Simple Control (Former Roomie Remote) and ISY Integration

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Chuck,

Have you tried PresencePoly?

With kind regards,

Michel

[ahwman]

This sounds interesting, unfortunately room detection is hardcoded into Simple Control using iBeacons...

 

Thanks

Chuck

[wintermute]

Anyone else with SimpleControl and ISY having issues with SC not reading the current On status properly? About 90% of my Insteon devices show that they are On and at the present On Level, regardless of the actual state of the device. Really weird. It's like SimpleControl is reading the Preset On Level instead of the current On/Off Level status. I have a Dimmer, for instance, that shows as On at 75%, which is the Preset On Level, but the actual switch/lamp is Off. I can touch the On/Off buttons in SimpleControl, but they do not operate the switch... they do nothing. If I tap and access the Slider for that same button in Simple Control, I can slide the power level and the dimmer switch then responds, but after lifting my finger from the slider, the Slider button pops back to the 75% preset while the actual dimmer stays at whatever level I had set it to prior to lifting my finger. Again, this sound like Simple Control is grabbing the wrong variable and using the Preset On Level in place of the actual On/Off state. This is specific to Simple Control, since Orchestrated MobiLinc app and the ISY Dashboard all respond and work normally. Simple Control used to work flawlessly, but it seems to have gotten more buggy over time. Simple Control support says that I "have two seldom used properties 'OL' and 'RR' on some lights" that are causing the issue. Anyone know what these "OL" and "RR" properties are? If they are "On Level" and "Ramp Rate", then Simple Control Support is being ridiculous calling them "seldom used."

[MasterC]

On 9/23/2018 at 6:25 PM, wintermute said:

Anyone else with SimpleControl and ISY having issues with SC not reading the current On status properly? About 90% of my Insteon devices show that they are On and at the present On Level, regardless of the actual state of the device. Really weird. It's like SimpleControl is reading the Preset On Level instead of the current On/Off Level status. I have a Dimmer, for instance, that shows as On at 75%, which is the Preset On Level, but the actual switch/lamp is Off. I can touch the On/Off buttons in SimpleControl, but they do not operate the switch... they do nothing. If I tap and access the Slider for that same button in Simple Control, I can slide the power level and the dimmer switch then responds, but after lifting my finger from the slider, the Slider button pops back to the 75% preset while the actual dimmer stays at whatever level I had set it to prior to lifting my finger. Again, this sound like Simple Control is grabbing the wrong variable and using the Preset On Level in place of the actual On/Off state. This is specific to Simple Control, since Orchestrated MobiLinc app and the ISY Dashboard all respond and work normally. Simple Control used to work flawlessly, but it seems to have gotten more buggy over time. Simple Control support says that I "have two seldom used properties 'OL' and 'RR' on some lights" that are causing the issue. Anyone know what these "OL" and "RR" properties are? If they are "On Level" and "Ramp Rate", then Simple Control Support is being ridiculous calling them "seldom used."

I am having this exact same problem as described by wintermute. It's driving me nuts. I'm not sure what started it (I recently upgraded to ISY firmware 5.013 beta) but it used to work flawlessly up until a few days ago.

Anyone have any ideas on this one????

wintermute - I'm assuming by your post you already contacted Simple Control??? Have you tried playing around with On Level and Ramp Rate settings?

[wintermute]

1 hour ago, MasterC said:

I am having this exact same problem as described by wintermute. It's driving me nuts. I'm not sure what started it (I recently upgraded to ISY firmware 5.013 beta) but it used to work flawlessly up until a few days ago.

Anyone have any ideas on this one????

wintermute - I'm assuming by your post you already contacted Simple Control??? Have you tried playing around with On Level and Ramp Rate settings?

I ended up downgrading to ISY v.4.7.3 to get Simple Control to work again... but it was a PITA. ISY v.5013b would not allow downgrade no matter what I did from either of my Macs. I had to use Windows to apply the firmware downgrade. I ended up wasting a lot of time. Someone needs to add a warning to the posted recommendation to try out the v.5beta and mention that users of Simple Control should wait until compatibility is verified. Simple Control stated they will be coming out with an update that will fix the problem, but I am not sure they understand the issue, yet. It seems to me that they are grabbing the wrong variables, but they mentioned that that isn’t the case. 

