLM. An 8 button KPL has 8 link records pointing to the HL PLM, one for each button. A 6 button KPL has 5 link records pointing to the HL PLM. All of these links are created when the device is added to HouseLinc. Has nothing to do with Scenes that may have been defined in addition to what HouseLinc does under the covers. The ISY does the same thing as it is in Insteon requirement.

 

Edit: the PLM has a corresponding link for each of the device links. Deleting a PLM could easily drop that many links (Scenes)

 

Pick a device, do a Show Device Links Table and Compare. Analyze the differences to determine what the issues are. Cannot suggest an approach until each of the link record issues is understood. Did the spider process miss some device link records.

 

Edit2; when you added the devices to the ISY that is the option you chose "add devices found in links and keep existing links". It is part of the device add process.

 

EDIT3: the dimmer switches and inlinelincs account for 33 Scenes gone when the HL PLM was deleted. Depending on the type of KPL (6 or 8 button) an additional 40 to 64 Scenes are accounted for. Lots of Scenes went away when the HL PLM was deleted.