upstatemike

Innovation seems to be at a standstill with Z-Wave: Still waiting for Z-Wave LR products that let you install remote devices without "building out the mesh" with useless intermediate ones just to get the signal there. LoRa uses the same frequency as Z-Wave and has no mesh building requirements. Still waiting for smooth group actions that work at the protocol/device level without a lot of controller intervention. Bonus if Z-Wave standards were actually enforced so you could have smooth group dimming and simultaneous on/off in mixed vendor switch groups. Still waiting for a Z-Wave equivalent to the Insteon keypad where buttons can act as virtual switches in multi-way switch switch situations. All Z-Wave can do now is trigger scenes and leave it to the user to somehow code that into proper multi-way control. (ugly, painful, unreliable)

Who else makes Z-Wave chips besides Silicon Labs?

Yes. I have the PG3 Elk Node Server and it installed fine.

Update 3: Managed to reinstall the P2 version of the Hue Node Server and rebuild all of my scenes and programs. I discovered that if I start P3 and get the "Topology was destroyed" error that I can hit the back button on my browser and get to the login screen. As far as I can tell the P3 version of the Hue Node Server is non-functional. The Install button does nothing at all.

Update 2: Things are deteriorating quickly. I can no longer login to PG3. When I enter the URL of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:3000/dashboard, I just get an error message that says "Topology was destroyed". No clue what that even means.

Update: I could not find any combination of restarting admin console, restarting ISY, or restarting polyglot that would refresh the Hue data in IoP even though the Node server was picking up the changes fine from the Hue Bridge. I finally decided to delete the Hue Node server and reinstall it. I tried deleting it from inside PG2 but it still showed up in IoP and PG2. I tried deleting it in IoP but it still will not clear out of PG2. I then stopped it in PG2 deciding to ignore it and just install the PG3 version. When I go to the Node server store in PG3 and click install on the Hue Node server nothing happens. So now my question is what combination of rebooting PG2, PG3, IoP, and/or Polisy do I need to perform to actually clear the Hue Node server out of PG2 and successfully install it in PG3?

I just created a new room in the Hue app and moved a bulb from an old room to the new one. I restarted the Node server and exited and restarted Admin Console but the new room does not appear and the bulb I moved is no longer controllable. I tried clearing my Java cache and starting Admin Console again but no change. I also checked the Node server to confirm that the new room appears in the Nodes list so the Node server finds it OK but IoP does not pick it up. What else should I try? Hue Node Server 0.1.11 P2 2.2.13 ISY 5.3.4

What about using Lutron Pico remotes?

It is the same thing. No further development plus cut too deep into the staff to even maintain it. They have already discontinued Alexa whether they meant to or not.

But what happens if Amazon eventually abandons Alexa? One of the reasons I use FireTV Sticks and Amazon Music is because of they way they interact with Alexa. If Alexa goes away then FireTV becomes no more compelling than Roku. Once I switch to Roku I might decide that Amazon Prime Video is no longer competitive with my other streaming video options and that there are better Music streaming services than Amazon. Once those services are no longer attractive the cost of an Amazon Prime membership seems high if the only benfit to me is free shipping so I cancel that. Once free shipping is gone there is little incentive for me to go to Amazon first when searching for online products so I start doing more general web searches to find products and spend my money in the direct outlets for those products or at other online competitors to Amazon like WalMart. Now multiply my scenario across millions of former Amazon Echo users... Amazon will surely miss the days when they only lost a few billion dollars selling Alexa compared the the hundres of billions they would indirectly lose as a result of getting rid of the product.

I am fine if they stop development of new Echo models and features. I can live with the functionality I have. The problem will come if they start shutting down services and deprecating already existing features, much the way they decided to stop supporting the original Amazon Cloudcams and replace them with fee based Blink units.

This would solve my case color coordination problem as well.

I run both Polisy and Home Assistant and will be keeping both because the blue Polisy box matches the blue Home Assistant box. I will not be upgrading to eisy or the Home Assistant Yellow because I would lose that color coordination. Everybody has to follow their own priorities when choosing home automation hardware.

Only you can decide what you will need in the future. Some questions I would suggest are: How rapidly do you plan to eliminate Insteon from your environment? You will need an integratable Insteon interface like ISY until then. How confident are you using Home Assistant as your primary system with no lower level subsystems as backup? Home Assistant is notorious for introducing breaking changes on a regular basis. What technology/protocol are you planning to focus on going forward? Is it one that ISY/eisy has Node Servers to support so you can continue to enjoy the programming interface you have now?