[larryllix]

7 hours ago, wintermute said:

I ended up downgrading to ISY v.4.7.3 to get Simple Control to work again... but it was a PITA. ISY v.5013b would not allow downgrade no matter what I did from either of my Macs. I had to use Windows to apply the firmware downgrade. I ended up wasting a lot of time. Someone needs to add a warning to the posted recommendation to try out the v.5beta and mention that users of Simple Control should wait until compatibility is verified. Simple Control stated they will be coming out with an update that will fix the problem, but I am not sure they understand the issue, yet. It seems to me that they are grabbing the wrong variables, but they mentioned that that isn’t the case. 

AFAIK UDI has not  changed the Rest interface from the beginning. None f my remote controls have changed how they work with ISY V5.0.13C. I haven't tried v5.0.13D as it apears to offer no updates that would affect my non-Zwave system. I have 4 remote softwares that use the ISY Rest i/f without trouble.

Have you tried to update Simple Control to  v5.5?

[wintermute]

1 hour ago, larryllix said:

AFAIK UDI has not  changed the Rest interface from the beginning. None f my remote controls have changed how they work with ISY V5.0.13C. I haven't tried v5.0.13D as it apears to offer no updates that would affect my non-Zwave system. I have 4 remote softwares that use the ISY Rest i/f without trouble.

Have you tried to update Simple Control to  v5.5?

SimpleControl just released an update yesterday which I am now using, but the release notes do not specifically mention any compatibility fix with ISY. I don’t have time to deal with it if it doesn’t work with ISY v.5.x, so I’m leaving my ISY on v.4.7.3 for now. If someone has success with SC v.5.6.1 with ISY v.5.xx, please post and let us know (and what specific version of ISY v.5 is working for you with SC.) Thanks.

[adamthp]

I can't seem to get the rest API for simple control to work. I'm using the following resource, but getting the following error. 

Can anyone see a problem with what I'm trying to sen? I appreciate the help!

 

[Michel Kohanim]

@adamthp,

404 = not found. The path you are using is incorrect. 

With kind regards,
Michel

[John McDowell]

I am new to ISY and I am slowly moving my insteon devices from insteon hub to ISY.  One of the reasons for moving away from the hub was to get better control with SimpleControl as I have been using it for home theater automation for quite a while.  I have been able to get SimpleControl to recognize the ISY and get a manifest from it.  Control of the devices works fine from the Homebar so all is good.  However, the only thing in the manifest are the devices.  The scenes do not show up.

On the ISY Main page there is a folder called Network.  In network there is an entry called ISY that has all of the devices in it.  There is also a folder called "PowerManagement" that is there by default.  I created a folder called "Scenes" and added my scenes to it but none of the scenes in this folder show up in the manifest.

Here is what I got from SimpleControl on the issue: (Kitchen Counter Lights" is one of the Scenes in the Scenes folder)

------

I see several groups such as "Kitchen Counter Lights" in what your ISY sends us, but it is not sending us any scenes. Instead it just says "Scenes" "folder". Either that's an undocumented/new format or some brokenness on their side. Meanwhile, you could perhaps fix it by looking at that on the ISY side and trying to normalize it.

-------

[wintermute]

On 1/23/2019 at 4:15 PM, John McDowell said:

I am new to ISY and I am slowly moving my insteon devices from insteon hub to ISY.  One of the reasons for moving away from the hub was to get better control with SimpleControl as I have been using it for home theater automation for quite a while.  I have been able to get SimpleControl to recognize the ISY and get a manifest from it.  Control of the devices works fine from the Homebar so all is good.  However, the only thing in the manifest are the devices.  The scenes do not show up.

On the ISY Main page there is a folder called Network.  In network there is an entry called ISY that has all of the devices in it.  There is also a folder called "PowerManagement" that is there by default.  I created a folder called "Scenes" and added my scenes to it but none of the scenes in this folder show up in the manifest.

Here is what I got from SimpleControl on the issue: (Kitchen Counter Lights" is one of the Scenes in the Scenes folder)

------

I see several groups such as "Kitchen Counter Lights" in what your ISY sends us, but it is not sending us any scenes. Instead it just says "Scenes" "folder". Either that's an undocumented/new format or some brokenness on their side. Meanwhile, you could perhaps fix it by looking at that on the ISY side and trying to normalize it.

