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jgreco
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 10:20 | IP Logged
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I've got a strange problem and I'm not sure where to go next.
We had a nicely functioning PH setup with dozens of Insteon devices, including KeypadLincs. We've mainly been using PH as an intelligent KPL group controller. Almost all KPL buttons proxy through it, all other devices link to MH as well, so when someone clicks "ALL OFF", the ALL OFF KPL LED comes on, and then if anyone turns on a light, it also properly extinguishes. Works very well, a bit laggy, but that seems to be Insteon.
One day, it suddenly stopped working. Hadn't done anything to the MH host PC for quite some time, so it seemed out of the blue. It's got some timed events that run to control evening lighting, etc., and these still work.
However, incoming messages (seen in the Insteon Raw Log) don't seem to be getting processed. When an incoming message arrives from a device, it's seen in the IRL, it's properly decoded in the Event Log as an Insteon In with the correct device name, but does not update in Device Status, does not trigger triggers for the group, etc. Interestingly, it POLLS the device statuses just fine, i.e. it'll eventually get around to polling every device and correctly updating its status in the Device Status screen, so it's obviously not deaf and it's clearly able to chat with the Insteon devices just fine. Incoming events do appear to trigger a check we've got called KPL_CLEANUP which is the hook to clean up the LED status, but since the events don't get registered in the Device Status, it doesn't work correctly.
I'm not sure what to do or where to look to determine what the problem is. What is it that glues events that appear in the Event Log to whatever logic it is that actually updates the Device Status in the database?
Most puzzling is that this all used to work well.
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 11:15 | IP Logged
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You might try going to Insteon Explorer then Devices to check for shaded boxes for those devices.
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jgreco
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 11:26 | IP Logged
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BeachBum wrote:
| You might try going to Insteon Explorer then Devices to check for shaded boxes for those devices. |
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Sorry, yeah, I should have mentioned, the first thing I did was to clear failed in the Insteon devices, we have a few outliers that do rack up enough errors from time to time... also restarted PH, also restarted the host PC, also uninstalled and reinstalled PH, so I was going to point out that it seems clear that it's likely something awry in the database.
By the way, we sometimes see the PLM (2412S) go failed comms. My vague recollection is that my previous research on that suggested it wasn't a Real Problem.
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 12:37 | IP Logged
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“PLM (2412S) go failed comms” I would suggest that would be a problem and is probably because of noise on the circuit. This would also explain the delay due to error retries built into Insteon. If that is part of the problem then the obvious question is what in new and/or what has been moved. It might help if you could snapshot the IRL and the Event Log. Personally I don’t believe it’s the DB but I’ve been wrong before.
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grif091
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 13:13 | IP Logged
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Pete, he may be referring to the problem where the PLM is part of a Group where PH is trying to Query the status of the PLM using the PLM which is not possible. Eventually PH marks it red shaded but that should not stop foreground activity. Of course if it is noise or something new attenuating the Insteon signals your suggestions are right on.
Edited by grif091 - June 18 2010 at 15:53
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Lee G
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 13:18 | IP Logged
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It would be interesting to see what the 2 logs reveal.
Edited by BeachBum - June 18 2010 at 14:03
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jgreco
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 14:19 | IP Logged
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BeachBum wrote:
| “PLM (2412S) go failed comms” I would suggest that would be a problem and is probably because of noise on the circuit. This would also explain the delay due to error retries built into Insteon. If that is part of the problem then the obvious question is what in new and/or what has been moved. It might help if you could snapshot the IRL and the Event Log. Personally I don’t believe it’s the DB but I’ve been wrong before. |
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Yes, there's effectively noise on the circuit, but this is unavoidable. I can see the difference between what would seem to be Insteon lagginess and actual Insteon retries (based on the Insteon Raw Log) but I'm not really able to do anything meaningful to affect the root causes at the moment: suffice it to say that there are a lot of electronics involved and a lot of power protection issues. Our worst performing device is about 50% ack/50% nak, everything else comes in at least at 90% ack, according to the stats.
I'm not really sure how that is relevant, in any case; I understand the ins and outs of Insteon pretty well, but what I'm trying to find out is what is happening within PowerHome. It registers an inbound Insteon event correctly in the Insteon Raw Log, and in the PH Event Log, it has correctly identified the device name, but in the Device Status, the status isn't being updated, and it doesn't seem updated in the database either, since my KPL button code isn't picking up any changes.
So, what I'm really after is some information on how PowerHome takes an inbound Insteon event and handles it.
Here's some screen caps, blame Avocent and a 150K image size restriction for the poor video, sorry.
Here, I just pressed OFF on the wall switch:
Here, I just pressed ON (so technically Device Status is correct, but see the timestamp, it's old)
Here, I just pressed OFF again on the wall switch:
No other events, no other Insteon traffic. See, the event arrives, is decoded correctly, shows up in the Event Log, and never makes it to Device Status. I'm asking WTF and would really appreciate some clues as to where to check next. My experience with PH devices and Insteon is that PH just automatically picks them up, once created by Insteon Explorer, and just magically makes them work right within the Device Status and PH database. So I don't know what broke or why. The system hadn't been logged into for at least a month when it suddenly stopped working one day, and no Insteon changes had been made. I'm at a loss as to what to try next.
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jgreco
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 14:22 | IP Logged
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Oh, and I just noticed, while I was putzing with resizes to get all the little windows to fit, Insteon Explorer's devices pane now shows the wrong two devices and they're disabled. I disabled them in order to keep things quiet, I was originally trying to show the defs for the OFFICE LTS switch and the PLMCTLR, which are not disabled. Sorry for any confusion.
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 15:26 | IP Logged
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Lee, when another controller changes the status but PH in not making the change what causes the PH status to change other than through a trigger? In my system I originate all device changes so this is not a problem.
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grif091
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 15:52 | IP Logged
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The Event Log is not showing any Group Broadcast messages, only the Group Cleanup Direct messages. That suggests the PLM links have been corrupted in some way. The links are required so that the non-device specific Group Broadcast message is accepted by the PLM. Try rebuilding the PLM link database.
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Lee G
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 16:48 | IP Logged
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Might add use Full as we have seen weird problems associated with the PLM using MIN.
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jgreco
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 17:12 | IP Logged
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Did a clear, add full, now it's working again. Sheesh. Thanks guys.
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 17:20 | IP Logged
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Next question, what clobbered it? I have not had to reload mine in 2 years.
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grif091
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 17:32 | IP Logged
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No way to know for sure. Because the link database is searched serially from top down it only takes a single flag byte to get lost for all the link entries following the corrupted entry to no longer be searched. Maybe a power glitch that affected the entire PLM link database. Sometimes a better theory can be developed by looking at the pages of link database memory as data, so that flag bytes don't stop the retrieval. I have a PH macro that does that but it cannot be used on the active Controller device. Probably never will know what actually happened.
Edited by grif091 - June 18 2010 at 17:57
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Lee G
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 18 2010 at 17:35 | IP Logged
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BeachBum
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| Posted: June 21 2010 at 09:35 | IP Logged
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I don’t know if it has anything to do with this problem but when a Windows (Vista) update hit my PH system yesterday it locked up the PLM and a USB mouse. The only way around it was to Clear and download Full to the PLM.
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Topic: Insteon not being processed ...?
