Insteon Scenes as a Device

[ziflin]

I'm evaluating HCA and am very new to this, but what I'd like to do is take 2 switches that are in a multi-way and control them as a single device (scene) in HCA. I did this using the VCE and cannot get it to activate and deactivate the switches even though I can control each of them individually. I "Programmed" them and still cannot get it to work, so is there something that I'm missing? The Network Map shows that they are both controlled by HCA on Group 100. They are ICON On/Off switches and I'm using a 2412U PLM.

Besides not being able to get it to work, it does not seem that it is possible to treat this scene as a "Device", give it an icon, and show it in the design view so that I can simply right-click and select On/Off to toggle the scene on and off from there. Is there support for this? The last software that I used let me do this, and it will be very annoying in HCA without this support as most of the switches I have schedules for are multi-way.

I tried using a group, but this seems to cause delays in sending the commands so the switches all turn on at different times (which is not acceptable)...

Thanks!

[KHarms]

I think the question here is not how to create a scene with multiple Insteon devices – the VSE and/or the Multi-Way wizard do that – but how to get an object that activates or deactivates the scene. This object can have an icon on a display, can be scheduled, or use in programs.

That object is a program. The program is simple in that it uses the “Scene” element. The program can have an icon – any icon you want – and be placed on a display, can be scheduled, and can be used by other programs.

The only tricky part of this is if you want to be able to activate and deactivate the scene. Perhaps in your situation you need only activate the scene in which case the program is just the scene element and has no triggers.

If you would like to activate and deactivate the scene then you need to give the program an on trigger and an off trigger. This keeps the UI happy – you get ON and OFF context menu picks – and makes it possible to schedule on and off, and use in programs with the ON and OFF elements. For this sort of thing I would use a throw-away X10 address. Pick something that never happens – how about L10 – and give the program an L10 ON and an L10 Off trigger.

What’s nice about this is that once you have your scene expressed as a program you can use all the facilities of programs. Perhaps you want to a variable to the time the scene was initiated. Perhaps initiating this scene wants to also adjust other objects in your solution and that can’t be done simply by expanding the scene to encompass other devices but rather needs some decision making.

Hope this helps.

[ziflin]

Thanks for the reply. Ideally it would be nice if you could add a "Virtual" Device that was an Insteon Scene and not have to deal with creating a program and using dummy X10 addresses just to turn on and off something that you already have the VSE to setup. Perhaps a radio button on the Insteon Address page to pick and address or Scene. It would have made it much clearer to me if I had have seen something like that. Then the 'scene' visual element would not have been needed.

But since that is not the case :), I can't quite figure out how to get the "Off" right-click command to work. My program has a scene element in it to turn on my scene, and that is triggered by both the On and Off commands. Is there some way to get the command issued during the execution of the Program? So that I could use the condition and do something like "If Command == On Then Turn Scene On Else Turn Scene Off"?

I tried adding flag-based triggers thinking that the right-click menu might set the flag to something and then I could test that flag in the program, but that didn't seem to be the case either.

At any rate, if there's a wish list for HCA 9.X it'd be nice to get a more unified way of dealing with Insteon scenes as normal devices or something similar. It'd be nice to just write programs to do important things and not have to write them just to turn a simple scene on and off.

[mjl]

I have quite a few scenes - the thing to remember is that whenever you control the device in a VP, use the scene rather than the individual devices so that they stay in sync - for example, my foyer has two lights controlled by two separate switches - I combined them into a Foyer scene which controls both lights at the same time. Both switches participate in the scene, so when either light is turned on via the paddle, the other goes on as well. To control these lights from HCA, you must always use the Scene in visual programs - never the individual lights.

If you want to be able to control it from the GUI, you can right click on either individual device and activate a scene rather than turning the device on or off. If you want to be able to turn the devices off without creating a VP, you can create an addition scene which when activated sets all devices to 0% or off, since you cannot deactivate a scene from the GUI.

Using a Visual Program as the "Icon" gives you more options and functionality, but I just wanted to point out that you *can* do it without a VP.

There is one exception to this - if you are using the new Web interface, I believe you need to at least set up a simple VP to activate and deactivate the scene as was suggested - I don't believe the web interface provides a way to activate scenes at this time (but I could be missing something).

Jim


I'm evaluating HCA and am very new to this, but what I'd like to do is take 2 switches that are in a multi-way and control them as a single device (scene) in HCA. I did this using the VCE and cannot get it to activate and deactivate the switches even though I can control each of them individually. I "Programmed" them and still cannot get it to work, so is there something that I'm missing? The Network Map shows that they are both controlled by HCA on Group 100. They are ICON On/Off switches and I'm using a 2412U PLM.

Besides not being able to get it to work, it does not seem that it is possible to treat this scene as a "Device", give it an icon, and show it in the design view so that I can simply right-click and select On/Off to toggle the scene on and off from there. Is there support for this? The last software that I used let me do this, and it will be very annoying in HCA without this support as most of the switches I have schedules for are multi-way.

I tried using a group, but this seems to cause delays in sending the commands so the switches all turn on at different times (which is not acceptable)...

Thanks!

[ziflin]

I managed to get it working with a VP, only it is definitely a bit of a hassle for something so simple. Especially considering I had to add the dummy X10 triggers and for 'correctness' I needed to Add 2 Tests to make sure that it was triggered by the X10 On and then by the X10 Off. Maybe if there was a trigger for "HCA On/Off/Dim" (meaning it came from the UI, the On/Off VP element, a schedule, etc) it would feel a little "cleaner" than having to use a dummy X10 address.

