Elk and Insteon Device Status Updating

[mtwalsh367]

What are others doing to keep their insteon device status up to date in their elk system? I have been using the polling feature within my M1 and this works great to keep the device status up to date (not exactly in real time but within a few minutes since the polling feature polls a device every 15 seconds and I have about 30 devices).

I would like to find a way around using the polling feature since the added traffic of polling every 15 seconds occasionally causes a missed insteon command. The challenges I see with finding a better alternative to polling are as follows:

1) When I manually turn an insteon switch off or on the elk needs to pick this up. I understand that this is possible if you have everything linked properly to the M1. Does this work?

2) I mostly use group insteon lighting commands when I turn lights on and off from the M1. I don't see how the M1 can update the status of the lights you turn on or off through the use of groups since the M1 has no idea what devices are associated with a group.

3) I also use insteon group commands through my insteon control linc and keypads. I don't see how the M1 can update the status of the lights associated with these groups.

I really only have 3 insteon devices that I need to track if they are on or off. I thought I could turn off the insteon polling feature and just check the status of these 3 devices every few minutes using M1 rules and this would reduce the polling traffic. Unfortunately I don't see a way to poll the status of a device through the M1 rules. Is there another way to poll a device on the M1?

It would be great if someone can confirm my assumptions above or better yet provide some alternative approaches to updating insteon device status.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Spanky]

Group commands do not send the individual light settings, so the M1 does not know the status of the lights that change. You can send a group command then follow it up with individual light commands. This way the M1 will know the status of the lights.

Polling is on the list to do in a later software release.

 

[wisebishop]

I am considering Cortexa to control insteon in addition to M1 gold as security and surveilance. Just an idea, I think this might be a viable alternative. Cortexa seems to be very promising for whole house automation. Thank you.

 

[mtwalsh367]

Thanks for the update Spanky. Good idea to follow up the group commands with individual commands but that won't work for controlling lights using group commands from my Insteon keypad or controll linc since the M1 knows nothing about these. I guess if the M1 could recognize a group command I could do something with M1 rules. This would sure be alot easier if Insteon broadcasted status changes.

I like the idea of being able to poll within the software so I'll just continue with the every 15 second polling for now.

I also like the idea of combining a house automation system with the M1 to get the best of both worlds. I am curious to know how strong the integration is between the security system (M1) and the popular automation systems. The reason for the question is that much of my lighting automation is related to security events (sometimes I trigger lights based on zone changes, sometimes based on arming state changes with the system, sometimes based on bypassing zones at night to let the dogs out, etc)

Matt