SJK

Agree - I started with this 20 years ago now with Insteon V1 and and Elk integration using the X10 commands and some dedicated hardware interface between the two. Now 2 homes and 2 businesses later I'm on my 5th and final buildout with my preferred kit. So as I said- dipped toes into water with HomeKit (or spent the time in HA rabbit holes)- can keep it, but not any killer feature to layer on top of a polished IoX setup. It's just hard to follow with all the Matter this and Thread that hype- sounds great for interoperability in simple setups, but IoX already is integrating and translating between vendors and protocols just fine.

General question: What's the advantage of integrating HomeKit (Apple) to IoX? I'm not sure what I'm missing out on by not doing this and interested in the killer functionality this provides given all the talk re: Matter, etc. With the pending January update just announced, I'm thinking the advantage is even less. I'd understand if someone started with a HomeKit environment and fell into IoX, but not the other way around. I have an Insteon-heavy environment, so IoX is ideal there. I have branched out into Zigbee 3.0 (Hue bulbs, Sonoff switches, GLEDOPTO devices for LED strips and architectural lighting) but also use Polyglot for UniFi, Venstar, Elk, and CAO/Wireless Tags integrations. An eISY and a Polisy running IoX and Polyglot are my only hubs. The admin console programming setup is very flexible- things often require multiple small programs making sort of a web of interactions (vs a HomeAssistant script for example) but it's intuitive. Any limitations I've run into when trying to accomplish something is more often hardware-based, rather than IoX capabilities itself- with a few exceptions of trying out some cheap "unsupported" devices. Perhaps that's it? People using a mishmash of cheap consumer devices of the week that are supported in HK or HA and may not have made it into IoX yet? I'm not currently using ZWave at this house but am in commercial settings. So what's the advantage? A prettier UI from Apple instead of UDMobile? Even there, UDMobile is awesome- I've built a massive interface for my iPhone allowing me to control multiple IoX systems at multiple in one place. And I try to automate most actions so I don't need to fiddle around in the app to live my life- my home just does it's thing and responds to presence, motion, climate/weather/luminance, etc. I use Insteon keypads for most manual interaction and am installing a wall-mounted iPad to run UDMobile and a web browser for other home services (calendar/shopping list, etc). I'd rather not have to whip out my iPhone as I walk around my house to trigger events. I interact with Elk directly for security when home, which IoX monitors to trigger some routines, and UDMobile if I need to interact with or monitor the security system when away from the premises. I'm using UniFi protect for cameras (and access at commercial settings) but they have their own apps and I don't really need them to integrate with IoX. and then I could integrate an RSTP camera stream to UDMobile if desired (not sure of that other than quick access to a key feed or two in case of an alarm event rather than switching apps- maybe). Sonos and Roku aren't well integrated into IoX via Polyglot- always ran into issues with them (some self-inflicted based upon enforced network segmentation)- but then Sonos has an app if I want to interact with it, and I can use the IoX network module if I want to program a specific action such as pressing an Insteon key to turn on the radio while cooking, etc. What are people doing with HomeKit and HomeAssistant if they've got a mature IoX setup?

Sonoff ZBMINIR2 on/off switch. Currently able to be added as a Zigbee device, on/off works, but no ability to configure/mange device settings such as detached mode, inching mode, trigger mode, power reset state. My use case is to sense a local switch for Hue bulbs to toggle on/off state without powering off bulb entirely (originally wired it as a local failsafe switch/if we ever sell the house and revert to "dumb" wiring). A whole lot cheaper than another insteon switch with a disconnected load. https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/ZBMINIR2.html https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/zbminir2/

I currently have zero Z-wave devices at this location so could live with that. Too many scenes with each devices a member of multiple scenes to accommodate on insteon PLM. Attached article not too helpful- one network manager per network- but I'm looking at making multiple independent networks - or at least that would be fine as I see no need to make both see each other. It does mention "start network and join/leave network" so presumably each controller should set up their own independent network - otherwise how would interference between neighbors be prevented? Found this: https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Tutorials/Zigbee_tutorial.html which mentions each controller starts its own personal area network- so I can see on my eISY this in X-ray of the network: Integer DATA controller.data.defaultPanId = 27238 (0x00006a66) I would assume that if I bought another ZMatter dongle it would create a different network ID- either randomly or upon detecting a collision with an existing network but that is a something one of the UD developers would have to confirm.

