Scene Not Responding

[ziflin]

I still am having problems with a simple scene. I have one with 2 Icon On/Off switches that controls the "Foyer Light". After a few tries it seems to be working and responds to the Activate and Deactivate Commands properly in the VSE.

I have another that I just created with 2 Icon Dimmer Switches, but I cannot get the Activate / Deactivate to work properly. Clicking Activate in the VSE for the new scene does nothing (I have Programmed it already). I am able to turn the individual switch on and off without a problem though. And the Network Map shows that it is setup properly (similar to the other scene except that it is using group 101 instead of 100).

Is there something I'm missing? So far I seem to be failing at getting simple things to work :(.

[ziflin]

So I managed to get this to work finally. The problem is that I still do not know why it works. I deleted the devices from HCA, unplugged/replugged in the PLM, shutdown HCA (which btw the process still remained and for some reason I was not able to End it even through Task Manager). I rebooted the machine to get rid of the old HCA process as it seemed to be holding a lock on the USB/Comm port and starting HCA again failed to connect to the PLM. This is all under Windows 7.

After all of that, I re-added the 2 switches and one of them claimed to be a responder for HCA (group 0) instead of group 101 like the other. I cleaned up both scenes and tried again and now it works.

I did previously have an Access Point plugged in next to the PLM, so perhaps that is causing some sort of a problem, but I have yet to get any errors in HCA regarding failure to send a command to a device.

Is there something else I could be missing? I'll try adding more multi-way scenes later today to see if they give me similar problems.

[ziflin]

Tried a new scene with 2 Icon On/Off switches that both work final if each switch is toggled On/Off but do nothing if the scene is Activated/Deactivated. I even removed the multi-way scene so that they are just responding to HCA group 102 and it still doesn't work.

[ziflin]

(sorry for the spam) And what's odd is that once it does finally start "working", it seems to work fine from then on. The last 2 2-device scenes that I finally got working are working consistently now even through the small programs that I setup to control them. I still haven't figured out the magic to get this new scene working though. They all appear to be setup the same...

[KHarms]

If yuou could move a bit slower and make notes on exactly what you do and what happens perhaps I can help. With so much involved here it is hard to follow the exact steps without a clear pattern.

[ziflin]

I have several multi-way scenes: Foyer, Foyer Hall, Outside Front. Each has 2 switches that control lights in those areas.

First I tried to build a scene controlled by HCA for the 2 switches in the Foyer. It did not Activate or Deactivate them even though I could control each of the switches properly from the right-click menu from their device icon. (ie - no communication problems with PLM to Switch)

I managed to get that scene working finally by something that involved deleting all the links those devices had and adding the HCA/PLM scene back first, one device at a time. Then I created the multi-way scene between the two switches.

I then had the same problem with the next 2 sets of switches.

It seems to be a problem with them having an existing scene and then adding the one that allows HCA to control them. I do not know why this is so, it could be my new PLM acting weird. But something with removing all the links and starting over worked even though the Network Map shows an identical output now that it's working as it did before.

I never got errors while linking these, and there were no errors when trying to activate and deactivate, it simply didn't work. At first I thought it was something with an Access Point plugged into the PLM, however I removed that and on the next multi-way I setup, I had the same problems as before. Once I did all the removing links and readding, it finally started working, and those scene worked fine from then on.

Sorry if I was in a rush, I don't have long to evaluate HCA to see if it does what I need, and running into simple scene linking problems was unexpected.

[KHarms]

Here is what should happen and what I have done many times.
I select from the menu Insteon – Visual Scene Editor. The new scene dialog appears. I press the Create new scene button.

It asks for a name. I enter “red”. The “controlled by” dropdown says “HCA” and that is what I want. I press OK

The VSE canvas appears with HCA at the top. I drag into the scene from the design pane (left hand pane) a switch a drop it on the canvas. HCA opens a dialog that asks for the level. I select 50% and close the dialog with OK. I then drag in a second switch and do the same.
I right-click and press “Program”. HCA programs the switches linking tables as needed.

I now create a program and drop into it a Scene element. I select the scene “red” and choose the Activate option. When I save the program and run it the lights come on.

I check the log and that shows HCA sending the commands to the scene.

What do you do differently?

[ziflin]

Nothing other than I don't create a program, and I was dragging two switches into the VSE before right-clicking "Program". I then right-click inside the VSE and try to Activate/Deactivate.

There does seem to be a bug in HCA that doing this does not display the correct state of the devices -- there is no yellow border around their icons if I close VSE after activating a scene that works.

[KHarms]

The Activate and Deactivate menu picks in the VSE don't send the scene command. They simulate the scene by controlling the devices each to what the scene would set them to. And that's not what I think we should focus on.

