Universal Devices ISY-994i Series, User Manual

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Example: Today 3 or my 5 devices turned on in a scene but yesterday everything worked
fine.
Tools to look for noise.
•
Place an INSTEON keypad in link mode and watch the flashing cadence. It should
flash on and off about every second. When noise is present the flash cadence will be
all over the place. It might flicker instead of flash and it might stay off to 5 or 10
seconds at a time then flash fast. (to put a keypad in link mode you just press and
hold the set button in for 5 seconds)
•
Some INSTEON devices actually have a function called flash on traffic. This will
cause the LED on the device to flash when it see powerline traffic and in some cases
it can show noise also.
•
Query a device in the ISY and it should query very fast. If it takes 20 seconds (it
should take a second or two) then you may have noise of phase bridging issues.
What to do to identify Noise.
•
I find the easiest way to get to the bottom of the cause is to look for the identifier
like the flashing on the keypad then go to the breaker panel and turn off the first
breaker. Look to see if the flashing goes back to normal. If not then turn that breaker
on and turn off the next. Keep doing it until the keypad flashes at a normal cadence.
Note: Try not to switch the breaker that controls the keypad you are watching. If
you go through all of the breakers and you have found the cause then it may be the
circuit the keypad is on. In this case you unplug any device plugged into that circuit
and see if one of the plug-in loads is the cause. Once you find it you can simply buy a
plug-in filter and filter that device.
In closing, there doe sn’t have to be a device that you just added that causes the problem. It
could be a device you have had for years and one day it starts to throw noise on the
powerline. I had a customer that had a Sonic Care tooth brush and then the brush was in
the charger it destroyed communication to 120 switches in his house. This is just one
example and there are other stories like this with simple plugin loads that start to produce
noise on their own.
12.7 INSTEON No Status Feedback from Devices
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ISY programs which are based on Status or Control depend on the status of devices being
communicated back to ISY from the device and through the PLM. Therefore, if you do not
see immediate status updates on the Admin Console when a device is manually controlled
(at the device), then - and in all likelihood - the issue is PLM related and specifically link
records for that device does not exist in the PLM. Since PLMs have limited capacity for link
records (about 2000 but they stop sending change of state after about 900), it's always best
50 (Universal Devices)