ISY Home Assistant Integration is slow & unreliable?

[Venicenerd]

Hey,

I used to run my ISY into Homekit using Homebridge and it worked decently fast. Once in a while it would miss a device and if I executed a scene with many devices there would be some lag but it worked, more or less. Now I am trying out HomeAssistant and I'm noticing that lights respond WAY slower than what I'm used to. Devices also fail to sync their status way more often. I'm really disappointed because I thought moving over to HA would be a step up compared to my Homebridge solution. 

Is it just normal that you can't really turn on/off more than 3-4 devices at a time without running into issues with HA & ISY? Or is there something I can do to get the communication between HA and my ISY to work better?

Really hoping I'm just missing something here...

[kzboray]

I've been playing with HA a bit as well for the last 10 days. I have one bathroom with 5 LifX bulbs and a single Insteon Keypad Linc Switch that I decided to use as a test. So far I have created two scenes, one for on and the other for off. I haven't figured out how to create a scene for a LifX group yet so the scenes simply tell all five bulbs to power on or off. Now keep in mind this is Insteon interfacing with LifX, or in the UDI world it would be an ISY talking to a Polyglot NS.

What I have found is that the HA solution is much faster in responding to the switch being turned on or off. With the Polyglot NS it could take 2 or three seconds for the LifX bulbs to respond to the switch being turned on or off. With HA the bulbs respond instantly, or in milliseconds since I can't perceive a delay.

This is doubly impressive because the HA scene is actually commanding each bulb individually as opposed to the Polyglot NS which is able to active the LifX group natively.

But, as I play with HA I am more and more impressed with UDI and what they have created with the ISY and Ployglot servers. Things that are easy to do on an ISY require programming in HA. Something as simple as dimming the LED brightness of the Keypad Linc necessitates programming in HA.

I'm a total newb with HA and have years of experience with ISY's and Polyglot servers, but I can already see that HA is going to require an entirely new set of skills and for advanced capabilities it's going to take learning the programming language of HA to move forward. Yuck, yet another language to learn.

I am not a programmer, but I can usually follow someone else's work and make changes if I need to. That was what attracted me to the ISY in the first place. It's programming is simple but incredibly powerful. ISY / Polyglot works really well for the most part.

My girlfriend is loving the responsiveness of the bathroom lights, but misses the circadian lighting routines that turned the lights red and set their power levels very low between the alarm being set at night and disarmed in the morning. It's been four days since I changed from ISY / Polyglot LifX NS to HA in that room and already she wants the old system back, even with the responsiveness being so dramatically different between them.

So for me HA seems to be much faster than the ISY / Polyglot NS for LifX / Insteon integration and control but less friendly to setup and manage.

It will be interesting to see what the more advanced and experienced HA users have to say.

Edited December 8, 2021 by kzboray

[Venicenerd]

I’m mostly controlling Insteon Devices and those seem to be responding much slower and less reliable through HA than they have been through Homebridge. 

[io_guy]

I've been using the ISY with HA for about 2 years now.  I can't speak for controlling 3-4 Insteon devices at a time but when I command single devices it is instant. 

The only time I do multiples would be in an Insteon scene which is also very fast.  

The only time I get status update issues has been with failing devices.  

[Michel Kohanim]

@kzboray,

Is this ISY on Polisy or ISY994?

With kind regards,
Michel

[Venicenerd]

For me it is the ISY994 with the Home Assistant plugin. 

[kzboray]

@Michel KohanimIt an ISY994i Pro attached to a Polisy Pro.

ISY994i Pro: 5.3.4

LifX NS - 2.1.26

Polisy: FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p4 (POLISY) #13 releng/13.0-n244760-940681634ee: Wed Aug 25

UDX - 2.5.3_2

ISY - 5.2.0_58

Thank you Michel!

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by kzboray

[Venicenerd]

Hi Michael, hoping you can help me as well.

 

To summarize my issue:

If I control more than 3 Insteon devices in HomeKit (through HA) at the same time only 2-3 will work reliably. The others are all ignored.

