I'm very unhappy

[MarkJames]

I haven't put any time into the mobilinc forum and I'm hoping I find some answers here but so far I'm entirely unhappy with my purchase of mobilinc hd

It found my isy system just fine. I have a very large network with over 180 Insteon devices, over a hundred scenes, over two hundred programs, integration into Elk and a parallel Homeseer pc running, etc. etc. I was hoping mobilinc hd would help make the whole thing more family friendly but instead this is what I've experienced.

a) a user interface that takes quite a while to load. I can leave it on all the time and burn in the screen of my wall mounted ipad, I suppose, but that thought doesn't appeal to me. Some sort of screen saver would help in this regard.

b) a user interface that has so much lag to it that it renders it almost unusable. I hit the 'on' or 'off' side of the switches and get no response for several seconds - long enough that I figure I haven't hit it so I hit it yet again. Insteon is so very responsive and even the web interface of the ISY is almost instant. Mobilinc makes me think x-10 not insteon.

c) the hook into my ISY crashes the ISY. My ISY has run hiccup free for years. I don't know that it's ever crashed. With mobilinc running it crashes daily. I can't leave mobilinc running or none of the programs that manage the house execute.

I hope there's some serious upgrading coming for this product as so far this has been a very disappointing $50 spent.

mark

[AdminWes]

Mark,

I'm very sorry you are not having a good experience with MobiLinc. Let me offer my thoughts on what might be happening. If you'd like to take this offline and contact me directly, please reach me at: support@mobilinc.com

a) Two issues here:
Part 1: Do you use folder organization for your devices and scenes? The problem you may be running into is if all 180 devices are at the root level, MobiLinc will attempt to render all 180 devices on the My Devices screen when you transition to My Devices so the left/right swiping is smooth, however, the shear number of devices will definitively bog down the app.

My recommendation is this:
Option 1: Organize your devices, scenes, programs into folders to allow MobiLinc to only render what's in the current folder view.
Option 2: With 180 devices my guess is that quite a few of these you don't need access to from an iPad. You may want to consider hiding the ones you don't need access to by either deleting them from MobiLinc, or a better way is to use the "Hide Me" MobiLinc prefix option and rename your devices/scenes/programs by adding the MobiLinc "Hide Me" option prefix to the name of each device/scene/program. MobiLinc will auto hide these from the display. The default is set to look for "{HIDE ME}".

Part 2: For wall mounted displays that is a good suggestion to ad in some sort of a screensaver. My assumption here is that you do not allow the iPad to sleep, ever.

b) This lag issue is very likely related to part a. If the devices/scenes/programs are organized into folders it will allow the rendering to be snappier and allow for commands to be issued from MobiLinc near instantaneously.

c) What ISY firmware are you running? The latest is 3.2.6 and is recommended to upgrade to that version if you haven't already. Also, with HomeSeer running talking to the ISY there could be additional complex interactions on the ISY with HomeSeer causing the ISY to react badly now that there's two UI/controllers both wanting to talk to it. In all of our development and abuse on our local ISY we've only gotten it lock up a handful of times. Hearing this lock up daily is concerning. If you leave MobiLinc just running without interacting with the ISY, there's virtually no communication to the ISY. So, there's something else that's happening if the ISY is locking up and MobiLinc is On but not syncing or issuing ON/OFF commands to the ISY.

What happens if you address part a from above? If the ISY is still locking up, try the firmware upgrade. Then try temporally shutting down the HomeSeer connection to rule that out.

Wes

[MarkJames]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for my late response.

My devices are all sorted by folders. I've always kept my devices sorted by room or by floor. For example I have a 'kitchen' folder, a 'second floor' folder, a 'master bedroom' folder etc. etc. I don't think that's the problem - but I'm also not sure how many devices mobilinc can handle before it starts to slow down. \

The screen I've tried to use the most is the 'favorites' screen. I've put my most commonly accessed devices there - less than 10 of them - but it's still quite 'laggy'.

I could almost live with the lag - it's the crashing of my ISY that is the biggest problem. I've confirmed that it's the mobilinc in that if I leave it off I get no crashes. If I start it up I can't go 24hrs without my ISY packing it in. Any help in this regard would be much appreciated.

mark

[AdminWes]

Thanks Mark,

Based on that description, you shouldn't be having any kind of lag issues. Is there a time this next week that works for you where I can connect to your ISY to investigate as to what's happening?

Also, please confirm you are running the latest ISY firmware 3.2.6.

Wes

[MarkJames]

Sure thing.

I'm running ISY 3.3.3 - not 3.2.6. Could that be part of it?

I'll message you during the week or phone and we can set up a remote session or I can just send you an HTTP link into my ISY for you to access it.

mark

[AdminWes]

Sounds good Mark.

We haven't tested against 3.3.3 beta. That could be contributing, although 3.3.2 is working fine in our lab.

How about https certs? Do you have any custom https certs installed? If you do what's the key strength? If it's more than 1024 then that is very likely the issue. MobiLinc will work with 2048-bit key strength, but the ISY will go through a 15 second delay every time you start MobiLinc. That's because with the high-end key strength the ISY needs 15 seconds to create the initial handshake session with the caller (MobiLinc).

If you do have 2048-bit certs installed, please back this down to 1024 or use MobiLinc Connect to connect with your ISY.

Wes

[MarkJames]

link is in your inbox.

Thanks!


mark

[MarkJames]

Thanks Wes, for taking the time today to check out my system. I'm exploring the issues you pointed out to me with Michel and the gang over at ISY and hopefully will have some answers. I'll be sure and post back what the end result is.

Mark

[AdminWes]

Great, thanks Mark.

Wes