Device Poll does not trigger events using "Sends On Command"

[Burrington]

Mark, I have a Synchrolinc for my sump pump and events to detect the running time and warn of a fault if it runs too long, too short, or not for an extended period. The events are triggered by special Insteon triggers "Sends On Command" and "Sends Off Command". On occasion I receive the On but not the Off (my only device that has poor comm), so I have a check event that detects when the pump has been running too long and polls the device to provoke the OFF response. It has never worked right and it just dawned on me that the Insteon Poll must be updating the device status to OFF, but is not firing the associated "Sends Off Command" trigger.

This would be an issue for any event that is written to use any of your great Special Insteon triggers because it would not fire as the result of a poll. If using the "Changes and Becomes" trigger it would fire. I also use the Poll All Devices command after a power failure to bring things up to date. I assume those poll results would not trigger any of the Special Insteon triggers either. Could that be fixed?

[mnsandler]

I understand your situation, i do the same thing with my sump pumps and experience similar issues (missing the Off msgs). At this point in HS3, I can't change what causes an insteon trigger to fire. I will consider this for HS4.

[joegr]

... Could that be fixed?

I would like to offer the counter point that I believe this (as it is now) is the way it should operate. When I use one of the special triggers, like sends an "xx" command, I use it to react to someone pressing a switch right then and there. I wouldn't want to trigger the same event for any other reason that the switch might change status (result of a group event, or control from HomeSeer, or from catching up from a missed transmission via polling). I have other events with other triggers for those cases.

[Burrington]

I understand your situation, i do the same thing with my sump pumps and experience similar issues (missing the Off msgs). At this point in HS3, I can't change what causes an insteon trigger to fire. I will consider this for HS4.

I understand, no problem Mark. This probably needs a lot more thought and discussion to see whether what I asked for makes sense or whether it breaks more things than it fixes. I'm sure there are other people out there that have the same issues and can't figure out why the poll isn't triggering the event, so maybe it just needs some documentation. In the meantime I can easily add a "OR Changes and Becomes" trigger to pick up the change from poll.

[Burrington]

I would like to offer the counter point that I believe this (as it is now) is the way it should operate. When I use one of the special triggers, like sends an "xx" command, I use it to react to someone pressing a switch right then and there. I wouldn't want to trigger the same event for any other reason that the switch might change status (result of a group event, or control from HomeSeer, or from catching up from a missed transmission via polling). I have other events with other triggers for those cases.

I hear you. This needs more thought and discussion.

[mrceolla]

I have a comment to add that is somewhat related to this.

I too currently use the special triggers to detect button presses vs the device simply turning on or off. I do this primarily with in-wall switches and keypads. I like this ability. Especially since it enables programmatical use of "Fast On/Off".

My additional comment is that with the Insteon plugin, I've always been annoyed by the fact that I can't rely on the "Set to" HomeSeer trigger. This is because this plugin doesn't update a device's "Last Change" timestamp if the device does not change value, even though HomeSeer provides a "Do not update device last change time if device value does not change" checkbox for each device to let you choose whether or not this matters to you. The "Set to" trigger appears to rely on the timestamp updating. My use case: I have a few switches that when I tap the off button, I want to turn off another light as well, even if the light for the switch that I press is already Off. If "Set to" worked like I think it should, and how it works with other Z-wave devices, I wouldn't need to use special triggers in this case. I also wouldn't need to add extra "Changed to" logic to catch the light turning off by some method other than a local button press.

Just my 2 cents. Hope that makes sense.

Edit: this was my 1000th post

[Burrington]

I was not suggesting that the special triggers behave the same as a status change. That would break all kinds of things. I was only suggesting that if the result of a poll changed the status of a device, it be treated as a special trigger. However, I can see there are lots of things this would still break, and lots of complications to how exactly it would work, so let's drop the idea. Its easy to fix my issue by adding a "OR Changes and Becomes" trigger.