Insteon 2413U occasionally disappears

FLiMAC:~ BillNYCiMac$ ls -la /dev/*usb*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 20, 7 Aug 30 14:49 /dev/cu.usbserial-A4016OPA
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 20, 6 Aug 30 14:48 /dev/tty.usbserial-A4016OPA

The only thing plugged in is the modem.

[jay (support)]

So, before it wasn't showing. Now a port is showing but it's not the same as what you had configured before (notice the string after "usbserial-" is different). Have you replaced your 2413U? That's the only reason that number would change (unless your PowerLinc was reporting a different serial number periodically to the driver which pretty much means it's failing).

Open your Insteon config dialog and select that port and see if things start working again.

Yes... I did replace a failed modem.

I tried it and now the computer recognizes the modem and just about everything has synced. There are a few motion detectors and doorway sensors that I will need to reset but so far it seems most everything is back now.

Thanks again;

Hi,

I've been having this same issue ever since I upgraded to new mac mini running Indigo 7 (I was running on old mac mini with Indigo 6). The 2413u modem occasionally disappears. Have not yet tried replacing the modem, but FWIW, my issues did start when I switched over 3 months back. I would say it's happened 3 times, the latest 2 days ago. I didn't at first suspect the modem because the issue was noticed initially with my bedroom remotes not controlling Hue light bulbs in a pair of lamps...So I assumed it was something to do with philips Hue or the plugin, but I couldn't fix it at first (I still didn't suspect the modem because appeared to be online). The odd thing was that when I pressed the remote button, nothing appeared in the log, but then if I executed the command manually from the trigger itself in indigo, it worked.

I didn't put two and two together until I looked a little more at the log noticing that Indigo wasn't picking up ANY traffic at all except for nest thermostats and Alexa discovery running every few minutes. A few Z-wave entries too.

In indigo's lower left corner, it reported "GREEN" on both my Z-wave modem stick and the Insteon 2413U.

This morning, I unplugged the 2413U modem. After unplugging, Indigo 7 was still reporting GREEN in the lower left corner on the modem. So I restarted Indigo and after restart the 2413U modem device went RED (not found). After plugging the modem back in it discovered the modem and now everything is working again. Problem fixed... not solved though because I don't know if it's Indigo7 or my modem.

Should I replace the modem?

Is it normal that Indigo7 would not notice a failed 2413U modem? If so, I'm really surprised.

My next step is to buy a new modem (hate to see one fail... it obviously locked up or something).

TIA.

[matt (support)]

Before replacing the PowerLinc you might want to try it on different USB ports. We recommend the Mac's internal ports first, but if you are having problems/errors there then trying a hub wouldn't hurt.

It is uncommon for it to fail and not have errors in Indigo. If it locks up it is possible that it will remain "green" in the progress area, but the outgoing command green bars will build up and stall in the progress bar. When unplugged from the Mac though it should turn red and you should receive an error. I'm really surprised that didn't occur, as the driver should have reported errors to Indigo in that case.

Had another failure but tried something a bit differently than the last time. Last time I was home, unplugged the modem, noted the 2413U was still green in indigo, then I restarted indigo, with modem unplugged still, indigo now showed "red" on it's status. Plugged modem back in and it went green.

This time, I was away from the house and noticed indigo was not working through any of the insteon triggers and devices. So I connected via "back to my mac" and restarted the computer (restarting indigo naturally) and everything came back after I got back on. My thinking was that this would restart the 2014 mac mini's built in USB hub.

What I wish I had of tried first was a simply restart indigo to see if that would work. Next time this issue arises I will do that first.

I'm still holding off buying a new 2413U modem until that last test. The usb port I'm using is directly off the back of the Mac mini... all the way over to one side I believe. No external hub... but being a designer myself of several skylake, haswell, and sandy bridge hardened military grade mission computers and having dealt with how these USB3.0 ports are brought out, it's usually the case that there is a hub someplace between the PCIe architecture and the final set of plugs on the back of the computer. I don't know how true this is for the Mac mini, which uses a Haswell I think.

I think the main clue uncovered here is that unplugging and repowering the 2413U modem was not a factor.

[jay (support)]

The other thing you should try is quite counter to what we normally tell people: try a USB 2.0 hub. We've had some reports that PowerLincs and Z-Sticks can have issues if plugged directly into a USB 3 port, but switching to a USB 2 port seems to solve the issue. Anecdotal of course, but it's worth a try.

Interesting point. Yes, i do have a couple of old usb2.0 hubs.

But, perhaps the usb2,0 hub isn’t needed at all, since a usb3.0 hub is completely compatible with the old usb2.0 cables...which are simply lacking the 3.0 pins. Hmmm.

I thought the 3.0 tries to use higher data rates even on the 2.0 pins... which could be marginal for the Z-stick (ie works in the initial handshake tests, then may fall behind with heavy traffic?).

