Home Assistant ISY Component

[jec6613]

23 hours ago, mwester said:

Kinda proves my point -- the concept of "Let's duplicate EVERYTHING from the ISY into HASS!" is flawed right out of the gate.  We'd never to that in any other system architecture, so why do it for the ISY?

(I think the answer to that question might perhaps be in the way the ISY is designed -- you either grab info bit-by-painful-bit, or you subscribe to the "fire-hose" that sends every action about everything in XML down the wire.  Of course the receiving side could filter that - but filtering is hard, and doing it on the RX side is not the ideal place for that either...)

If you have 1000 nodes on the ISY, it makes no sense to mirror that into any other system (and it won't matter if it's x64, arm, or an IBM mainframe!)

I was filtering on anything with a tilde character not making a device, but HASS still subscribes to the firehose XML internally, and it's quite chatty, as you say.

The things is though, I only have 300-ish Insteon and Z-Wave devices combined, the bulk of the devices are from nodeservers.  One Harmony remote, for instance, can show up as dozens of devices in HASS, as I discovered.

The thing is though, the firehose honestly isn't *THAT* chatty.  At most I get 5-10 state changes per second normally, unless something like an alarm goes off and it'll change 50 or so at once.  But even 200 state changes per second should not be an issue for an RPI even with JIT code or even most scripting languages.

Essentially: there's no excuse for having code that borks like this, it's just poorly coded.

[rccoleman]

15 minutes ago, jec6613 said:

I was using the version through HACS.

When I first installed the HACS version, I had trouble getting it to use PyISY_beta underneath instead of the original PyISY. It’s mentioned properly in the manifest and both versions ended up in the homeassistant container (I’m using Hass.io), but I had to manually copy it into config/deps/... to have it be used. Not sure what was going on there, but maybe it’s biting others as well. 

[Mecheng70]

New to the HASS world. Decide to install it and try it out.  One issues I am having is getting the variables to show up in HASS.  The second issue is the polyglot nodeservers not showing up anymore.

Only the last variable (of 7) show up as a binary sensor.  If I remove the 7th, then only the 6th shows up and so on.  

Running the add-on from the HACS and 5.0.16B.  

 

Thoughts?

[Jefe]

Regarding the variables, I use the ISY994 custom integration add-on in HACS.  HA Core version is 0.105.  Here is the setup for the first four ISY variables in my config file:

isy994:
  host: xxx
  username: yyy
  password: !secret zzz
  ignore_string: Auto DR
  isy_variables:
    sensors:
      - id: 1               # Work Holiday
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:home
      - id: 5               # Curio Cabinet
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:track-light
      - id: 8               # Workshop Power
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:power-socket-us
      - id: 11              # Fall Decor
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:halloween

There are additional variables setup in the config file.  All are working.  They show up as sensors under Developer Tools --> States.

[Mecheng70]

I think i may figured it out. I have a "binary_sensors:" line before each "id"....

Will try tonight. 

That was the problem.

[isyrocks!]

On 2/25/2020 at 12:19 PM, Jefe said:

Regarding the variables, I use the ISY994 custom integration add-on in HACS.  HA Core version is 0.105.  Here is the setup for the first four ISY variables in my config file:

isy994:
  host: xxx
  username: yyy
  password: !secret zzz
  ignore_string: Auto DR
  isy_variables:
    sensors:
      - id: 1               # Work Holiday
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:home
      - id: 5               # Curio Cabinet
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:track-light
      - id: 8               # Workshop Power
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:power-socket-us
      - id: 11              # Fall Decor
        type: 2
        icon: mdi:halloween

There are additional variables setup in the config file.  All are working.  They show up as sensors under Developer Tools --> States.

I too have a similar setup like this using the HACS plugin but something breaks after about 12 -24 hours.  HA stops talking to my ISY.  I am running the latest code on everything.  Sometimes I get the "Already Subscribed" message on the ISY.  Sometimes things just stop talking unless I restart HA.  I really want to figure something out because I have a Ring Alarm that I can only control from HA.  I may have to go with Network calls to talk to the HA if I can figure out the right way to configure the HA as a network resource.  I have probably already spent a solid 30 hours on this project trying to get things to talk reliably to each-other and I am not there yet.

[Mecheng70]

10 minutes ago, isyrocks! said:

I too have a similar setup like this using the HACS plugin but something breaks after about 12 -24 hours.  HA stops talking to my ISY.  I am running the latest code on everything.  Sometimes I get the "Already Subscribed" message on the ISY.  Sometimes things just stop talking unless I restart HA.  I really want to figure something out because I have a Ring Alarm that I can only control from HA.  I may have to go with Network calls to talk to the HA if I can figure out the right way to configure the HA as a network resource.  I have probably already spent a solid 30 hours on this project trying to get things to talk reliably to each-other and I am not there yet.

