simplextech

People want a web interface because they want it. What you and many are wanting is great and doable but UD isn't going to invest into the older platform that was designed around a switch/dimmer/keypad being the user interface not a iPad.

ZLINK is another brand of the same products. They are from the same ODM as where HS gets them from. Those on that page are the 100 series but you can find the 200 series as well. Point being the HS are not designed by HS they are just like most other z-wave devices that are re-branded.

One more thing @asbril the HomeSeer switches/dimmers are over priced re-brands of ZLINK devices. https://www.zwaveproducts.com/collections/z-wave-in-wall-dimmers

I'll also through zooZ brand into the ring. I have several of their devices and the customer support from TheSmartestHouse (front end for them) has been excellent.

Is Eric even participating in this forum any longer? I see him and other Inovelli staff posting in the Hubitat forum quite often. Seems they have a favorite hub.

Yeah the buttons on the KPL are rather small. Not the greatest. There are better when looking outside of Insteon.

This will depend on vendor. Same with build quality. Some are good, some are not. The LED I guess is nice, some people use it for indicators of things (use keypads). The multi-tap scene control it's "cool" and then it wears off because people do not remember what 3 taps up or 4 taps down does across several different switches. Keypads are far better than multi-tap scene control (IMHO) In my home and designs if you have to touch a switch there needs to be a specific reason for it.

Both. Both device and hub need to support associations. Mainly the device needs to support it and the hub needs to be able to configure/manage it. Insteon is great for lighting but has it's own issues. Z-Wave is bad for lighting (IMHO) but has other uses like sensors and other devices not available in Insteon and alternatives would be zigbee if available or wifi if available. Z-Wave isn't horrible in and of itself. Z-Wave implementations from hubs and devices come into play as some are better than others.

I thought I would be thorough in explaining how much it sucks

If you have a smart gateway like the ISY then you lose more than you will gain from associations. UNLESS the devices in question support multiple associations where you can associate the gateway AND controller to keep all parties in sync. Typical keypad controllers don't support this and fewer and fewer gateway hubs are supporting this. The flip side is if you do NOT have a smart gateway controller like ISY or another "hub" or something and your "controller" is just a multi button switch or keypad AND all you want to do is control those 2-5 OTHER light switches in the room... Yeah go for it. Then someday when you add more devices you will have to ditch the "Scene Controller" keypad.

Dunno... not soon or ever as associations aren't very common anymore with smarter gateways controlling things. Less and less devices are supporting associations as well so you have to check devices specifically if they support it or not.

Yup. Reason why it's not great for lighting. The best you'll get with Z-Wave with "less" popcorn effect is by using Z-Wave Associations from a Scene Controller. ISY does not support Z-Wave Associations (currently). You are limited to essentially line of sight or single room with Z-Wave Associations as it's a broadcast message from Scene Controller to the other devices which means it can't route through repeaters. I said "less" so @lilyoyo1 doesn't come beating me over the head because yes there are instances and times when popcorn is noticed. Just less of it.

The ISY currently does not have the ability to do OTA updates of z-wave devices. To update your z-wave devices you will need either another controller that does support OTA that also can be used as a secondary controller. OR you will need a USB Z-Wave stick and software that can perform the OTA update. HomeSeer sells their Z-Wave stick and ZTool software as a bundle OR you can buy a Z-Wave stick (any will work) and use the Silicon Labs Z-Wave PC Controller which is free to download. You will then need to contact the device vendor to get the firmware update file.

This is the root of the problem. People want everything but don't want to pay for the time that it actually takes. I don't think most people other than those that have designed a UI understand the amount of time it takes to design/implement and then tweak/adjust and this is just for our own use. Then take that and "customize" it for everybody's wants/taste the amount of time becomes enormous. This is one of the BIG reasons why custom solutions are expensive. It's not the hardware it's the TIME spent customizing the interfaces and integrations. BTW - I like it

Using a dimmer on a Fan is going to quickly ruin the dimmer or the fan motor. Dimmer's are not designed for this. You may be able to get away with a Switch just to turn the fan on/off but again the Switch is not designed for this. If you want to do it "right" use a FanLinc and a KPL to control the FanLinc. If you want to do it cheap then I have several FanLinc's and KPL's available for sale

Here is you really must have it... https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-20/20 and here's MS DOS to go with it https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/1x

Ok. But this is how the ISY works today. This isn't a multi-user system and doesn't run a multi-user OS. The reason to need admin access for any interaction is because it's the only access. The Linux analogy is nice, you must run Ubuntu or Debian maybe. Most other Linux distros don't come with sudo pre-configured and do require you to login as root and then you can decide if you want to configure sudo or not. No actual Unix system comes pre-configured with sudo. So I understand your analogy but it's the exception and not the rule. The ISY is an embedded system and is not going to have multi-user capabilities today with the OS and hardware it runs on. It's not designed for that. There's improvements and changes coming. That's the whole basis of Polisy afterall. Not what I think you are wanting to hear but that's the current situation.

For the last part of storing the admin credentials... yeah any interface currently would need the credentials to interface with the REST interface. That's just the way it is today. There's been talks about improving that. It would be nice to move to a token based setup for interface access. For the first part. What web UI are you referring to or is this just in general? The built in UI is not really intended to be AS-IS user facing and is more of a framework to be extended on or used AS-IS and with it's limits of requiring you to login. There's another project HousePanel that is coming along very nicely where credentials and information are not prompted for by users.

I've sorta followed this but not closely... So what is your scenario? Why do your guests need admin access?

The 5.x release of the ISY firmware added a lot of z-wave device support.

I know this is a little overkill just for the ISY.... but I think it's a whole lot easier... https://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP1500AVRLCD-Intelligent-Outlets-Mini-Tower/dp/B000FBK3QK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=cyberpower+ups&qid=1585884318&sr=8-3

That null database issue is likely a ghost device caused from the lock not including fully. Read through the August docs on how to perform an "Exclude" from the lock. Go through that and when done then run the z-wave heal. If the Null DB message is gone then it's what I'm thinking. If not then it may be something you need to contact UDI support about.

Now that's odd. The exclude process should not cause that. I think you should contact support as this is weird.

I don't know the exclude sequence for the lock. But just click the Exclude Device in the z-wave dropdown and start the exclude process from the lock. That will reset/exclude the lock and remove any "trace" from the ISY. Then do the Include of the lock again and see if it includes correctly this time.

Progress... good. Have you ran a Z-Wave Heal process after adding the range extenders? If not run that a couple of times. If you don't have a lot of devices it won't take long to run through it. After that's done then exclude the lock that wouldn't include properly and then try the include process again.