Insteon PLC reliability issues

MikeB

Active Member
I'm trying to control a group saved on my PLC that will turn on/off my front door lights at scheduled times (through CQC). This has been very unreliable for me. The event seems to fire as expected, but the lights do not turn on.

Using PowerHome to control the group, I'm seeing the same thing. I can use PowerHome to control individual lights in my house, and reliability is very high. But when I ask PowerHome to control my PLC group, I'd say I have a 50/50 shot of the group responding.

I've tried relocating the PLC to a couple different outlets in various locations of my house, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Insteon communications in my house, in general, is extremely reliable switch to switch. After leaving PowerHome running for a few days, all my devices show as 98%+ reliable. It's only PLC group control, and sometimes other PC control functions, that seem to be giving me a problem.

Looking at the PowerHome log (and not understanding any of it), it seems when the group is successfully controlled I get "PLC:eventraw=03" replies listed. If the group doesn't get controlled, there is no entry. Here's a brief sample:

ui:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
uifinished:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
si:00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
PLC:sendinsteonraw=True
ui:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
uifinished:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
si:00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
PLC:sendinsteonraw=True
ui:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
uifinished:!sendinsteonraw=00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
si:00 00 00 00 00 02 CF 13 00
PLC:sendinsteonraw=True
PLC:eventraw=03
PLC:eventraw=03
PLC:eventraw=03


I tried resetting the PLC, I BELIEVE I reset it correctly and re-linked all my Insteon devices to it, but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance..
 
Using PowerHome to control the group, I'm seeing the same thing. I can use PowerHome to control individual lights in my house, and reliability is very high. But when I ask PowerHome to control my PLC group, I'd say I have a 50/50 shot of the group responding.

I've tried relocating the PLC to a couple different outlets in various locations of my house, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Insteon communications in my house, in general, is extremely reliable switch to switch. After leaving PowerHome running for a few days, all my devices show as 98%+ reliable. It's only PLC group control, and sometimes other PC control functions, that seem to be giving me a problem.
Unfortunately, the PLC does not natively do cleanups (well, not entirely true, it didn't do cleanups, then they added code to do cleanups which needed a different method of activating it but then we found out there was a bug in the cleanup code anyway which meant it would only work properly with one device in a group so fairly worthless really) so I can tell you that my CQC driver doesn't do cleanups from the PLC and it may well be that PowerHome doesn't either. The hardware switches are doing cleanups which may explain why they are more reliable.

To explain, a group command is a "blind" broadcast. Since it is possible that not all devices heard the broadcast, the switch will then send a direct command (called a cleanup command) to each device in the group and elicit a response from that device. This makes the whole solution much more robust. Cleanups are "low" priority, that is, if you sent another INSTEON command (e.g. pushed another button on that switch or any other switch) the device will see other traffic and stop sending the cleanups.

It is this cleanup and confirmation that is missing natively on the PLC (the author would need to write their own cleanup code as the PLC isn't doing it).

Only good news is that the new PLM module (which I'm working on a new CQC driver for) does do native cleanups so group commands sent from it should have the same level of reliability as from any other hardware switch device.
 
In PowerHome, PLC Group Cleanup is an option that you select with a checkbox at the top of the Insteon Explorer screen. You might want to confirm that you have this feature enabled. I have very good luck sending reliable group commands from PoerHome. Not only for setting a bunch of lights but also for ensuring that KeypadLinc LEDs stay in sync with the switches. No problems at all.
 
What we noticed over on the HAL board is that it appears that if you send out a group command without specifying the repeat hop count (remember, Insteon messages cascade out with a hop count, such that each time a message is received and repeated the hop count is reduced by one and messages are only repeated if the remaining count >0) , but it defaults to 0--meaning the PLC group message isn't taking advantage of remote devices' repeater function. IIRC, the docs say it *should* default to 3. We found if we manually send the group command with the correct hop count (by opening the SDM window and typing the group command in), it becomes as reliable as any other Insteon device group.

Sounds like a bug in the SDM to me. I'm hoping the next version will fix the default. In the meantime, developers can probably get around the problem by simply hard-coding the ",3" hop count code into all their group command transmissions.

Tom
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I was aware of the PLC cleanup issues, but I figured I'd be getting higher reliability than 50% or so with the amount of Insteon devices in my home. I also assumed that moving the PLC to a different outlet might improve the results if it was some sort of interference issue.

Also, if it was a signal reliability issue, wouldn't at least SOME of the switches respond to the group command? When the command fails for me, NONE of the switches receive the command.

I'm using PLC groups to keep KeypadLinc secondaries in sync, like UpstateMike mentioned he was doing.

My goal is to use CQC for my lighting control and automation, but reliability is just so poor for me through the PLC. I use PowerHome for programming, but wanted to try sending PLC group and device commands from it to make sure I wasn't having an issue with the CQC driver.

I will try checking the PowerHome PLC cleanup option to see how that affects my issue.

Any other suggestions? Is it possible I have a bad PLC?

