Insteon and Power Loss

[Mike]

I originally had a problem where my insteon control stopped working after a power outage. At the time it was noted that since I had the elk power into a UPS as well, the powerlinc failed but the elk did not know so it did not know to reset it.

Well I changed that so the elk is plugged into a wall outlet, on the same circuit as the powerlinc. I lost power the other day and it seemed to kill my lighting control again.

Once I cycled the power on the M1 it was fine again.

Am I missing something else I should be doing? All my firmware should be on the latest rev's.

 

[mustangcoupe]

I believe it might be the same problem again... the Elk went on to battery backup and did not re establish communications with your controller connected to the serial interface.

 

[Mike]

So I will always have to reset it? That doesn't sound right.

Is there a command I can add to a rule to reset it after a power loss condition?

EDIT: I do see your train of thought though, and I considered that, but I have to assume there is a way arond this.

 

[mustangcoupe]

my elk does not control my insteon stuff yet.... So I havent looked into this feature, hooprfully Spanky willl rply with his thoughts.

 

[jlehnert]

I would take the elk off the UPS, and just use the Elk backup batterie(s). First, this way the elk will know when there is a power failure. Second, since the Elk is designed as a fire/burg panel, it is very reliable on battery backup. I'm not sure with the elk, but most panels will go 24 hours using the two batteries that fit into the can. Lastly, think what you are doing when you run the Elk off of a UPS. You're converting 120 VAC to 12 VDC to charge the UPS batteries. You then convert 12 VDC back up to 120 VAC to supply the plugs on the back of the UPS. You then use the ELK transformer to convert the power back down to 12 VDC to power the Elk (and also charge the elk batteries). The major result of all these conversions is extra hot air in your HA closet, and increased money in your electric utilities pockets. B)

 

[Mike]

jlehnert,

Agreed completely. When this came up the first time, that is exactly what I did. I did not think about it when I originally added the elk transformer to the UPS.

My question now is, since the elk is on its own power/batter, and the powerlinc is not on a ups, why did I lose lighting control after a power failure?

I'm guessing I missed something else, or I need to make sure a setting is a certain way, but that is what I am hoping to get to this time around.

If anyone has any thoughts I would appreciate it.

It was amusing, I had some houseguests at the time it occurred and my lights were not going off. I originally thought 'perpaps they turned them off after they shut off'. I later did tie everything together and confirm an outage (and everything began working again after cycling power to the elk).

 

[Mike]

Bump.

Has anyone else had this problem (or is there something I missed in setting up the powerlinc/elk?)?

This seems to be my only issue with Insteon/Elk and only occurs when I lose power.

 

[Digger]

I havent seen it yet.

 

[fitzpatri8]

As I understood it, the Elk normally resets the interface when it recovers from a power outage. Just speculating here, but there might have been an unusual power spike or brownout condition that so scrambled the brains of the PLC that it was unable to perform a "soft" reset when the Elk requested it.

If you simulate a power outage using the house's main breaker, does everything come back up properly a couple of minutes after you power things back up?

Tom

 

[Mike]

I will have to test that.