Migration from Hub/Houselinc to ISY and Thermostat for heat pump

[sandpiper]

Good morning all,

 

I am running a fairly simple, but spread out insteon installation im my Bed and Breakfast. About 40 devices, 7 scenes, 5 events, but in 3 buildings on 2 power meters. The houses are about 100 ft away from each other. Most of the devices are easily accessible, some are hard to get to. 

The plan is to migrate from hub/houselinc to ISY to be able to use Variables and programs to better control the behavior of each house based on occupancy and weather.

 

To get me started, 2 questions:

 

1. Do I have to rebuild everything from scratch or is there a way to export / import something, like the devices? Have not seen anything on the hub or in houselinc that looks promising...

 

2. I am using Insteon Thermostats in 1 of the houses (3 apartments). They work great, but don't support heat pumps, which is what I have in the other two houses. We are not in the Inn in the winter and our staff runs the place. Unfortunately they tend to keep the heat on 75 all winter long, whether we have guests or not. You should have seen my power and propane bills    It is essential (!) to I find heat pump compatible thermostats that I can read and control remotely, if at all possible with ihe ISY.

The ISY will be located in one of the houses with 2 heat pumps, so there will be 2 thermostats. The other house just needs one, It is probably too far away for radio communication, but it is on the same power meter and it has the same wired and wifi network.

Any suggestions for thermostats and how to establish communication to the thermostat in the other house? Thanks for your thoughts!

 

Oh - another question: Are there affordable wireless and battery operated temperature sensors out there? I'd like to maybe install them in the crawl space or tape them behind sinks in the bathrooms to be notified when the temperature gets very low.

[SteveL]

sandpiper,

 

This may be something you might want to contact me directly about.  support@universal-devices.com

 

Here are some options.  With the ISY you can add your devices into the system and choose to keep the existing link relationships.  Since you have what I would consider a small about of devices and programming needs I would just add the devices into the ISY and choose to remove existing links.  This way you do not pull in any link problems that may have existed previously.  Venstar makes a thermostat that supports heat pumps and can connect with the INSTEON wireless communication adapter.  As far as sensors you can purchase an INSTEON I/O Linc and connect a temp value sensor (two wire sensor set to close at a particular value) to it for alerts.  This way the sensor is connected to the powerline and you can get the signal a greater distance.

 

Please feel free to contact me and I can go into greater detail with some options.

[sandpiper]

Thank you Steve! I'll send you an email a little later today. For now, I'd like to keep this discussion open too. From what I have read, I know there are some skillful people here and hope for some ideas.

I don't mind doing the installation from scratch, it is not that much. The thermostat question was the more important one. Can you elaborate this a bit more - what is a "insteon wireless communication adapter"? And which thermostat can connect to it? I could not find a word about insteon on the Venstar website, but I know they can connect to wifi and offer their own tool to control the thermostats. This would be an option if everything else (with the ISY) fails.

 

Those sensors... As said, I have a Bed&Breakfast, which means I have people goofing around with my stuff all the time. They unplug the refrigerator for their cell phone charger (ignoring the empty receptacle right next to it) and then complain about warm soda... And my wife would kill me when I start installing those ugly IO Lincs with sensor cords in our 1802 Victorian. I'd like to have something that I can glue behind a sink or under the bed frame.

As long as it is Insteon, I have no problem with the distance. This would only be a concern with for example Z-wave Thermostats.

[paulbates]

Welcome Sandpiper-

I moved from HomeSeer Connected via Hub to the ISY which is similar to what you are doing. I recommend the build from scratch method, asking the ISY to remove what links it finds. Steve assisted me with my migration which was great.

 

You'll want to understand the impact to your operations, ISY is different than the hub and requires more learning. You can start simple with schedules and work your way up.

 

I had 33 devices at the time. Using "remove links", that's about 2 hours to add devices and think though how to group them with the ISY's folders. Another 6 hours to define and thoroughly test all scenes (I have keypad links, those take time to configure), and then review it all again. If you have help with a walkie talkie, it should speed that up.

 

If you use the hub's mobile apps or windows 8 app, you';ll need to think through how you replace the remote control aspect of the hub. There are some third party products here to try, however I don't know them. Also give yourself time to learn ISY' programming. Its great, I love it... and it takes time to work your way from simpler things to more complex things.

 

One thing I think you will enjoy is the ISYs ability to send emails based on lights and thermostats, etc being on.  Even though you're remote, you'll feel close to what's going on

 

Good luck, I believe you will glad you switched over to ISY

[EricK]

When I finally made the upgrade to the isy from houselinc it went fairly smoothly. I had about 40 devices, but a lot more scenes and events. Somehow I was able to copy paste my device list from houselinc into a word or excel document. This was essential to have a list of insteon addresses. I also used a notebook to make device lists for scenes and wrote down events that would become programs. I made the migration over several days going room by room. I would delete the devices from hl, factory reset them, then add to the isy.

I have heat pumps and considered the venstar thermostats, however the reviews scared me away. I think people are having good success with z-wave thermostats and the isy. I installed a honeywell wifi thermostat in our basement and that works well. Not integrated with my isy, but is easily controllable with the honeywell app.

Check this thread about temp monitoring.

Eric

[sandpiper]

Hi Paul,

thanks for your thoughts! I will follow the recommendation and start from scratch. My events are simple time and sunset - based on/off events, the scenes are already created and the Programs are already done and seem to work as they should. I just need to add the devices to the ISY and to the scenes. I feel well prepared and I know you guys are here if something comes up.

 

I alredy have screen shots of my houselinc configuration (Devices with insteon adresses, Scene member lists and event schedules), thanks Eric. I looked at z-wave-thermostats, but considering the fact that I have a long distance to the other house and no other z-wave-devices to relay the communication, I think I would run into range problems. I think I will give Venstar a try.

 

Thanks to all!