New Insteon PIR sensor

[Steve Horn]

I just received an email from Smarthome announcing an Insteon PIR motion sensor. Battery (or USB) powered, it seems like this might be useful in our HB HA envireonment, especially if you are already Insteon equipped. Here is a link to their info:
http://www.smarthome.com/insteon-motion ... gn=170118R
My question is how would the status of the this device's output (motion, obviously) be reflected as a device in HB? Does this require a new device type? Smarthome has very little info (i.e. no manuals yet) but they do describe how the sensor could trigger lights through their Insteon hub.

[ScottBot]

You might be able to setup an Insteon Switch Device and the Power State Property would reflect the motion status.

If that doesn't work, I can create a new Insteon motion sensor device. But I would need to get one (doesn't look like they are out yet), or at least get some good specs.

[Steve Horn]

I suspect a new device is required. But what do I know? Yeah, seems like pre-order. I may order one on the chance we can get it work w/HB. It seems like a good alternative to pulling yet more wire. But I can capture movement in most locations with existing PIRs connectd to the Elk alarm panel and the serial data sent to HB.
There are some specs on their site but i dont know if they help you with HB device definition. No manuals yet, but those typically are short on tech details anyway.

[Steve Horn]

Well, the PIR sensor finally arrived today. Interesting little device. It has two buttons: SET, and Motion. It comes with very little (literally) instructions. It describes using an app to configure. Looking quickly at iPad Insteon apps, I ruled them out as useful for our PLM environment. So I trial-and-errored. I pressed the set button on the PLM, and the set button on the PIR, after creating a Insteon Switch Device in HB. Pulling out the battery yielded what appeared to be an Insteon device address. In this case 41.64.62, which I used to create the device. It appeared, after the setup button pressing, that the PIR and the PLM were talking. I could press the Motion button (which according to the literally very little instruction sheet, is used to "enable or disable motion", presumably motion sensing) and the Dim level in the HB device would change, but not in any consistent pattern. And the Power State never did change when I presented motion in front of the device. I tried creating several other devices: Insteon controller... with no success.
So, clearly there are things I don't know about the device. Could be that its not designed to be used with a PLM. Or, we need a different device type in HB. Or I just purchased a cute little paper weight.
I will try to find out more in the Insteon forum (if there is one). And I would be happy to ship this off to you for beta testing.

[ScottBot]

I'd try and get it setup with whatever app they are suggesting first. You might be able to get more info about how the sensor works from the app and can verify that it is working the way you want.

It might also be helpful to run an interface trace to see if there's any good info there that might help. You can pass it along to me to look at if you would like.

[Steve Horn]

I go the impression from what little was on the app's description that it was a way of communicating/interfacing,with an Insteon Hub. So i didnt download or pursue it further.
Will set up a trace sometime today. Need to look at the forum too. Calling Smarthome is a total waste of time. You go into an endless land of hold.

[Steve Horn]

I set up tracing yesterday ... at least I think I did. Its not creating trace entries. Not ruling out that I don't know what I'm doing when setting up a trace, but it appears that HB is seeing nothing on that device.

[ScottBot]

Try setting up a Hardware Interface trace on the PLM.

[Steve Horn]

Attached is a short file of what the PLM is seeing. (At least its seeing something ) Much of the entries at the beginning result from me pressing the enable/isable button. The last entries, starting at 3:59:31 are as a result of a trigger - me walking in front of the thing... once.

[ScottBot]

Steve,

The trace shows ON and OFF Insteon commands being sent from the PIR device [41.64.62], and the notifications being sent to the HouseBot Device. So that's good. I'm not sure why your HouseBot Power State Property isn't reflecting it.

It looks like the data stream got a little confused towards the end after receiving an extended message, but it should have recovered from that and the ON/OFF messages were before that anyway.

Two things to try:

1. Double check the Insteon Address setup for the HouseBot Insteon Device. Make sure it's only 41.64.62 without any extra characters.
2. Try restarting HouseBot. It's possible that somehow when you changed the address on the Device, it didn't get re-subscribed or something.

[Steve Horn]

Working now, though no changes made on my end. Looking at the Power State History, at least on the HB Power state history tab, it began working yesterday at 6 pm. Not sure how much further back it was working since that's all the HB history screen lists. Moot point though, its working now.
I wondered though, before it began working, how long the trigger/toggle would last, since motion detection is a momentary thing. Looking at the history data, its hard to see a pattern. But a quick look at one trigger a few mins ago seems to indicate that the Off-to-On state change holds long enough for a task or VBscript to see the change and act on it. Time will tell.. (no pun intended). But there does seem to be a lot of Off-On triggers when there is no (apparent) activity in my kitchen. It may be too sensitive.
Looking at the trace listing, there are several entries flagged as errors:
"3/4/2017","9:09:15 am","4764","Insteon PLM","Warning","ServerInterface.cpp","555","Error receiving response. Command code terminator is not the expected value of '6'!".
Do you want to see the trace log file created so far?

[ScottBot]

Do you want to see the trace log file created so far?

You can send it along and I'll see if I can determine the issue. Sometimes the 'error' messages aren't really errors, they are just recorded to the trace log because they are out of the ordinary and *could* cause other issues.

[Steve Horn]

Attached is the most recent trace log, which has a few of the errors. There is a longer log from last week that may show more that I can forward if needed.
When you are looking at the log, see if you can see any reason why the power state after a trigger event would stay "on" for such a long time. I, presumably, triggered an event by walking past it at 8:18:36 to answer this email. Its now 8:32 and the power state is still shown as On.
I need to lock this thing up in an enclosed space, where no triggers can occur and see what the resulting log shows. Just seems like there is too much trigger activity based on the non activity in the room.

Also, the Dim Level is changing with each trigger, from 0,1,2 to something higher (59, 84,...,) Dunno what if anything that serves.

[Steve Horn]

Yeah, we're on the bleeding edge here.
I put the cube in a dark closet and closed the door Sunday morning at 8:18:36 am. The Power State was ON. It finally toggled off according to the log at 8:18:42 am. After that, it triggered itself on few secs. later, then off. I just opened the door at (Monday) 5:35:17 pm and it winked. Then I shut the door. Its Power state is still showing ON at 5:43. So either HB's Power state is not being updated as the devices state changes, or once its triggered and goes to an ON state its staying there for a good long while.
Looking at the trace listing, there is a LOT going on there that is not being reflected in the Power State. I don't know what I'm seeing but it appears that the PLM is sending commands such as Power State and Dim Level. I expected to see nothing being sent from the PLM unless someone (me) changes the power state or dim level via the device' properties.