-------

Scenes are normally defined in the Main tab under the Network folder. Just create a Scene (like a folder) and add devices to it with the preset levels/on-state, etc. The Scene is then assigned a Scene Number displayed under its title on the right pane. When calling a scene from SimpleControl, you normally just use the "Scene On" command and define the Scene Number... at least that's how it has worked for me in the past. (See my later post in this thread to walk you through how it now works in SC5.7.x)  Unfortunately, this functionality seems to be broken under the current combination of SimpleControl 5.7.x and ISY v.5.0.14, resulting in a Fast On of unrelated devices. It seems to be a problem with SimpleControl again calling the wrong variable from the ISY. However, Programs seem to be working, so you could create a Scene, then define a Program that has a simple Then command like "Set 'Kitchen Light Scene' On" and then call Program Run from Simple Control instead of Scene. The Program to call is defined by the associated ID number in the Program-->Summary tab. The alternative is to define the scenes as a bunch of devices under a scene folder in SimpleControl, but if you have a lot of devices or a lot of Scenes already defined in ISY, this can be very time consuming and problematic. (While this works, it is a needless workaround, now that I discovered my mistake. Sorry. This info may still be useful for calling Programs, however, thus I left this post here with these additional bold notes and strike-throughs.)

[John McDowell]

Thanks for the info. I moved all of my ISY scenes out of the folder Named “Scenes” into the root Network folder. However, they still don’t show up in the ISY manifest in SimpleControl. I am expecting them in the Manifest list so I can add a scene to the “home contro bar”. Also I don’t see programs in the manifest either.

Am I looking in the wrong place or am I not going to see anything but devices in the manifest? (I see the manifest when I configure the ISY device)

thanks

[wintermute]

44 minutes ago, John McDowell said:

Thanks for the info. I moved all of my ISY scenes out of the folder Named “Scenes” into the root Network folder. However, they still don’t show up in the ISY manifest in SimpleControl. I am expecting them in the Manifest list so I can add a scene to the “home contro bar”. Also I don’t see programs in the manifest either.

Am I looking in the wrong place or am I not going to see anything but devices in the manifest? (I see the manifest when I configure the ISY device)

thanks

Doh! Ignore what I wrote above! I think I just found my mistake while I was writing this tutorial for you! Gee, helping others can really pay off!

They don't show up in the Manifest in SC, unfortunately. It's should to work like this:

1. In SimpleControl 5, click on the top left "hamburger" menu to show the prefs and go to "Activities".

2. Add (+) Activity.

3. Select your ISY and click Next.

4. Choose icon, name activity, assign room, define Activity Type as Homebar Scene, activate Show in Room, then click Setup.

5. Under Universal-Devices/ISY click on Add Command, then click Add Command from the drop down sheet.

6. Scroll down and then select .SCENE ON, then click Add.

7. Click on ISY and your Scenes should be visible and you can select one there. (I think this is where I goofed before, I didn't click on ISY to find the Scenes and tried to define the Scene value as the Managed Scene number... which doesn't work.)

8. To the right of Scene On enter 255 for the value, then click Done or it might not save. (I thought this was for the Managed Scene ID number... no!)

9. Click Save. Go back and check to make sure all your selections and values were saved... SC5 is a bit quirky with saving and values refresh in certain fields. Then click the top left return arrows to return to the prefs and then click the right peeking pane to go to the Room and test it out.

10. Eureka! Thanks for helping me by letting me help you!

[John McDowell]

Thank you so much!!

i am on the road right now so I can’t play with this yet. I will try it out this weekend and let you know how it came out!! If this works then the marriage between SC and ISY will be everything I hoped.

Then it will be on to PolyGlot to add some items that neither SC or ISY control directly yet.

[wintermute]

1 minute ago, John McDowell said:

Thank you so much!!

i am on the road right now so I can’t play with this yet. I will try it out this weekend and let you know how it came out!! If this works then the marriage between SC and ISY will be everything I hoped.

Then it will be on to PolyGlot to add some items that neither SC or ISY control directly yet.

Post what you learn about Polyglot... I have yet to play with it, but would like to learn what you are using it for and how it all works. Thanks!

[John McDowell]

Thank you so much.  This is where I have gotten:

1.  I created the activity as described.  I put the .scene on in the "On Start" and .scene off in the "On Stop"

2.  I have activity type as "Homebar Scene"

3.  If I enable "Show in Room" it does show in the room and will turn on the lights in the scene.  All good.

But ...

