Firmware v 5.x, Polisy and Nodeserver Releases

[matapan]

Having recently upgraded my ISY 994i controller to version 5.3.4, i was curious to see what significant changes existed in this new release. Apart from subtle changes in the UI, it seems pretty similar to the 4.x releases. I’m presuming the major changes allow for users to move beyond Insteon and ZWave with Polyglot and the different nodeservers people are developing.

This sounds great in theory. I have a question though about release management. How does one assess the state of development with any given nodeserver quickly? Are there official releases of nodeservers with a defined feature set? For example, a number of users on the forum have been discussing new lighting platforms to migrate to, like Lutron. In perusing the Lutron Caseta nodeserver forum, it seems like it’s still in development.

Is there anything published on the site or forums that summarizes the release state of each nodeserver?

Also, are there user instructions on how to acquire and install any given nodeserver package on a Polisy device?

[rob.bushkaufer]

I find that the best way to get the particulars on any node server is to look at the developer's notes. You can click on the name of the node server in the list on PolISY, and it will take you to the GitHub for that node server.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[lilyoyo1]

7 hours ago, matapan said:

Having recently upgraded my ISY 994i controller to version 5.3.4, i was curious to see what significant changes existed in this new release. Apart from subtle changes in the UI, it seems pretty similar to the 4.x releases. I’m presuming the major changes allow for users to move beyond Insteon and ZWave with Polyglot and the different nodeservers people are developing.

This sounds great in theory. I have a question though about release management. How does one assess the state of development with any given nodeserver quickly? Are there official releases of nodeservers with a defined feature set? For example, a number of users on the forum have been discussing new lighting platforms to migrate to, like Lutron. In perusing the Lutron Caseta nodeserver forum, it seems like it’s still in development.

Is there anything published on the site or forums that summarizes the release state of each nodeserver?

Also, are there user instructions on how to acquire and install any given nodeserver package on a Polisy device?

It's not only great in theory, it's great in reality as well.

It's pretty easy to set up if you read the instructions. It's as simple as going to the store and hit install for the nodeserver you want. 

https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=Polisy:User_Guide

 

[bpwwer]

Keep in mind that with the current release of Polyglot, all node servers are free.  They are mostly developed by individuals that create them for the equipment they own, to do what they want to do.  And then they do their best to support others who want to use them in their spare time without any compensation. I state this simply so that you have the right expectations set.

That's not to say that the existing node servers aren't good.  Most of them are very well written and do what they are intended to do.  

[matapan]

All I am asking is if there is a way to discern at a glance how fully fleshed put any given nodeserver is, particularly the ones one would pay for.

The unique model presented here is one where the Polisy is a platform on which support for specific devices is left to 3rd party developers or power users. With other controller applications on the market the publisher provides and maintainance for the platform and device support. The quality and degree of the device support is inherently more consistent in general when it’s centralized.

How does a potential customer decide if a feature set is “good enough” before taking the plunge with Polisy?

Also, is there a package deinstallation process for any given nodeserver?

[lilyoyo1]

28 minutes ago, matapan said:

All I am asking is if there is a way to discern at a glance how fully fleshed put any given nodeserver is, particularly the ones one would pay for.

The unique model presented here is one where the Polisy is a platform on which support for specific devices is left to 3rd party developers or power users. With other controller applications on the market the publisher provides and maintainance for the platform and device support. The quality and degree of the device support is inherently more consistent in general when it’s centralized.

How does a potential customer decide if a feature set is “good enough” before taking the plunge with Polisy?

Also, is there a package deinstallation process for any given nodeserver?

If "Free" isn't good enough for someone i really don't know what to say. With that said, as someone already mentioned, if you click on the nodeserver you're interested in, you can see all the information you're asking about

[bpwwer]

34 minutes ago, matapan said:

All I am asking is if there is a way to discern at a glance how fully fleshed put any given nodeserver is, particularly the ones one would pay for.

No, but given that you aren't paying for any of them, you are always getting what you paid for.

35 minutes ago, matapan said:

The unique model presented here is one where the Polisy is a platform on which support for specific devices is left to 3rd party developers or power users. With other controller applications on the market the publisher provides and maintainance for the platform and device support. The quality and degree of the device support is inherently more consistent in general when it’s centralized.

