Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Noam]

Have you looked at the Activity Monitor to see what commands are being sent when you expect the lights to be dimming?
Have you tried putting a delay at the beginning of the macro?

[Tuicemen]

You may also wish to clear the CM15A
Empty the recycle bin in AHP
Purge macros
then re upload to the interface.
 

[Noam]

Have you looked at the Activity Monitor to see what commands are being sent when you expect the lights to be dimming?
Have you tried putting a delay at the beginning of the macro?

What I forgot to mention was that you should look at the Activity Monitor when you manually dim the lights through AHP, and compare that to what you see when you try to dim them with a macro.

Are you using conditional macros? If so, are you sure that the conditions are being met?

[Rambeaudoin]

Thanks Noan and Tuiceman for your quick reply.  To answer to both of you, I did empty the CM15A, I did re-upload the macro, I do see the dimming commands in activity monitor ( by the way I also see WEIRD commands that I did not program in the macro).

The macro is used to turn all my lights on at dawn.  There are about 20 lights that turn on in about 1½ hour, so there are delays between each one, and when one is turned on, I put a 3 second delay before the dim command.  All the modules are what they really are in the AHP description (soft start, no soft start, lamp, etc...)

I'm running WIN 7 ULTIMATE 32 BIT and I think I have the latest driver for the CM15A.

Like I said earlier, all this hardware used to work with 3.228, I had everything going kinda smoothly.  There were and still are phase coupler, boosters, filters etc...  and nothing else changed.

Keep the suggestions coming.  Thanks again.

I don't have any plug-ins, but I will check the difference between the manual dim vs the macro dim tonight since I deleted the activity monitor today.
...

******* EDIT  *********

In activity monitor, it seems that the dim command is compensated by a bright command a few secons later, but that is not in the macro...

[Noam]

... I do see the dimming commands in activity monitor ( by the way I also see WEIRD commands that I did not program in the macro)...

What type of "weird" commands are you seeing? Those could very well be the Extended Dim commands, for the SoftStart modules.
Do you have multiple modules assigned to the same addresses? I have found that mixing SoftStart and non-SoftStart modules on the same HC/UC address doesn't work very well.

SoftStart modules have the ability to go directly to whatever dim level you want, and I've found that using "relative" dimming doesn't actually work as well with those as it did with the non-SoftStart modules.

For example, if you want a light to come on at 20%, and then brighten an additional 20% every 5 minutes, the "old" style macro would actually do the following (this is not the actual commands, but a representation of them in human-readable form):

Bright 100 (light is at 100% - which is needed for the non-SoftStart modules, to make sure you know where yo start)
Dim 80% (light is at 20%)
wait 5 minutes
Bright 20% (light is at 40%)
wait 5 minutes
Bright 20% (light is at 60%)
wait 5 minutes
Bright 20% (light is at 80%)
wait 5 minutes
Bright 20% (light is at 100%)

This seems to work pretty well. However, when doing that with the SoftStart modules, I've found they don't respond very well. The better way to do it is:

Extended Dim 20% (light goes right to 20%, from whatever state it was before)
wait 5 minutes
Extended Dim 40% (light goes right to 40%, from whatever state it was before)
wait 5 minutes
Extended Dim 60% (light goes right to 60%, from whatever state it was before)
wait 5 minutes
Extended Dim 80% (light goes right to 80%, from whatever state it was before)
wait 5 minutes
Extended Dim 100% (light goes right to 100%, from whatever state it was before)

When using SoftStart modules, it is always better to program them to ABSOLUTE values when dimming in a macro. Otherwise, they try to use the relative dim, which doesn't work as well for them.

AHP version 3.228 did not support the SoftStart modules. SoftStart support was added in version 3.302.
When you use Absolute dimming with non-SoftStart modules, it actually has to brighten up to 100% first, then dim by the amount you want (to go to 40%, it does a "Bright 100", then a "Dim 60"). The SoftStart modules can go directly to any brightness, so Absolute dimming works nicely for them (to go to 40%, it only has to to an "Extended Bright/Dim 40%").

I hope this helps, and let us know how it goes.
You can always post the contents of the macro here (just type out the steps, and let us know what type of module each one is), and we can take a look.

[Tuicemen]

once you updated AHP and changed the none softstart modules to the old did you rebuild your macro?
I'm wondering if the macro is  using modules the way they were described in AHP before the softstart add.

As a test make a new macro with just one of the lights and see if it works correctly!

[Rambeaudoin]

In activity monitor, it seems that the dim command is compensated by a bright command a few seconds later, but I did not put that in the macro...

All the modules are configured as they should (soft and non soft)

Yes I did rebuild after upgrading to 3.310.  When I did upgrade, I had'nt changed the modules from new to old and the CM15A froze up sending a command of a adress in an endless loop.  Since then, I rebuilt the whole macro.

The commands in the macro issue a bright 100%, delay 3 seconds, dim to 80% in general.  I have one old module that dims correctly, but not the others, old or new.

[Noam]

In activity monitor, it seems that the dim command is compensated by a bright command a few seconds later, but I did not put that in the macro...

