wintermute

I found the same solution as Fahrer16, I just run Home Assistant to expose Insteon devices as HomeKit devices and use Roomie Remote as the user-side interface. Then you're not tied to just Insteon or Z-wave, either. Home Assistant works well as a bridge. I have lights using many protocols now that all work within one interface. HomeBridge can be used, too, but I have found HomeAssistant to have more integrations and it seems to be more actively developed. One protocol that isn't yet supported is Yolink. That's too bad since Yolink uses LoRa which has amazing range, is really power efficient, and is very inexpensive. In addition to Roomie, I also load up the Apple Home app for when I just want simple lighting controls without having to launch Roomie and bringing-up the pop-up bar. I have found that just migrating everything toward HomeKit compatibility through Home Assistant makes things a lot simpler. For my tastes, the Home Assistant app interface is not as sleek as Roomie and is a bit kludgey, especially for AV. Hopefully, ISY-on-Polisy will allow the same ease of integration as HA and allow bridging to HomeKit at some point so I can just use the UD box for all home automation.

Interesting! I've also been having odd connectivity issues with an ISY on a network using Roomie Remote 6.5--- sounds very similar to your experience. What seems to have finally worked for me was to remove the ISY as a device in Roomie Remote and instead run HomeBridge on a local machine to expose all the ISY lights and some scenes as HomeKit devices. This appears to have eliminated the communication issues. I am also running HomeAssistant with the HomeKit bridge on another Roomie+ISY network and it appears to work fine as well. So it appears Roomie is doing something odd when it tries to communicate directly with the ISY under some circumstances. Let us know if you discover anything else or can confirm or dispute other findings. Thanks for posting!

Please try the suggestions outlined above. Also, are you on a Mac by chance? I’ve noticed some weirdness lately running / trying to run Start.jnlp and Admin.jnlp on my Mac, even after emptying the cache, etc. I’m not sure what the issue is myself… it might have to do with recent security updates and new anti-tracking / Private Addresses that Apple has implemented on recent versions of MacOS. —Things aren’t even consistent between two different macs when running the admin console and having downloaded them the same way. Really odd since Java is meant to run the same regardless of platform. As soon as I booted into Bootcamp running Windows 10 on my Mac, everything worked as expected. Just something to try if you happen to be Mac based yet have access to a Windows machine. (Spoke too soon... Windows had problems, too. Possibly a network communication issue. Still investigating.) As far as controlling devices, I have found the new UD Mobile to be much more responsive than other apps that have worked with my ISY in the past, even though I am running them all solely on the local network. I can only guess that those other apps need to be updated for more recent releases of iOS for them to function as well.

Great job on UD Mobile (iOS.) It’s working great. A couple of requests: 1. Can we implement a setting/preference to hide devices that begin with a tilde (~) ? I believe the old web interface works that way. It makes it simple to hide devices that don’t actually control a load and reduces a bunch of duplicate/remote switches this way. 2. A setting/preference for haptic or faint audiofeedback on clicks would be nice. keep up the good work!

Shoot... I had some issues when I first tried an earlier version of ISY 5.x, but the issues were mostly resolved when I tried ISY 5.16rc and the latest versions of RoomieRemote 6.x... I did do some clean-up and reloaded things more than once. I re-did a few scripts. Maybe check some of the older posts on this problem and review some of these ISY tips. I do recall having to do a complete Factory Reset and Restore from an older back-up when I tried to downgrade my ISY to 4.x from 5.14b from my Mac... it seems my Mac wouldn't fully load all the firmware properly. Michel mentioned it may have been a firewall or permissions issue. I ended up using an old Windows laptop and it downgraded/reloaded without issue. Are you on a Mac by chance? If so, you might try backing up, factory resetting and then restoring from a Windows machine and see if it makes any difference. Since you said it works fine under ISY 4.7, the following probably isn't the issue, but it is still good to check. https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=INSTEON:_Troubleshooting_Communications_Errors A little more info for Insteon "newbies"... Insteon devices (at least the preferred Dual-Band devices) can communicate over both electrical house wiring and wirelessly. Typical house wiring in the US is split from the main 240v feed into two 110v "halves" at the electric breaker panel. This splitting isolates communication over the house wiring into each "half". To allow the Insteon wired signals to be sent and received properly, you need to bridge these two halves with an Insteon Powerline Phase Coupler or with two Dual-Band Insteon Devices (one on each "half" near the breaker panel and in close proximity to one another.)

