LampLinc lost its memory, Zwave locked up

[jrfuda]

Last night there was some electrical weirdness going on.

I think the power went off around 1 am, but I did not notice it until it came back on. Apparently it was only out for a few minutes, because my HS server on its little 350 UPS hadn't shut down.

I would have stayed in bed, but I could see alight was on in the living room, so I went to turn it off. I couldn't turn it off sending X10 commands. I could only turn it off with the switch. The lamp's on a LampLinc 2-way module.

I checked HomeSeer and saw that there were some A1 transmissions in the log, but it didn't register in my head as to why, and I was distracted by all the ZWave errors in the log.

Usually when we have a power failure the ZWave USB interface locks up, I think from trying to poll devices that can't respond because they're not powered. Restarting HomeSeer fixed the problem. I'll probably need to use one of the UPS scripts someone posted over at the HS board, and have it restart HS after power is restored so the system won't lock up.

Well, it was late so I went back to bed without messing with the LampLinc, 'cause I was tired.

At 3 am I woke to the sound of beeping UPS's (I really need to disable the beeping in those things). So I got up to power everything down and turn off the UPS's, because I couldn't sleep with the beeping and I was afraid they'd wake the baby.

I then proceeded to get a wind-up kitchen timer out of the kitchen, cranked it to 60 minutes and put it by the bed to wake me up since I needed to get up a little after 4 am in order to get the baby to daycare and get to work on time (I'd need a little extra time to get ready in the dark).

At 4 am the power came back on.

At 4:15 am the kitchen timer went off. I went back to sleep.

At 4:30 am the alarm clock went off (It's one of those "atomic" clocks, so it keeps time really well and uses a button battery to remember the alarm settings, don't know if it would sound the alarm with no power, though).

I got ready for work and had a few minutes to spare before I needed to wake the baby, so I dug under the couch for the LampLinc. Just for giggles I held down the program button and sent it the appropriate house and unit code. It responded! It appears that it lost its memory somehow during the night. That phantom A1 I saw earlier in the log was the 2-way action of the module reporting its status when I was turning it on and off locally.

I thought those things were supposed to have some sort of persistent memory. I wonder what made it forget who it was?

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

Yes, they do have memory and should retain their address for a very long time. Some devices will hold it for up to 10 years. I would suspect that you might have had a power surge when the juice came back on. Sometimes that will knock out programming.

 

[WayneW]

I thought those things were supposed to have some sort of persistent memory. I wonder what made it forget who it was?

They are supposed to have persistent memory. This is a bug that I have seen in the LampLinc and ApplianceLinc modules. It may or may not affect other Linc stuff, but I don't have enough other stuff to have seen it myself.

In my experience, the modules change their address back to A1 and turn on. I don't think that they lose their dim level and fade rates. To resolve the situation, press the button and send the desired house & unit codes. No power cycle is required, but you must have physical access to the module, which can be a total pain.

My belief is that the memory loss is caused by a power glitch of some sort, but I have been unable to reproduce this by deliberately cycling power. I have discussed this with SmartHome folks. At first they denied it, but they have now heard it from enough people that they admit it. Unfortunately they have been unable to reproduce it or find the root cause, therefore it is not likely to ever get fixed in the existing hardware. This issue has prevented me from deploying more Linc products in my house. Having things stuck on is not good for the WAF or the power bill. The good news is that SmartHome claims enough things are different in the v2 Insteon products that they believe the problem has been resolved in the new hardware.

 

[jrfuda]

In my experience, the modules change their address back to A1 and turn on. I don't think that they lose their dim level and fade rates.

You are correct, the dimlevel and fade/on rates stayed, just the housecode was lost.