xlurkr

All: Thanks for the helpful replies. I could have mentioned a few things earlier. I don't have an existing doorbell or wiring for one. But the "Dakota hub" is the Dakota Alert. Its job is to turn signals from Dakota sensors into Insteon triggers. I have several sensors, including a battery powered button on the front door. So I'm fully covered as to having a doorbell button that a visitor can push to trigger any Insteon activity I can think of. At the moment it just triggers an Insteon siren. It's plenty loud, but equally annoying. I have already experimented with having the Dakota button set a state variable and having that variable act as a motion sensor to trigger an Alexa voice announcement. That's less annoying, but has the typical unpredictable cloud delay, and I haven't found a way to have it always make the announcement at high volume, regardless of the current volume setting of each Echo. And there's the 30 second debounce which ain't great. The doorbell chime either has to be really loud (though not annoying), or visual rather than audible. That's because my wife spends hours every day with Airpods in her ears on a videoconference. And the phone she's on is a work phone that she (and her employer) refuse to let me set up with any kind of home automation, including alerts. So far @Geddy's suggestion of colored Hue bulbs will probably work best. I have some, and they are never required for any important activity in the house. Mine are a novelty, not part of the critical lighting, and this is a good use for them. I'll post an update if the Hue solution proves to be inadequate. But I still think it would be very useful to have the ability to record the state of all (or selected) nodes in IoX and restore that state - mindful of security and safety issues, of course. -Tom

@GTenchThanks for the first-person account. I think I'll get another speakerhub based on your experience. The Yolink stuff works great, and the plugin has worked well for me too, @Panda88 ! -Tom

@GeddyThanks for the link. I remembered reading a post about someone with multiple hubs, but my search turned up nothing. Unless I'm misreading the post you linked to, it doesn't say anything about how multiple hubs are handled in the plugin. I'd want to be able to send a TTS command to 2 or 3 of them with the same message at the same time. Not clear if I'd be able to do that. This is related to my doorbell thread in the IoX Support board. -Tom

@Guy LavoieThanks for reminding me not to track the state during the flashing! I'm sure I would not have thought of that myself. @GeddyThe doorbell button is extremely old school - it's a Dakota Alert button that is linked to a Dakota Alert hub. I bought all kinds of oddball Insteon stuff at one point, and I usually try to solve any new problem I encounter with things I already own. It's 100% local and 0%"big brother", too, which I like. -Tom

I might be able to continuously track the state of a small # of lights, each in its own variable, so I can restore them after flashing them, but again, given the many ways the level can be changed, I'm not sure it won't get out of sync. This weekend I might experiment with a single light. I'm hoping there's an easier way that I just don't know about. -Tom

BTW, the alarm panels of the past (HAI and ELK) used to give you the option to flash lights when the alarm triggered. IIRC, they would restore the lights to the previous state when the alarm was cleared. I want the same thing, only not all the lights - just one per room - and to restore it based on time, not on any action. -Tom This had crossed my mind, but I don't know how to do it, or if it's possible. -Tom

Generally speaking, no. I have a mix of lights - mostly Insteon and Lutron, and they go to their "on level" when they are sent a command to turn on. But they all can be controlled through other means, such as scenes and verbal commands, and less frequently through manual dimming, that might have them at some level other than the "on level" or 100% when the doorbell button is pressed. -Tom

I'd like to create a silent doorbell. My wife hates the sound of the Insteon chime, and TTS via Alexa and Yolink's speakerhub have too many limitations. What would work great, if it's possible, would be to flash at least one light in each room. That's easy enough to do through programs, but ideally every light would return to its previous state after flashing - and that state could be anything, because we set the levels of lights throughout the day through a combination of manual switching, scene controllers, and Alexa commands (for scenes and individual lights). I can't think of an easy way to do this. Can you? And in general, this is just one use case where one might want to capture the state of every light (and maybe some other devices, too) as a global state representing a moment in time and restore that state after making arbitrary, temporary changes. Is there any way to do that? Is this something a plugin could be written to do? -Tom

Does anyone have more than one speakerhub in a single home? I'm thinking of using them as annunciators for various rooms and/or floors. From reading reviews on the Yolink site I'm convinced it's possible to set up more than one in the app, but I'm not sure how well that will work with this plugin. -Tom

Thanks for the explanation. You addressed the one thing I was worried about. I worry no longer. -Tom

100% agree. I love the cloud benefits, but I need to be able to configure and control everything when my broadband is down. Not all nodeservers, of course, but all Insteon and Z-Wave. -Tom

@FerventGeek It looks like the UDI ZMatter enclosure is out of stock at the moment, too. After @Guy Lavoie responded in his original post (linked above) about the part # of the enclosure he used, I found that it is available in the US from Digikey. Part # is HM209-ND, and I paid $7.68 for it two weeks ago. Shipping is not free, but I was ordering a bunch of other stuff so I got one of these anyway. I have a Polisy with internal ZMatter now but when I upgrade to Eisy I'll have choices about how to mount the board. I like the idea of not snapping off the unused part and being able to use the cable of my choosing. -Tom

@Guy Lavoie Can you add a link or part # for the enclosure? Seems like a perfect fit. Thanks. -Tom

The only thing that I'm jealous of Eisy owners over is the ability to connect an HDMI monitor and run a gui on FreeBSD. That would be kind of cool, but tbh it would not make it work better as an automation controller than my Polisy does. Or maybe if I were a plugin developer, doing it all on one device - with a gui - would be a step up. But I don't have the chops - yet. Now that I'm retired, though, who knows? -Tom

I just replaced a failed KPL. It took me about 10 minutes total. The KPL controlled a load and also was programmed to control a Z-Wave dimmer, a Z-Wave relay that controls an exhaust fan, and another (Insteon) relay in another room that controls another exhaust fan. The latter two are timed via programs and variables. After I shut off the breaker, removed the old KPL, wired in the new one, and turned the breaker back on, the last step was to right-click on the failed KPL, and choose "Replace with", followed by choosing the new KPL I had just added. This took less than two minutes, required no intervention on my part, and flawlessly updated all the settings, links, and programs. Priceless. -Tom