3/4 or 3 to 4 seconds? 0.75 isn’t bad. 3 to 4, you definitely need to troubleshoot. Try creating Roomie buttons to activate ISY scenes... tends to work faster than Roomie’s individual light control. I usually have about four light scene buttons per room as well as an Off button. I use them more often than the Roomie “Home Bar” light controls.

Basically, Roomie does everything you would use MobiLinc for, with the addition of also controlling all your AV gear and other remote controllable devices. Roomie can talk directly to many devices over IP and provides a very easy and clean interface for everything... which, IMHO, is the main thing that ISY is missing. I look at it like ISY being a "server" or "back end" while Roomie is more like the "browser" providing a unified interface for ISY, Amplifiers, Consoles, TVs. etc. From my understanding, Poliglot / Nodes adds functionality that adds, among other things, the ability for ISY to be a "server" or "hub" for even more devices aside from Insteon and Z-wave devices, such as MagicHome Lights, Philips Hue, etc. Some of this functionality overlaps with Roomie as Roomie can control things like Philips Hue by itself already. So in these overlapping cases, you will need to see what works best.

So just to clarify... I am not using the SimpleControl Poly. No nodes. Just using Roomie Remote app with ISY added as a Device. (View, Update & Save the Manifest on the ISY via Roomie to update Insteon Devices.)

I have the Roomie Mac App... it works just like the iOS version for me. No problems. You might need to back up your working config and reload it. I had issues with Sharing my Roomie config previously. This is what I was instructed to do: On the main device associated with the Apple ID that owns the subscription:1. Ensure you have a backup of your configuration, the file named RoomieBackup.zip, and move it out of your iCloud Drive.2. Go to the iOS Settings app, tap the top item for your iCloud account, tap “iCloud”, tap “Manage Storage”, scroll down to any items labelled “Simple Control” or “Roomie Remote”, tap them and then tap “Delete Documents & Data”. Also perform this step on the iCloud account on devices to which you plan to share.3. Delete all Simple Control or Roomie Remote apps from your iOS device(s) as well as any iOS devices to which you plan to share. Make sure this is complete including any older apps.4. Install Roomie Remote V6.https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1455871956?mt=85. Make a fake backup just to ensure the Roomie Remote directory exists in your iCloud Drive. Then delete everything in that directory.6. Restore your backup from step 1 via Restore from iCloud Drive (move RoomieBackup.zip back to the top level of the empty Roomie Remote folder). Make sure never to create the iCloud Drive directories manually.[If your subscription was started in Simple Control V5, at this point install Simple Control V5 on your owning device as well. Run it and Restore Purchases. Nothing else needs to be done in that app. Make sure to turn off Background App Refresh for it in Apple’s Settings app.]7. Use the Restore Purchases button (in V6) after your configuration has been restored.8. Assuming everything is now working, install V6 on any additional device of the same Apple ID, launch it, and allow 1 minute to synchronize with the app open in the foreground.9. Assuming everything is now working, install V6 on any devices that use a different Apple ID, launch it, and then return to the owning Apple ID's device and then share the home from the Homes panel in Roomie to the Apple ID of the secondary device. We recommend using iMessage for this step.10. Accept the share on the secondary device and return to Roomie Remote on that device. The home should populate. If not, check the Homes panel to make sure the correct Home is now added and is listed under the "Shared" category, and Activated.11. Restore Purchases on the owning device. Restore Purchases on any shared device. Leave them open for 1 minute to ensure full sync and recognition of purchases. Also refer to the post regarding the update to Folder Sharing on IOS.

ISY 5.0.16rc. Roomie Remote 6.2.1. AV devices (amps, AppleTVs, TVs, Consoles, Sonos, etc.) = about 16. Insteon Dimmers, Motion Sensors, Smoke Alarms and Irrigation devices = about 40. I have older client installations (still on SimpleControl 5.x) with well over 150 devices.

Also, try reading through these older posts... might be helpful in resolving lag, etc. I did have some issues with earlier releases of both ISY and Roomie.