I just got a reminder that my trial will expire tomorrow and that I need to purchase the Elk PG3 Node server. I went through the purchase process and got a reminder that after the purchase I need to reinstall with the paid version. I hit install and selected "install into the same slot" and everything seemed to go OK except when the Node Server restarted I got a bunch of messages saying it could not start because configuration was not complete. I looked at the configuration and sure enough all the fields were blank and I had to scramble to find all that info again since nothing had warned me that it would be erased so I did not jot it down before installing the paid version. My questions are: Did I do something wrong that caused me to lose the configuration when moving to the paid version? If not, isn't there a way to make the transition to paid Node Servers preserve the configuration? If not, couldn't a warning popup be put into the upgrade process to let you know you need to write down your configuration information and add it back after the licensing is finished? I think I got the right info back into configuration but now I have to do some testing to be sure since I seem to recall there were quirks about my settings to get it working before. Was not expecting to have to do this.

Why? It's not like Google has a history of abandoning things and just walking away from them or anything. I wonder if they will add Matter to the Google Home Max? (You can contact me on Google Hangouts if you want to discuss further)

I'm not saying there is no need to use Insteon with Matter. I am saying there is no need to translate Insteon devices so they appear and communicate as Matter devices in order for them to work together. You can let each device speak its native protocol and still do what you want at the Controller.

OK then to restate the OP's original question I guess the ask is "Will folks who rely on Alexa as their primary automation platform be able to use Polisy as a way to talk locally to Insteon devices using Matter?" But even from the perspective of a consumer who is not deep into automation like us it still confuses me some: If you do not want to use Polisy for automation because you are an "Alexa Consumer" why would want to buy and learn one just to expose Insteon devices as Matter devices? If you are using Polisy (or Homeseer, or Home Assistant, etc.) then why do you need devices to be tralated to Matter since these platforms will communicate with Insteon and other non-Matter devices using their native protocol? If you are starting fresh and want to use Matter/Thread exclusively with Alexa etc. then there is no need to expose Insteon as devices as Matter devices. I'm just struggling to identify a use case for publishing Insteon devices as Matter devices. There is no combination of platorm and user type that would utilize that functionality.

OK so Polisy would just do translation and the event engine used for actually automating the devices will reside in some native Matter Controller someplace else. Ignoring cloud based platforms such as Alexa, have any native Matter local controller platforms with robust event engines been announced yet? Everybody talks about Matter being the universal standard for communication between devices but the logic to control those devices has to reside someplace.

So I understand all of the above but don't see how it relates to Insteon any differently than any other protocol or standard. If you substitute Lutron RadioRA3 for Matter would you ask the same question? "Can Polisy expose Insteon (via PLM) lighting as Radio RA3 devices?" What would that even mean? Is the question whether Insteon devices connected via Polisy + ZMatter will automatically appear in some Matter Controller as Matter devices? In other words Is Polisy publishing Insteon devices as Matter devices on a Matter network? If so then I just wasn't understanding the question correctly.

Stargate is the most reliable piece of automation hardware ever made... I would not want change that by adding Matter to it. (Stargate is the thing that monitors my other platforms and tells me when they screw up) I'm just struggling with the terminology in this thread. What is difference between having Polisy provide interoperability between different protocols like Insteon and Matter/Thread (basically what we have now) and having it "Expose Insteon devices as Matter devices"? Insteon modules are never going to respond to Matter commands directly because there is no Matter spec to run on PLC or the RF protocol Insteon uses so it will always be a translation via Polisy. I guess you can call Polisy an Edge Router if it makes you feel better but beyond that I don't understand what is being requested here?

Still confused about what Matter will do for me. If a Zigbee device and an Insteon device are connected to Polisy then they can interact with each other. If the Zigbee device adds Matter and Polisy is upgraded to support Matter then the Zigbee/Matter device can interact with the Insteon device... just the same as before Matter was added to the equation. I guess I need an example of the specific use case where Matter will let me do something that I could not do before.

Are they going to do that by making the Insteon Hub an Edge Router? If so it won't bring Matter to Insteon systems managed via PLMs.

Good. I'll go over to the C4 website and and see if they have any PLMs in stock.

Somebody should ask about an enhanced PLM, either from them or made by someone else under license.