Anybody familiar with the ISY and it's X-10 capabilities?

[LarrylLix]

Me thinks a few  things about this.
 
 - The ISY and PLM will do well and you will end up liking it.
 - After seeing the ISY perform you will forget controlling it with outside software from a computer or other powered device, especially if it is not a dedicated machine taking up energy money. ISY can do it all, independently, for about 2 watts.
 - You may migrate to Insteon devices as they are much more reliable for communications and feedback to know devices have actually operated.
 
Insteon is great for most fields of usage  but lacks in the thermostat and door lock fields. Z-Wave fills in that gap and with the ISY drop in board (BLH) is controllable from one small independent box.
 
Get yourself over the UDI forum and ask questions. There is a lot of very knowledgeable friendly help over there. BLH (I am guessing) is one of the top X10 and hardware experts there, even though he must be over 130 X10-years old by now.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Deane is using CQC already, so that's a non-issue, and also already has a Z-Wave setup which CQC can control directly without the middle man, so there's no need for the Z-Wave drop in board.

 

[Deane Johnson]

And, using it very successfully with CQC.  They get along well.  So far, I'm getting the feeling it's a little faster responding to CQC than it was to Elve.  I don't know if that's possible or not.

 

[LarrylLix]

And, using it very successfully with CQC.  They get along well.  So far, I'm getting the feeling it's a little faster responding to CQC than it was to Elve.  I don't know if that's possible or not.

Cool!
What is the update response time of CQC to Zwave device events like?

Users of Zwave, in the UDI forum, complain of HomeSeer and Vera taking 2-3 minutes to update from a remote initiated event from a light switch or door lock. I have no Zwave devices yet but apparently some systems use some slow background method of (high traffic) constant polling devices to update status on those controllers. Somehow ISY has found a better method to get instantaneous updates so logic decisions can be made from remote events.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Larry, you're asking a question above my pay grade.    I'm happy at this point just being able to push a button on my iPad and have it turn on a light.  Polling I don't know about.  Does that have something to do with the recent election?
 
Actually, it's gone very well with CQC and my interfaces.  Much better than I expected.  Probably the most general comment I can make about CQC from my experience so far is that it is very well mannered.  I was a big Elve fan.  So far, I'm thinking I like CQC even a little bit better.  The support has been awesome.
 
BTW, I have Elve and CQC running side by side on the same server during the transition.  The only thing I have to be careful of is not assigning them simultaneously to the same device.

 

[LarrylLix]

I meant to get back to you on this before.

The PLM 2413S is the modem that acts as a bridge between the ISY and powerline and RF signals.

It converts serial port control signals from the ISY into Insteon RF, Insteon powerline and X10 powerline signals.
It converts X10 powerline , Insteon powerline, and Insteon RF signals to serial port signals for the ISY to understand.

The PLM also handles the handshaking with Insteon devices. They have to be acknowledged or will be retried. It has to sort out the multitude of echoes that the Insteon mesh network throws at it. Most Insteon devices repeat what they hear to extend range up to 1 mile. some state. 1-2000 feet would be more likely. Group commands or Scene command need to followed up with a check up that all devices changed etc.
X10 signals are not repeated by Insteon devices. Many Insteon devices understand X10 commands.

The ISY is the smarts of the system and could replace most other software. With CQC you should only need the PLM interface to talk to your X10 devices via a serial port. I don't now if this is available on CQC. With the ISY it may make things much easier.

The Rest interface is a reception medium, via Ethernet, for other systems to control and/or monitor devices, programs, folders, variables, and scene data in the ISY. You may need the X10/A10 firmware module to Rest access your devices. I am not sure how that one will work. BLH will know about that one most likely. Many other system use it to stuff data into ISY variables and read them for recording and charting. People use the ISY as a central housekeeping system for data, security systems (built in Elk interface) and house automation.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Cool!
What is the update response time of CQC to Zwave device events like?

Users of Zwave, in the UDI forum, complain of HomeSeer and Vera taking 2-3 minutes to update from a remote initiated event from a light switch or door lock. I have no Zwave devices yet but apparently some systems use some slow background method of (high traffic) constant polling devices to update status on those controllers. Somehow ISY has found a better method to get instantaneous updates so logic decisions can be made from remote events.

 
The new Z-Wave driver that he's using depends solely on async notifications. It doesn't poll for device status. That's a losing proposition on a Z-Wave network of any size. The response isn't fast enough to keep the latency down to something reasonable. If you have 60 polled devices, and it takes, on average 500ms to do a polling cycle (which includes some time in between polls since you can't bang it like gong full time), then on average it'll be 15 seconds before the automation system sees a change via polling, and worst case 30 seconds. If any of those devices are shaky in terms of comm and the automation system has to time out waiting for it, then the latency can go up a lot more.
 
