KPL Gone Wild

[gviliunas]

This is an FYI story in case your Insteon system suddenly goes wild...

 

My system had been running fine for several months. This evening, while we were all around the dining table, we heard a "beep" from one of my KPLs. Note: No changes were being made to the system throughout the house at this time. I thought nothing of the beep but later noticed that none of my programs were working. I power-cycled ISY but noticed that the programs had not restarted after 20 minutes. I unplugged ISY again but then thought to check the PLM before powering ISY. Upon checking the PLM, I noticed that the led was rapidly blinking. In fact all of my devices with LEDs had blinking LEDs. Hmmm My thought at that point was how to discover the device that was apparently flooding the network with bad traffic.

 

Then I remembered the "beep" during dinner. I checked that 2486D v.39 KPL and noticed that the local load could not be switched-on from the KPL primary button. (The KPL light did turn on when I pressed the button though . I opened the air gap switch and then checked my PLM. All of the led blinking had stopped.

 

I powered-up ISY and everythin g came-up normally. Finally, I closed the air-gap on the KPL and now it is working normally. I'll need to keep an eye on that KPL.... We are not prone to power surges here in Vancouver and there is a whole-house surge supressor installed. Bad KPL??

 

Morale of the story is that one bad Insteon device can bring an entire ISY network down and cause programs to stop and scenes to behave strangely. Had I not heard the beep, one my kids would have been assigned to watch the blinking PLM led while I flipped circuit breakers.

 

Hopefully you won't see this type of problem.