Manually Turning on Valve Does Not Work

[uberseer]

When I click the On Control button for a valve, HS2 status shows On but the valve is not actually turned on. Looking at the HS log, I see the following:

4/2/2006 5:07:40 PM Info Device: Rain8 7 - Back Yard Flower Bed Garage(B7) ON.

This was working earlier today. When it was working, the HS log showed a status log entry that is no longer occuring.

I must be missing something here.

Also, when I check zone status page, it seems to be in manual mode. When I click Stop Manual button, I get a blank HS page with nothing displayed. The same thing happens when I click Update button. When I return to the zone status page, it appears as if nothing has been changed.

When status entries were being logged in HS log, things worked. Now there are no status entries and I can't get things to work.

Bob

I've just installed H2.0.2041.0 on a Dell E510 with 1 gig of memory running Windows XP Media Edition. I'm utilizing a W800RF32A, Z-wave, MOXA 8 Serial port pci card with the following plug-ins: AC RF Processor 1.1.0.11, X10 CM11A/CM12U 1.0.2.0, Elk-M1 1.7.0.1, SmartHome PowerLinc USB 1.0.0.7.

[Michael McSharry]

I see several manual B7 and C7 actions in the log. The easiest way to support is if you post your \Config\mcsSprinklers.ini file so I can see your setup. I also need to know if you are running HS1 vs HS2 since the logic for HS2 is more complex. HS2's internal status is not updated immediately, but sometime later in a different thread where all pending status changes are acted upon together.

Over the months the user experience for working with manual mode has changed based upon user requests. There is more than one way to transition into Manual Mode. The top of the General Status page has a pair or moding buttons. There is also a status device at the bottom of the page that should refect the same state as indictated by the label on the button at the top of the page. The Start Manual and Stop butons provide a more localized control of manual mode. The Update buton on this page is geared to saving changes made in the settings rather than actual control of the manual mode vs auto mode. I can be more helpful after I see your ini file.

[uberseer]

Michael,

I've just installed H2.0.2041.0 on a Dell E510 with 1 gig of memory running Windows XP Media Edition. I'm utilizing a W800RF32A, Z-wave, MOXA 8 Serial port pci card with the following plug-ins: AC RF Processor 1.1.0.11, X10 CM11A/CM12U 1.0.2.0, Elk-M1 1.7.0.1, SmartHome PowerLinc USB 1.0.0.7., PowerLinc Phase coupler / repeater.

I've attached my .ini file. Please let me know if you need anything else.

Everything seemed to work fine after upgrading to 2.5.0.24 this morning. Now everything is flakey again.

Bob

[Michael McSharry]

I've been working with your file for a few hours and am not able to reproduce any behavior that I did not expect. I notice you itemized the B devices in the HS list and also marked it as X10-2 in the grid. You do not need them in the HS list, but it does not hurt. You do have the command Safety set on the Other Page and this should not be set when using 2-way units such as the X10-2. Positive acknowledge and recommand will occur without sending the command multiple times. It just floods the powerline with too much activity.

Here are two typical scenarios I used to evaluate manual mode. The first is from the Zone Status page. I changed the Manual durations from 23 to 2 to reduce the wait for testing. I put a checkbox on manual control for B1 and B3. I clicked Manual Start at the top of the page. The status shows green for B1 and the HS log shows B1 was turned on. Two minutes later the log shows B1 OFF and then B3 ON. Another 2 minutes and B3 then goes OFF.

If I issued a C2 ON from a palmpad I will then see the C2 in the log followed by B2 ON and then two minutes later B2 OFF.

You indicated that the valve status and the HS status were not consistent. This could be due to the command repeat just being too much for the X10 interface to handle at the same time. What I did not do with your data is actually connect a Rain8 and confirm that the X10 Status Request did not get broken along the way. I will do this soon when I have time to set it up.

I posted my current compile which is 2.5.75 so you will have the same version that I'm running. The changes between this and the prior post dealt with the dual-pc standalone configuration which is not activated when running under HS.

I like the debug log when you have a problem, but it also helps to know what you were doing that generated the log entries.

[uberseer]

Thanks for the Great Support

I appreciate your help on this issue. I have cleared the Repeat command indicator and will test when I get home this evening.

This is my first experience with X10 and I'm not totally sure that the PowerLinc phase coupler / repeater is working correctly. Sometimes the PLC signal indicator light will come on and it does not repeat the signal to the other phase. Maybe it is because of the Repeat command process overwhelming it.