Ok... Apparently we were talking about different things here... I was referring specifically to the RoomieRemote app. Both of you seem to be referring to the Poly node for SimpleControl. You will need to contact the developer of that node here: https://github.com/exking/udi-simplehub-poly I don't believe it is compatible with the current version of Roomie Remote, nor do I think it was ever finished by the looks of the version number and the last time it was updated. (I installed it on my Policy previously, but that's as far as I got.) As far as how I use Roomie Remote with ISY, I let each do what it does best. Roomie has a better end-user GUI and control over AV gear. ISY excels at lighting, HVAC, and irrigation control with very stable and robust scripting. I use Roomie as the interface and created buttons, sliders, etc. to command devices/scenes/programs in ISY. If you want a button in Roomie to turn off all your lights at night, just make a button and point it to an ISY "lights off" scene. If you want it to automatically do this, you need to set a trigger, like no motion events for X amount of time or a simple timer... and this is likely done best in ISY. Roomie Remote for the Mac is a client/controller app just like on iOS. It is not like the old SimpleControl Hub. The new Roomie Remote does not use a Hub... it uses iCloud to share its configuration and synchronizes states without a hub. Many people will find the Roomie App for Mac a bit redundant since they will likely have their iPhone on them at all times, but some may prefer it if they are working on their Mac a lot. As far as lag in controlling ISY / Insteon lights through Roomie, I had some lag (about a second) previously, but it seems to have resolved itself. I did notice that controlling a light via an ISY scene versus directly sometimes gave me a faster response. When wanting to control multiple lights, I use ISY scenes since the scene control in Roomie tends to send commands to each light in sequence versus all at once. My TV guide is working fine in Roomie. The Sonos Guide doesn't seem to respond to some selections still, so I created a button in Roomie to switch to the native Sonos app if needed.

Not sure what you mean by "installed [it] from the Admin console"... Just install it from the AppStore like any other app. It should use your old Roomie config and update it to work with the new version (at least it does this if you were running SimpleControl v.5x--- not as sure about updating from Roomie Remote 4.7.x.) If it's slow to respond, you may either have a network issue, or you might be running multiple versions of Roomie Remote / SimpleControl at the same time (perhaps on an AppleTV or Mac?). To troubleshoot, try starting with just one controlling device (iPad or iPhone) and be sure all other controller devices are powered off. Get just one working first. Reinstall and start with a clean slate if you need to. Reboot your router and any network ethernet switches if you see any weird lag with a clean slate. After you get one device working well with Roomie Remote 6.x, save a back-up to iCloud (under "Homes".) Then open Roomie Remote on another device with your same Apple ID-- it should automatically use the current configuration; if not, load it from iCloud. For devices with other Apple IDs, you can share the configuration from the first device from "Homes / Sharing" with the other Apple IDs. Then see my previous post above for sharing the primary account's iCloud Roomie Remote folder with other Apple IDs.

Update: Now that iOS / iPadOS 13.4 is here with Folder Sharing, we now appear to have resolved any issues with configuration sharing / synchronization amongst iPad controllers with different iCloud accounts. Hurrah! Now my personal iPhone and my house iPad controller can share and seamlessly synchronize the active configuration without time out issues. Just Share the Home configuration (read only is likely preferred) from Roomie Remote on your primary device to your household users and then share the primary device iCloud Roomie Remote folder to those same users. (You may need to create this Roomie Remote iCloud folder and then share the enclosed folders to the household devices.) Oh, and don’t forget to first add your household members to Family Sharing to allow sharing of your Roomie Remote purchase/subscription to avoid paying multiple times for something you already bought. I hope you are all healthy and coping well during this stressful time. Kind Regards, WM

I'm still using Roomie. The new version is working fairly well, but I am still playing with different ways of dealing with the Apple ID account tied to the purchase of the Roomie app. I first tried setting up a separate Apple ID for the house iPads to which I would share access to the configuration from my iPhone. However, I found that they would lose the shared configuration every so often and then I would have to go to the Homes tab and re-activate my shared configuration on the home iPads. That was a bit annoying. Now I am trying setting up house iPads with my own account, but then enabling restrictions via Screen Time, etc. to prevent access to my email, etc. on these shared iPads. I'm not sure I will keep it this way as I am concerned about having my personal account active on shared iPads... I don't want a guest to accidentally delete any of my files or email. Has anybody figured out a good way to deal with the Roomie account set-up for their home?