I disagree with the conclusion.  Do you really expect a single entity to provide better support for 100's of different devices they don't have and don't use than individuals that actually have and use the devices?   My experience is that the other controller manufacturers either can't support all the different devices or provide the minimum of support so they can claim they support them.

UDI provides a platform and API, the community is currently providing Polyglot and device support.  This is changing as UDI takes a more active role in developing and supporting the third party development community.

41 minutes ago, matapan said:

How does a potential customer decide if a feature set is “good enough” before taking the plunge with Polisy?

That's an interesting question as the Polisy is really a future ISY product, not the current ISY product.  So I believe most folks are taking the "plunge" with Polisy now so they can be better prepared for the future, not based on what it can do today.  If you don't want to run pre-release/beta software, the Polisy is really just a nice piece of hardware with Polyglot pre-installed. 

Both the Polisy and an RPi with Polyglot installed give the ISY the ability to interact with other devices and services beyond the support for Insteon and Z-Wave devices built into the ISY.  If you need support any other device/service, then node servers are the only option you have.  And I use the term "node servers" specifically because that's a reference to the API that the ISY uses to interact with other devices.

Polyglot (on either Polisy or RPi) is a framework that supports many different device node servers.  It is community developed and supported and is not well documented.  You basically have to install it to see what is available and (as others have pointed out) the documentation for each.

NodeLink is another framework that supports device node servers.  It was developed by a forum member and you can find more information about it here in the forums.

Polyglot Cloud is a cloud version of Polyglot that runs on machines in the cloud instead of a local (Polisy or RPi) hardware device. It supports a subset of the node servers that Polyglot has.

In a few cases, there have been individual node servers developed that aren't part of any framework.   But I believe most of these have been abandoned in favor of NodeLink or Polyglot.

Polyglot version 3 is currently in development and is an evolution of the current Polyglot.  The main goal is to provide a better customer experience and allow third party developers to be compensated for their efforts, should they desire.  

1 hour ago, matapan said:

Also, is there a package deinstallation process for any given nodeserver?

Yes.

[lilyoyo1]

53 minutes ago, bpwwer said:

 

I disagree with the conclusion.  Do you really expect a single entity to provide better support for 100's of different devices they don't have and don't use than individuals that actually have and use the devices?   My experience is that the other controller manufacturers either can't support all the different devices or provide the minimum of support so they can claim they support them.

UDI provides a platform and API, the community is currently providing Polyglot and device support.  This is changing as UDI takes a more active role in developing and supporting the third party development community.

 

 

You could also add that no single controller supports a large number of 3rd party devices without outside developer assistance.

As you've already mentioned, those that do all in house development on support a small number of outside devices. Nowhere close to the number of 3rd party devices that polisy already supports

[matapan]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

If "Free" isn't good enough for someone i really don't know what to say. With that said, as someone already mentioned, if you click on the nodeserver you're interested in, you can see all the information you're asking about

Don't get me wrong. It's a wonderful thing to see an active community engaged in expanding the capabities of what's being developed here. As an installer though, I would think you would want to know what is rock solid, stable and fully fleshed out before deploying it to minimize callbacks from your customers. The various levels of development stages different nodeservers are in does require people to dive in and really see what does work and what doesn't.

I get a pretty good sense of where Polisy is now from the comments received so far. Thanks!

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, matapan said:

Don't get me wrong. It's a wonderful thing to see an active community engaged in expanding the capabities of what's being developed here. As an installer though, I would think you would want to know what is rock solid, stable and fully fleshed out before deploying it to minimize callbacks from your customers. The various levels of development stages different nodeservers are in does require people to dive in and really see what does work and what doesn't.

I get a pretty good sense of where Polisy is now from the comments received so far. Thanks!

As an installer I do want things to be rock solid. However, what i consider rock solid may not be the same as what someone else calls rock solid. It's up to the mfg. to provide me with a product I want to use. It's up to me not them to verify that the product is a fit for what I'm trying to accomplish. 

Because of that, I don't depend on what anyone says about their product. I still want to get my hands on it to see how it works inside and out. Reading about something gives information but experience is still the best teacher. Only once I've used something long enough to  where i feel that I understand it's full capabilities and what I'm going to experience (pros and cons) will i deploy it in a person's house. 

