Insteon Transmission Failure

Please forgive me if this subject has been previously covered. My Indigo/Insteon system is generally wonderfully effective but often enough, Insteon signals are not reliably transmitted. I have moved various access points and range extenders all over without much success. I've also tried noise suppressors with the same result. I do find that repeating the (failed) command once or twice more generally solves the problem.

My question is, is there an "approved" or advisable way to do this through programming with Indigo? Obvious ways abound in Indigo but I wonder if some are better than others.

Thanks

[jay (support)]

Repeating failed commands will most often make the problem worse (Insteon has retries built-in). If you're seeing "no acknowledgment" errors, then you are having some kind of signal issue. Check out the signal troubleshooting page for details.

Unfortunately this is not always the case. In my situation >9/10 time my one switch works but <1/10 it doesn't. It may mean the switch is bad? Possibly but I really don't want to spend another $40-$50 to find out I just want to send the signal again, if it fails. When I send the signal manually after noting a failure it works, again> 9/10 times or better. I have Insteon repeaters, all my switches are dual band, etc. I've been doing this for over 15 years starting with X-10. My current home actually has two separate 200A services so I have 4, not 2 legs, to bridge and I've traced things using the X-10 stuff so I have a pretty good idea what circuits are on what legs.

So, is there a way to write a script/plugin to handle these errors and simply repeat a command that fails? I've gone through the python/AppleScript DOM/Dictionary and don't see any way to get error events. Am I missing something. It seems an oversight to have good failure reporting on Insteon devices and not to have any way to do something about the failures. I guess I could just parse the event log every minute, or so and use the error messages there to do something but seems a little kludged.

BTW thanks for getting the 64 bit Touch out. I know that was a pain.

[jay (support)]

There is no easy way to have a script retry failures - we stand by our statement above WRT Insteon signal issues. I think your problem is very likely the two services to your house. I'm pretty sure Insteon wasn't designed to work in an environment like that (they back away from 3 phase commercial service when asked about it - at least they used to). I'd contact Smarthome and ask them how to ensure that all 4 phases are getting bridged correctly and reliably.

Re. your electrical service, do you have separate electrical meters for each 200 Amp service, or do you have a single (320A, 400A) meter providing power to both panels?

Terry


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(they back away from 3 phase commercial service when asked about it - at least they used to).

I read somewhere (can't recall where) that the RF side resynchronizes the signal for each phase on 3 phase power; but for the power line side, since X10 and Insteon both transmit burst information at the zero crossing point, 3 powerline phase signal propagation is not going to work across phases. As far as different services on 110-220 circuits, we had very good results over power line as long as both services were driven off the same transformer (and you don't have an unfiltered VFD waterwell pump in the mix).