Diesel

I don't have any X10 devices but wonder if HA assigned the device type as a switch [On/Off] rather than a light [On/Off/Bright/Dim]. In HA, go to Settings | Devices & Services | and search for the device name on the Entities tab... Does the Entity ID start with switch.[devicename] or light.[devicename]?

1. No, you can search reddit or synology forum for specific models, but just about any externally powered 3.x USB hub should work fine. 2. I don't have any bluetooth devices in my HA. But if I did, BT is generally short range. My NAS is in a network closet in the basement of a large home and not an ideal location for a BT radio. A lot of users in the HA community use an ESP32 for this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=endqy0G6Dks

Glad you're happy. My pleasure.

The HASS virtual machine has its own virtual lan connection to your network. It can connect to any devices on your network as long you add the integration modules into HASS for those devices.

Aqara FP2 is WiFi, no zigbee or zwave radios/hub required. Here's a review and guide on how to add to Home Assistant. For blinds, one option is to look into the latest matter devices like the Eve MotionBlinds. Also just FYI because you mentioned node servers - any devices you add to ISY via node servers can be added to, and controlled by HomeAssistant through the ISY integration. In fact they're added by default unless you explicitly exclude them.

Yes, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, in Synology VMM you can pass through USB devices to virtual machines. But due to the great development and driver support on Hubitat, I think your life will be a lot easier going that route...but first setup and play with a HASS VM without making any hardware commitments and see if you like it.

Using a Hubitat for your zigbee and zwave devices is just one option. You don't have to use one. I had one before I started with HASS so I used that as my zigbee & zwave hub. It's very stable and works well for everything I've thrown at it. Very active community & device driver development. If you do decide to go with it get the current C-8 model. If you go the RP4 route you'll still need to buy zigbee and zwave radios. My advice would be not to buy any hardware just yet. Instead get the HASS VM installed on your Syno first over a cup of coffee. Go thru the initial HASS setup, and add the ISY integration to get all your Insteon devices added to HASS. You can also add the integrations for any WiFi, Network, and cloud devices you may have. HASS will detect a bunch of devices on your network that you can add (ex; Hue, Apple TVs, Android, Samsung, LG TVs etc). Learn how it all works to see if you like it. Spend some time on the HASS community forum and ask questions. It's a very active place with a lot of helpful people. Once you get a good feel for HASS and you know you like it, then you can either get USB dongles for zigbee & Zwave radios and pass them thru to the VM, a Hubitat, or something else. If at that point you're convinced to go the RPi route, just create a HASS backup and restore the config on the RPI and you pickup where you left off in minutes. Good luck

Getting the HASS VM up and running is pretty quick. You just install the Syno VMM package, download the premade virtual machine OVA file, upload to Syno VMM and start the VM. There's quite a few videos and tutorials out there like this one Installing Home Assistant on Synology NAS using VMM WD Reds are NAS drives. HASS disk IO is minimal. Nothing to be concerned about. Don't be afraid to use your NAS for what it was intended for.

You have options. You can passthru USB devices to a virtual machine in Synology VMM. In my case I use a Hubitat hub that handles my zwave and zigbee devices. HASS has excellent integration for Hubitat so it's able to control everything. Over time you can have many different native hubs (Hue, ISY, Hubitat, etc) all connected to HASS as the brains and control center.

IMHO, if you don't already have one I would put the money instead into a Synology NAS and run HASS as a virtual machine on it. The NAS will do so much more for you, like provide network storage for all your files, documents, Windows and Mac (TimeMachine) client backups, storing Eisy backups. A 2 bay Synology DS224+ is only $299. It also runs Docker for other containers you may want to explore. There's a premade OVA (virtual machine) for HASS that can be imported into Synology VMM (virtual machine manager). It's practical because you can run snapshots on the VM before making any major changes and simple to roll back if things go wrong.

You have a config issue somewhere because I use it for quite a few automations and it's been very stable. Go back to a simple config. Have the scene contain only 1 keypad button, and make sure that button isn't assigned to any other scene to be sure nothing is conflicting. Be sure 2 linked entities are the new scene you created and the lights you want to control. You'll get it working. Sometimes it's just simple conflict somewhere. Edit: Just thought of something. Remove/Delete the Helper you created to change the switch to a light.

Create an ISY scene on Eisy and add the keypad button(s) as controller(s) to that that scene. Name the ISY scene something easy to identity in HA, ex: Dinning Room KP B, or Light Scene X buttons(s). Reload the ISY integration on HA. The new scene will show up as a switch. In HA | Automations download a Blueprint called Linked-Entities. Then create a new automation using that Blueprint to link the ISY scene (KP button) and the light group.

@shbatm Would it be possible to add an option in the configuration to completely ignore selected Node Servers including all devices and entities related to that node server? Maybe a drop down checkbox with a list of connected Node Servers. Example: I use the Hue Node Server in IoX so that I can use keypads to control Hue lights that can't be accomplished in HA. But I already have my Hue lights in Home Assistant directly with the native Hue integration. I don't want all these devices and their entities added in duplicate again from the NS. This just creates a huge mess. The Hue hub creates Groups for rooms, and Zones (groups of lights) so if you have 10-20 Hue lights you'll end with about 30-40 devices in the IoX NS. I don't want to have to rename them all with an ignore string, especially since IoX has limited characters for naming. Thanks for your hard work and great integration!

Ah, so you experience the same behavior? At least it helps me confirm it’s not a misconfiguration issue from my side. Although I’m surprised that @shbatm wouldn’t have mentioned that what I’m experiencing is expected behavior. I dont quite grasp what you mean about using button entities instead. Aren’t Insteon keypad buttons just sensor entities in HA without any ability to control underlying devices? Oddly, before i setup the HA IoX integration I’d been using a Homebridge container with an ISY plugin (Rod Toll?) that also allowed you present native Insteon scenes as switches and behaved correctly in Apple HomeKit. You hit the ‘scene switch’ and it turned on only that specific scene without affecting other scenes that had the same devices (WatchTV and Relax). I’ve been trying to move to HA to consolidate all my hubs there as automation devices become more and more fragmented. It’s a great platform for this, but this Insteon scene issue is causing some major grief, especially with the wife who uses Homebridge most of the time. I’ve thought about using a dummy switch in HA that toggles a variable in IoX that sets a scene state, but that just seems cludgy and cumbersome for all the scenes we use. Hopefully we can come up with a better solution that works properly and improve the IoX integration.

No apology my friend. Appreciate you taking the time to try to help. The world is a better place because of people like you. Thanks!