MWareman

There are also some zwave controllers that would work more securely.

Iolinc + garage door opener = bad combination...

Not everyone has the skills or the patience/time to setup ddns/port forwarding/SSL certificates/VPN. Clearly, your using HTTP within a VPN. That's why you don't see the SSL performance penalty. I for one don't want to use a VPN. Many others don't. A proxy (such as the portal, or my personal Apache based proxy) with a SSL accelerator chip will be orders of magnitude faster than SSL termination directly on ISY, especially with 2048+ bit certificates. I get instant response using my SSL accelerated proxy, and 5-6 second response using SSL directly to ISY. Alexa needs the portal because Amazon requires the service Alexa is connecting to to be a cloud service. It cannot connect to thousands of individual devices - they must have a single API for accessing all devices. That what the portal provides, and is why its required.

Disappointing to be sure. I hope the certification process is a swift one...

I have a lock command as part of my 'Alexa, send goodnight' program that is sent via the Maker channel. Not at all comfortable having any way to unlock the door via Alexa.... even with an alarm system. I just won't do it!

On the 'Select Tools' menu, select 'ISY Information'. It will pop-up. It uses JavaScript, so if you use an ad blocker you may have to whitelist my.ISY.io. Michael.

Try using Lastpass to automate password entry.

Remember all, the features in the portal are still under development, and (to my knowledge) more functionality is forthcoming. The value proposition is only going to go up. In addition to what was just mentioned, the speed of establishing an SSL connection from clients like Mobilinc and Tasked is orders of magnitude faster that establishing an SSL connection directly to the ISY, due to the computational expense of new connections. Portal has a hardware crypto accelerator I believe to make this really fly. Portal supports more than one credential, and you can turn off a credential if you want without breaking others. Direct ISY access only has one account - and that account is fully administrative. So, use a portal credential in you Mobilinc and lose your phone: just disable that credential. Lose your phone with direct Mobilinc, change your ISY password then spend hours fixing up all the places you used it. There is an even easier token based authentication on its way as well - for better, secure authentication to ISY Portal from services like the Maker IFTTT channel. Plus we can feel good continuing to support UDI, who are working hard to bring us all this goodness...

If you 'installed' the Admin Console by using: http://isy.universal-devices.com/994i/4.4.1/admin.jnlp ..then you'll need access to that URL to open the console. Try using the url: http://your.isy.ip.address/admin.jnlp (but of course change your.isy.ip.address to be correct!). This will load the console from the local ISY rather than from UDIs server. If you look in your Java cache, you'll see things are tied to the URL that you load the .jnlp file from, and that's where the java classes are loaded from during initialization. You won't be able to use a different version that what is installed on your ISY though. Michael.

Native integration? Yes. It's been said this will require the portal. This is part of Amazons requirements and, I believe, a deciding element for UDI to develop the portal at all. More services will likely come - native IFTTT for example. You can also do Alexa integration via the Maker channel, if you want to hack it yourself. You can also use one of several 'Hue' emulators to link to Alexa without the portal.

I know the nest offers a compelling use case, but I also sold my Nest (came with the house from the builder as a promotion) and switched in a Trane zwave stat. Much happier! Nest is fantastic, unless you want to integrate it with third party systems.... UDI are not keeping the details of the Alexa integration secret - its just that the information is somewhat spread around the forum, and mixed in other threads. I'm just waiting for Amazon to approve the skill and connected home submission, then will be able to speak with first hand knowledge... Should be any day now, I hope! Shouldn't need a 5.x upgrade - the integration point is the ISY Portal, and this works on the latest 4.3.x.

Nest needs the client to support oAuth. ISY won't support that for quite a long time, if ever. The portal can, but UDI is prohibited from working with Nest without giving up a substantial income. Doubt that's ever going to happen, unless Google change their policies. As far as Alexa, UDI is making two interfaces. Native 'Connected Home' and a skill (Izzy). The first will be exactly like the Hue emulator (or a native Hue bridge). Same command set - and same limited vocabulary. The skill will allow many more command types, but has a requirement to invoke the skill by name (Alexa, tell Izzy to...), with the advantage that you can have arbitrary commands after that, not limited by the connected home vocabulary. Both will need an ISY Portal subscription. The certificate changes (ability to add an intermediate certificate) will allow the IFTTT Maker channel to send triggers to ISY (as well as unchecked 'trust all certificates' in Tasker... - I can't wait for this!), and Alexa can trigger IFTTT (Alexa, send ....). So, you will be able to trigger ISY programs from Alexa using this method, without the portal (if you are comfortable having your ISY password configured at IFTTT). There may be a change in the future to allow the Maker channel to make ISY REST calls without needing the ISY password - by using a security token instead. Hopefully, this change comes quickly on the heals of the cert change.

My view is this. The early products were advertised as having the feature to turn on after a power failure. The near fire was caused by a combustible being placed over a halogen light, then the control device behaving and performing as designed. How is this ISY/Insteon/Smarthome's fault? It's a buyer beware world. We cannot complain about problems we cause ourselves when the product itself did exactly what the vendor said it will do. Poor design choice - sure. I agree. However, its not like Smarthome said it wouldn't do this. It's obligant on us as buyers to assess the suitability for its purpose when selecting products. This is why its not a good idea to use an iolinc to control a garage door opener - its not a device refer for an application where security is a need. That, and allon.... I'm glad things worked out though.

I've been using a 2456S3E for a number of years now, still performs flawlessly (Chicago area, so some pretty chilly winters as well). Designed for outdoor use, but single band. I don't think they sell them anymore though.

It's in beta version 5.x... It's beta though - currently with some rough edges. In the latest 4.x version, you can use the network module and variable substitution to do the same thing.

Yes! We'll be happy to help. Hopefully, this means they've approved it, but the 'technical issue' is in publishing the approval.

UDI not being able to work with Nest is a Google enforced restriction. They (Google) simply prohibit any company that does demand/response energy management from using the API. The new Honeywell stats work with IFTTT now, and ISY can control them by using the network module and the IFTTT Maker channel already. You currently cannot easily get feedback from the stat though, without running a third party process. There has been some success with other WiFi stats as well - but I haven't followed these.

I'm starting to move to Aeotec zwave smart switch devices, since they report energy consumption as well as allowing the ISY to control them. The Smarthome sale was not good enough for me to justify this year's addition - they lost a sale from me.

That's good to know! Some of my sensors may be getting to a low battery state in the next few months...

Looks like the HTTP/1.0 profile can set the 'Authorization' header by you filling in the 'HTTP Authentication' box with the username[emoji14]assword of your ISY. For the rest, put the ISYs IP (with a trailing : and then the port number for the non-ssl port on the ISY) in the destination, and configure the rest api URL in the 'CGI-Path' - leaving the 'Message' blank.

Batch files cannot themselves call a rest api. You'll need to find a helper binary, such as curl or wget (compiled for windows) and then use that as a command in your batch file to call the api.

The camera would (currently) need to be able to set a 'Basic' 'Authorization' header to requests to be able to utilize the rest api. Not many can.

Historically, I've seen many delays with email to SMS gateways on AT&T and T-Mobile (never had Verizon). It's why I switched to services like Pushover for those time I need instant notifications.

ISY doesn't run Linux....

Hopefully, the delay is just the approvers enjoying Thanksgiving with their families, and they'll issue their approval early next week.... I know I'm not the only one checking the Alexa app regularly...