Woke up dead.

[Wadenut]

I have no idea what you are writing about here.

Found one, but it's 25 pin. Not what I'd prefer as it means using an adaptor, or modifying the cable.

See attachment. These are what I'm looking for, and know I have. The one I found is 25 Pin. May not need them now anyway.

I do have a USB hub in the mix. Found the RFXCOM and Way2Cal on that; no idea why I did that. Moved both to onboard USB. This required a reboot as now the Way2Call wouldn't work.

In doing the reboot, so far the Edgeport is acting differently. Instead of the indicator being mainly off and flashing orange on activity, it's now mainly on and flashing (as it should). Ran around the house testing motion sensors and they all responded very quickly. Of course it's daytime and some of the lights, by my design, didn't switch on.

In asking questions around here (one always should)... As in "Have you noticed the lights not working sometimes?", I got "It's been doing that for a long time". Now, around here "A long time" might mean a "couple of days" or it could mean "it's always been that way". Hard to get a straight answer.

At any rate, the reboot did have some kind of effect, so now I wait and see.

[Pete]

I have a few of those that I have not thrown out.

I have two types of those 9 Pin ribbon to motherboard connectors here as my newer BCM boards used these but smaller ends.

I quit using legacy serial ports when I went to using one Digi USB hub to the Digi Edgeports and other USB devices.

Doing similar today with newest HS3 box. (works with RPi2 also).

Computer ==> Digi powered 7 port USB hub ==> 2 Digi Edgeports plus 5 USB ports. Way2Call powered USB device works fine with Digi USB hub.

ZTroller was on 2nd floor and connected to a Quatech serial server way long time ago.

This is one USB cable for all of my hardware. HS2 was configured like this for years.

[Wadenut]

Problem SOLVED

I found a couple of the IDC cables in my garage. One DE9, the other DE25.
It would seem not all of these cables are created equally. There are at least two very different configurations and both had to be modified to suit my MB. Having done that, I plugged both into the COM1/COM2 ports on the board and connected both the Z-Troller and the w800 to them. It's currently a bit of a kluge as I didn't have a proper shell for one of the DE9 connectors (ribbon cable). I've ordered two new cables from Amazon. When they arrive, I'll mount them properly and this will be done with (after checking/correcting their pinouts).

As a result, I first noticed a big change in the behaviour of the Edgeport. The indicator previously had been constantly fast flashing orange, indicating a lot of traffic on at least one port. Now, the indicator slow flashes green with occasional orange flashes when a port is in operation.

On the Homeseer side, the annoying delays in responding to motion activity are completely eradicated. Response is now nearly instantaneous. In less than a second of entering an area, the lights have turned on. That remaining delay being due to the fact that wireless X10 operates at a relatively slow rate. Palmpads and DS10's are similarly more responsive.

Looking back, I think there have always been some short delays in the wireless X10 side with the w800 having been on the Edgeport for several years now.

Now, time to undo some of the registry changes as well as event & script compromises I'd made in trying to troubleshoot this issue over the past few weeks.

It's been 24 hours now since installing the cables, with no delays seen, so this time I'm confident the problem is solved.

[Pete]

I am curious about the differences running the W800 with a direct RS-232 versus Edgeport 8 serial connection.

I currently utilize two Digi Edgeports on one PC for Homeseer. Never have seen any delays. Originally tested with debug logging to see the palm pad key presses and logging the events.

Here I have three W800's on one Edgeport and use the palm pad for my garage door notifications / time-date-temperature chime and never have noticed a delay.

[Wadenut]

Observe it, I have.
Explain it, I cannot.

[Pete]

Yes the older Digi boxes are mounted on a plywood wall flush facing each other with the serial ports out such that I cannot see the LED lamps on them. This is HS2 running on Windows server (on two boxes such that there are 4 digi edgeports here). One is the Foxconn D525 which I had added one RS-232 port but never used it. The other computer BCM has 4 RS-232 ports on it but never used these. I would utilize this to check on the event engine running on HS2. When it got really messed up then the delays were seconds long. Today there are no delays.

The new ones are currently just sitting on a rack connected to the HS3 Pro box running on Linux. One box is using a Windows server VM and the other is using Linux. This box has only USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports on it. I did have issues with USB 3.0 stuff running Wintel but none with Linux.

Yeah the garage palm pad isn't a garage palm pad; it is one of the multi button wireless keypads stuck on a wall. I will test it with an X10 palm pad. I use this one for manually turnning on and off the irrigation zones outside to check the sprinkler heads / zones / solenoids.

[Wadenut]

Whether it was the Z-Troller or the W800 causing the excess traffic I can't say at this point. Sometime down the road I may move one, then the other back to the Edgeport to narrow that down.
What is possible is some rogue RF device with a dying battery crying for help. I've seen that in the past with some X10 RF devices. However, on enabling extended logging on the W800, I'm not seeing anything abnormal at all. Normally there would be an indication.
There is a motion sensor somewhere transmitting intermittently a couple of times a day which I haven't been able to locate. It's likely been thrown aside and forgotten with the battery left in. This has been going on for many months though, not corresponding to the recent delays, and sooner or later should die (hopefully sooner as it's quite annoying to be seeing this).

