PG3 on Polisy

[macjeff]

this is direct from Michel at UDI but it was in December

54 minutes ago, dbwarner5 said:

@macjeff Am not sure what you mean by redoing the scenes. I did not have to do anything with my scenes. Only my programs that had elk or zwave in them. But I dont have any zwave devices in scenes. All the Insteon stuff, resources, variables, etc all came over seamlessly.

The zwave had some potential short cuts in that if an original zwave device Zwave1 was in node ZW006 and now zwave 1 was in ZW008, and Zwave2 device was in ZW006, I could do a find and replace in the programs: find Zwave 2 and replace with Zwave 1.  That worked great for a lot of it. 

I got the Zoos 700 for ~$28. Works great. No problems with it at all. Plugs into the back of the polisy.

1.   I ordered that dongle

2.-  I assume if I move things over and it does not work well that I could move back right?

3. -  do you use Alexa?  I assume you have to relink all the devices there

4.  This is directly from Michel at UDI  from December so maybe things changed

 

You can import programs and network resources. The only issue is the scenes.

 

With kind regards,

 

******************************

  Michel Kohanim

             CEO

 

[bpwwer]

11 hours ago, macjeff said:

4.  To update Polisy (and freebsd) I use SSH commands (sudo pkg upgrade) and not the GUI version in PG2 under the system menu or can I continue doing that.    And will this update everything (anything for pg2 and pg3 as well as freebsd)

5. So lets pick a nodeserver as example-  Jimbo WirelessTag.  I disable it in pg2 and install on pg3?  If I have issues with pg3 one can I go back to pg2 version until I get the issue resolved.  Everything is working well now (knock on wood) and I dont want to mess it up (fix what aint broke!!)

6. Question- My ISY is NOT on polisy and I dont plan on moving it any time soon  because I have a VERY complex setup (see screenshot) and it would take a lot to upgrade.  So assuming I stay with the hardware ISY, can I now have more than 25 nodeservers?  The nodeserver limit is fine now but as this expands to more and more devices 25 is not going to be enough.  Depending on your answer here, I may consider running a second ISY on polisy since pg3 supports it and move over some stuff.  My issue is some of the programs run other programs and having 2 ISY instances seems like it will be hard to manage what devices are on each one assuming you cant call commands from one ISY to another  (if so I would like to learn more)

7. When I back up Polisy do I have to run one backup from pg2 and one from Pg3?

8. Some nodeservers may never be ported to pg3 so I assume pg2 will be able to run for along time and its not going away anytime soon. 

9. Anything I missed and should know.

Some answers:

 

4. You should be able to use the GUI update.  Once the PG3 package is installed, it will update with the standard package update commands.

5. Yes. If you 'stop' the node server on PG2, and then install it on PG3 you could switch back if necessary. However, the PG3 install may or may not take over the existing nodes, that's going to depend on how the node server was designed and I suspect that most are NOT designed that way.   You can restore all the node servers (that exist) from a PG2 backup with PG3, but that's not perfect and you can't move one at a time.  There are plans to add the ability to take over nodes as a feature of PG3, but that feature hasn't been written yet.

6. The limit is in the ISY. A single ISY can only have 25 node servers.  

7. Yes, each is separate.

8. The goal is to port every node server to PG3 with the only exception being node servers that are specific to RPi hardware.  I.E. the GPIO node server and ones that work with bluetooth are the only ones I'm aware of that won't be ported.

9. Keep in mind that PG3 is currently just a pre-release.  There are a few areas that need work and it will be changing.  I'll make every effort to not break existing installations with new updates, but I can't guarantee that it won't happen.

[dbwarner5]

1 hour ago, macjeff said:

this is direct from Michel at UDI but it was in December

1.   I ordered that dongle

2.-  I assume if I move things over and it does not work well that I could move back right?

3. -  do you use Alexa?  I assume you have to relink all the devices there

4.  This is directly from Michel at UDI  from December so maybe things changed

 

 

2) not sure what or how that would work but probably

3) Yes. Look at my other post. I messed up in that I deleted my old isy UUID from the portal BEFORE I transferred the Alexa stuff so I had to recreate it all. Luckily I had downloaded a copy of my SPokens. In the Portal, there is a migrate option that will move the Alexa stuff from one UUId to another. 

[jkosharek]

I am running these nodes in PG2:

AmbientWeather
BondBridge
HoneywellHome
Hue
ISY-Inventory
Kasa
Push
Sonos
WirelessTag
udi-sonos-poly

Would I be able to backup PG 2 and restore to PG 3?

I am also looking to replace my old home alarm and was going to go ELK and get the ELK Module, but since that is going away when I move ISY to the POLISY, should I be looking at another Alarm brand?