Bradsjm - are you Jonathan from the CQC forums? I'm starting to think all the reliability issues I'm having with CQC keeping up-to-date with my lights, etc., are from a PLC issue. I have a PLM on order, coming in this week sometime.

Question is, if all my switch-to-switch Insteon signals are super-reliable, but my PC to Insteon is very unreliable, what do I do? Try another PLC?

I just find it very hard to believe that I'm having powerline signal strength or interference issues in general since my switch-to-switch reliability is so high.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I was aware of the PLC cleanup issues, but I figured I'd be getting higher reliability than 50% or so with the amount of Insteon devices in my home. I also assumed that moving the PLC to a different outlet might improve the results if it was some sort of interference issue.

Also, if it was a signal reliability issue, wouldn't at least SOME of the switches respond to the group command? When the command fails for me, NONE of the switches receive the command.

I'm using PLC groups to keep KeypadLinc secondaries in sync, like UpstateMike mentioned he was doing.

My goal is to use CQC for my lighting control and automation, but reliability is just so poor for me through the PLC. I use PowerHome for programming, but wanted to try sending PLC group and device commands from it to make sure I wasn't having an issue with the CQC driver.

I will try checking the PowerHome PLC cleanup option to see how that affects my issue.

Any other suggestions? Is it possible I have a bad PLC?

Bradsjm - are you Jonathan from the CQC forums? I'm starting to think all the reliability issues I'm having with CQC keeping up-to-date with my lights, etc., are from a PLC issue. I have a PLM on order, coming in this week sometime.

Question is, if all my switch-to-switch Insteon signals are super-reliable, but my PC to Insteon is very unreliable, what do I do? Try another PLC?

I just find it very hard to believe that I'm having powerline signal strength or interference issues in general since my switch-to-switch reliability is so high.
You should consider switching the the new PLM. It communicates directly with Insteon devices and by passes the SDM application thus improving the reliability.
 
I had problems with my 2414U USB PLC. Even though I was not using Direct X Input Devices. The DirectX Diagnostics failed if my 2414U or for that matter an older 1132U was connected. My Serial 2412S is much faster then the 2414U and I don't have hangups anymore.
 
Mike, you may have been in the middle of writing your reply when I posted mine re: group command hop count. The problem goes away when we send the command manually using the SDM and specifying a hop count of 3. There's nothing wrong with the PLC, just with the SDM's handling of the send group command.
 
You should consider switching the the new PLM. It communicates directly with Insteon devices and by passes the SDM application thus improving the reliability.

I'm planning on it, once the software I use supports it. My PLM should be in this week. However, other people are using their PLCs fairly reliably (at least I assume they are!), so in the mean time I'd like to try and figure out what's up with my system. If it's a bad PLC, I'd like to swap it out and get a good one. If it's some other sort of interference, then I'd like to try and figure it out and hopefully save some headaches down the road.

Mike, you may have been in the middle of writing your reply when I posted mine re: group command hop count. The problem goes away when we send the command manually using the SDM and specifying a hop count of 3. There's nothing wrong with the PLC, just with the SDM's handling of the send group command.

Hey - thanks for the reply. Yes, I did miss your original post. Can you tell me how to send that command manually as a test? I'm not sure if the Insteon CQC driver or PowerHome are specifying the hop count or not. Like I mentioned above, maybe that would solve my PLC group issue, but I still feel like I have other PLC reliabilities going on, and I'm not sure why. Other people I've talked to using the Insteon CQC driver are getting fairly reliable realtime statuses of their lights. In my setup, I'm not.

Also, I tried checking that "PLC Group Cleanup" box in PowerHome. When I do that, and try to send PLC group commands, PowerHome seems to go into a loop and keeps re-sending the command over and over again. In the log, one line that stands out to me is RX SRIR=SEND FAILED. Does that mean anything to anyone?

Thanks again guys!
 
I don't think you should focus so much on the PLC as the problem. Group comm in Insteon is less reliable than direct comm. Direct commands will retry if they fail, group commands will not, their reliability is controlled through the group cleanup messages mention above which is not as reliable.

You most likely have a noise/signal sucking issue. The problem is that PC's, UPS's, etc will suck the signal off the circuit or cause interference. You should try eliminating these one at a time until you find the problem. Once you find the device(s) causing the issue put filters on them.

I have a small Insteon setup in my home theater, 12 switches on a few circuits. My group commands were unreliable until I filtered my UPS, ELK M1, and Surge Protectors on the PLC circuit. Communication has been rock solid ever since.
 
Well, I feel like an idiot. I believe I solved a big chunk of my PLC reliability issues simply by moving to a different PC and switching USB cables. I was running CQC/PowerHome/SDM on a Windows 2003 Server machine. I've switch to a straight Windows XP Pro machine, and also switched to a 6' USB cable instead of the 10' cable I was using. PLC group control is far more reliable (so far). I'm still having some CQC issues, but I believe that is much improved as well.

I'll be testing more and will update this thread.

Is anyone aware of any compatibility issues with Windows 2003 Server and the Insteon SDM?
 
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