johnnyt Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 I recently read a post where veteran forum contributors LeeG and Xanthros indicated they had less than 100 programs. I'm pushing 500 and finding the time it takes to load them into the GUI and back them up, along with the time it takes ISY to update HomeSeer every time I save changes, to be getting quite long. No one else, however, seems to be complaining about this. I guess I'm wondering if 500+ programs makes me a bit of an oddity or outlier. I do have plans to add more programs as I continue to chip away at moving off HomeSeer after 12 years of using it. At this point, though, I'm not sure I'll actually be able to move everything off HomeSeer and am wondering if I should be continuing to do so. (I need support for a wired thermostat and forecast data, which I'm not seeing as coming soon to ISY). This means I will need to continue to wait for HS to get updated after saving programs (or turn off the HS Insteon plug-in, which I do when I'm going to sit down for a stretch but not when I want to make a "a quick fix" - which aren't so quick anymore) Am I the only one with 500 programs (~50 are used as variables from the days before variables)?
LeeG Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 Perhaps indicating what is being done in those 500 Programs would help. Switching to Variables seems like a good idea. Perhaps some of what is being implemented in Programs can be done using Scenes.
Xathros Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 Johnnyt- I currently have just under 100 programs. Many of these I hope to eliminate as the ISY's capabilities mature. Once we have the ability to do variable assignment to/from devices and maybe get some string variable support, I suspect I could cut my program count in half. Not knowing what exactly you are doing with programs I can't venture a guess as to how that could effect your program count. In the short term, I see my program count increasing somewhat as I continue to build out my Insteon network and need to keep track of more devices and data. The feeling I get is that a large program count isn't necessarily a problem unless you have many trigger at once or as in your case where it causes a repetitive update delay. I see this with Mobilinc. The more devices, programs and variables I have, the longer it takes to sync up with current statuses. Not really a big issue for me unless I'm on on a weak 3g/edge connection at the time. -Xathros
johnnyt Posted November 30, 2012 Author Posted November 30, 2012 Perhaps indicating what is being done in those 500 Programs would help. Switching to Variables seems like a good idea. Perhaps some of what is being implemented in Programs can be done using Scenes. I don't think I do anything in a program that is better handled in a scene but I'll look again. The only exception I can think of is when I want a different light level at night than during the day. In those case I could use the "adjust scene" command, although I would still have to have a program to adjust the scene and it would only reduce runtime processing load, which I don't think is a problem. So as not to detract from the question I asked here, I may start a different thread to test some of my programming logic and see where I might be able to trim some fat, particularly when multiple programs are needed to do one thing. Even if I took 100 programs off, I'll probably gain that back over the next year or so, particularly if I keep the push on for sunsetting HomeSeer so I'd like to keep the two conversations separate.
johnnyt Posted December 5, 2012 Author Posted December 5, 2012 So that's it, no one has more than 100 programs, never mind more than 500? Well I guess that explains some of my problems and why no one else is complaining about them. I'll definitely have to look at some program consolidation, moving to variables for my legacy programs-as-variables, maybe toning down my plans for ISY and keeping HomeSeer...
nstein Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 Is there an easy way to find out how programs many you do have? Looks like I have over 200. A lot of them are triggered by rest over the network. If isy supported nested if statements I could cut out over half of them. For some I could also change to using variables instead. I don't think having a large number of programs is necessarily a sign of problems, it depends more on rate of activity and how hard they work. -Nick
johnnyt Posted December 5, 2012 Author Posted December 5, 2012 Is there an easy way to find out how programs many you do have? If you have HomeSeer with the ISY insteon plug-in , it gives you all the stats on the status page. I think I sometimes have a performance problem when a program sends a notification, which I do a lot because there isn't good program activity logging. For example I get default messages instead of the custom message I call for, or I get told the program is running false when the notification is triggered in the "then" clause, showing a delayed execution of the notification. When I add a wait 2 secs, everything works fine. That said, I don't think I have that many execution performance problems at this point (other than at reboot, not something that happens often thankfully). The bigger problem is the performance loading, saving, backing up (restores, of course) and updating HomeSeer. I can't be sure, though, and am worried about growing things to a point where there are execution performance problems.
TJF1960 Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 I am just over 500 programs. 78 Insteon devices of which 14 are 6 or 8 button kpl's 47 Integer variables 193 State variables 197 Network Resources 15 email customizations As the programs grew so did the length of time to open the program tab. I don't have homeseer but I do have a pogoplug with dsclink for the alarm and caiwc for 3 webcontrol boards along with the 3m-50 tstat and some other programs all connecting to and updating the 994ir pro constantly. It just took 9.3 seconds for the admin console to open and populate with status for all nodes and another 24 seconds for the program tab to finish loading. I can't say its so long though that it has really ever bothered me. Yes, it takes some time but the way I look at it, the benefits of the ISY far outweigh minor stuff. Just my opinion. Tim
ih574 Posted December 5, 2012 Posted December 5, 2012 I have about 350 programs. The way I count them is to go into the console under Programs | Summary. I sort the list the way it is most useful to me (usually by path). Then I select the first line, hold down shift and select the last line. Then press CTRL + C to copy. Then I go into Excel and paste the lines in, followed by a tiny bit of formatting to add a header row and get column widths correct. Then I can set Excel's Autofilter and sort and search to my heart's content. The 350 programs breakdown as follows: General Controls 14 Timers 35 Occupancy Check 21 Voice Announcements 69 Garage 17 Weather 51 Building Status 46 Web Control 68 Archive 28 The Programs tab loads in 35 seconds, on a very slow client computer. I have 191 Network Resources, more than half of which are commands to the voice server. While most programs act on Insteon events, many are simple event processors that act on dates, times, PC or network events. r- Tom C.
johnnyt Posted December 17, 2012 Author Posted December 17, 2012 Perhaps indicating what is being done in those 500 Programs would help. Switching to Variables seems like a good idea. Perhaps some of what is being implemented in Programs can be done using Scenes. see viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10090&p=77047#p77047 for a description of the programs I have that are not controlling lights (about half of them). When time permits I may post in a separate thread some examples of scenarios that are taking multiple programs in order to see if my programming knowledge could be improved to do things more efficiently.
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