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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 03 2008 at 00:35 | IP Logged
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Hi - I just discovered this useful and helpful tab, but I'm confused about a couple of things....
1) I apparently have one module that is 50% NAK. However, I use an outer loop on all my insteon commands that sends the command and then checks the module status, and this module has never failed to obey a command. So... ?
2) is there a way to reset the counters? I'd like to swap the aforementioned module, but it's not interesting unless I can re-start the count.
3) I'm not sure what "event 03" or "COMM vs ACK+NAK" mean.
Thanks!
/j
Edited by jeffw_00 - February 03 2008 at 00:36
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jpcurcio
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| Posted: February 03 2008 at 02:20 | IP Logged
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Jeff...
To clear the status, go to the "Devices" tab in the Insteon Explorer, and click the box in the "Clear COMM" column (if you want to clear them all, click the "Clear COMM" header at the top of the column). Click the "Save/Refresh" button and you'll be all set.
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 13:18 | IP Logged
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thanks on #2
anyone have thoughts on #1 or #3?
Edited by jeffw_00 - February 05 2008 at 13:19
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dhoward
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 14:04 | IP Logged
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Jeff,
#1...you'll probably want to check your COMM stats in a few days (after resetting to 0 of course) and see if the problem still persists. PowerHome will retry Insteon commands when a NAK is received (on background operations) until a response is received or Max Failures is reached.
You'll need to be sure that you've got a Poll Interval set and at least "Status Scan" enabled to start rebuilding statistics. Alot of people dont like the extra Insteon traffic, so turn these off. You can do like I do however and enable these operations only during the wee hours of the night using the ph_insteonctrl function within a timed event.
If after a few days, you've still got alot of NAK's, then there is a communications problem. If it's just on this one device, then I would look in the area of the device for noise producing devices. If you get NAK's on all or most of your devices, then it's usually a problem with where the PLC is located...usually caused by being plugged into the same outlet as the controlling computer.
#3 - Event 03's show up in the SDM log and is essentially a repeat message. When an Insteon message is sent, everytime it is relayed by another device, an event 03 is generated. You'll usually see 1 to 2 Event 03's before an ACK is received and is normal in a good network. When you start getting into 4 and 5 event 03's, then you may start to see a higher incidence of NAK's for a particular device meaning that the device may be on the fringes of the communications network and not getting a good signal. Additional Access Points (or SignaLincs) may help in this situation.
The COMM vs ACK + NAK report doesnt have any *real* use that I can determine as yet. Since the data was available, I wanted to see if I could spot any trends and so created the report. Basically, every attempted communication should result in either an ACK or a NAK. If I communicate with a device 10 times (say 10 status requests), I should get back either 10 ACK's, 10 NAK's, or a combination thereof totaling 10. This report shows the differences between the total communication attempts and the sum of the ACK's and NAK's.
HTH,
Dave.
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 14:20 | IP Logged
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Hi Dave - thanks for the response
a) Are you saying that PH collects these stats only when Status Scan is running? If so, they are bogus, because except for the first day I used the program, I have status scan OFF. (It interferes with X-10 traffic and with INSTEON cleanup commands). So if that's the case this is all moot.
b) If that's not the case, and you know that I have an "outer loop" where every send-insteon is followed by a poll-insteon-state, does it strike you odd that i have not logged a single failure?
c) What's the benefit of running the scans in the middle of the night? I thought the purpose was to update your program to the state of the world, so you would want to do this continually or not at all. you're framing it now like some sort of maintenance function, which is new to me.
thanks for the explanations, though, I learn something new every day
/j
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BeachBum
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 14:43 | IP Logged
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Jeff, I would be the last to disagree with Dave but I believe the Stats are built from the SDM log on the fly without Scan turned on. Reset the COMM Stats and test without Scan on. Just my 2 cents worth.