Can you post what, exactly, you see in the activity monitor (beginning with the command to trigger the macro)?
That might help us understand what is happening.

Are you running multiple macros at the same time? Is an older macro still running?
Are there any other commands in between the initial "Dim" and the "Bright" command?
Are you addressing more than one module in each macro?

The commands in the macro issue a bright 100%, delay 3 seconds, dim to 80% in general.  I have one old module that dims correctly, but not the others, old or new.

I'm confused as to why you have the macro turning the light on to 100%, and then dimming it down to 80%. Do you actually want it going to 100% first, or do you only need the 80%?
If that's the case, then you should be able to set it to an Absolute setting of 80%. It will automatically bring it to 100% first (for an old module).
How many different Housecode/Unit codes are you using for these lights? How many modules (and what types) do you have on each unit code? Do you have any instances where you have both a SoftStart and a non-SoftStart module on the same HC/UC? If so, AHP won't address them properly.

Do you have any motion sensors in the rooms with those lights? Some of them have a second address (one above where you set the sensor) that is a day/night trigger. Perhaps dimming the light down causes it to think it is nighttime, and triggers the "bright" command (a longshot, I know).

You may need to start with a simple test macro, to test the individual behavior of each module you have, one at a time.

[Dan Lawrence]

I would suggest backing up ALL your .ahx files to separate media, then uninstall AHP completely.  Then re-install 3.310 and copy your .ahx files to the ActiveHome Pro folder and see what happens.  Since you have already changed your module to non-soft-start and rewrote your macro, they can't be the problem. Try that and get back to us.

[Rambeaudoin]

Answers to Noam:
- Only one macro at a time triggered by a DUSK minus 60 minutes.

- I do have old macros, but they don't run at the same time.

- Macro includes: module x  Brighten to 100%
                                      Delay 3 sec
                                      Dim 20 %
                                      Delay 5 minutes
                        module y  Brighten to 100%
                                      delay 3 sec
                                      dim 20 %......... and so on

The brighten to 100% and then dim, if I recall correctly, was a way to get another version of AH to work "properly".  I never thought of writing macros in another way.

Each module has it's own HC and UC.

Answer to Dan Laurence

I did backup the AHX file , reinstalled AHP, but still the same result.  May be I'm missing something in how to do it, or missing something in what files to backup...

BTW, is there a way I can copy the activity monitor and post it here or send it to somebody, and how about the macro itself?

Let me know, thanks

[Dan Lawrence]

You can copy the Activity Monitor, but I don't know what format it does.  I looked at it, there is a "save as an Active Home" as the first option under "Save As".   

I would get rid of any "old macros" as they might be interfering as all timers/macros are uploaded to the CM15A. 

As to backing up .ahx files, always back up to separate media (different hard drive, removable media,etc.

[Rambeaudoin]

I did rewrite all the macros, come to think of it.  Anyway, last night, I removed all the BRIGHTEN to 100% for each module in the macro and let only the BRIGHTEN to the "absolute" % I really want.  The macro will run at dusk today, so I'll let you know tonight or tomorrow on how it went.

[Noam]

You can save the Activity Log out to an HTML file.
Open that in your browser, copy the part you want to show us, and paste it in here. That should work okay.

As for copying the macro, there really is no good way. Just list out the commands it has, in order.

How many modules do you have on this macro? Are they all Lamp modules, or are some of them appliances?

Are you mixing SoftStart and non-SoftStart modules in the same macro (I haven't tested that, so I don't know what would happen)?

Have you tried running the macro manually from AHP (instead of waiting for the timer)? Does it do anything differently than when it is run with the timer?

Are ANY of the modules in the macro responding?

Have you verified that the timer is actually starting the macro at the right time? Perhaps the macro isn't running at all, which might be part of the issue?

Is there anything different at the time the macro should be running (other lights/appliances on, etc) that might be causing noise in your system?

One last thing, which I wasn't clear on earlier - are the lights coming on, but not dimming, or are they not coming on at all? There is an option in AHP to "Send 'On' in place of "Bright 100' " in macros. That might change the behavior of your modules, too.

What module types are these?

[Rambeaudoin]

Like I previously stated, I took off the brighten to 100%, then dim to 80% to finally command the modules to absolute 80%.  Same result, nothing dims.

It used to work.  Don't take it personally, but I was always able to work around for this crappy X10 software, but now for me it's a realy shi**y software.

Commands appear in activity monitor, but they are not always sent.  It's like the CM15A remembers what it wants, and trust me, I've taken out the batteries, unpluged it, cleared it, re-uploaded it and so on.  From my point of view, it's a POS.

Any options with what I can replace it with, I kinda had enough already, 10 years of pathwork is enough don't you think?

I appreciate the help for sure, but I don't think people should struggle that much for something that should be simple to get working.  We supposedly landed on the moon and came back...  42 years ago...

My 0.02$ anyway.

[Noam]

Okay, if you don't want any more help, I'm happy to stop trying.

However, you still haven't answered my question of what types of modules you are actually using.
since the macros are set to send an absolute dim level of 80%, does that mean the light doesn't come on at all now?