Even though it is a "Homebar Scene" it does not show up in the list of lights for the room when I select the "light" icon in the homebar scene.  (The individual lights all show up since I have made their default room the one there in when setting them up.  What I want to do is have the actually scenes show up so I can turn the lights on and off in a group rather than one at at time)

Putting the off command in the "On Stop" does not seem to do anything.  I can use the button in the room layout to get the scene to turn on, but pressing it again does nothing.  Note: I added a second activity to turn the scene off and put the scene off command in the "On Start" command list.  It turns the scene off.

Note: I was able to get the scenes to work as an activity in the room with my Insteon Hub.  Once of the reasons, among many, was to get these commands to the homebar to get them out of the room controls and make them available while in another activity (like watching TV).

Seems like these issues may be on the Simple Control side now, but wanted to get your thoughts before I try in their forum.

[adamthp]

2 hours ago, John McDowell said:

Thank you so much.  This is where I have gotten:

1.  I created the activity as described.  I put the .scene on in the "On Start" and .scene off in the "On Stop"

2.  I have activity type as "Homebar Scene"

3.  If I enable "Show in Room" it does show in the room and will turn on the lights in the scene.  All good.

But ...

Even though it is a "Homebar Scene" it does not show up in the list of lights for the room when I select the "light" icon in the homebar scene.  (The individual lights all show up since I have made their default room the one there in when setting them up.  What I want to do is have the actually scenes show up so I can turn the lights on and off in a group rather than one at at time)

Putting the off command in the "On Stop" does not seem to do anything.  I can use the button in the room layout to get the scene to turn on, but pressing it again does nothing.  Note: I added a second activity to turn the scene off and put the scene off command in the "On Start" command list.  It turns the scene off.

Note: I was able to get the scenes to work as an activity in the room with my Insteon Hub.  Once of the reasons, among many, was to get these commands to the homebar to get them out of the room controls and make them available while in another activity (like watching TV).

Seems like these issues may be on the Simple Control side now, but wanted to get your thoughts before I try in their forum.

I believe you are correct and the home are issues are on the Simple Control side. 

I tried to work through this with them a few months back and received the following

make sure your Activities send commands to devices that are otherwise supported by the Homebar. Some kind of program reference command to your ISY has nothing to do with the Homebar.
 

I think you could setup a device (Insteon etc.) that controlled your scene/program, and have this device show up in the home bar.

 

I never got as far as trying this... simple control made my isy go haywire and I’ve yet to try and troubleshoot it with simple control support. 

[adamthp]

Virtual devices would work a treat for this!

I remember reading somewhere that virtual devices were coming in 5.0.x... is that a thing? I had a quick hunt around the admin console but couldn't see anything.

 

[wintermute]

On 2/2/2019 at 6:39 AM, John McDowell said:

Thank you so much.  This is where I have gotten:

1.  I created the activity as described.  I put the .scene on in the "On Start" and .scene off in the "On Stop"

2.  I have activity type as "Homebar Scene"

3.  If I enable "Show in Room" it does show in the room and will turn on the lights in the scene.  All good.

But ...

Even though it is a "Homebar Scene" it does not show up in the list of lights for the room when I select the "light" icon in the homebar scene.  (The individual lights all show up since I have made their default room the one there in when setting them up.  What I want to do is have the actually scenes show up so I can turn the lights on and off in a group rather than one at at time)

Putting the off command in the "On Stop" does not seem to do anything.  I can use the button in the room layout to get the scene to turn on, but pressing it again does nothing.  Note: I added a second activity to turn the scene off and put the scene off command in the "On Start" command list.  It turns the scene off.

Note: I was able to get the scenes to work as an activity in the room with my Insteon Hub.  Once of the reasons, among many, was to get these commands to the homebar to get them out of the room controls and make them available while in another activity (like watching TV).

Seems like these issues may be on the Simple Control side now, but wanted to get your thoughts before I try in their forum.