As an aside- just received my first actual Philips Hue bulbs and tried one out. Amazing that I can set commands directly with scenes included alongside Insteon switches- so I can use the regular wallswitch button to turn the light on AND reset the temp back to a "normal" bulb rather than the last on. Well done native implementation! Kudos!

I don't have a large zigbee network, I have a large Insteon network. The Zigbee devices will be in locations covered by each of the IoX controllers (max nodes/scenes/devices per PLM) and cannot be reconfigured to condense the Zigbee network to one IoX controller.

I have a corner-case question here regarding Zigbee (and possibly ZWave). I have an eisy and a polisy both running in the same home as my Insteon network is too large for one to contain all nodes. The polisy handles exterior and basement, the eisy handles floors 1-3 in the main home and the entire HVAC system. Polisy handles polyglot and external intgrations and the eisy references polisy for polyglot. I'm now adding Zigbee to my home- currently for Hue-style lighting using the GLEDOPTO 5 in 1 LED drivers and their exterior wall wash and garden lighting (integrated Zigbee 3.0). Problem is I'll have some inside the home, where it will be important for them to integrate with the interior scenes and programs on eisy, and also the garden/wall wash exterior ones which should be integrated with the exterior scenes- on polisy. Since z-matter works without a hub I don't have one so I don't need or want to use polyglot/nodeservers. That would make this easier as both could "see" the nodes (like I do with Elk). I have no problem getting a second ZMatter dongle for the Polisy. But then I have two controllers. Can they be on the same network? Should I just change the frequency of one of them (no idea how to change the frequency of the listening devices or if they even support that)? I don't have any way I can reconfigure which IoX controls what given the HVAC is all on eisy and I've previously run out of Insteon nodes/scenes and my final insteon network plan has gotten substantially bigger since then. Thoughts?

On the device dashboard for a variable the top 3 pickers are under the properties header- value precision and startup value. Value is where is get that error- tried with variable dashboards of status commmand and default types. Below that under a command header is a blue button for value which will accept an arbitrary value. Since the property picker is first (and there and accepts a value) it’s what I always click on.

Sorry if this is double post, but I can't find it with search so I'll ask the question here. I have a few minor issues with the mobile app on iOS: When I go to manually input a variable value in a entity's dashboard, I cannot enter a value greater than 100. Obviously in the admin control panel I can enter any value I wish. Obviously if you were looking at status of a light entity a hard limit of 0-100% would make sense but I'm talking about a integer or state variable which should be able to hold any value. The value can clearly be something other than 0-100 because I can view variables set via my programs with arbitrary values. Similarly I cannot set the value from the variables list directly outside of an entity/device dashboard. If I create an entity/device of type command with dashboard, the ability to edit the commands at the bottom of the pane disappears. I can add new steps but cannot edit existing steps. The little right arrow/Chevron that would open up the command to edit literally isn't there. If I change the entity to type command then the Chevron appears, and I can edit a previously entered command step. A question on trying to create a button that when pressed would increment a value. Due to how I've laid out the pane in question, I don't want to use the increment button type. I'm not trying to manually adjust the value directly to an arbitrary value- It's really that I want to press the button and have it add 30 or 60 (minutes) to the existing state value being used to feed a timer program. The command entity cannot add to an existing value (+=), only assign the value directly (=). Am I approaching this wrong or is this a limitation of the app? I could write an increment program in the admin console and have that button run the then step of the program I guess but that seems like a workaround. Overall, kudos with the app. It's really grown and has become indispensable to running my home (as much as I've automated everything to require minimal interaction.)

No. It’s an API call to a REST URL with parameters. GET/POST command with the inbuilt network module will suffice. I use IOX variables to hold state variables for status and integrity variables for the desired setting prior to the call.