From within the HA Interface directly it seems that I can control a larger amount of Insteon devices at the same time but they take a very long time to execute (one slowly after the other). At least they execute  

At first I thought this was an Insteon congestion problem but now I notice that the device change is not even communicated to the ISY994 for more than 2-3 devices at a time (when coming from HomeKit). The devices don’t update in the Admin Console either. Controlling a single Insteon device (or even two together works great and fast!)

I just went back to my homebridge install and weirdly enough the response is now as slow/buggy as it is through the HomeKit Bridge on HA. It used to be way faster/reliable with my homebridge setup. The only other change I made (in preparation to switch to HA) was to upgrade my ISY from 4.x to 5.0.16C. I believe I read that’s the latest firmware I can upgrade to since I have the zwave board (which I’m not using btw…)

 
 

So no matter if I control the devices through HomeAssisstant’s HomeKit Bridge or through Homebridge the result now seems to be the same. 

Is it possible that upgrading my firmware caused this? It there anything I can do to trouble shoot? And logs I can include here to help?

I know that you shouldn’t control a metric ton of of Insteon devices through Homekit but anything under 8 should be fine, no? At least so I can turn off all of the lights in one room at the same time from inside of HomeKit. Im really shocked that I suddenly can’t control more than two Insteon devices (reliably) at a time anymore 

Would really appreciate the support!

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by Venicenerd

[kzboray]

@Venicenerd First I would ask, are you able to control multiple devices directly from the ISY?

[Venicenerd]

5 minutes ago, kzboray said:

@Venicenerd First I would ask, are you able to control multiple devices directly from the ISY?

Yes! That always works!

[kzboray]

OK, so the problems not with the Insteon devices or with the ISY. It's either the HomeBridge or Homekit. That being the case, there may be someone here that can help, but you might want to post on the HomeBridge and Homekit forums as well. I'm not a HomeBridge guy so this is as far as I can go. Good luck!

Edited December 9, 2021 by kzboray

[Michel Kohanim]

20 hours ago, kzboray said:

ISY994i Pro: 5.3.4

LifX NS - 2.1.26

Polisy: FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p4 (POLISY) #13 releng/13.0-n244760-940681634ee: Wed Aug 25

UDX - 2.5.3_2

ISY - 5.2.0_58

@kzboray, this makes sense. The reason is very simple: ISY connects to Polisy using 2048 bit TLS connection. This is slow (on the ISY side). Once you move your ISY to Polisy, this should be faster. 

With kind regards,
Michel

[Michel Kohanim]

@Venicenerd,

As @kzboray suggested, I think the issue is on the HA side. This said, why don't you turn on/off a scene? Why one switch at a time? Also, 5.0.16 is way too old. You should upgrade to 5.3.4.

With kind regards,
Michel

[PatPend]

On 12/8/2021 at 3:44 AM, io_guy said:

The only time I get status update issues has been with failing devices.  

Try doing a “Restore Device” for each non-updating device and see if that fixes the problem.

FWIW I’ve found the Restore Device command will fix many odd misbehaviors in an Insteon device.

[Venicenerd]

7 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@Venicenerd,

As @kzboray suggested, I think the issue is on the HA side. This said, why don't you turn on/off a scene? Why one switch at a time? Also, 5.0.16 is way too old. You should upgrade to 5.3.4.

With kind regards,
Michel

I was under the impression that 5.0.16C was the end of the road for me because I don’t have the new zwave board? This was mentioned here:

Is it okay to upgrade to 5.3.4 if I don’t use zwave on my isy or would if still cause issues?

 

[larryllix]

I was under the impression that 5.0.16C was the end of the road for me because I don’t have the new zwave board? This was mentioned here:
Is it okay to upgrade to 5.3.4 if I don’t use zwave on my isy or would if still cause issues?
 

yup. that is what I ran without any zwave.

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[carealtor]

1 hour ago, Venicenerd said:

Is it okay to upgrade to 5.3.4 if I don’t use zwave on my isy or would if still cause issues?

 

I can confirm that there is no problem having the old z-wave board installed, as long as you aren't trying to use any z-wave, which I believe you stated earlier that you were not.

[Venicenerd]

11 minutes ago, carealtor said:

I can confirm that there is no problem having the old z-wave board installed, as long as you aren't trying to use any z-wave, which I believe you stated earlier that you were not.