Please try to do what I did - create a program to control the scene. That way we can see if the programming "took" and the scene really is built.

[ziflin]

Sorry, I am doing one 2 other things before creating the HCA controlled scene. The switches were all linked in a scene previously to another controller (an EZSrve) that is no longer plugged in. So before creating the new scene with HCA I first do an "Insteon Network Capture Database". It finds the bad link on each device and then in the "Insteon Network Clean" I check those links and perform a clean, which succeeds.

I just did this with another pair of switches in the Breakfast area and it did exactly the same thing the last 3 pairs did. In other words, it does nothing when I click Activate/Deactivate in the VSE for the HCA controlled scene.

I then deleted all the scenes for these two switches in the VSE (the multiway scenes, and the HCA one I previously created). I then did the same thing as before to create the HCA controlled scene and it works fine now. Activate/Deactivate in the VSE work properly.

My guess is that there is something from the "Clean" that possibly messed things up. I'm running out of multi-way scenes in my house to try this on though..

[ziflin]

The Activate and Deactivate menu picks in the VSE don't send the scene command. They simulate the scene by controlling the devices each to what the scene would set them to. And that's not what I think we should focus on.

Actually if you click "Program" first, they do. At least that's what the Tool-tip told me and what definitely appears to happen when it works. When it works, the 2 switches turn on simultaneously (they don't if it tries to simulate it).

I have also written a stand alone C# program to send the Insteon scene/group broadcast command to that group. And I have also done what you mentioned, which is create a Program in HCA that uses the Scene node and that did nothing as well. Once I removed the links and re-added them, it then worked fine in all these cases.

[KHarms]

I don't know where to go from here. We would need to get back to the original configuration of your switches. Document their exact state. Then do the creation of the scene, document their contents again, and verify their function - working or not.

If you can get this information then I can take it to the developers.

But the bottom line is that, for now your scenes that HCA built are working. How you got there was messy and I wish I could examine that path in more detail.

If you have other issues like this please send them to technical support.

[ziflin]

This happened again today with a new PLM (2412S). The steps were as follows:


Added 2 Icon On/Off switches that were each linked to each other (multi-way).
Added a new scene using the VSE controlled by HCA to control both switches.
Created a program to activate the scene based on an X10 trigger as before.
Right-Click on program and select "On".

Nothing happens with the switches, but HCA thinks it turned them on as their Icons change. Issuing a "Get Status" command on the switches reads their (correct) status as "Off".

I then removed all the scenes for each switch using the VSE so that the devices were no longer in a scene. I then recreated the scene with HCA as a controller in the VSE and the program works properly without changing the program at all.

This happened for each of the multi-way switches I just readded and each time it was fixed by removing all the scenes and starting fresh with the HCA controlled one.

This is highly annoying as it appears any time I switch PLMs I can expect this to happen.

[mjl]

I apologize that I don't have time to read this whole thread, but I think I get the basic issue - you can't just switch PLC's willy-nilly - there is a procedure for swapping PLC's which must be followed to ensure that the new PLC contains all of the devices and all of the links in the devices which would normally link to the old PLC must be replaced with links to the new PLC - HCA can do this, but it must be done cautiously, since there is no easy way to undo it if the whole process is not completed successfully. It must all be done at once. I've done it twice, but it's been a while since I did it. It did work once all of the links were updated. If any of the reprogramming fails, you will need to manually fix it.

[KHarms]

The issue is the linking model used by Insteon. The receiver and controller are cross linked by their address. This means that if keypad A wants to control modules B and C, A must be linked with B and B linked with A. Also C must be linked with A and A must be linked with C.

So if you change A it will have a new Insteon address. That breaks B and C.

This is the same as links "to HCA" which is really a link to the PLC. Change the PLC and you have to rebuild all the links to it.

HCA can do it but, given the les then perfect Insteon comm between modules will almost never get it right 100% of the time. But it will do a lot to take you most of the way there.

HCA should detect when you open a design file if the PLC used to create that design was the same as the PLC now in use. If not then it offers to reprogram your network. This is in the menu pick:

HCA - Hardware - Insteon PowerLinc - Insteon PLC Swap Tool

[mjl]

Yes, HCA will probably not get all of the PLC links replaced the first time, but you can re-run the "Insteon PLC Swap Tool" function to replace the links it missed the first time. You can use the "Insteon Network Clean" function to identify the links with the address of the old PLC (but do *NOT* clean them or they will be erased forever). The process of identifying the links to the old PLC and then replacing them with the PLC Swap Tool can be repeated until all of the lnks have been replaced.