I have noticed that occasionally some nodeservers stop working on my eISY's IoX admin console. What I've traced it to is the nodserver profile address on the IoX service. Polyglot is working fine- the nodeservers are fine, but IoX changes the URL/IP of the nodserver to 127.0.0.1. I run both polisy and iox due to running out of Insteon nodes a while back so I split the install. The polisy is older and is already running polyglot so I kept it there. I do not use the eISY's polyglot install. Instead i've added both ISY mac addresses to the polyglot server on the Polisy and run the required nodeservers there in one or both profiles as required. That cuts down on licensing and keeps everything in one place, simplifies updating, etc. It works fine and seems analogous to when polyglot first came out and I'd run it on a RPi with an ISY/99. But if there's a network hiccup, or I update a nodeserver (so it goes offline) the eISY will often revert to a local address, breaking the connection. Oddly the nodeserver is still listed as online in its node but control breaks. (Like the Elk module will pick up events - violations, arming, etc. but I cannot send any commands from IoX). Go to the profile and put in the correct IP address and everything is fine again. This is longstanding behavior- as long as I've split out to two systems. Note I haven't figured out how to completely turn off the eISY's polyglot service. I don't see an option to do so. I could write a script to disable the service but I'm sure a future update will revert that or break a version update or something so I'd rather not go hacking around in a command line. But the eISY polyglot isn't running anything- no nodeservers, etc. Previously I'd be able to log into the eISY polyglot -not that I need it for anything thought- but I just tried while writing this post so that I could again confirm it's idle. I couldn't log in via the website/port 3000. So I logged in via the console and checked the logs: Jan 18 17:05:04 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:04 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: call_udx: Making request to socket with url /rest/pg3.auth.ns Jan 18 17:05:05 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:05 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: call_udx: Making request to socket with url /rest/pg3.auth.ns Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: Verifying node servers are installed on IoX correctly Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: IoX Request: [Try: 1] [00:21:b9:02:64:d7] :: - http://127.0.0.1:8080/rest/profiles/ns/0/connection Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: IoX Response: [Try: 1] [00:21:b9:02:64:d7] :: [200] :: 3.1233ms - http://127.0.0.1:8080/rest/profiles/ns/0/connection Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_1] Unmanaged NodeServer 'UnifiPresence' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_3] Unmanaged NodeServer 'WirelessTag' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_2] Unmanaged NodeServer 'ELK' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_4] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Timedata' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_5] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Holidays' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_6] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Sun' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_7] Unmanaged NodeServer 'OpenWeatherMap' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_8] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Virtual' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_9] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Roku' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_10] Unmanaged NodeServer 'Plex-WebHook' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_11] Unmanaged NodeServer 'VenstarCT' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:06 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:06 [pg3] ^[[32minfo^[[39m: [00:21:b9:02:64:d7_12] Unmanaged NodeServer 'NOAA' found. Adding to DB. Jan 18 17:05:08 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:08 [pg3] ^[[31merror^[[39m: UDX authentication failure for admin with cause udxTimeout: Error: udx /rest/pg3.auth.ns - ECONNABORTED: UDX timeout after 4000ms Jan 18 17:05:09 eisy daemon[2932]: 1/18/2024, 17:05:09 [pg3] ^[[31merror^[[39m: UDX authentication failure for admin with cause udxTimeout: Error: udx /rest/pg3.auth.ns - ECONNABORTED: UDX timeout after 4000ms Never seen that before- every 5 minutes it's polling IoX and adding nodes to the internal database. Never saw that before. Last night I upgraded packages on both polisy and eISY to get to IoX 5.8.1. Thoughts?

One more thought if this is relevant to your decision: Venstar API is local. I am free from and service/cloud dependency. I'm not opposed to using one, but we all know services shut down or change their business models, nodeservers get abandoned, etc. Skyport is there if I wanted some cloud-baed vendor-supported tool, but separate from the API access which is on-device. Isn't ecobee reliant on a cloud connection to their servers? I've never used them so I could be mistaken, but when I was looking at them I recall that was an option- they have a cloud service which they are pushing people into to get some "security" functions out of the sensors (motion, window monitoring, etc). That required a subscription to enable and I didn't find that appealing. Also if you do go ecobee- look at your utility provider- many have discounts for purchasing a "smart" device through them and lots partner with ecobee or nest. Pay up front, pay later, or pay with your data.

I vaguely remember a scheduled reboot feature in the old ISY. I cannot find it on IoX now. I wanted to try a scheduled weekly reboot because I'm having stability issues lately. eISY will hum a long for weeks then all of a sudden everything goes wonky- variables and program status seems off and things stop responding properly with no changes in the setup. I have a lot of programs and variables including currently 223 state variables and 295 integer variables. I'd think eISY can handle it but perhaps there's a memory leak somewhere. In any case a reboot seems to set everything straight for a while. Is the option for a scheduled reboot still possible somewhere?

Also look into notifications via UDMobile. Much more reliable and there's a wiki post to help you configure the network resource.

Elk? Old school but very capable. On my 3rd home install with them. It gets expensive quickly though. The Elk Nodeserver is top-notch.