Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

Posted on
Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:35 pm
DVDDave offline
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Location: San Jose, CA

Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

My Rain8II and PSC05 have been working reliably for many years now, even with Indigo 2021.1. However, I just updated to a Mac Mini M1 with Big Sur and have noticed a weird problem.

Valves turn on as expected at the proper time. However, they don't turn off with Indigo commands sent from the irrigation control interface. (A big problem with our California drought but they do seem to go off after the failsafe time since my yard is not flooded.)

When I send a regular X10 command to the device code, the valve responds normally both on and off. Therefore, there seems to be a problem with the irrigation control interface in Indigo. Since my EZFlora Insteon controller responds normally, the problem seems to be confined to the X10 version.

This is a built in function of Indigo so I don't know how to troubleshoot it further. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

--Dave

Edit: I just noticed that no status is being returned to Indigo from the Rain8 (request times out). Could be part of the same problem I guess.

Posted on
Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:19 pm
matt (support) offline
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Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

Hi Dave,

It is unlikely this problem is related to Indigo or your new Mac (or Big Sur). This sounds like an X10 signal problem, or a hardware malfunction (Rain8, PSC05, or your X10 interface).

Take a look at the Event Log window when the Off is supposed to occur. Copy/paste the Event Log result of that (failure case), along with the manual X10 command case (which sounds like it works) into a reply for us. I suggest doing multiple tests of each to make sure it consistently fails in the former and not the latter.

Image

Posted on
Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:26 pm
DVDDave offline
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Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

I turned on the lawn sprinkler with an Indigo irrigation control device and it went on OK.
I issued a status request with the irrigation control device and it timed out.
I stopped all zones with the irrigation control device and the lawn sprinkler stayed on.
I stopped the lawn sprinkler with an Indigo X10 appliance device and it went off OK.
I issued another status request with the irrigation control device and it again timed out.

I've done the above many times with many variation and the irrigation control always fails to turn off the sprinklers and the X10 appliance device always succeeds.

The status request always times out. I don't remember if it worked before; does Indigo support status on the Rain8II 2-way module?

Here are the log entries for the sequence I described above:

Code: Select all
Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Lawn" on
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" on
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front" status request
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" status request
   Error                           timeout waiting for device Status Response
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Lawn" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Shrubs" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Shrubs" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Pots" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Pots" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Pool" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Pool" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone5" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone6" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone7" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone8" off
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Lawn" off
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" off
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front" status request
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" status request
   Error                           timeout waiting for device Status Response

Posted on
Thu Sep 02, 2021 5:56 am
DVDDave offline
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Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

I just noticed that extra entries appear in the log since both the irrigation and appliance devices used the same house code. However, this does not affect the actual commands sent and it makes no difference in the behavior I described. In the interest of clarity though, I repeated the test, changing to an different house code for the unused devices. I also annotated the log entries.

Looking back at a log file made by my old server that was working for irrigation control, I noticed that "(address)" did not appear next to the first 7 Sent X10 entries as it does on the new server. This might be a clue to the problem but I have no idea what it means.

Code: Select all
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Lawn" on ;Sent with irrigation control, command successful
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front" status request ;Sent with irrigation control, command unsuccessful
   Error                           timeout waiting for device Status Response
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Lawn" off (address) ;Sent with irrigation control, command unsuccessful
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Shrubs" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Pots" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - Pool" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone5" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone6" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone7" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front - zone8" off
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" off ;Sent with appliance control, command successful
   Sent X10                        "Sprinklers Front" status request ;Sent with irrigation control, command unsuccessful
   Error                           timeout waiting for device Status Response

Posted on
Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:41 am
DVDDave offline
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Joined: Feb 26, 2006
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

Sorry to stack up replies like this but I just had a major breakthrough. When I executed an action with sequential commands to turn off valves using appliance module controls, I got the same problems as with the irrigation control device. However, when I inserted a short delay between the off commands, the problem went away. Maybe with the new, faster server, the commands are going out too quickly for the Rain8 or the PSC power line interface to process. However, the fact that "(address)" appears in the log may indicate that the problem is more internal to Indigo. In any event, I have no control over the timing of the off commands from the irrigation control but it seems like something that hopefully should be easy to fix.

Edit: Even more importantly, this is happening with other X10 modules as well when commands are stacked up without delays. Sounds like there is a timing issue between Indigo and my Powerlinc 2413U. This is much more serious since I probably have many actions that send out sequential X10 commands and finding them all may be difficult.

Code: Select all
   Action Group                    Test sequential
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" off (address)
   Sent X10                        "Shrubs" off
   Action Group                    Test sequential
   Sent X10                        "Lawn" off
   Schedule                        _delayed_action_71
   Sent X10                        "Shrubs" off

Posted on
Thu Sep 02, 2021 7:43 am
DVDDave offline
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Joined: Feb 26, 2006
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

Problem solved!!!

It turns out that Grouping X10 Commands on Transmission in the Insteon/X10 configuration was causing the problem. For some reason, this doesn't work properly with my Mac Mini M1 or maybe with Big Sur at all. Unchecking the box makes everything work fine, including the irrigation control feature. Edit: Status requests still time out though.

Sorry for such a long winded thread with such an easy fix but I suspect other users will run into similar issues. The problem can present itself in many ways that may not be noticed at first so some sort of announcement may be in order if it can't be fixed other than by disabling the feature.

Thanks.

--Dave

Posted on
Fri Sep 03, 2021 3:55 pm
matt (support) offline
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Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

Hi Dave,

Great – I'm glad you tracked down the problem and a solution. Is it possible your Indigo Server prefs file didn't get copied over to the new Mac or the preference for grouping X10 commands somehow got changed? That is, I wonder if the problem would have occurred on your previous setup with the same preference. Now that you identified the problem, I have a very vague recollection of the PSC05 or Rain8 not liking the grouped X10 command technique.

Image

Posted on
Fri Sep 03, 2021 5:46 pm
DVDDave offline
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Joined: Feb 26, 2006
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Irrigation problem after upgrade to Mac Mini M1/Big Sur

I think the prefs got copied over but I can't be sure now and have no easy way to check on my old server. Come to think of it, my home coordinates prefs were messed up (zeroed out) with the new server, putting me in the wrong time zone, so you might be right about that. Thanks, Matt

--Dave

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