Indigo & Virtual 3-way Setup Problem

I'm very excited to have my new PowerLinc V2 and Indigo 1.8. Thanks for all your hard work on this, Matt. It really is amazing!

I am having a problem with two Insteon SwitchLinc Dimmers that are linked together for a "virtual 3-way" setup. They have always acted as expected, but they don't seem to work quite right with Indigo. When I turn one on via Indigo, the other one is not affected. For example, if I turn on the "master" via Indigo, the "slave" stays at 0% in Indigo, and LEDs on the slave switch do not move up. Same thing when I turn on the slave via Indigo, except the light fixture doesn't turn on either. When I turn on either switch at the wall, everything acts as it should, and BOTH indicate the proper % in Indigo.

I have fiddled with them for several hours, resetting, relinking, re-syncing links, etc... I think I have tried everything. Am I missing something? Could this be a bug? Could I have a bad switch? Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[matt (support)]

This is somewhat understandable, given the way linking works with INSTEON. If you used a ControLinc or KeypadLinc to turn on one of your switches, then the other would not also update. You would have to link both switches into the ControLinc/KeypadLinc for it to work correctly. Indigo only sends direct INSTEON commands to a single device, compared to a ControLinc which always sends a group INSTEON command to multiple devices.

Because of this, the only solution I can think of would be to use an Action Group to send the command to both switches. Eventually, I hope to add group command support and more remote linking capability, which will let Indigo send a single group command to both switches at the same time. I'll think about this some more...

Regards,
Matt

Thanks for the quick reply. I wondered if it was something like that. At least now I know I wasn't doing something wrong. I know Insteon support is a work in progress. Keep up the good work! I think it's great so far!

I noticed the same thing. First of all, I believe that it can get real confusing to program for Insteon because of the number of links that are capable.

Anyways at first I disliked the way it worked, but then I realized that I have a case where I would not want it to work differently: I have outdoor house lights and outdoor driveway lights added afterwards. I have the switches linked with virtual 3-way with Insteon so I can control both manually with the wall switches. But what I do with Indigo is setup a timer that turns both sets of lights on, then a few hours later turns off the house while leaving the driveway lights on. If they were all automatically linked together then I could not do this.

A workaround I did for regular indoor Virtual 3-ways:

I setup each switch as a device (eg. Hallway Master and Hallway Slave) in Indigo. I then make two Trigger Actions for the Master Device with State changed to On or Off which changes the slave respectively. Now I just remember use the Master device in Indigo to turn the light on/off and the trigger takes care of the slave (not really necessary but nice cosmetically when looking at the switch on the wall). What one could do is name all the slave devices like zzzHallway, zzzStairs etc. so they are all listed at bottom. Maybe there could be an option for Indigo to set a "hide device" option with a checkmark at bottom which show/hides those with this status. This would be good for slave devices or other devices that one normally wouldn't want to mess with.

Seems though that Indigo has no problems when receiving an Insteon command from either linked switch - it updates the other one respectively (eg. light bulb icon on/off).

I have found it best to program action groups to setup 3-way, 4-way, etc switches. I add devices as normally described and name them with a prefix so I know what devices are assosiated with a 3-way circuit. For example, the two hallway light switchs could be named SW1-Hallway and SW2-Hallway. Single switches I eliminate the SW# prefix to avoid confusion.

Each action group obviosly must reference each switch on the circuit. I have found it important not to use the TOGGLE ON/OFF action in one action group to turn the switchs On or Off since it is possible to request swicthes on the same circuit to be in opposite conditions (On or Off) if not linked correctly or if the start conditions were not the same (one OFF, one ON). To prevent this, you can create two action groups: Hallway Lights - ON, and Hallway Lights - OFF. In each group use Turn On or Turn Off actions, respectively. This ensure all the switches are forced to either the ON or OFF state.

Hope this helps....
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