Is this your post on the repository?

https://github.com/shbatm/hacs-isy994/issues/17

 

[isyrocks!]

20 minutes ago, Mecheng70 said:

Is this your post on the repository?

https://github.com/shbatm/hacs-isy994/issues/17

 

Yep that's me.  Thanks for reminding me to check.  Looks like I need to follow those instruction to enable debugging.

[bkvargyas]

I've been using HA (Home Assistant) for a couple months now, and ISY's for 10 years.    A few people here have spent a lot of time getting the ISY99 integration updated and working as of HA .110 and it works extremely well.    I've moved most of my ISY automations over to Node Red and treat Home Assistant like a big state machine.    Been running stable for over a month now on hass.io under a ESXI image on a lightweight x86 system.    There is a new 2.0beta of the ISY plug in that uses asyncIO (Installed on HACS) that promises to be faster, but so far, all my automations are just as fast as they were running on the ISY itself.     I'm now just using the ISY to build scene's that are controlled by node-red.     Couldn't be happier with this combination setup.

[Mecheng70]

On 6/16/2020 at 8:55 PM, bkvargyas said:

I've been using HA (Home Assistant) for a couple months now, and ISY's for 10 years.    A few people here have spent a lot of time getting the ISY99 integration updated and working as of HA .110 and it works extremely well.    I've moved most of my ISY automations over to Node Red and treat Home Assistant like a big state machine.    Been running stable for over a month now on hass.io under a ESXI image on a lightweight x86 system.    There is a new 2.0beta of the ISY plug in that uses asyncIO (Installed on HACS) that promises to be faster, but so far, all my automations are just as fast as they were running on the ISY itself.     I'm now just using the ISY to build scene's that are controlled by node-red.     Couldn't be happier with this combination setup.

 

Curious, are you using zwave devices?  I have all zwave and am attempting to change some config parameters with the send_raw_node_commands.  However, that command only allows GV0, GV1, etc that can change the color of bulbs (AEOTEC).  Are you familiar with the command to change parameters?  I am trying to make sure that I am not missing something around being able to change the config parameters versus the color parameters.  I have not touched the 2.0beta as of yet...

[PPlacr]

Hello everyone.  I have a  ISY running in conjunction with Home Assistant and HomeKit. I'm on 5.016 and latest Home assistant version. Most of my devices are Zwave. For the most part, the  integration is working great. The problem I’m trying to figure out is how to communicate with dimming lights using 0-100 parameters vs 0-255. I can control the dimmer but 100 out of 255 shows up 100% on the ISY.  I tried using input numbers but that does not translate well into HomeKit because it shows up as a switch. I tried several light templates and while I can control the on and off feature, I am unable to figure out how to scale the dimmer slider. I'm hoping that some one here has had the same issue and there is an easy fix that I'm missing. This may not be the place to ask the question and if that’s the case I apologize. If someone could point me in the right direction or help me with this I would very much appreciated. I'm new to HA and I’m not big on programming but I can figure things out with a little help. 

[asbril]

I just successfully installed Home Assistant on the RPi, priorly used for Polyglot. It looks nice but I am not sure to understand what it can do that ISY can not..... Cam someone enlighten me ?

[carealtor]

@asbril

Well, there certainly a lot more integrations, but you would have to decide if there is anything additional that you want or need.

I'm no HA expert, but I have been playing with it for quite awhile now.  I see it as the user interface that is missing from ISY.  We all know that the AC is for configuration, and not meant to be used as a user interface.  With HA, you can create an extremely functional user interface that would be very "wall mounted tablet" friendly.  

I use ISY for ALL of my automations.  I only use HA as a user interface.  I have ISY, Sonos, Ecobee, Logitech Harmony, RainMachine, Ring, all on both my ISY and HA and it all works together flawlessly.

[asbril]

Just now, carealtor said:

@asbril

Well, there certainly a lot more integrations, but you would have to decide if there is anything additional that you want or need.

I'm no HA expert, but I have been playing with it for quite awhile now.  I see it as the user interface that is missing from ISY.  We all know that the AC is for configuration, and not meant to be used as a user interface.  With HA, you can create an extremely functional user interface that would be very "wall mounted tablet" friendly.  

I use ISY for ALL of my automations.  I only use HA as a user interface.  I have ISY, Sonos, Ecobee, Logitech Harmony, RainMachine, Ring, all on both my ISY and HA and it all works together flawlessly.