 

 

[ase]

On 12/13/2021 at 11:09 AM, matapan said:

All I am asking is if there is a way to discern at a glance how fully fleshed put any given nodeserver is, particularly the ones one would pay for.

The unique model presented here is one where the Polisy is a platform on which support for specific devices is left to 3rd party developers or power users. With other controller applications on the market the publisher provides and maintainance for the platform and device support. The quality and degree of the device support is inherently more consistent in general when it’s centralized.

How does a potential customer decide if a feature set is “good enough” before taking the plunge with Polisy?

Also, is there a package deinstallation process for any given nodeserver?

I gotta call you out here. This isn't a unique model, not by a long shot. This is how nearly all software and technical products are built. Linux for instance powers 100 percent of super computers 80 percent of all servers, 87 percent of all cell phones. Linux has thousands of distos, millions of libraries and software packages. Apple for instance uses Darwin as the bases for all of its OSes. Darwin is simply a disto of FreeBSD, the very same software at the heart of Polisy. 

What you're thinking of is consumer level products. Products that are designed to be fool proof, that prove the quality of human fools. 

When it comes to professional products of any kind, in any industry, it is up to the professional to determine how well each item works for the scenario they are dealing with. That is why they are professionals.

In software development no single company can produce vast products of quality. Take Microsoft for instance, they are more known for crashes, blue screen of death, and security holes than reliability. Meanwhile Linux which is open source and built on millions of "third-parties" is the most successful OS in history. 

This not so unique model allows for diversity of choices, diversity of support, openness of code allowing for flexibility.

The fact is that this method breeds stability by allowing code to be viewed and modified as needed.

That being said,  it is possible that in the hands of a novice or a pseudo-professional that this can lead to instability and difficulty. However, that is why it is best to allow true professionals to deal with professional things.

[matapan]

When I started out with Insteon, I was looking for a good controller solution. Based on the feedback I received on some online forums, UDI made the ISY99 and this was the controller everyone except perhaps Smarthome recommended for a well supported Insteon controller.

Over the years, UDI has provided great support for their controller and Insteon devices using their controller. In hindsight, it was probably not something the company necessarily wanted to do, but to provide a good support experience they helped where they could. Kudos to UDI for this.

By creating a layer for specific device technologies to work with Polisy, UDI has decoupled support for any specific protocol, leaving this responsibility up to the nodeserver publisher. This is similar to writing printer drivers for an operating system. Whether or not all of the available services in the OS are supported is implementation-specific. 

The incentive for those publishing nodeservers probably vary. Someone might be interested in publishing a nodeserver because they wanted a specific capability as a user themselves and they know how to write it. Or, they may want to publish a nodeserver for profit. The individual who wrote a nodeserver for themselves may not want the burden to support it and might ask people to use it as is because they may not be interested in the support aspect of it.

The difference between printer device drivers and a nodeserver is that the printer driver drives the sales of the hardware. For someone trying to evaluate where they're going to go beyond Insteon, it's really hard to tell without making some substantial hardware investment to do an in depth evaluation of a nodeserver.

Having some certification of nodeservers published describing their capabilities by some definitive feature set support would be helpful for someone trying to evaluate the next step beyond Insteon. As devices start failing, as they will inevitably, users will have to stockpile on backup Insteon devices to keep their setup going or migrate to a new lighting platform. Prescriptive guidance on what works well is very helpful if one chooses the latter option.

[ase]

7 hours ago, matapan said:

When I started out with Insteon, I was looking for a good controller solution. Based on the feedback I received on some online forums, UDI made the ISY99 and this was the controller everyone except perhaps Smarthome recommended for a well supported Insteon controller.

Over the years, UDI has provided great support for their controller and Insteon devices using their controller. In hindsight, it was probably not something the company necessarily wanted to do, but to provide a good support experience they helped where they could. Kudos to UDI for this.

By creating a layer for specific device technologies to work with Polisy, UDI has decoupled support for any specific protocol, leaving this responsibility up to the nodeserver publisher. This is similar to writing printer drivers for an operating system. Whether or not all of the available services in the OS are supported is implementation-specific. 