So I just decided it's not worth it, and made the new driver solely use async notifications for state changes (other than when the driver starts up and has to get initial status info of course.) It does poll some things very slowly if the device doesn't provide it async, such as battery power, but that only needs to done on an hours time scale, not seconds.
 
So the response is always pretty fast. The notification comes in, and since the driver isn't constantly blocked trying to poll units as fast as it can, it immediately sees the incoming notification and stores the new info, and if relevant sends out an event trigger to be reacted to.
 
There is no other way to get fast response, so if the ISY is getting fast response it has to be pretty much doing it that way.

 

[LarrylLix]

....
So I just decided it's not worth it, and made the new driver solely use async notifications for state changes (other than when the driver starts up and has to get initial status info of course.) It does poll some things very slowly if the device doesn't provide it async, such as battery power, but that only needs to done on an hours time scale, not seconds.
 ....

Nice going!
It sounds like most of the other system controllers are way out of line with the Z-Wave stuff. This really surprised me to hear people reporting this. This stuff gets around but usually to the "already purchased" crowd.

Unfortunately most new purchasers don't have enough education in HA to make good decisions before buying. They don't know what to ask. I didn't and I started back in about late 70s somewhere with x10. Later they feel stuck with the system they have. Yours sounds quite nice with multiple hardware support. This allows good hardware independence somewhat.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Well, after 4 hours of messing, I've gotten nowhere with the Isy and the 2413S.  I don't even know that the Isy knows the 2413S exists.
 
They refer to it as a serial device, yet it uses a network cable to connect to the ISY.
 
Meantime, my CQC driver is saying "wait for Comm Resource".   This puzzles me since the ISY is a network device.  I'm thinking nothings talking to nothing.
 
I've found lots of instruction documents, but not much of anything indicating I need to do anything to get the 2413S recognized by the ISY.
 
Do I sound frustrated?

 

[Dean Roddey]

If the CQC driver Is saying waiting for resource it means that it's not finding the ISY. Are you using the new V2 ISY driver? That's only available in the betas since it wasn't quite ready to go for 4.6.0. If not, you are using the old one.
 
For the new one, you give the driver a URL in the form:
 
http://ippaddr/desc
 
where ipaddr is the IP address of the ISY. You give the URL instead of just the IP address since on some of them it seems the URL is slightly different. But the ones I've tried so far are all like above.
 
The case is important, and of course the case of the username/password you give the driver is also important.

 

[LarrylLix]

Well, after 4 hours of messing, I've gotten nowhere with the Isy and the 2413S.  I don't even know that the Isy knows the 2413S exists.
 
They refer to it as a serial device, yet it uses a network cable to connect to the ISY.
 
Meantime, my CQC driver is saying "wait for Comm Resource".   This puzzles me since the ISY is a network device.  I'm thinking nothings talking to nothing.
 
I've found lots of instruction documents, but not much of anything indicating I need to do anything to get the 2413S recognized by the ISY.
 
Do I sound frustrated?

Yes you do but this will work it's way out. This should also be in the UDI forum. People there are a lot smarter than me at this ISY stuff.

The serial connector is a defined EIA-232 standard for some equipment. Yeah that sucks.
Since the connectors are both the same are you sure you plugged the correct connectors in the sockets?

Is your MicroSD plugged in properly?
The LEDs on the front indicate errors. Look for that in the manual to help resolve the problem.
The PLM and the ISY need to be powered up in a particular sequence

http://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY-99i/ISY-26_INSTEON:Troubleshooting_Flowchart


Once you get Ethernet working you should set your router DHCP reservation table to fix your ISY IP address.
Also set the Auto DHCP enabled in the ISY.

 

[Deane Johnson]

I'm apparently using the old driver as I am using 4.5.1.  I haven't wanted to try and load updates during the "get it going" phase for fear of messing something up and not realizing it.
 
I've tried various ways of  expressing it, the latest as http://192.168.x.xx
 
I'm using the default log in info.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Larry, I have led activity on the front of the ISY except the blue power light.
 
***EDIT*** That should have read that I have NO LED activity on the front.

 

[LarrylLix]

Larry, I have led activity on the front of the ISY except the blue power light.

Can you login to the ISY?

http://ISY/

 

[LarrylLix]

Larry, I have led activity on the front of the ISY except the blue power light.
 
***EDIT*** That should have read that I have NO LED activity on the front.

Try unplugging the PLM cable from the ISY, check the Ethernet cable is plugged into the correct socket firmly and then reboot the ISY without the PLM.

What happens then?