It's nice that there is a way to make it work, it would just be nicer if it was more consistent I guess. I tend to think of the "Foyer Light" as being the thing I care about and not the "Foyer Light Switch #1" and "Foyer Light Switch #2" especially when I'm making schedules or writing programs. Most times I don't even want to see the Switch state, just the scene.

[KHarms]

I'm glad you can get it to work. The only thing I would add is that you can do it with one test: If started by ON then do one thing. Not started by an ON, then it must be by OFF and you do the other thing. The test element has two paths. Test for "started by ON" and make the Yes path do the ON and the No path do the Off.

[ziflin]

That's what I figured and tested at first, but it seemed like "Dim" was another possible condition, though I haven't gotten that to 'enable' from the right click menu, so it's probably fine with just the one Test.

[mjl]

Insteon switches don't send Dim/Bright - they send FADE commands.

I just noticed something odd - my 2412U does not report FADE commands to HCA, but the 2414U does:

2414U:
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:20,1,FADE-,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:20,1,FADE-,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:21,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:21,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:23,1,FADE+,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:25,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
16,ISend,10/25/2009 15:15:54,1,S-REQ,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:55,1,S-RSP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,78%

2412U:
17,IRcvc,2009/10/25 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Start here
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Test for started by a When SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM sends On by Switch paddle -> YES
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Request status from devices
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Exit
16,ISend,2009/10/25 15:15:05,1,S-REQ,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,
17,IRcvc,2009/10/25 15:15:06,1,S-RSP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,50%

I wonder if this is a limitation of the 2412U?

[mjl]

I manually linked the switch with the new PLC and now the 2412u is also reporting the fade commands, so evidently when I did the PLC replace from the 2414U to the 2412U, I still need to manually link each device with the new PLC. Aargh...

Insteon switches don't send Dim/Bright - they send FADE commands.

I just noticed something odd - my 2412U does not report FADE commands to HCA, but the 2414U does:

2414U:
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:20,1,FADE-,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:20,1,FADE-,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:21,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:21,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:23,1,FADE+,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:25,1,FSTOP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,0%
16,ISend,10/25/2009 15:15:54,1,S-REQ,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,
17,IRcvc,10/25/2009 15:15:55,1,S-RSP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,78%

2412U:
17,IRcvc,2009/10/25 15:15:05,1,ON,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,100%
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Start here
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Test for started by a When SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM sends On by Switch paddle -> YES
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Request status from devices
3,Pgm,2009/10/25 15:15:05,,,,PGMS - GET ON DIM LEVEL,Exit
16,ISend,2009/10/25 15:15:05,1,S-REQ,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,
17,IRcvc,2009/10/25 15:15:06,1,S-RSP,0C.6F.7B,SDV2 - COMPUTER ROOM,50%

I wonder if this is a limitation of the 2412U?

[mjl]

OK - this I guess was a mistake on my part - When I did the PLC swap, I did not use the PLC Utilities to add the links from the devices into HCA's database, assuming that the swap utility would automatically do this for me - I added the devices to the PLC database and now the new 2412U is also receiving the FADE commans from the devices.

I manually linked the switch with the new PLC and now the 2412u is also reporting the fade commands, so evidently when I did the PLC replace from the 2414U to the 2412U, I still need to manually link each device with the new PLC. Aargh...

[KHarms]

I'll ask the developers to check the implementation to see if it is or is not updating the PowerLinc linking table. It should, as you discovered.

[kjbbasic]

I managed to get it working with a VP, only it is definitely a bit of a hassle for something so simple. Especially considering I had to add the dummy X10 triggers and for 'correctness' I needed to Add 2 Tests to make sure that it was triggered by the X10 On and then by the X10 Off. Maybe if there was a trigger for "HCA On/Off/Dim" (meaning it came from the UI, the On/Off VP element, a schedule, etc) it would feel a little "cleaner" than having to use a dummy X10 address.

It's nice that there is a way to make it work, it would just be nicer if it was more consistent I guess. I tend to think of the "Foyer Light" as being the thing I care about and not the "Foyer Light Switch #1" and "Foyer Light Switch #2" especially when I'm making schedules or writing programs. Most times I don't even want to see the Switch state, just the scene.


Can this "issue" be added to the HCA suggestions (for future relase resolution) if it is not already? This is an issue I've raised in the past. There are probably a number of solutions to this...but the current handling is odd/tedious to deal with from a scene perspective for me as well.

Ken

[KHarms]

Of course!

[kjbbasic]

I'm trying to setup a new program which controls a scene and which has triggers. The triggers are for on and off ...using a dummy/nonexistent Insteon switch but I've also tried a "real" switch as the trigger. The program has a test element to test what started it...on or off....to activate or deactivate the scene.

Thru HCA for this program I get the RMB context On/Off picks on the program (left pane icon)...BUT both on and off selections do the same thing...either both always trigger an ON or an Off...which *may* be dependent on the order the triggers were added? ...but the log is always showing no difference between the handling/trigger of an "on" vs an "off" context menu pick on the program.

Am I doing something wrong here? BTW, could you clarify what the on/off context picks are supposed to do/how they work...esp if you have multiple triggers perhaps thru multiple devices?

I'm using 10.3 (build 77) thru a client on windows 7.

Thx,

ken

[kjbbasic]

Update: I got this to work. I was hoping to use Insteon signaling but it seems you have to use the dummy X-10 address approach for the on/off selections to work properly....the selction binding seems fixed/hardcoded around x-10.

The on/off menu items do get enabled if you add more than one Insteon trigger (and only Insteon triggers) ...but it's unclear what the supported behavior is or if it is really supported (likewise if you add more than one x-10 address triggers not sure what happens).

Anyway, just adding the L10 ON L10 Off triggers worked. I've been phasing out x-10 use as I've had problems with bad/false (or perhaps my neighbors!) signals...