The incentive for those publishing nodeservers probably vary. Someone might be interested in publishing a nodeserver because they wanted a specific capability as a user themselves and they know how to write it. Or, they may want to publish a nodeserver for profit. The individual who wrote a nodeserver for themselves may not want the burden to support it and might ask people to use it as is because they may not be interested in the support aspect of it.

The difference between printer device drivers and a nodeserver is that the printer driver drives the sales of the hardware. For someone trying to evaluate where they're going to go beyond Insteon, it's really hard to tell without making some substantial hardware investment to do an in depth evaluation of a nodeserver.

Having some certification of nodeservers published describing their capabilities by some definitive feature set support would be helpful for someone trying to evaluate the next step beyond Insteon. As devices start failing, as they will inevitably, users will have to stockpile on backup Insteon devices to keep their setup going or migrate to a new lighting platform. Prescriptive guidance on what works well is very helpful if one chooses the latter option.

I don't think Insteon is going out of business, at least not liquidation. They are owned by a Capital Investment company at this point, if anything they will gut out the IP and sell it. I am more concerned with them closing down more avenues of access for third party usage than I am about them going under. That said the Idea of Polyglot and Polisy was to make UDI less dependant on Insteon for customers and bring in a more diverse home automation group. ISY is very powerful software and shouldn't be strapped by support for a certain brand. However, the time tested and solid method of allowing users to create their own interactions. It is a very solid method for tech savvy users. Unfortunately the market on the hardware side is just rattled with little more than snake oil products. The a fact in the market right now is that an uninformed newbie doesn't stand a chance of navigating the product selection at the moment. To be brutal, navigating away from Insteon right now only has only real solid path, and that is Z-wave. None of the Nodes on Polyglot are going to give you the peace of mind for the future in terms of compatibility with Polisy or ISY even if UDI implemented a certificate or QC system. Compatibility can only be achieved if the manufacture maintains some local API that is usable to create a node. If the company decides to stop doing that, than game over. So moving away from Insteon it is just better to look at the protocols rather then the brands themselves. Insteon was just the marriage of both a brand and a protocol that worked for most people that were doing this kind of thing. Unfortunately they were a bit ahead of the curve on the consumer front and when the consumers were ready Insteon just didn't do a good job at pitching itself. Myself I think for most things Z-Wave will work great, on the Polyglot side I am going to look at the manufacture and deciding based on what I see as to what I will buy knowing that while it works for me now, an Update of firmware may break that compatibility. So I think for me anyway It will come down to how open is the company with their users. If they are tight lipped like say apple than no go, If they are open then yes. 

[Michel Kohanim]

@ase, thank you very very much!

@matapan, first if all, thank you very much for the compliments. There are products for which we have to manage their lifecycle for a variety of reasons such as certification (Z-Wave, Zigbee, OpenADR,..) and licensing. This said, and as @ase suggested, there is absolutely no way we can support 1000s of devices out there on our own and in house.

So the question for you would be: what do you want to use and which controller gives you the reliability and extensibility? Once the equation is changed from what UD has to do, to what you need, then you will be free to make the best decision for you.

With kind regards,

Michel

 

[lilyoyo1]

11 hours ago, matapan said:

When I started out with Insteon, I was looking for a good controller solution. Based on the feedback I received on some online forums, UDI made the ISY99 and this was the controller everyone except perhaps Smarthome recommended for a well supported Insteon controller.

Over the years, UDI has provided great support for their controller and Insteon devices using their controller. In hindsight, it was probably not something the company necessarily wanted to do, but to provide a good support experience they helped where they could. Kudos to UDI for this.

By creating a layer for specific device technologies to work with Polisy, UDI has decoupled support for any specific protocol, leaving this responsibility up to the nodeserver publisher. This is similar to writing printer drivers for an operating system. Whether or not all of the available services in the OS are supported is implementation-specific. 

The incentive for those publishing nodeservers probably vary. Someone might be interested in publishing a nodeserver because they wanted a specific capability as a user themselves and they know how to write it. Or, they may want to publish a nodeserver for profit. The individual who wrote a nodeserver for themselves may not want the burden to support it and might ask people to use it as is because they may not be interested in the support aspect of it.