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dhoward
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 15:07 | IP Logged
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Jeff,
a. I double-checked the sourcecode because I wanted to be sure of my answer. No...stats are collected from ALL transactions (they used to be (long ago) only during background operations which included Status Scan, linking, level and rate scans, and X10 scans). So, you do not have to have status scan running to build statistics, but you'll get the statistics faster if you do.
b. It would definately seem odd and I would suspect that the 50% *may* have been caused by earlier stats collected over time OR...I have seen communications that have been NAK'ed, but the light STILL responded properly. Im not sure what is going on with that, but that's not the norm and I would think it's a problem. I believe one other user had a similar problem and it was fixed by exchanging the device.
c. The status scans have several benefits. First, they do get the current status and corrects the status within PowerHome in case of bad communications. Second, they also retrieve the current revision of the remote device's internal database and allows PowerHome to refresh it's internal tables by re-scanning the device if differences are detected (the device lost it's memory, a link was added, deleted, changed manually, etc). Third, they're a good way to quickly (and evenly) build the COMM statistics. In a normal setup, we usually control some lights more than others. For example, my living room lamps are hardly used and without the Status scan, I would have hardly any statistics.
Since some people do have problems with continual status scanning (I don't have problems, but I don't want any potential delay or alot of traffic during "normal house operating hours"  ) and I do believe that status scanning is a good thing (Im more concerned with number 2 and 3 above rather than actual status), I created the ph_insteonctrl function so that the Insteon parameters can be read and modified programmatically. So, for those people who choose not to enable status scan, they can now enable during off hours where it's less likely to interfere with normal operations and you'll at least get two out of the three benefits.
Dave.
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 05 2008 at 15:13 | IP Logged
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Thanks Dave - I do 100% of my linking through powerhome so I'm not concerned about the sync issues, and I'm ok not seeing the status of the network (lights turned on manually). so I may leave the scan off for now. However, I will clear the stats and run scan for an hour or so and see if that device is still sketchy, and if it is i'll swap it and see if it's the module.
Stats are a great feature BTW.
Thanks!
/j
PS - I know you're busy, but when you have some time, hope you'll take a quick look at
http://www.myx10.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1647&PN=1
and
http://www.myx10.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1648&PN=1
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 06 2008 at 21:57 | IP Logged
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ok - my stats now looks like
http://www.kwcpa.com/insteon/insteon.pdf
it sort of looks too clean. what do I make of the X-axis?
Thanks!
/j
Edited by jeffw_00 - February 06 2008 at 21:57
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BeachBum
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| Posted: February 07 2008 at 11:55 | IP Logged
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OK, I give.. What did you do to clean up the NAKs or were they left over from day one?
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 07 2008 at 12:30 | IP Logged
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I did nothing. Although in my dim memory i think i may have done some testing of my PH macros by unplugging that module and then trying to access it (it is near my computer and I think I was experimenting with retrieving the status). so maybe it was never broken at all 8-}
still like to know what the X-axis measures...
/j
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BeachBum
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| Posted: February 07 2008 at 14:21 | IP Logged
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I assume you are concerned with the Overall screen. My guess is that 100 = 100%. The right side of 100 is = to value – 100 x.1 representing the average number of Event 03s per COMM.
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jeffw_00
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| Posted: February 07 2008 at 14:24 | IP Logged
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was hoping it would say how many samples the stats were taken over....
/j
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BeachBum
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| Posted: February 07 2008 at 14:28 | IP Logged
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The COMM Count screen does that to a degree but don’t know what happens over 100.
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GadgetGuy
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| Posted: February 06 2012 at 10:02 | IP Logged
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I have a question (perhaps even a suggestion for Dave) re the Insteon Communications Report tab.
I often use the "Overall COMM" report to periodically check for any home issues. However, during years of use, I have never figured any rhyme or reason for the sort order of the report.
Indeed it is VERY confusing.
I suggest it would be nice, if the order has to be fixed, to sort entries in the same order as the "Devices" ID name Tab sorts. It would make it much easier to find individual devices that one suspects may be having any issues. Sometimes it takes me minutes to finally pick out a specific device from the scrambled list.
Overall, it would be nice to be able to sort the list by either ID or overall comm reliability. 
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dhoward
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| Posted: February 06 2012 at 20:15 | IP Logged
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Ken,
I'll look into adding sort options on the reports including the overall COMM.
The current sort is actually by COMM reliability (kind of). The sort is by the TTA (Time till Ack/Nak...the green bar on the right). This is the amount of time it takes for a device to respond with an Acknowledgement (or nak) after sending a command to the device. The higher this value, generally the worse your communications will be as the message will often have to be repeated because the device is further away from the controller, noise is causing interference, etc. Of course, thats not always the case .
Dave.
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Topic: Insteon Explorer -> Reports
