Insteon Motion Sensors Reset

[heatvent]

These are pretty recently purchased and you don't really know what you would get until it arrives. Mark, can you confirm that yours send ON, ON? I think in the meantime I will check with SmartHome to see. I think I would prefer this capability. Maybe they could reflash or hotswap if I sent them back.

I'm still not convinced yet and I suspect it's still ON/OFF only. These are designed to act on their own and control the lights. SmartHome's HouseLinc software is also more of a link management tool that a HA program (at least v1 was). So this wouldn't be a surprise to me. I would guess if it could do ON ON, then that would be a setting because if you use standalone, you don't want ON's being communicated all the time.

[heatvent]

So I will need to be at home to verify, but DooMotion does setup differently. The motion sensor device contains the Occupancy time setting. In BLRadar this is contained in the zone. So this may make a difference. DooMotion may work differently where it turns on Occupancy when triggered and turns OFF occupancy X minutes after the sensor goes OFF. BLRadar has its own separate timer. I want to say it is to simplify when you have multiple sensors in a occupancy zone. There is only one timer to track. If you have a timer on 8 motion sensors in DooMotion, then you need to track 8 timers even though it is the first one that will turn off the Occupancy or maybe it only shows unoccupied of all have turned off.

So there is some potential that BLRadar and DooMotion function differently related to Occupancy.

[heatvent]

Heatvent,
That is my understanding also of the Insteon MS. If it is in the on state it will not send another on signal. This is what both DooMotion and BLradar use to determine the room is still occupied. It sounds like Mark is aware of another version or firmware that will send the on command even though the MS is in the on state. If that is now true, I would be tempted to buy some of the insteon motion sensors.

Just out of curiosity why would this prevent you from buying Insteon. I am sure it can be either worked with or worked around. For example a script that when triggered on sends an ON signal of some sorts every 5 seconds until the sensor turns off. As long as the sensor turned on and not off, then you know it is really sensing (although not reporting) a bunch of ON's.

[johnnybwis]

Just out of curiosity why would this prevent you from buying Insteon. I am sure it can be either worked with or worked around. For example a script that when triggered on sends an ON signal of some sorts every 5 seconds until the sensor turns off. As long as the sensor turned on and not off, then you know it is really sensing (although not reporting) a bunch of ON's.

My concern was missing the off signal. Currently my events turn on the light when the on is received with a delayed (light) off. So no off command has to be sensed. As long as more on commands are received the light stays on as the delay gets replaced each time - extending the time the light stays on.
Just to be clear I do use Insteon just not the motion sensors....yet

[heatvent]

Mark, I posted on the SmartHome website about this issue and the moderator refers to something called "Occupancy Mode" which can only be set via software programming. Below are the posts. Do you know what the Occupancy Mode is?

heatvent
Average Member
65 Posts
Posted - 01/08/2011 : 12:54:45 PM
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I believe my experience is the 2420M sends ON when motion is detected and will sense motion but will not send another ON until X seconds after last motion was sensed (determined by the timeout setting). Is this correct?

I have v2 sensors with firmware version 34.

Thanks

Tfitzpatri8
Administrator
USA
2878 Posts
Posted - 01/08/2011 : 1:23:26 PM
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Yes, you are correct, that is the default setting but it can be changed.

If Occupancy Mode is set to off, then the device will transmit an ON, wait for the timer to expire with no motion, then send an OFF. If it sees motion, the timer resets. In this mode, it only transmits an ON if it has already switched to the OFF state.

With Occupancy Mode set to ON (setting is only available using software, HL2 or ISY, not with a jumper), the device will send an ON each time it detects motion. Use a battery eliminator if you set Occupancy Mode to ON.

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For me, in light of the battery comments and that I think I can ultimately work with this. I probably will not use Occupancy Mode but it may be worth testing how much it impacts battery life.

Also, FYI, according to the same admin, HL2 can access motion sensors without putting them into linking mode. It can also poll for luminescence and battery status when it receives an ON from the sensor. Thought this might be useful functionality you might want to consider for your plugin although I am not sure this is in the SDK or not.

[joegr]

These are pretty recently purchased and you don't really know what you would get until it arrives. Mark, can you confirm that yours send ON, ON? I think in the meantime I will check with SmartHome to see. I think I would prefer this capability. Maybe they could reflash or hotswap if I sent them back.

I'm still not convinced yet and I suspect it's still ON/OFF only. These are designed to act on their own and control the lights. SmartHome's HouseLinc software is also more of a link management tool that a HA program (at least v1 was). So this wouldn't be a surprise to me. I would guess if it could do ON ON, then that would be a setting because if you use standalone, you don't want ON's being communicated all the time.

I can confirm that mine (five V2 and one V1) do not send ONs over and over. They send an ON when motion starts. They then send an off after the timeout period after motion stops. I have the timeouts (except for the V1) set to five minutes. If motion is constant for an hour, then only one ON is sent and the off is sent after one hour and five minutes.

[mnsandler]

guys,
two things

after a careful review of my logs, i do see on/off msgs, not on, on, off. Sorry for the confusion. So i think DM must do things differently than BL radar when it comes to occupancy. because i don't have the 20 min issue Heatvent mentioned in the begining.

regarding the sh posting; i am not aware of the occupancy mode or the extra readings during the On msg with the MSs, i'll have to check with sh as to how to set this via software; it wasn't in the docs i recvd. maybe the MS stays in link mode for a few seconds long enough to poll it for addnl info.

for what it is worth DM can group multiple MSs together; i have all my MSs grouped into one occupancy sensor called House Occupancy. when the last MS times out via DM, the house goes vacant.

so after all this discussion, i think you need to ask Blade how to handle this on/off issue so your lights don't go Off when there is still motion in the room.