How is the performance on the ELK node server compared to the ELK Module? 

[dbwarner5]

On 2/4/2022 at 3:56 PM, jkosharek said:

 

Would I be able to backup PG 2 and restore to PG 3?

I am also looking to replace my old home alarm and was going to go ELK and get the ELK Module, but since that is going away when I move ISY to the POLISY, should I be looking at another Alarm brand?

How is the performance on the ELK node server compared to the ELK Module? 

PG3 is still being perfected. Am not sure how well the conversion of each of those nodes would go or if they are even available on PG3 yet. 

Elk on pg3 works very well, but there are some bugs still being worked out. 

Have you ever seen this: https://konnected.io

I installed this device in a second home and it works great. This is a fabulous inexpensive product and upgrade of old alarm systems.

Not sure if anyone has looked into a node server for it though. I use SmartThings at the second home.

[Goose66]

The BondBridge PG3 nodeserver (now just "Bond") is currently in the works. However, I don't know how well the backup and restore is going to work. The new API for Bond uses 16 digit device IDs instead of 8, and while any existing devices registered in your Bond Bridge will continue to utilize 8 digit IDs, the nodeserver itself has to be changed to get a valid node address from 16 digit device IDs, which may end up changing the node address for nodes representing existing devices. Does this means that restoring a backup from PG2 into PG3 won't work? Answer is I won't know, and it won't be something I will be able to test.

I know I (and I can assume others) are taking the opportunity in converting nodeservers to PG3 to make some foundational improvements as well as doing some standardization across nodeservers developed over a span of years. This may result in subtle changes in the way existing nodeservers work that could cause a restored PG2 backup to be non-functional. I would think a better course of action would be to systematically delete your PG2 nodeservers from the PG2 Dashboard and then spin up a fresh install of the corresponding nodeserver on PG3 into the same slot number. That way, the nodeserver installation is consistent and the ISY has the updated profile, but all of your programs and scenes should still hopefully work, with only minor changes potentially required.

[bpwwer]

For a restore from PG2 to work the PG3 node server must have the same name.  If the name is different, it won't work as there is no way to map an old name to a new name.  Also, you must have a valid license for the PG3 version.  That means that from the node server store listing, the node server must show that you can "Install" it.  The restore process won't try to purchase the node server.  And lastly, it will carry over the custom parameters from PG2 to PG3, but as @Goose66said, many PG3 version may use different custom parameters, in which case you'd have to reconfigure the PG3 version after the restore.

[mbking]

@bpwwer,

If I copy all the contents of the PG3 folder on Polisy to a remote machine, my Mac, before updating PG3, can I copy that folder content back to Polisy to revert back to a working copy of PG3 and my node servers assuming a new update causes issues?  Recognizing this is Alpha software, it would be nice to be able to revert back easily to a working version until any issues with an update get resolved.  I've moved all my node servers to PG3 except one and they are working quite well and this gives me the opportunity to participate in testing, etc..  But the update from 3.0.39 to 3.0.40 was a wake up call that this is Alpha software and updates can go wrong.  All that said, kudos to getting it fixed so quickly!

Mark

[jkosharek]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:20 AM, dbwarner5 said:

PG3 is still being perfected. Am not sure how well the conversion of each of those nodes would go or if they are even available on PG3 yet. 

Elk on pg3 works very well, but there are some bugs still being worked out. 

Have you ever seen this: https://konnected.io

I installed this device in a second home and it works great. This is a fabulous inexpensive product and upgrade of old alarm systems.

Not sure if anyone has looked into a node server for it though. I use SmartThings at the second home.

I would be looking at $1800 ish to replace my config with ELK, which I am not excited about but feel like there are better options out there for the money. https://konnected.io/ looks promising, but my goal is to have all my alarm sensor data on my ISY in close to real time and there isn't a node even started for it yet. 

I see a couple of Node available ELK (PG2 & PG3), EnvisaLink-DSC (PG2), EnvisaLink-HW (PG2) but seems there isn't much for options.

[mmb]

On 2/4/2022 at 1:56 PM, jkosharek said:

I am also looking to replace my old home alarm and was going to go ELK and get the ELK Module, but since that is going away when I move ISY to the POLISY, should I be looking at another Alarm brand?

@jkosharek I'm curious to know what you are using now for home alarm?

[jkosharek]

57 minutes ago, mmb said:

@jkosharek I'm curious to know what you are using now for home alarm?

It's an old Vista 20P panel (I believe) with 16 channels with all hard wired door, window, glass break, motion sensors, and 4 keypads. It's all working now. If I could get an interface to work with this panel that has a node server, I wouldn't change the panel. 

