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COMMUNICATING FROM THE ISY-994I TO BLUE IRIS

A few months back I wrote about the Blue Iris Mobile App, and how you could
configure it with a geofence similar to MobiLinc that allows Blue Iris to record
video and notify you of motion detection when you’re not home.

In that post’s comments Sagi Geva mentioned his system has even more integration
between his Blue Iris installation and his ISY-994i. While I’ll certainly do a
how-to post on that kind of integration (get Blue Iris to tell the ISY motion
was detected), I had a more immediate need: get the ISY to tell Blue Iris that
motion was detected. Specifically, my problem is that the camera on my front
porch faces a road where car headlights sweep across it when turning. This fools
Blue Iris into thinking that motion is detected because the pixels in the image
change. As a security system, it’s not great when this “motion” triggers a false
alarm every time a car drives by.

The solution turns out to be similar to Sagi’s suggestion: using a remote API,
only this time we’re talking about using the JSON interface built into Blue Iris
rather than the one built into the ISY-994i. Specifically, the Insteon motion
sensor I have on the porch uses infrared heat to detect motion rather than just
light, so it’s much less prone to false alarms (although they do occasionally
happen). So what we want to happen is that the camera will only trigger a
recording when the motion sensor detects motion, rather than when the camera
detects motion.

To do this, first turn off motion sensing in Blue Iris for each of your affected
cameras. Remember that if you are using the geofence system I described a few
months ago, you’ll want to do this for every relevant profile:
Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 19
Tagged with: blue iris, geo-fence, isy-994i, network, security
Posted in ISY-994i, Security



HOME AUTOMATION TIPS FOR NEW CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

A few months back, reader Billy wrote:

> We’re building a new house, and what better way to get in when you have all
> the walls open to begin with. I was wondering if you had any recommendations?
> Maybe you could do a blog post on things you’ve learned or would do
> differently.

It’s a great question, and I’m just now circling back to it because I’m actually
moving myself this week. Although it won’t be new construction, it will
certainly spawn a whole new set of projects to write about, and I realize the
tips I sent Billy are relevant even if you’re not dealing with new construction.
Here they are:

 * Electrical wiring. First, the beauty of Insteon is that you don’t really need
   to do any specific wiring for it; switches communicate over power lines and
   wirelessly, so there aren’t many INSTEON-related wiring considerations to
   communicate to your electrician. That said, there are some things to consider
   if you’re planning on going all-Insteon in your home:
   1. With Insteon, the concept of switch-to-circuit location isn’t as
      important. For example, many homes have a panel of 4-5 switches by their
      front door to control things like the porch lights, the chandelier, the
      stair lights, the hallway, etc. But in one client house we actually
      installed all the switches for those circuits in a closet nearby. So if
      there was traditional wiring, you’d actually have to open the closet door
      to turn on any of those lights because those switches controlled those
      circuits. But since this was Insteon, we were able to install a single
      circuit by the front door that controlled the porch light. But instead of
      having a simple switch there, we installed a KeypadLinc that would
      remotely control all those other switches/circuits hidden in the closet.
      You don’t HAVE to do this, and could wire your house completely “normally”
      (useful if maybe you want to yank out the Insteon system at some future
      date), but having a single Keypad with 8 buttons gives a cleaner look than
      a bank of a half-dozen switches. In my house I did Insteon as a retrofit,
      so I had a 3-gang box by the front door for the stairs, porch, and
      chandelier. I replaced one of the receptacles with a KeypadLinc, so my
      setup doesn’t look as clean but has the same effect – plus I can turn off
      a bunch of OTHER lights in the house on my way out the door.
      
   2. The wiring for 3-way circuits is different. Specifically, say you have
      stairs that need a switch at the top and bottom to control the lights.
      Normally you’d do this “mechanically” so that both switches control the
      lights with a toggle. But with Insteon, you power both switches
      independently. Only one of them actually controls the lights – and the
      other one sends digital signals to the first to tell it to turn on. See
      this post for a refresher on how this works.
      

Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 15
Tagged with: ethernet, home automation, insteon, wiring
Posted in Home Improvement, Insteon, Media, Security



ISY-994I QUICKSTART: BASIC PROGRAMMING (ACTIONS)

On the heels of the post about ISY-994i programming conditionals, let’s take a
look at possible actions you can take in “Then” and “Else” clauses of your
programs. You can see the list after clicking the “Action” button under “Add to
Program”:
Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 11
Tagged with: amazon echo, isy-994i, programming, quickstart, variables
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i, Programming



ISY-994I QUICKSTART: BASIC PROGRAMMING (CONDITIONALS)

Continuing our QuickStart mini-series, let’s cover the basics of ISY-994i
programming. I’ve covered lots of programs over the years, but apparently, as a
reader pointed out, I never covered the very basics of the structure.

Programs follow a pretty basic “if-then-else” structure. Let’s take a look at
probably one of the most complicated programs I have, which you’ll see isn’t
that complicated at all when you break it down into its parts:



I touched on this concept at the end of my last post about scenes in an example
of how you could activate lights with a motion sensor via scenes or programs;
this is one of my programs for accomplishing that goal.

We won’t go into exactly what this program does (perhaps another time…) because
for now we’re just looking at the structure. As you can see, there’s an “if”
clause in this program, and a “then” clause, but no “else” clause. The “then”
clause is pretty straightforward and is restarting another program, but the “if”
clause is a compound statement that deserves a closer look. Basically by using
the parentheses (added with the buttons that say “Add And (…)” and “Add Or
(…)”), we have three parts that make up this compound conditional.

 1. The first part itself has an “or” clause in there; you can see the dropdown
    that says “And” in the bottom box titled “Schedule”. When adding a clause to
    a conditional, you make this box either “And” or “Or” before clicking “Add
    to ‘if'”. This part is basically saying “this statement is only true if the
    time falls into certain hours around sunset OR certain hours around
    sunrise“.
 2. The next part says “this statement is only true if motion sensor A turns on
    OR motion sensor B turns on.”
 3. Finally, we say “this statement is only true if the kitchen light is NOT
    80%.”

Once we execute each of those three statements to figure out if each of them are
true, we join them together to basically say “run the THEN clause if part 1 is
true AND part 2 is true AND part 3 is true. Otherwise run the ELSE clause (i.e.,
do nothing).”. So the next question is how does the program run at all, and
when? Well, it essentially runs all the time, but nothing happens because not
all of the “If” conditions are met. Every time the time of day, the state of a
device, or a state variable (but NOT an integer value) changes within the ISY,
every program’s conditionals are checked. So in this case:

 * Every minute the program “runs” and the first condition is true some of the
   times of the day, but not all.
 * Every time any device in this program changes state, the program “runs”. The
   second conditional is true if a) that device is one of those motion sensors,
   and b) the state of the motion sensor is “on”.
 * If we had state variables here (like those set when we enter and leave a
   geofence), the program would run when those changed.
 * Note the difference between the word “Control” in the second part, and
   “Status” in the third part of my program. You use “Control” when you want to
   test how a device was turned on, and you use “Status” when you want to test
   the brightness level of a device.

Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 9
Tagged with: isy-994i, programming, quickstart
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i, Programming



ISY-994I QUICKSTART: SCENES AND LINK TABLES

I’ve written extensively about Insteon Scenes, and discussed some things to
consider when diagnosing problems with scenes, but I thought for the sake of
completeness in the ISY-994i QuickStart mini-series, scenes should be included.
So here’s a question from reader Ashu:

> I do understand the use case for creating a scene where multiple devices need
> to controlled together but if there is a need to control just one device, say
> a lonely light bulb in the spare room – would you still create a scene for
> that device?
> 
> The reason why I ask is becasue per ISY documentation: “Once programmed,
> scenes operate completely independent of the ISY for the quickest response
> time and most reliable operation” — does that mean there is some
> performance/efficiency to be gained?