The difference between printer device drivers and a nodeserver is that the printer driver drives the sales of the hardware. For someone trying to evaluate where they're going to go beyond Insteon, it's really hard to tell without making some substantial hardware investment to do an in depth evaluation of a nodeserver.

Having some certification of nodeservers published describing their capabilities by some definitive feature set support would be helpful for someone trying to evaluate the next step beyond Insteon. As devices start failing, as they will inevitably, users will have to stockpile on backup Insteon devices to keep their setup going or migrate to a new lighting platform. Prescriptive guidance on what works well is very helpful if one chooses the latter option.

At this time, you can purchase an Rpi to run polyglot V2 on right now and test out nodeservers you may want to use. This is a low cost way of checking things out without investing too much money. While UDI doesn't offer support for this method, you can always upgrade to polisy later if you like what you experience. 

[randyth]

2 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

At this time, you can purchase an Rpi to run polyglot V2 on right now and test out nodeservers you may want to use. This is a low cost way of checking things out without investing too much money. While UDI doesn't offer support for this method, you can always upgrade to polisy later if you like what you experience. 

Last I checked, the most recent Raspberry Pi OS doesn't support mongodb so you are unable to install PG2 on it. 

Update: I just verified that if you avoid the latest RPi OS and install the Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Legacy) port of Debian Buster instead instead, PG2 installs just fine (though you might have to follow these "SSL error" instructions to get it to start properly: https://github.com/UniversalDevicesInc/polyglot-v2#ssl-error-ee-key-too-small).

[matapan]

When Polisy eventually matures, it will be interesting to see what nodeservers are developed for it and how they are supported. ZWave may be the current migration path from Insteon. Personally, I’m unimpressed with the industrial design of thr ZWave devices I’ve seen online. In particular, there seems to be no real alternative to Insteon Keypadlincs. All the Zwave functional equivalents are so clunky.

To be frank, I’m curious to see what support, if any will evolve for Lutron products. Lutron has been around for a very long time. They make high quality, well engineered products. I haven’t seen any installations using Lutron product fail like Insteon products do, and their product industrial designs are tasteful. Having reliable hardware paired with a versatile home automation controller seems like a good combination. Lutron is not sold through retail channels though, except For their Caseta line. It’s hard to determine from a consumer perspective if Caseta devices are interoperable with any of their professional lines like Radio Ra3. 
 

Would Lutron support be offered by UDI if there was a lot of interest in it, or by a third party node server developer? Personally, I would feel more comfortable if UDI offered support for Lutron for the simple idea that it would be easier to deal with a single entity for something as significant as a lighting system over something minor like IR remote control device support rolled in the form of a node server, for example. The versatility of ISY with the Networking support provides users with some latitude to develop their own integration solutions if a nodeswrver solution wasn’t satisfactory.

[lilyoyo1]

10 hours ago, matapan said:

When Polisy eventually matures, it will be interesting to see what nodeservers are developed for it and how they are supported. ZWave may be the current migration path from Insteon. Personally, I’m unimpressed with the industrial design of thr ZWave devices I’ve seen online. In particular, there seems to be no real alternative to Insteon Keypadlincs. All the Zwave functional equivalents are so clunky.

To be frank, I’m curious to see what support, if any will evolve for Lutron products. Lutron has been around for a very long time. They make high quality, well engineered products. I haven’t seen any installations using Lutron product fail like Insteon products do, and their product industrial designs are tasteful. Having reliable hardware paired with a versatile home automation controller seems like a good combination. Lutron is not sold through retail channels though, except For their Caseta line. It’s hard to determine from a consumer perspective if Caseta devices are interoperable with any of their professional lines like Radio Ra3. 
 

Would Lutron support be offered by UDI if there was a lot of interest in it, or by a third party node server developer? Personally, I would feel more comfortable if UDI offered support for Lutron for the simple idea that it would be easier to deal with a single entity for something as significant as a lighting system over something minor like IR remote control device support rolled in the form of a node server, for example. The versatility of ISY with the Networking support provides users with some latitude to develop their own integration solutions if a nodeswrver solution wasn’t satisfactory.

All good questions. Caseta does not integrate with the RadioRa line. It uses the same app but that's about it. If you had both in your home, you'd have separate systems you'd need to log into. Using the Isy/polisy nodeservers, you could integrate them together but from the lutron side of things, they'd be separate. 