Edited February 8, 2022 by jkosharek

[bpwwer]

1 hour ago, mbking said:

@bpwwer,

If I copy all the contents of the PG3 folder on Polisy to a remote machine, my Mac, before updating PG3, can I copy that folder content back to Polisy to revert back to a working copy of PG3 and my node servers assuming a new update causes issues?  Recognizing this is Alpha software, it would be nice to be able to revert back easily to a working version until any issues with an update get resolved.  I've moved all my node servers to PG3 except one and they are working quite well and this gives me the opportunity to participate in testing, etc..  But the update from 3.0.39 to 3.0.40 was a wake up call that this is Alpha software and updates can go wrong.  All that said, kudos to getting it fixed so quickly!

Mark

The PG3 folder holds the database, the installed node servers, and the log files.  PG3 itself is in a different location, /var/polyglot/node_modules which is where the program and all the library modules it needs are installed.

In most cases, it's the database that causes the issues.  Because of the database engine being used (sqlite3), some changes require removing, recreating, and then restoring the content of a table.  If this process fails, there isn't a good way to try and recover.  I've made it a more robust in the current version and changes are rare (only two or three in the past 40 releases).   The process does backup the database before it attempts to make changes, so even in this case, recovery simply meant replacing the corrupted database with the backup and restarting using the new version.

But to answer your question, yes backing up everything and restoring it would work.

[jkosharek]

On 2/7/2022 at 10:22 AM, Goose66 said:

The BondBridge PG3 nodeserver (now just "Bond") is currently in the works. However, I don't know how well the backup and restore is going to work. The new API for Bond uses 16 digit device IDs instead of 8, and while any existing devices registered in your Bond Bridge will continue to utilize 8 digit IDs, the nodeserver itself has to be changed to get a valid node address from 16 digit device IDs, which may end up changing the node address for nodes representing existing devices. Does this means that restoring a backup from PG2 into PG3 won't work? Answer is I won't know, and it won't be something I will be able to test.

I know I (and I can assume others) are taking the opportunity in converting nodeservers to PG3 to make some foundational improvements as well as doing some standardization across nodeservers developed over a span of years. This may result in subtle changes in the way existing nodeservers work that could cause a restored PG2 backup to be non-functional. I would think a better course of action would be to systematically delete your PG2 nodeservers from the PG2 Dashboard and then spin up a fresh install of the corresponding nodeserver on PG3 into the same slot number. That way, the nodeserver installation is consistent and the ISY has the updated profile, but all of your programs and scenes should still hopefully work, with only minor changes potentially required.

I see that you are also developing the EnvisaLink-HW Node. My panel is a Honeywell Vista Panels Vista20P (Safewatch Pro 3000) and was looking at the EnvisaLink EVL-4EZR for $109 to connect it to the ISY rather than going the ELK route for $1,800. Would the EnvisaLink-HW Node give me all my alarm zones and sensors in my ISY similar to an ELK node?

[Goose66]

1 hour ago, jkosharek said:

I see that you are also developing the EnvisaLink-HW Node. My panel is a Honeywell Vista Panels Vista20P (Safewatch Pro 3000) and was looking at the EnvisaLink EVL-4EZR for $109 to connect it to the ISY rather than going the ELK route for $1,800. Would the EnvisaLink-HW Node give me all my alarm zones and sensors in my ISY similar to an ELK node?

The Vista 20P with Envisalink is exactly what was used to develop the nodeserver. It does give you the ability to arm, disarm, and monitor the status of your partitions, bypass zones, toggle the door chime, etc. It also gives you a status for each zone, but the zone status is probably not as reliable (or timely) as the DSC (and I assume Elk) panels provide.

With DSC panels, the nodeserver gets a specific message from the panel every time a zone opens and another specific message when the zone closes again, along with other messages that flow from these conditions (alarming, partition not ready, etc.). In the Honeywell panel, while you get a general message that the status of one of the zones has changed when a zone is opened, it doesn't identify which zone and you really never get a specific indication of when the zone goes closed again. So the nodeserver implements a "smartzonetracking" feature where it will use other status messages, such as zone bypassed and partition ready, to try and divine the status of the individual zones. I certainly wouldn't tie any fail-safe decisions to the zone status in the HW nodeserver, but to have it turn on and off lights and stuff like that would be OK.

[Goose66]

I believe there is a small number of folks that use the HW EnvisaLink nodeserver in "production." You may want to PM @bgrubb1 and see what he thinks. 

[jkosharek]

6 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

The Vista 20P with Envisalink is exactly what was used to develop the nodeserver. It does give you the ability to arm, disarm, and monitor the status of your partitions, bypass zones, toggle the door chime, etc. It also gives you a status for each zone, but the zone status is probably not as reliable (or timely) as the DSC (and I assume Elk) panels provide.