One furthor question: When eveything is working correctly and the system is in automatic mode, should I be able to trigger a valve utilizing the remote pad without going into manual mode? During the time when everything worked yesterday, I was able to do that.

[Michael McSharry]

Yes you can use the remote handheld at any time and the software will automatically transition from auto to manual and back to auto. I think you can press multple alias at one time and it will stay in manual mode until each of the associated zones has completed its manual duration periods.

[uberseer]

Status Update

Michael,

I made the change to not repeat commands and downloaded and installed the new version.

I tried to utilize my remote pad to start valve B7. See HS log entry where C7 received. However, B7 did not start. I am scheduled to water tonight and will see what happens.

When I take mcsSprinklers out of the picture and use the remote pad, valves turn off and on ok.

I must be doing something wrong. Please let me know if you need anything else or if you'd like me to try something.

Bob

[uberseer]

Additional Status Update

As stated, using the remote pad does not work but clicking the Control On button on the Rain8 device page works ok.

I'm still not getting any indication that status' are being checked. Nothing is getting logged relative to status'.

When the system was working yesterday, I was seeing status check log entries.

[Michael McSharry]

I found a few more thinks when I installed the Rain8-X102. I do not know if these could cause what you are seeing or not. The first is that the initial entry of devices in the HS list made the software think the devices were under HS control and operate as 1-way. This explains why you are not seeing status response. I updated the software to provide precedence for the X10-2 selection in the matrix so when you do the next Save from the Devices/Rain8 setup page then it will correct this.

The next is with the programming of the X10-2 Ack mode. This is the radio on the lower left to the Devices/Rain8 page. The polarity was reversed. You want it set for Ack on Poll for Homeseer. With the other setting then HS gets confused because it is not expecting a status response immediately after the command.

The updates are posted in V2.5.80.

Another observation on your setup is that the EPROM timers were set to 23 minutes. You will likely want to set them to 60 or so to give you some scheduling flexibilty. These timers only come into play as a fail-safe should the PC not turn the valve off.

I was not able to reproduce the falure mode you are seeing. I evaluated on HS1 and HS2/2038 with the same success with using C2 to cause the B2 value to run. When I observe the log I see something like the following. This is an example when the Rain8 was programmed to ACK after command. You can see the two status responses. One was from the command ON/OFF and the second was from the 30 second-later status-request poll. This also shows the C2 ON followed by the B2 ON.

4/3/2006 8:01:39 PM~!~X10 Received~!~C2 (Rain8 Alias B2)  C On
4/3/2006 8:01:39 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B On
4/3/2006 8:01:44 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status On
4/3/2006 8:02:11 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status On
4/3/2006 8:02:26 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B On
4/3/2006 8:02:31 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status On
4/3/2006 8:02:57 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status On
4/3/2006 8:03:26 PM~!~Info~!~Exec command: Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2 off dim:  0 extra:  0
4/3/2006 8:03:26 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Off
4/3/2006 8:03:31 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status Off
4/3/2006 8:03:58 PM~!~X10 Received~!~B2 (Rain8 Rain8_Unit_B_Valve 2)  B Status Off

[uberseer]

Status

Michael,

I made the changes that that you touched on and the results are still flakey. Use of the remote pad did not work and I tried a 2 minute per zone schedule where B1 fired for 2 minutes, B2 for 2 minutes, etc. When the time came to start, B2 activated for 2 minutes and then I kept getting status for B2 on. It ran for 2 minutes but I kept getting a status B2 on.

I took the rain8 out of mcsSprinklers, set the remote for house code B and all of the zones responded correctly turning on and off with the proper status.

I just did one more test where I set the schedules start time to 21:30 for the first area with each of the 4 zones to activate for 2 minutes. Nothing triggered. I must be doing something wrong. I've attached the debug log, hs log and mcsSprinklers.ini file. Maybe you could send me the .ini file that you are using with good results and I could try it on my system.

Thank you for your help.

Bob

[Michael McSharry]

The debug file spans the time between 9:24 and 9:37 today. In that log there was no instance where the plugin commanded a B device or received a C input from HS. The HS log for this same period has a long sequence of X10 Received from B1, B7, and B8. HS did not call the plugin during this time as witnessed in the debug file. My only thinking on this is that HS was so backlogged that it never made the calls, yet still responded to the X10 receive events in another one of its threads. The X10 responses are received with 3 second spacing so it looks as if the plugin made the status requests, but the relationship between the two logs is very skewed.

