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MrGibbage
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| Posted: January 14 2007 at 14:18 | IP Logged
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The instructions for the Elk M1XSP goes into detail about how to enroll each device in the insteon network into the M1XSP using the tap tap method and looking for the three flash two second pause light on the board. My question is, why is this necessary? If the PLC knows about each divice that it needs to control, and the M1XSP just needs to tell the PLC what device number to fire, then why the need to register? In fact, when I create groups with PH, I sure don't enroll them into the M1XSP. So, what's going on? Do I really need to enroll each device to make it work? I have already enrolled mine, and it works, so I'm not about to clear everything to find out myself.
Just wondering,
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MrGibbage
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| Posted: January 14 2007 at 23:52 | IP Logged
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Interestingly, I actually had to reset my M1XSP tonight, and found out the answer to my side-question: you do have to enroll the insteon devices into the M1XSP. I reset my M1XSP tonight when I realized that none of my devices were working tonight. After resetting it, nothing still worked. Looked a little closer and saw that the cable had come loose at the bottom of the PLC. **sigh** Everything works again, but I would still like to know why devies have to be enrolled into the M1XSP. It just doesn't make sense to me.
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bmil
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| Posted: January 15 2007 at 10:58 | IP Logged
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I'll give your question a shot as I use the M1 for controlling Insteon also...
The Insteon PLC doesn't know anything about M1 lighting device numbers. All it knows about are the Insteon Hex ID's that you load into it, either by manual linking or using PH to d/l them to the PLC. When you want the Insteon PLC to control an individual Insteon device you have to tell the PLC the hex ID of the device to control. Since the M1 knows nothing about Insteon hex ID's and the PLC knows nothing about M1 lighting device numbers there has to be a way to associate M1 lighting device numbers with Insteon hex ID's. That's where the M1XSP comes in.
The XSP maintains a table relating an M1 lighting device number with an Insteon hex ID. That way when you tell the M1 to turn on lighting device number 14 it knows that lighting device number 14 is associated with Insteon hex ID C1.E6.B0 and sends a command to the PLC to turn on C1.E6.B0.
The tap tap "enrollement" process you mentioned is how you tell the XSP which Insteon hex ID is associated with each M1 lighting device number (this was the ONLY way to do it before PH wrote the phinsteon utility). Without some way for the M1 to internally relate it's lighting device numbers with Insteon hex ID's it has no way to send the PLC the correct command to control an individual Insteon device.
What is a little confusing is as you mentioned, the PLC Group command. The only way to send the PLC a valid command to control Insteon devices without sending a hex ID is when one or more Insteon devices are part of a PLC Group (not a non-PLC device group). The PLC maintains the table of hex ID's that are part of each of it's group numbers (which you set up using PH). In this case the M1 only has to send a group number, i.e. lighting device number 193-255.
In closing, the M1 can control a PLC group without having an Insteon hex ID loaded into the XSP (as long as you've already used PH to configure groups into the PLC) but in order to control individual Insteon devices the hex ID's have to be loaded into the XSP's internal table (using tap tap or the phinsteon utility).
Boy, did this explanation end up long winded.. and please keep in mind that I am in no way an Insteon expert and my explanation may have mistakes in it.
I have to stop reading these forums when i've had more than 2 cups of coffee...
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dhoward
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| Posted: January 15 2007 at 20:33 | IP Logged
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Bmil,
Excellent explanation. You've got it exactly right. The Elk only knows about lighting devices 1 to 255 (old X10 holdover) but in order to directly address Insteon devices for control, you need a device to map the 1 to 255 over to Insteon ID's. This is the M1XSP and the tap-tap method is what normally does this. PowerHome allows you to do this programatically however.
If you look at the raw Insteon command set, a direct device to device command addresses a specific Insteon address (devices 1 to 192 in the Elk). An Insteon Group command however uses a group number 1 to 255 (193 to 256 in the ELK to map to Insteon groups 1 to 64...you cant control groups above 64 with the Elk). This is why you don't have to teach groups to the M1XSP...it just has to subtract 192 from the lighting ID to get the group number and doesnt care about individual group members (which also means that the Elk won't be doing any Insteon Group Cleanup commands).
Dave.
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Topic: M1XSP + 2414S + PH: How does it work?