Bottom line however, is that the problem is solved. QED.

[Pete]

Good news Greg.

I only have X10 CM11A's connected today. I do have a few older MR16As (Eagle eyes) around if you want them as I haven't used them in a long time.

X10 stuff here today is still CM11A's, TW523's XTB and a dual phased Volp TW-523. All of it works just fine.

I used to use them a lot in the 1990's and early 2000's in the old house.

Also found a few of the RS-232 9 pin to motherboard cables that I hadn't thrown out.

X10 wise here mostly just utilize it for my Christmas decorations outside and inside.

Using the palm pad outside I turn them all on at once that it works in unison very quickly (faster than Z-Wave, UPB, Zigbee stuff).

I disconnected all of Jim Doolittle's MR16As at his house and left them all there (I should have taken them) in a box.

Yes here had issues with the Z-Troller plugged in to a Quatech server on the second floor or even a direct serial connection with HS2.

If I disconnected the network or the serial cable the Z-Wave plugin would just quit working and never reconnect until I restarted the HS2 server.

I do not think this had anything to do with the serial connection; rather it was the plugin for HS2.

That and the z-wave device footprint worked only on the second floor.

The current DIY'd Zee-2 with a GPIO Z-Wave plus card in the attic has not been an issue whether a direct or remote connection on the LAN.

I had another Z-Wave network plugged in to the OmniPro 2 panel using a serial VRCOP adjacent to metal conduit. Never had an issue with that Z-Wave network.

I have never mixed wireless battery Z-Wave stuff with wired Z-Wave stuff. Similarly have not mixed my multiple Zigbee networks today.

I have 4 Zigbee controllers set up today (all in the basement) and have not had any issues connected wireless / wired devices to them at this time.

I did install W800 antennas here in the attic, main floor and basement. (only really need the attic one).

Been playing lately with the cheaper RFID stuff and now getting about a mile range on them for the automobiles. (antenna tweaks).

[Wadenut]

Not liking unanswered questions,
This morning reconnected the W800 to the Digi. Traffic seems normal, defined as only occasional orange flashes of the indicator light.

Next, reconnected the Z-Troller to the Edgeport. Indicator light flashes Orange continuously, indicating continuous serial data in or out (TBD) even during periods of no apparent ZWave communication.

Now that that's narrowed down, time to find out why. A spare Z-Troller does the same thing.

Pulling the plug on the Z-Troller, I still see constant activity from Homeseer, trying to send data. (thought) Does HS poll the Z-Troller to maintain connectivity?

[Pete]

I think HS does poll the Z-Troller. Best to check for yourself. Easy to do with Windows.

Easy test with HS3. Run the plugin. Disconnect the serial port and reconnect it. The HS3 plugin should restore the connection and NOT abend the plugin.

In HS2 it always killed the Z-Wave connection until you rebooted. The new HS3 z-wave plug-in runs separately and should never do this.

Here only got granular with the CM11A / HS2 serial communications finding a bug in the pluging that was never fixed.

There is a windows tool you can utilize. You have to run it first before anything; then watch the serial communications.

This way you can monitor a direct serial port connection versus an indirect serial connection comparing the two.

Portmon for Windows

Run this before you start HS. Then configure the application to monitor the specific serial port in question.

You should see identical data / port stuff with a direct and indirect Digi serial connection. Look for CRC errors stuff.

Here is another program that provides little blinky LED's which will not tell you much.

Serial Port LEDs

[Wadenut]

The final solution:

While everything I did/tried improved the situation somewhat, I was never fully satisfied I'd found the root of the problem.

Finally did.

Thinking about the situation I realized it was really only motion events that were affected by unexplained delays.
The Palmpads and DS10 (door/window sensors) shared the X10 RF so I dismissed that right away.
Then, realized there were no delays on remote control events (Palmpads) at all. So.... more head scratching.

Finally looked at some of the events themselves. Since one would naturally want more or less instant response from motion sensors, I'd set the "Priority - does not queue" flag on all of those events. Palmpad events, DS10 events, etc. were not set.
It seems HS doesn't appear to understand the meaning of the word Priority. What seemed to have been happening watching the Z-Troller display was that all of the backed up ZWave commands were suddenly being sent at once when HS decided it had nothing better to be doing. This actually had been staring me in the face for a very long time. My event delay measurement script had been showing up to 5 second delays at times.

Reset the Priority flag on the events and now response has been absolutely instantaneous for the past three days.

ZTroller and RF interface now moved back to the Edgeport. All is good.

Event delays never measuring any more than 70 milliseconds now, worst case.