Upgrading from Insteon Hub to ISY944

[Uconn9]

First of all, thank you all who have posted information to the forum - the breadth and depth of information is staggering and will be of great use as I continue down the HA path.

 

I've been running an Insteon Hub (2245-222) to control a few dozen Insteon devices for a little over a year.  I'm happy with the way the system is performing, but I'm ready to upgrade to an ISY994.

 

Is there a post that documents the process and/or specific best-practices for performing the actually switch from the Hub to ISY?

 

For example:

• I've seen Teken recommend in several posts to perform a hard reset on all the devices (in my limited experience, I definitely see why). 
• What's the best way to move scenes?  Since I'm going to do a hard reset, should I copy the all down by hand from the Insteon App to make sure I set them back up correctly?  Again, my system is currently running well, so as a baseline I'd like to mimic the current performance before I dive into programs.
• Should I create a map (by hand) of all the devices and addresses before I do the conversion?
• Etc, etc, etc.

I have a sneaky suspicion that this already exists somewhere on the forum and I just haven't been able to find it.  If that's the case, my apologizes in advance.

 

Thanks for the help,

Dave

[oberkc]

I dont know whether there is a one-stop location for moving from hub to ISY. Based upon your bullet points, It seems you have a pretty good idea already.

 

Yes, document current device locations and addresses. Yes, document existing scenes.

 

Yes, I would factory reset all devices again. This is partly to get rid of the hub address links in each device, but also just to ensure starting with a clean device Create all scenes with the ISY. I have always been happy to add devices to the ISY by starting the linking process then walking to each device and putting them into linking mode, rather than typing in the address manually, but either approach is viable. Trying both approaches will give you experience with the ISY, and may be even better. Just accept and push through the learning curve, and you will be fine.

[paulbates]

Having moved from homeseer on the hub to the ISY, I can tell that oberkc's advice is spot on: document, reset and start fresh.

 

I tried letting the ISY discover existing devices and scenes when I first attempted to convert and a number of things didn't work right and left me a lot to delete. I ended up doing it as oberkc describes.

 

Paul

[larryllix]

As per Paul (above) it seems like ISY may have a mechanism to adopt existing links but I, personally would (and  also advise) factory reset all devices and start over. with ISY.

 

As oberkc also advised, document your Hub innards first, of course.

 

There will also be some internal juggling of things inside ISY after you get set up and ISY has some find and copy tools to facilitate some of that.

 

Use the ISY backup frequently as you progress. It's an easy fall-back, if you decide you made a complete mess at any time, and it's really cheap to use. Less than one grey hair per usage.

 

 

Welcome to the forum!

[Uconn9]

Thanks guys - It sounds like I'm on the right track.

 

Another question - is there any clever way to document my current hub configuration?  I'm using the iOS app, so I think my only option is to open up every device and scene and copy down the info by hand.  I'm wondering if there's some way to dump this info to a file like a .csv.

 

Again, thanks for the help.  I'm sure I'll be back with more questions!

[paulbates]

Hi Dave, and welcome to the UDI forums!

 

You used to be able to connect via https://connect.insteon.com. The hub is backed by web services and there is a basic management page there. No csv I can remember, but you could copy room by room and paste special into excel or something,

 

There was also a way to login to the Hub 1 directly on the local lan for very simple pages, but I've forgotten how to do that

 

Paul

[Uconn9]

Thanks Paul.

 

I connected to https://connect.insteon.com as you suggested, and as you suspected, there's not much there.  You can toggle devices and scenes on and off, but no addresses.

 

I did a google search on the topic and came across this address: http://connect.insteon.com/getinfo.asp. It appears to be a direct connection to the Hub through the LAN as you suggested.  I tried to log in with my normal User ID and PW, but didn't have any luck.  I looked on hub itself (because occasionally I'll right UserID/PW on a piece of tape) and low and behold there were credentials listed on the serial number plate directly from Insteon.  The good news is they worked, but the only thing that came ups was a little info on the Hub (model #, firmware, version, Inteon ID), a users manual, and a link to the silly web interface listed above.

 

At this point, I think I'll just do record everything with a paper and pencil unless someone else has another idea.

 

Again, thank you for the assistance!

[paulbates]

That wasn't the local LAN access URL..  Had to dig back into my homeseer forum posts, this is the local LAN access I was talking about. It worked for the first 2 revs of Hub 1 FW

 

http://x.x.x.x:25105/config.htm

 

(like 192.168.x.y)

 

It probably doesn't have the insteon IDs, but its fairly quick to check

 

Paul

[Uconn9]

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for taking the time to look up the link.  I gave it a try using my "Local IP" and after I logged in, I got the following message:

 

404: File not found
Use MPFS Upload to program web pages

 

I'm running a Hub 2.

 

Again, thanks for the help!

[paulbates]

Hi Dave

The link I provided was from the original Hub 1. I found more recent links that talk about how you can send formatted URLs to change the status of Insteon devices, but not a menu tree for pages to navigate the hub. Worth a try, but it looks like a dead end

 

Paul

[Uconn9]

Agreed - paper and pencil it is.

 

Thanks again for all your assistance.