Lutron is bound (at least should be) higher quality than insteon being that you're looking at a 200+ dollar switch vs. 50. They can afford to use better components. Insteons quality has improved over the years however. 

Most likely (as with many if not most) a lutron nodeserver will be developed by a 3rd party developer. I understand your hesitation but reality is that there are too many products available for UDI to try and support alone. Not only they they have to take time to develop and test, they'd have to purchase the products to have in-house to verify it works and learn it's beaviors, etc.  

There's already been talk from a couple of developers about supporting Ra3 but that would depend on lutron releasing the API. I know one of the caseta nodeservers already supports LEAP so im confident Ra3 will come at some point. I know some of the bigger developers of nodeservers here are present and use the equipment they develop nodeservers for (I know 1 is a Lutron dealer/installer).

Personally, I don't care whether it's UDI or a 3rd party developer. With all that UDI has on their plate, adding to it only takes away from something else they could be working on. Having someone with the proper skills along with being a user themselves means a product that works great and the experience to help troubleshoot issues. 

[asbril]

6 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

All good questions. Caseta does not integrate with the RadioRa line. It uses the same app but that's about it. If you had both in your home, you'd have separate systems you'd need to log into. Using the Isy/polisy nodeservers, you could integrate them together but from the lutron side of things, they'd be separate. 

Lutron is bound (at least should be) higher quality than insteon being that you're looking at a 200+ dollar switch vs. 50. They can afford to use better components. Insteons quality has improved over the years however. 

Most likely (as with many if not most) a lutron nodeserver will be developed by a 3rd party developer. I understand your hesitation but reality is that there are too many products available for UDI to try and support alone. Not only they they have to take time to develop and test, they'd have to purchase the products to have in-house to verify it works and learn it's beaviors, etc.  

There's already been talk from a couple of developers about supporting Ra3 but that would depend on lutron releasing the API. I know one of the caseta nodeservers already supports LEAP so im confident Ra3 will come at some point. I know some of the bigger developers of nodeservers here are present and use the equipment they develop nodeservers for (I know 1 is a Lutron dealer/installer).

Personally, I don't care whether it's UDI or a 3rd party developer. With all that UDI has on their plate, adding to it only takes away from something else they could be working on. Having someone with the proper skills along with being a user themselves means a product that works great and the experience to help troubleshoot issues. 

Thanks @lilyoyo1 for your insight. If I were to start from scratch, I most likely would go for RA3, but I am sufficiently ok with my Zwave setup to stay away from replacing my whole system. However, I am keenly interested in a potential gradual upgrade once a well working nodeserver is in place.

[lilyoyo1]

12 minutes ago, asbril said:

Thanks @lilyoyo1 for your insight. If I were to start from scratch, I most likely would go for RA3, but I am sufficiently ok with my Zwave setup to stay away from replacing my whole system. However, I am keenly interested in a potential gradual upgrade once a well working nodeserver is in place.

You're welcome. I installed a few of the Sunnata dimmers in unused areas of the house. They're amazing. Using the same bulbs as I had with insteon (new and old) and the zooz zwave dimmer (for testing purposes) dimming is so much better. I can get more usable light out of the low trim level than i can from zooz and the new insteon. 

If you do decide to start upgrading, let me know

[Michel Kohanim]

@matapan,

In order to be part of Lutron partner network, we will have to manage everything in house. 

With kind regards,
Michel

[sjenkins]

@matapan,
In order to be part of Lutron partner network, we will have to manage everything in house. 
With kind regards,
Michel

I was wondering why I didn’t see you logo on their site when I knew “you” had a nodeserver. That’s too bad, Lutron would be a good one to continue to raise your profile.
I’m doing my part & installing a new Polisy at my friend’s place. I’m up to three now for the team!


SeJ

[Michel Kohanim]

@sjenkins,

That's precisely why we applied and currently under review.

With kind regards,
Michel

[lilyoyo1]

3 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@sjenkins,

That's precisely why we applied and currently under review.

With kind regards,
Michel

That would be awesome. Would be cool if you could sell the switches from your store as well. 

[sjenkins]

@sjenkins,
That's precisely why we applied and currently under review.
With kind regards,
Michel

No one ever called you a dummy


SeJ