ISY + SMARTHINGS + HUE + ALEXA + SONOS

[Cottonwood]

I currently am using Samsung SMARTHINGS Hub with Philips HUE and Amazon ALEXA (with two DOTS in other rooms). I control Zwave light switches and outlets, Hue lightstrips, a Honeywell Thermostat, and SONOS Play 5s.  The Smarthings app is nice to view status & control things remotely and ALEXA is nice for voice control.

 

In Jan I will be moving into a larger new house where I wanted to use ISY994ZW with my new ELK M1 Gold Security system.  I plan to have 20 lights, 6 fans, 10 outlets, 3 lightstrips, two thermostats, and 6 SONOS amps I would like to automate and have voice control (outlets, fans & lights will be all new GE Zwave+ modules I got on BlackFriday).  I hope to use the ELK zones to trigger actions (garage door opening, motion at the front door, etc).

 

Any recommendations on how to integrate these items?

 

Do I even need the SMARTHINGS hub anymore, or if I keep it, which should be the primary hub (ISY or Samsung)?

 

Any incompatibilities I need to be aware of?

 

What order should I bring things online and integrate first?

 

Can I back up configurations?

 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Cottonwood,

 

Thanks so much for your interest. ISY doesn't have native support for Sonos and Hue. As such, if integration with those are hard requirements, ISY is not the right solution.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Cottonwood]

Can I have both Smarthings on the Z-Wave network and ISY?  Maybe use ISY as a secondary hub?

 

Does ISY have native support for Smarthings?  Could I use Smarthings as the interface to HUE?

[mwester]

In order:  Sort of, Yes, No, and Sort of.

 

 

More specifically, you can have both a Smartthings hub and an ISY using z-wave in the same house, and you can even set up the ISY and Smarthings as a primary/secondary (although I've had little luck with the ISY as the secondary, and cannot find anything useful about having the ISY as a primary with something else as a secondary).  ISY has no support for Smartthings, native or otherwise.  Smartthings may support the Hue, but it does so by talking to the Hue hub, not the bulbs directly.

 

Bottom line: there's no easy "click here, now click there" way to use Smartthings and ISY together.  There may be a way for a programmer to set something up running on a Raspberry Pi or other computer to tie the ISY and Smartthings hubs together -- but if you were up for that, I rather doubt you'd be posting asking about it; I suspect you'd be busy writing code to do it instead.

[Cottonwood]

Thanks. 

 

Are you recommending for my new house, I make ISY the primary Zwave hub, Smarthings a secondary hub (really just to allow the Smarthings app provide me a status, and to do the ALEXA interfacing and the HUE & SONOS control), but allow ISY to do all of my Zwave automation?

[lilyoyo1]

Personally I would use all under 1 system as much as possible. While the ISY doesnt natively support all that you want it to support, all can be controlled from the ISY with the network module (free with portal integration). Nothing is worse than starting as a newbie and then trying to join systems. It can be a technical nightmare when things dont work right and not knowing where to start or how to fix.

 

For starters, focus on the simpler tasks first (lighting) to learn the ISY and then start branching off to the more difficult items such as HUE and then Sonos. By doing this, your knowledge base increases so that when you get to the more difficult tasks, fixing them can become much easier. This always ensures all of your programming is working properly from the start so that it doesnt impact other tasks as you get to them. 

 

Some things work well without adding to any system. For example, I use the Ecobee 3 thermostats and Rain machine irrigation controller. While there are ways for the ISY to control them, both work extremely well right out the box which saves time and effort on programming. Alexa can also control them when needed. 

 

Depending on what you want to do with your sonos, this can be standalone or added to the ISY with the network module. This will allow you to have volume buttons on insteon keypads and start music based on different button presses. For example, you could have a relax scene that dims the lights normally but double tapping that scene will dim the lights and play your music.

 

While it does take some skill, the forums and time are a great resource in regards to getting it up and running. Once you start using multiple systems, the amount of help diminishes.