[heatvent]

Thanks Mark. FYI, the ISY people have the Occupancy Mode in one of the more recent betas so this may be a newer development. Here is where the ISY people discussed the new features http://forum.universal-devices.com/viewtopic.php?t=5184.

Also, I did figure out it will be important to work with/around this somehow. What happens now is if someone is in the room and turns off the light manually and leaves the room, nothing triggers an ON to turn the light back on if there is a long timeout on the MS. So you probably want the default 30 secs on the MS so it quickly resets after someone leaves. This also means you need software to be able to do the rest. I will play around with DooMotion to see how it works and will think through if there is a way to do the same in BLRadar or what Blade might be able to change to compensate. He is usually good about feature requests but I am not sure about changing the logic in the program as it would affect how all his users use the program.

[mnsandler]

thanks for the ref on the ms. i have an email into sh on the subject. I need the programming specs to add this feature.

as for blade, he should be to add this logic (if necessary) with an option so the current logic isn't changed.

good luck. let us know how it all turns out.

[heatvent]

OK, I did some testing but have completed yet. I ran BLRadar and DM parallel and they seem to work the same although there were sometimes timing differences that I haven't yet figured out. I suspect they relate to when you use a "Sensor Recovery Time" ("Fail Safe Time" in DM) which will make more sense in a minute. The issue is a BLRadar Active Zone uses the "Motion Sensor Off Time" to determine when to trigger unoccupied status. MSOT is defined as follows:

Motion Sensor Off Wait Time: - This is only configurable for an active zone. This is the number of minutes that all motion sensors assigned to the active zone must be off for in order for the active zone to be turned off.

So there is an issue when you use the SRT failsafe with a sensor that doesn't resend ON's. You will get a false OFF state of the virtual sensor. The following test examples will show this.

Testing BLRadar I set my sensor "Timeout" to 1 min, the "Sensor Recovery Time" to 1 min and the Active Zone "Motion Sensor Off Wait Time" to 1 min. Under constant motion, the ON will be sent at first motion and the plugin will turn OFF the virtual sensor after 1 minute even though it is really still ON. The Active Zone will then begin counting down occupancy time. So in this example, under constant motion, the light will go off after 2 min (1 min until SRT turns off the virtual plugin sensor and 1 min for the MSOWT to then timeout).

If you don't put in a setting for SRT, the plugin will not turn off the virtual sensor and all works as expected. The question is do you need a SRT time or what is an ideal setting.

I would suggest setting sensor Timeout to 30 secs to maximize the likelyhood you won't have continuous motion and will get more OFF's and ON's. This will also help with the issue of someone manually turns off the light. If they return within 30 secs, the light will not automatically go on as the sensor is still in the ON state. The longer the Timeout setting, the longer the period this issue will occur. It would probably be ideal to have a Timeout setting of 10 to 20 secs but this is not currently possible with the Insteon MS.

I would also suggest setting SRT = MSOWT. That way you still have a failsafe in case for some reason the OFF is never picked up from the sensor. This shouldn't likely cause a false OFF with a Timeout of 30 secs the MS should keep the virtual sensor active in the plugin as well as the Active Zone.

I am not certain if DooMotion works the exact same way, but I would bet it is very similar. I may test just to see if DM would be more functional or if something could be adapted to BLRadar if more DM's logic is more useful for this type of sensor.

One final note, Mark, if Timeout could be set without manually putting devices in link mode this would be a huge timesaver at least for initial setup.

[heatvent]

UPDATE...

Ok, I have been operating with 30 sec timeouts and seems to work fine. I did have one instance where I was in a room and the lights turned off.

I am a bit concerned on battery life. I have replaced 1 battery and 1 sensor is indicating low battery so far. Not sure how good the batteries were in the first place though. I will see how long it takes for all the sensors to go dead. I know the X10 security sensors would go 2-3 years in the same rooms with 4 AA's. I may need to change to 1 min intervals hoping that it's the transmission of the ON / OFF that's using the juice. Hopefully will result in less ON / OFF signals and better battery life.

[claude]

... Also, FYI, according to the same admin, HL2 can access motion sensors without putting them into linking mode. It can also poll for luminescence and battery status when it receives an ON from the sensor.

From the SmartHome forum "HL2 knows the device is awake when motion On is received and immediately sends the messages to update the configuration before the motion sensor goes back to sleep" See: http://www.smarthome.com/forum/post....573&FORUM_ID=9

I wonder how long the MS stays awake. I created motion and (as fast as I could) hit the 'Program settings' button: no luck.

Mark, if the plugin could do the equivalent (HL2), it would be much less frustrating to program an MS. Right now, I need to get a step ladder, unhook the MS, unscrew, set in linking mode, program and the rest. Admittedly I don't program the MS on a regular basis, but it would have been such a time saver when I was trying to figure light levels over several days.

[heatvent]

It would also be nice to get luminesence values or battery %'s if possible. Not all the time but maybe once an hour. As noted above, I am having some concerns on battery life so I'm not sure polling every time there is an on is the right approach.

claude, FYI, I leave the screws out of the battery cover. Seems to hold find without it and saves the work. Maybe I'll put back in after I am done fiddling but not yet.

[mnsandler]

It would also be nice to get luminesence values or battery %'s if possible. Not all the time but maybe once an hour. As noted above, I am having some concerns on battery life so I'm not sure polling every time there is an on is the right approach.

claude, FYI, I leave the screws out of the battery cover. Seems to hold find without it and saves the work. Maybe I'll put back in after I am done fiddling but not yet.

Guys,

I have an email into SH to get the details on getting or setting values after an On cmd.

I did do a preliminary test by sending a request immediately after receiving an msgs from a MS. The MS does appear to respond so there is hope.

maybe we can use the polling option to query the MS for these settings or programming new ones

stay tuned