That’s encouraging. I’ll upgrade today and report back if the integration with HomeAssistant is improved by the more recent firmware. 
 

2 hours ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@kzboray, this makes sense. The reason is very simple: ISY connects to Polisy using 2048 bit TLS connection. This is slow (on the ISY side). Once you move your ISY to Polisy, this should be faster. 

With kind regards,
Michel

Should I perhaps change some TLS settings on my ISY994 as well? If so how would I go about doing that?

 

[Rob]

I've been using ISY 994 and HA for about 6 months now and my experience has never been better. Everything responds instantly (<1sec). I use scenes for controlling multiple lights at once since controlling individual lights in quick succession without delays between commands has always been problematic. This isn't specific to HA or ISY but Insteon. And as io_guy said, incorrect status is often an indication of a failing PLM. You can either re-cap it or simply buy an in-stock USB PLM and swap the daughterboard. I did that a few days ago and after resetting a few devices my network was back at 100% reliability.

[Venicenerd]

21 minutes ago, Rob said:

And as io_guy said, incorrect status is often an indication of a failing PLM. You can either re-cap it or simply buy an in-stock USB PLM and swap the daughterboard. I did that a few days ago and after resetting a few devices my network was back at 100% reliability.

Wait, what? Lol You can turn one of the new USB PLM’s into one with Ethernet? Do you have instructions for this somewhere?

[larryllix]

7 hours ago, Venicenerd said:

Wait, what? Lol You can turn one of the new USB PLM’s into one with Ethernet? Do you have instructions for this somewhere?

No Ethernet protocol. Only serial port or USB.

[Rob]

8 hours ago, Venicenerd said:

Wait, what? Lol You can turn one of the new USB PLM’s into one with Ethernet? Do you have instructions for this somewhere?

The only difference between the serial and usb PLM is a daughterboard that has the rj45 or usb port respectively. Now if the serial port on your existing PLM is dead or dying this isn't going to work, but in many (most?) cases it's the capacitors on the mainboard that's bad.

The PLM is held together by 4 screws. Open it up and you'll see a daughterboard attached via an 8 pin header (like the usb or serial header in your pc). It's attached by 2 screws. Carefully bend the 2 antenna aside, remove the screws, and gently lift up the daughterboard. Repeat the process on the usb PLM and re-assmble attaching the rj45 card to the new PLM, taking care to ensure the pins are aligned or you will have issues.

EDIT: I did a 2413U > 2413S conversion. I don't know if the daugherboard swap will work on different revisions of the PLM.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Rob

[carealtor]

12 hours ago, Venicenerd said:

Wait, what? Lol You can turn one of the new USB PLM’s into one with Ethernet? Do you have instructions for this somewhere?

RJ45 jack does not always equate to Ethernet.  The serial PLM being one such example.  

[Venicenerd]

5 hours ago, Rob said:

The only difference between the serial and usb PLM is a daughterboard that has the rj45 or usb port respectively. Now if the serial port on your existing PLM is dead or dying this isn't going to work, but in many (most?) cases it's the capacitors on the mainboard that's bad.

The PLM is held together by 4 screws. Open it up and you'll see a daughterboard attached via an 8 pin header (like the usb or serial header in your pc). It's attached by 2 screws. Carefully bend the 2 antenna aside, remove the screws, and gently lift up the daughterboard. Repeat the process on the usb PLM and re-assmble attaching the rj45 card to the new PLM, taking care to ensure the pins are aligned or you will have issues.

EDIT: I did a 2413U > 2413S conversion. I don't know if the daugherboard swap will work on different revisions of the PLM.

Hmmm very interesting! After I do this do I need to do anything in the ISY admin console to adopt the new PLM or I just replace the hardware and that's it?

[larryllix]

Hmmm very interesting! After I do this do I need to do anything in the ISY admin console to adopt the new PLM or I just replace the hardware and that's it?

There is a replace PLM instruction in the wiki.

Basically you replace the PLM hardware and then select the built in process in the admin console. After that you clean up battery devices, one at a time by placing them into linking mode and updating one at a time.

This all takes a while but ISY makes the bulk easier.

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