Avoiding and Troubleshooting Link Problems between your Insteon Devices and your ISY-99/994

I just learned something recently that wasn't clear to me before. If you are using an ISY-99/994 automation controller with your Insteon network - you have to be very careful and disciplined to only link devices / add devices to your network using your ISY-99/994 interface.

As you probably know, you can link two insteon devices directly together by putting the devices into linking mode directly on the device (usually by holding the paddle down or a button down). However, if you do this in the context of an Insteon network controlled by your ISY-99/994 controller - the PLM attached to your ISY-99/994 does not learn of this new link, and this will cause a mismatch between the link table on the device, and the link table in your ISY memory, and the PLM.

When your link tables become mismatched, that may lead to unpredictable or slowed behaviour in your network.

So - how do you clean up these mismatched link tables?

Your ISY has a diagnostic tool that can read the link table on any of your devices, and can compare it to the link table that is stored in your ISY. It will show you the mismatched link table records.

Results of ISY Links Table Comparison - All Links Matching in this Example

If you have mismatched links - you can clear the link table in your Insteon device by performing a factory reset on the device (follow the instructions in the device user guide), and then perform a "Restore" command to rewrite the links table to your device. This correct the "unmatched" links problem. You will have to go through the same procedure with any other device which had manual links added. Once all your devices have been factory reset, then restored, you will have to recreate those links which had been created manually using your ISY interface, if you wish to retain this functionality. One caution is that this process is time consuming, it took about 3 hours to go through the link tables of just over 50 devices, and performing the hard resets of about 5 devices along the way that had mismatched link tables.

So - remember - always do your device linking using your ISY interface, and not manually.

If anyone out there has a simpler way of rectifying this issue, please leave a comment!