What you described is exactly what I found and did as well. If you want the Scenes to show up on the Homebar, you apparently have to create a Scene from the individual Lights within SimpleControl instead of using a Scene defined in the ISY. Creating Scenes in SimpleControl, however, is much more time consuming and unmanageable in large installations. I have a few "SimpleControl Scenes", but otherwise, I just duplicated the ISY Scene On or ISY Scene Off buttons from one room to another to have it more readily available... although it kind of defeats the "always available" feature of the Homebar if you need to exit the current controls to access the ISY Scene button. Also, I have found that the new SimpleControl 5 REQUIRES a dedicated SimpleHub, unlike the previous version which functioned a bit more independently. For remote installations, I also recommend using a MacMini (or another repurposed Mac) set-up as a server (not an AppleTV or iPad as can be done) since you will likely need actual remote access to the server to check on pairing status, etc., which can't be done with iOS or tvOS. The control synchronization with the SimpleHub server works very well though and solves issues with some amplifiers and other gear that would only display feedback data (like volume) to one connected device at a time previously. The SimpleHub also provides Remote Control access with the higher tier SimpleControl account, but truthfully, that should be done over VPN with a good hardware VPN router which is more reliable and more secure IMHO.

[John McDowell]

I was able to confirm with Simple Control that they have some work to do to update their API with ISY following the ISY update to V5.x

However, working with Simple Control I was able to get to a degree of success.

In the room where you want to control a scene, you need to:

1. create an activity using the ISY as the device

2. In the "On Start" add a command with a ".scene on or .scene on fast".

3. After adding this command, select the scene you want to control (the command will default to the first alphabetic scene in the manifest scene list)

4. Now comes the "secret".  If you want the activity to control the scene to show up in the homebar you need to add a command to control one of the lights in the scene.  Simple  Control will not put the activity in the homebar (even if you select HomeBar in the options) unless you include at least one light in the command list (the scene itself does not count).  Also, the "status" of the activity (on or off) is determined by the light that you add not the scene itself. To add the second Command to the activity, you press the ... on the right and then tell it to add a new device.  Select the ISY then the .on command and then select the device out of the list.

5. Now, select the "On Stop" side of the activity and repeat the above.  Note, you will need to add the individual light to this one as well to ensure that simple control recognizes that the stop action has occurred.

One issue with this approach.  If you turn on or off the light that you associated with the scene outside of commanding the scene, then the activity will be in the wrong state.  (ie if you turn on the light by itself, then Simple Control will "think" the scene is on, so it will turn it off when you press it.

One other issue.  The light that you add to the "on start" command will now be listed as a subset of the activity button (much like if you created a Simple Control scene).  This will make what lights are available on the homebar a little odd, since some will show up on the main menu, and some under their scenes.  You have two choices.  On the ISY manifest configuration you have the choice for each device node on the ISY to make it not show up on the homebar for the selected room.  The other choice, and what I did, is to add all of the lights in the scene to the activity you created, not just one.  This way, all lights in the scene will show up in the sub menu for the activity and not on the main part of the homebar.  This is still better than just creating a Simple Control scene since the lights will all turn on or off when the .scene command is given rather than "machine gun style" with the individual commands.

Note, I also had an iTach IR controlled device (electric fireplace) that I wanted to put on the homebar.  I was able to do so using the same technique.  I used a spare Insteon light module as the "light device" to get the command to turn the fireplace on and off to show up in the homebar menu.

Simple Control said they will work on having the scenes show up as nodes in the manifest to avoid all of this, but that it will not be for several months due to a backlog of other issues.

[Dr. Q]

I used this when it was Roomie and thought it was great, Simple is a misnomer, since I thought they made it more complicated as well as going to a subscription plan that was just as complicated. I did get Simple Service running on my Mac server and liked having that running locally. Although I knew of the integration with ISY, I never took advantage of it at the time, since I was just starting to learn how to wrangle the ISY.
I just took a look at their website and revisited the app and was impressed with all the new features, then I looked at the reviews in the AppStore. Pretty brutal, and a running theme appears to be lack of support to the point of rudeness and a Pravda-like hold on the user forum, so I understand why you asked to have this topic set up on this forum.
If I get some time I may take advantage of the free trial and try out the new version. Personally I think it looks too good to be true but I will keep watching this space and hope we see some cool stuff come up.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[wintermute]

On 4/5/2017 at 9:00 PM, pinuz said:

Good evening everyone.

I am new to this forum but Im an X10 / Insteon User (and from 2011 an ISY User).

 

Im an avid Simple Remote (Roomie Remote) passionate user and I am wondering if we could create a section in UDI Forum about the ISY integration with Simple Control, reason being Simple Control forum doesn't have an active group of people (and it is also moderated).

 

Anyone interested?

 

 

 

We have a SimpleControl section in the UD Forums now! ?