ControlThink Forums

Was using ver. 2.2 then upgraded to the beta 2.3...now I can't get signal strength to pop-up when I left right click. I am using the pro version. The user manual said that the usb has to have "installer" firmware...but since it worked before, I assumed I had installer firmware. Thanks for your help.

 jstew2,

Try pressing 'F8' and see if that brings it up.  If not, go to "About ThinkEssentials" in the Settings tab, and make sure that it's coming up as TE Pro.

Note the right click option for signal strength only appears for some devices. In my system, the Intermatic plugin modules and the Wayne Dalton thermostat and gateway modules don't have it but all the Leviton Vizia RF stuff does have it.

If I right click a Vizia dimmer, things work (it's orange and everything eventullay turns green indicating good signal strength). If I then select something that doesn't have a right click signal strength option, that icon turns orange and a bunch of 1s show up indicating the items where first hop connectivity exists but all items stay as a dim white circle (i.e. nothing turns red, yellow or green).

Some devices have the ability to do power metering, some do not.  For the devices that support this feature, you'll still see the signal strengths of its neighbors show up.  However, for devices that do not support this, we just show the hop counts and the dim white circle.

It would be nice if devices that couldn't do power meering still had a right click option (say "View Hop Counts") and if the colors were different (Say Blue instead of Orange). That way, a network that consists completely of non-power metering capable devices can still access the functionality.

It would also be nice if there was some indication of when you think you're done gathering signal strength info (for both this function and the F8 function). Could be done by changing thhe cursor when you're busy or by changing the "Done" button to "Cancel" when busy and "Finished" with complete.

Finally, it would be good if, when viewing hop counts from a device you show all of them, not just the ones that are one hop from the orange device.

Steveg

 

FInally got it to work by re-installing ver 2.1.1 Will try to do the upgrade to beta 2.3 this weekend and see if it'll stay working.

Thanks

 

Now that it is working, what is the signal strength and hop count show? What does the color mean? Hop count...1 means what...? 2 means better? or not?

thanks

Had time to install ver 2.3 tonight and I lost the ability to right click for signal strength again. Bug fix?

Thanks

Based on empirical evidence....

If you start things with a right click, the orange circle is around the node you right clicked. The 1 means a node that is 1 hop away (i.e. directly connected to the orange node).

A dim white circle means no signal strength info is known.  A green full circle means full strength. A green partial circle means less than full strength. A yellow partial circle means even less and red means even less.You won't get signal strength on nodes that are more than 1 hop away.

If you start things with F8, the codes are the same and the source node is the ThinkStick. Here , you get 2, etc on nodes that are more than one hop away (i.e. 2 means directly connected to a node that's one hop away from the ThinkStick). In this mode, you get signal strength on all nodes -- I'm not sure what it's measuring for nodes that are more than 1 hop away from the ThinkStick.

Devices more than two hops away will respond to signal strength...it's strange that they will not for you.  The only reason why that wouldn't be the case is if all devices that are two+ hops away are also not capable of giving signal strength information.

Sorry -- I intermixed right click and F8 behavior in my reply.  Signal strength more that 1 hop away works with the F8 but does not on the right click. The caption on right click says "Click on a device to calculate signal strength to the device's direct neighbors". All devices in question are RZI06 or ThinkStick (there are a few Intermatic plug-ins and a Wayne Dalton thermostat in the network but they are not involved).

Actually, now it's broken -- was working but stopped. The right click device is RZI06 -- I get the View Signal Strength menu item but after the right click, it behaves like clicking a non-power metering capable device (bunch of white dim circles that don't change color). Exiting ThinkEssentials and restarting it cured the problem (but when exiting ThinkEssentials, I got the "this program has failed do you want to tell Microsoft" dialog box).

On the F8 page, what does signal strength on nodes that are 2 hops away mean? I can think of a bunch of schemes you could have used: (1) strength between the 2nd hop node and the (unidentified) 1st hop node, (2) total signal strength between the computer and the node combined in some unknown fashio, (3) some sort of average ofsignal strength for links between the possible 1st hop nodes and the 2nd hop node, (4) ...

Steveg