Here’s my response:

In general, I create scenes for virtually everything, even those single-bulb
scenarios like Ashu mentions. Here are a couple reasons why I do it:

 * I use MobiLinc and there are separate screens for “scenes” and “devices” so I
   don’t want to have to switch back and forth to control one or the other.
 * Oftentimes even if you do have a lonely light bulb, you may end up adding
   another switch to control it. For example, maybe you have a KeypadLinc in
   another room that you want to control that lone bulb; a scene allows you to
   connect multiple devices later on.
 * Insteon devices fail, so by controlling devices through scenes it provides a
   bit of an abstraction so that when you replace a device you don’t have to
   change the scene you’re controlling (or any programs or Amazon Echo commands
   that may reference that scene).

All of those reasons are a bit nebulous and don’t really answer the technical
question about whether you should create a scene to control just one device.
First off, let’s explain what the ISY doc means. Basically, they’re talking
about multi-device scenes, and they’re referring to the fact that all Insteon
devices have a built in “link table”. You can see this in the ISY by
right-clicking a device, then going to “Diagnostics: Show Device Link Table”.
The link table is how the device knows who to send messages to and receive from.
Take this example – I’ve got lights in my attic and I control those lights with
an open/close sensor so that the lights go on when the ladder is dropped down:



I have a “scene” called “Attic Lights” with two devices in it – the Open/Close
sensor as a controller and the Light switch itself as a responder. Open the
door, lights go on. But under the covers what the ISY does is write to the link
table for those two devices so that they send messages directly between them
without having to communicate with the ISY at all. So even if I unplugged the
ISY, this would all still work because the devices are communicating “completely
independent of the ISY for the quickest response time”.

Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 7
Tagged with: insteon, isy-994i, link tables, quickstart, scenes
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i



ISY-994I QUICKSTART: FOLDERS AND NAMING CONVENTIONS

Today’s ISY-994i QuickStart post addresses the question: “Once I’ve added
devices, how should I organize them?”

There’s no “right” way to organize your folders and devices, but here are a few
tips that I’ve applied over the years to keep things organized.



Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 5
Tagged with: best practices, folders, isy-994i, naming conventions, quickstart
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i



ISY-994I QUICKSTART: ADDING DEVICES TO THE ISY-994I

Continuing our QuickStart series of posts about the fundamentals of basic ISY
configuration, today we’ll cover two ways to add a device to the ISY-994i.

Without getting too technical, when we add a device to the ISY, in addition to
telling it that this device “exists”, we’re also telling it to add an Insteon
link to the device itself and to the PowerLinc Modem (PLM). It does this because
we want the device to send a message to the PLM every time its state changes –
and every time the PLM gets this message, it’s available to the ISY to update
the status, run programs, etc.. In other words, when you turn on a device, you
want the device to say “On” when you’re looking at the ISY application.

The first and easiest way to add a device is to go to “Link Management:Start
Linking”. Essentially what this does is tell the PLM to start listening for
devices on the network that are ready to link.



You would then put the device you want to add in “linking mode” by pressing and
holding the set button on that device for a few seconds. It will then send a
signal that is picked up by the PLM, and the ISY lets you know it’s ready to
configure the link tables and for you to name the device.





Here’s the thing: I don’t really advise this method of adding a device. I’ve had
only limited success with it, and it doesn’t seem to work well with wireless
devices like RemoteLincs. I don’t exactly have proof of this, but I’ve also been
concerned about adding multiple devices at once. Specifically, if you don’t have
an ISY or PLM, this is how you link devices together – by putting one device in
“linking” mode, then do the same on the next device. So if you do have the ISY
and put two devices in “linking” mode at the same time, I think it’s possible to
accidentally link those devices to each other. If that happens, you may end up
with one device turning on when you click a different switch – not something
we’re looking for in this case!

Read more ›



Posted by Matt Chiste
November 3
Tagged with: control device, isy-994i, quickstart, sensing device
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i

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