Usb 2.0 is limited to 480Mbps by impedance design as well as protocol. The 2.0 signals are a single differential pair of 90-ohm bidirectional chatter, while there are two 3.0 signal pairs, one transmit and the other receive at 85-ohms. These differential pairs run at about 5Gbps and their use is negotiated on the 2.0 pair. Yes, the 2,0 pair also carries traffic but does not exceed 480Mbps.

Incidentally, i checked the cable I’ve been using with the 2413U and its a 2.0 only cable. No 3.0 pins. The cable probably shipped with the 2413U. I had another USB2.0 cable in hand to replace it with, but there was no need. So I will try a USB2.0 hub... it may be that the housekeeping traffic going from mini-to-hub is enough to keep the mini port from croaking.

Was wondering... is there a direct preferred method for checking the status of a 2413U modem and also a z-wave usb stick in terms of absence of traffic? I know i get traffic usually way more than one time per minute...hundreds of insteon devices and a couple dozen z-wave (more z-wave coming), so i could use a watchdog variable, but that would require writing reset code all over kingdom-come to tickle the watchdog. I’d rather execute a direct ‘check every 15 minutes or so. The conditions I'm looking for are the absence of Insteon 'device' traffic, and the absence of Z-Wave 'device' traffic.

Any ideas?

Wouldn't this be a great feature to have on Indigo at the modem driver level, even without the current issue of USB ports vanishing.

[matt (support)]

I think you should be able to do it with just a couple of Triggers. One would be INSTEON Command Received from Any Device with Any Command. The other would be Z-Wave Command Received from Any Device using the Match Raw Packet choice and match bytes of just *. Not positive the latter will work trying to match any commands, but I think it should.

The actions panel for each Trigger would then each have 2 actions. The first one would set a variable value (say "InsteonTrafficReceived") to True, then the second one would set it to False but have the Delay By checkbox enabled with whatever time window you want. The delayed action will get replaced every time the Trigger fires, so if they continue to fire before the delay is over it will never set the variable back to False.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the help on the 'any traffic' triggers. I wrote a pair of triggers for Insteon and a pair of triggers for z-wave.

The first insteon and z-wave triggers were implemented exactly like you state. I thought initially that 10 minutes would be more than enough for Insteon... it timed out about 2 or 3 times per hour however so I set it for 30 minutes. Still waiting for my first false alarm but so far 30 minutes seems good and I can probably reduce to 20 minutes. The z-wave trigger is at 10 minutes and holding due to most of my z-wave energy monitors also having reporting timers every 10 minutes. I don't expect trouble from the z-wave modem but nice to have.

The second insteon and Z-wave triggers implement simple growl notifications if either respective variable ever turns 'false.' I also setup a growled time stamp so that I could know when the true->false transition happened. Very nice patch... I have to tell you that when the insteon modem goes down and things start not working, my wife begins to run around replacing all the batteries lol...and when that doesn't work for her, she tells me how the house needs to 'just work.' I agree and I can't argue with that. This should help.

My new triggers "Insteon Modem is Not Responding" and "Z-wave Modem is Not Responding" are now in place and within 24 hours I needed them... insteon 2413U modem went down... again. It's interestingI also got a power out failure notification too. about 5-am although I don't think the house power failed. But after the house power failure I received both Z-wave and Insteon traffic warnings thanks to the new code I wrote with Matt's help. This time, I was unable to bring the system back online with just a restart of the computer... I had to also move the usb plug to another port and power-cycle the 2413U modem.

Then... about 4 hours later I get another so-called "power failure" and my back to my mac remote capability is gone. Enough.

So I noticed another thread where somebody asked about the Insteon 2448A7, yes I realize that this is wireless only and would often require an extra hop, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Possible root cause: I'm wondering if all the heavy remodeling I'm doing has caused a few power spikes which have damaged the insteon 2413U's AC coupled small-signal read/write circuitry? I think it's possible. I have a 40-Amp molding mill, at 15-Amp large shop vac, routers, 15-amp chop saws... 13-Amp Table saws, and a 15-Amp compressor for the nail guns. I do in fact blow breakers from time to time. Call me sparky, but "spikey" would be more accurate. I'll try the Insteon 2448A7 first... because that has no direct connection to the power lines... this home remodeling hobby of mine is something that will continue to the day I die. Might as well try and keep the modem isolated.

-al

[matt (support)]

It is possible the PowerLinc is malfunctioning. I also think that surges and brownouts can cause the PowerLinc to lockup, sometimes requiring a hard reset (unplugging). The USB RF stick version will help eliminate those problems, at the potential cost of your INSTEON commands requiring an additional RF "hop" to get to modules. Depending on your setup though, that may not be a noticeable problem.