Is also begs the question as why so many status responses are being returned. When I look in my log for HS2 and HS1 I do not see any Status Off/Status On reported unless I have the Rain8-II configured to deliver Ack on Cmd. In other cases the Status Request is sent with the NoLog option so it does not clutter the log and apparently HS suppresses the response back when the request for it was with NoLog or maybe it suppresses it when the response is the same as the current state.

I believe the root cause of the problems you are having is that the Rain8 is configured to respond with Ack on Command and X10 powerline collisions are preventing the actual commands from being dellivered. In yesterday's update I swapped the polarity of the Ack bit in the EPROM. It turns out I was testing with a preproduction unit yesterday and that was an area that change between the preproduction and production units. I switched it back to the original configuration in V2.5.82.

You should have the ability to log the raw communications with our X10 interface. This will prove/disprove my belief that the status response is comming back at the same time HS is trying to send a second command and this collision causes an abort retry sequence. WGL also has a Rain8 Master Config program that can be downloaded to program the EPROM. This should also remove the uncertainty of the Ack configuration. If you use it then the bottom checkbox (Disable Status Respond) should not have a check.

Once we get past this low-level X10 interface issue then we can see if there are any of the problems observed in today's log with respect to HS not reporting the received X10 status back to the plugin. When it does not report then the plugin does not get confirmation that a valve action was taken and it needs to exercise a recovery procedure.

To alleviate X10 overload the plugin does provide a 3 second delay between issuing X10 commands and waits 30 seconds to ask for a status response. The actual timing onto the powerline, however, is controlled by HS.

When the B Valves devices are configured in HS they should not have a property set that indicates that is supports polling. This should be the default when mcsSprinklers creates the B devices. If you created them yourself then verify that this property is not set. Also note that when used directly with HS they are treated at 1-way units. Additional scripting of software, such as mcsSprinklers, is needed to take advantage of the Rain8 2-way abilty.

I also notice in your configuration that you have both a CM11A and powerlinc itemized. Which did you configure as your X10 interface for HS?

[uberseer]

Status

Michael,

I turned power off to rain8 and turned back on.
Restarted HS
I'm running 2.5.0.80 of mcsSprinklers
Acking on Poll Only
No devices in HS X10 device list.
The CM11A is disabled.

Input from remote keypad is now being processed correctly:

4/5/2006 7:27:42 PM X10 Received C8 (Rain8 Remote Alias for B8) C On
4/5/2006 7:27:46 PM X10 Received B8 (Rain8 8 - Back Yard Flower Bed North) B Status On

I started and stopped all zones from keypad successfully.

I'm scheduled for a cycle starting at midnight tonight. Hopefully that will happen.

If that works, then tomorrow I will try a manual cycle.

Should I go ahead and upgrade to 2.5.0.82?

I really appreciate your help in all of this and will let you know how it goes tonight.

Bob

[Michael McSharry]

I think the latest is .83 now, but for what you are doing your current configuraiton is fine. The difference between .81 and .82 is the polarity of the bit that controls the ack response from the Rain8. All you need to be certain of is that the Rain8 is not sending the ack after a command. If you are using .81 to read the EPROM then it will look as if the EPROM is setup to ack on command. (i.e. it will report backward from it really is) If you are using .82 then it will look as if it is ack on poll only when the EPROM is read. (i.e. it is not backward). If you use the WGL Master Config software to read the EPROM then it will be set to not have the checkbox enabled for status response.

[uberseer]

What do the following status' mean?:



Inhibited
]12 Inhibit StartTime Area 2 Today 6:40:08 PM
Inhibited
]11 Inhibit StartTime Area 1 Today 6:41:39 PM



Will this keep my midnight cycle from happening? How do these status' get set to inhibited?

[Michael McSharry]

It means that the area will not start now because a condition is setup to keep it from starting until the next start time. At midnight a new day starts and the start times get reset to the first specified start time for the area. They are showing a 6:40 PM status time because that is the last time the area was run and after it completed the area became inhibited until the next day.

On the original design there were no start times that were user-selectable. Specific times were achieved from the Restrictions page by blocking out times when you did not want to water and the first unblocked time would implicitly be the start time. The restricted times apply to all zones, while the start times apply to the zones in a specific area.

In your setup you have no start time for area 1 and 1:45 for area 2. I suspect your intention is to run area 2 zones after area 1 zones since you have the zone sequence control to behave as a single master sequence. It is probably the case that you do not want 1:45 to be specified and simply let area 2 run after area 1 with area 1 starting at midnight.

If you further north then you would not want to start irrigation at midnight, but sometime before sunrise. Fungus will develop if the water is left on the surface too long. I suspect this is not a problem in Texas.