Insteon Group problems

[Jon]

I was trying to do an insteon group for a lamp. The goal was to have a button on a mini remote trigger a lamp to a particular on level.

After many attempts, I got a pair of buttons on the remote that kinda gives me what I need.
I created a group with the mini remote button 1 as the controller and the lamp module as the responder with an on level of 20% and ramp rate of .5s
When I press the on button, the lamp snaps instantly to the on level. if I press and hold from there, it ramps up. if I tap off, it snaps to off. The ramp rate doesn't seem to be working.
The homeseer device for the lamp module isn't updating when the lamp is turned on by the group on command. (or group bright/dim either)

What I want it to tap the on button and have it ramp up to the group on level at the group ramp rate. I'd like for a tap of the on button to then ramp it to full (from the group on level).

When I edit the group, the setting for the group controller does not persist. It always comes up as none whenever I edit the group.

The lamp module locked up several times as I was programming it to try various settings. When It was locked up, the programming would fail, and it wouldn't respond to any commands, not even it's local buttons. I found that it locked up during link programming most of the time when the lamp was plugged into it. If I unplugged the lamp while programming, it did not lock up.

I also noticed a very weird phenomenon. I have a quartz halogen torchiere lamp in the same room. This lamp has no smarts. It's literally a 300W quartz halogen lamp wired to a plug. There's no insteon module on this lamp. Whenever I transmit any insteon signal, this lamp will have a bright pulse. I can actually tell when the packets are sending based on the pulses of this light. I think i'm going to pull out my o-scope tomorrow and watch what the voltage that outlet is doing as the insteon commands are going thru.

Insteon plugin 3.0.5.68
Lamp module v43
mini remote v37

[mnsandler]

Jon,
is the group just going to include a single lamplinc, or are you going to add other devices/responders once you get the lamplinc working the way you want?

if its just the single lamplinc, just create links between the miniremote and the lamplinc.

either way, as I understand insteon scenes/groups, devices only respond initially with the On level and ramp rate set in the link programming. after that, i'm not sure what ramp rate they follow (it might be the ramp rate set on the device itself).

[Jon]

This started with wanting a separate button for the preset level that was different from the main buttons that always controlled the light. So that I'm not changing the default on level of the lamp module itself (so events work as usual) But that gave some odd results so I got rid of the original direct link to the remote and added the group instead.
Maybe I'm going at it the wrong way. Here's the bigger picture. This all started when I changed the bulb in the lamp in my master bedroom from an Incan to a dimmable LED. While this is a dimmable led, it gets flickery below 20%. This lamp is set in a few events to come on to full automatically in the morning and evenings. My wife always goes to bed long before me so she dims the lamp to a low level so she can sleep but I can still find my way to the bed. Because it's hard to find the low point before flicker by holding the dim button. So I wanted to give her a button to make it easy with just a tap.


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[Jon]

Here's another weird part. When I go to reprogram the group to change the on level or ramp rate, I skipped putting the remote into link mode because I know it doesn't need to be programmed. The status message while programming even says it doesn't need to be programmed But the programming process still stops there and fails.

The ramp rate of the group still isn't acting right though. If the light is on and I hit the group on button, it ramps nicely from 100% down to 20%. But if it's off, it doesn't ramp. It snaps directly from 0 to 20%. I know that's not the way the light behaves because if it's off and I press and hold the up button, it will ramp up to 20% (hard to stop right on 20% though). Is this a plugin thing or an insteon thing?

None of this would be an issue if insteon inherently supported dimming curves and cutoff thresholds.

[mnsandler]

when you control the switch locally, it uses the settings for on level and ramprate.

when you control switch via link, it uses the settings programming with the link