Thanks @carealtor I just played around with it and it seems indeed to be an interesting UI.

[Mecheng70]

Agree with @carealtor. 

I use HA for basically the interface to my ISY. I also have solar panels on my roof, and a few other devices that are neither insteon nor Z-Wave.  I integrate my smart weather into it so that I can get a 5-day forecast in a nice graphical view. 

I can send you some images from my mobile phone depicting the different tabs that carealtor is talking about if you'd like. 

 

 

[asbril]

6 minutes ago, Mecheng70 said:

Agree with @carealtor. 

I use HA for basically the interface to my ISY. I also have solar panels on my roof, and a few other devices that are neither insteon nor Z-Wave.  I integrate my smart weather into it so that I can get a 5-day forecast in a nice graphical view. 

I can send you some images from my mobile phone depicting the different tabs that carealtor is talking about if you'd like. 

 

 

Thanks, I sent you a pm

[mwester]

HA is the UI for all home automation now.  The moment the wife saw the UI, she said "THIS is what I expected when you started this HA stuff!" -- so, that's where everything is going.

The hiccups with z-wave support over the past two years has resulted in all my z-wave going to HA as well.  I can't say if the current version (5.3) is on-par with HA, since I'm not upgrading to that version -- but the HA support has "just worked" for the past two years, and that's what's important, and why all my z-wave has slowly been migrating.

I've mentioned before that my Insteon devices are slowly, room-by-room, being replaced with z-wave -- along with that, since the z-wave is on HA, all other non-insteon automation is also moving to HA.  Automation with HA is different from the ISY.  Learning the peculiarities of the ISY programs has a steep and challenging learning curve, but HA automations have their own challenges (one of which is that the built-in automation "language" is somewhat limited, and you have to switch to scripting externally if you want something really sophisticated).

By the new year, I expect that the ISY will be almost entirely a management console for the Insteon devices, and everything else will be on HA -- and my winter project is a wall-mounted graphical UI for all home automation (15" touch-screen monitor), something that'll take HA to do.

Finally, I'll note that while node servers are cool, the extension mechanism on HA is more flexible, and easier to implement.  In particular, if you have a device that speaks MQTT, the MQTT support is amazingly good.

[Mecheng70]

2 minutes ago, mwester said:

HA is the UI for all home automation now.  The moment the wife saw the UI, she said "THIS is what I expected when you started this HA stuff!" -- so, that's where everything is going.

 

 

HAHA, I just sent @asbril a message pertaining to this exact element, the WFF.  WFF - Wife Fun Factor.  My wife has endured many of my attempts to make it simple for her.  HA was the way to go.  She loves the format.  Can use it on her tablet, phone and desktop.  

 

@mwester what USB stick are you using?

[mwester]

I'm using the Aeotec z-stick.  I found the multi-color LED thing cheezy as heck, but since it's on the end of a 3 meter USB cable extension, it's up in the basement ceiling anyway!  Range is excellent.

[isyrocks!]

The main thing I use Home Assistant for is to tie my ISY into my Ring security system (Ring Alarm) and to automate the Ring security system.  Very helpful tool.  HA Plug-In: https://github.com/tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon

[Mecheng70]

They just (117.0) tied ALL the simplisafe sensors into HA.  Now I don't have to have 2 sensors on each door. 

[Michel Kohanim]

@isyrocks!,

ISY Portal does support ring security.

With kind regards,
Michel

[isyrocks!]

19 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@isyrocks!,

ISY Portal does support ring security.

With kind regards,
Michel

Thanks Michel.  I know it supports the doorbell but it's the Ring alarm system that I use Home Assistant for.  I don't believe there is a native ISY solution for the Ring alarm system.  Please point me in the right direction if I have missed something.

[asbril]

1 hour ago, Mecheng70 said:

 

HAHA, I just sent @asbril a message pertaining to this exact element, the WFF.  WFF - Wife Fun Factor.  My wife has endured many of my attempts to make it simple for her.  HA was the way to go.  She loves the format.  Can use it on her tablet, phone and desktop.  

 

@mwester what USB stick are you using?

I am impressed with HA.  I opened the HA port on my router and now I can access HA away from my home. Is there a safer way to achieve this ?

I heard rumors that eventually ISY will move away from Java and then maybe the AC will be more practical to use.

[jfai]

1 hour ago, asbril said:

I am impressed with HA.  I opened the HA port on my router and now I can access HA away from my home. Is there a safer way to achieve this ?

Do you know what security protocol HA uses on the port that you opened to the world? If not, I would use a VPN instead, e.g., OpenVPN. At least you know that tons of people are using the same VPN implementation and that most security flaws have been found and fixed.