HAI UBP - repeater or coupler?

[pgray007]

So I moved the CIM into the house (from the detached where I attempted before) and now I'm able to see all switches, but load into UPStart only on one phase. Network discovery shows about 55% of the switches with "Comm good" and "Loaded" and the other half "Comm bad" and "Problem."
 
When I do a Signal to noise check, the signal is full green, with spikes between None and Severe for one sample every 1-3 seconds. From the PIM on the OPII I get about a 95% success rate on switches on both phases, other than the ongoing programming problem with those two switches I mentioned earlier.
 
I'm not sure what the means or how to begin debugging. Do I jump into turning off breakers or does this mean anything that would cause me to go in a different direction.

 

[ano]

So with the repeater on, can everything in the house see everything else?  It isn't that unusual to only be able to communicate with switches on the same phase without a repeater.  That is where the repeater comes in.  Once you have the repeater paired, then UPStart can run more sophisticated tests signal tests to and from the repeater.  Make sure you get the latest UPStart from PCS, I think version 8. You have to register, but its free. Don't worry about noise at this point, its rarely ever a problem unless its very bad.
 
Does the detached building you have have its own breaker panel?  If yes you might get a repeater just for that.  Then you would set all your switches to use a multicast of 3 under the advanced tab.  Of course there is a chicken and egg problem here, since if you can't reach your switches you can't change that setting but we can cover that when we get there. 
 
One more thing I forgot to mention.  Make sure your CIM is NOT from Simply Automated. If its from PCS or HAI or Web Mountain, make sure its not more than about 9 or 10 years old.  If its really old or from SA, you might want to consider replacing it before you go further. Simply Automated CIMs work fine with SA switches, but not with repeaters and Gen II+ switches.
 
Wait, one more thing. Make sure the Upstart option to use a repeater is turned ON. You click on the UPB circle in the upper left, then you should see Options. Click on the repeater tab.

 

[pgray007]

So I found a problem in that the repeater was wired incorrectly, and I'd wired both breakers onto the same phase since I didn't totally think through the fact that a breaker box would alternate phases on each side.
 
On fixing that problem, I still couldn't get UPStart to "talk" to the repeater in the garage. This is with the computer and repeater on the same 100A sub-panel and on the "noisy" phase. I turned everything off in the subpanel, and also turned off UPSes in the house (on another 100A sub panel off the main 200A panel) to no avail. Strange.
 
When I came back into the house however I could easily communicate with the repeater on the "clean" phase. UPStart was also able to enroll a single switch on the "dirty" phase and see several it could not before, so that's an improvement. I was also able to enroll the two new "troublesome" switches in Dealer Access, which prompted all this troubleshooting initially.
 
I'm not sure if I should be worried that a CIM and UPStart (and yes, I have the dreaded Simply Automated unit) on the "clean" phase can't see the "dirty" one. Comms seem much improved today, and the only way I was able to get missed switch responses was sending on/off signals to the same device every .5 seconds or so. Interestingly Haiku on an iPhone would change status based on my command (i.e. turn a light "off" when I tapped "off") and when commands were missed, it would correct itself a second or two later. This leads me to believe commands and confirmations are much more reliable now that the repeater is properly configured.
 
I'm tempted to call it "good enough" and move on with life, or perhaps see if a non-SA CIM gets upstart working. My one concern is that there's not much going on in the detached garage at the moment, but I plan on adding several automated switches so I'd like all this stuff to be 100% reliable before dropping another bunch of cash.
 
My CIM is probably about 2 years old and is an SA USB unit, do those have the problems you mention?
 

So with the repeater on, can everything in the house see everything else?  It isn't that unusual to only be able to communicate with switches on the same phase without a repeater.  That is where the repeater comes in.  Once you have the repeater paired, then UPStart can run more sophisticated tests signal tests to and from the repeater.  Make sure you get the latest UPStart from PCS, I think version 8. You have to register, but its free. Don't worry about noise at this point, its rarely ever a problem unless its very bad.
 
Does the detached building you have have its own breaker panel?  If yes you might get a repeater just for that.  Then you would set all your switches to use a multicast of 3 under the advanced tab.  Of course there is a chicken and egg problem here, since if you can't reach your switches you can't change that setting but we can cover that when we get there. 
 
One more thing I forgot to mention.  Make sure your CIM is NOT from Simply Automated. If its from PCS or HAI or Web Mountain, make sure its not more than about 9 or 10 years old.  If its really old or from SA, you might want to consider replacing it before you go further. Simply Automated CIMs work fine with SA switches, but not with repeaters and Gen II+ switches.
 
Wait, one more thing. Make sure the Upstart option to use a repeater is turned ON. You click on the UPB circle in the upper left, then you should see Options. Click on the repeater tab.

 

 

[pgray007]

Just realized I never said "thanks" ano! The debugging help has been invaluable!

 

[ano]

Just realized I never said "thanks" ano! The debugging help has been invaluable!

No problem we can get it going.
 
If you have an HAI UPB interface connected to the panel you can get a serial cable to connect that to a computer. It is not ideal, but it works.  The PCS CIM is best.
 
The SA CIM can talk to your switches with the repeater but can't pass back their replies which means UPStart can't program them when they are on the "other" phase.