With DSC panels, the nodeserver gets a specific message from the panel every time a zone opens and another specific message when the zone closes again, along with other messages that flow from these conditions (alarming, partition not ready, etc.). In the Honeywell panel, while you get a general message that the status of one of the zones has changed when a zone is opened, it doesn't identify which zone and you really never get a specific indication of when the zone goes closed again. So the nodeserver implements a "smartzonetracking" feature where it will use other status messages, such as zone bypassed and partition ready, to try and divine the status of the individual zones. I certainly wouldn't tie any fail-safe decisions to the zone status in the HW nodeserver, but to have it turn on and off lights and stuff like that would be OK.

I really only want to use the status of door & motion sensors to control other devices within the ISY or IoP ecosystem. 

So it sounds like I should look for a used DSC panel and get the EVL-4EZR. Do you know if the DUO™ IP/LTE (https://www.eyezon.com/duo.php) is the same thing as it relates to the HW EnvisaLink nodeserver?

[Goose66]

3 hours ago, jkosharek said:

So it sounds like I should look for a used DSC panel and get the EVL-4EZR. Do you know if the DUO™ IP/LTE (https://www.eyezon.com/duo.php) is the same thing as it relates to the HW EnvisaLink nodeserver?

I think a DSC panel would be better - yes. But you have to replace all of your keypads as well. Looks like the DUO from Eyezon has the Envisalink functionality plus an LTE modem, so it should work with the nodeservers (HW or DSC).

[jkosharek]

46 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

I think a DSC panel would be better - yes. But you have to replace all of your keypads as well. Looks like the DUO from Eyezon has the Envisalink functionality plus an LTE modem, so it should work with the nodeservers (HW or DSC).

Probably, I went ahead and picked up the EVL-4EZR and will play with the Honeywell panel and see how it works, then decide if I should upgrade to a DSC panel and keypads. Thank you for your help and work on the nodeserver. 

[btreinders]

I am about to convert to ISY on Polisy and I was unaware of PG2 being deprecated until I saw it on the ISY finder listed that way.

My issues with all of this is the lack of an easy way to convert (Z wave, ELK module, network resources, etc...) and then I find out that the new node servers (the reason I bought the Polisy I thought) now will cost more money.  I am not saying all the hard work is not worth it and that the developers do not deserve it but I run about 10 node servers and already 2 of them are $30 a piece and one is a yearly subscription.  So I paid around $400 for the polisy, another $50 for the z wave stick, and now I might have the potential to spend over $300 more on node servers?  There really should be notes when buying a Polisy about the extra expense you might incur if you want to move the ISY to it (which why would you not want to since just the speed of loading programs in the AC alone is awesome), especially when I already bought the ELK module once.   I mean what is the incentive to move to PG3 if the node server on PG2 is free but costs $30 on PG3?  Will the PG2 node servers still get updates? If we are getting more goodness then it is worth it I guess but right now all of this is very hard.  For $300 I would want to press one upgrade button and have it all done automatically.  Sorry for the rant but I am in he middle of this conversion and it is really annoying and I haven't even begun to change all the ELK programs which I won't have voice anymore apparently.  

One good thing I found, since I have Smartthings as the primary Z Wave controller I was able to just shift all the devices to the Polisy and only have to rename them back to what they were.

I really do appreciate UD and this forum for all the hard work they do. 

[Jimbo.Automates]

PG3 ELK has speak as of last night. PG2 version will not be enhanced any further. I debated on the price a lot, but instead of doing a low recurring payments I opted for a little higher one time price. This cost will likely never be enough to actually make the time spent worth it, but it's nice to get a little bit for the hundreds of hours spent developing them not to mention time spent supporting users as best I can. 

[btreinders]

@Jimbo  Thanks!  Really appreciate it!

[dbwarner5]

13 hours ago, Jimbo said:

PG3 ELK has speak as of last night. 

@jimbo. YEAH!!!  Thanks

[bpwwer]

15 hours ago, btreinders said:

I am about to convert to ISY on Polisy and I was unaware of PG2 being deprecated until I saw it on the ISY finder listed that way.

One of the reasons PG2 is being deprecated is because of support issues, or lack there of.  The main developer of PG2 has stopped supporting it, many of the node servers are currently unsupported because the developers don't have the time to support them for free. 

PG2 and most of the node servers have an open source license and the source code for them is readily available so if anyone wants to maintain and support them, they are free to do so.   It is just the support from UDI that will be going away eventually.

UDI has no control over the individual pricing of node servers.  Developers are just starting to figure out what that should look like.

I'm a bit surprised that most prices are as low as they are. There are other Home Automation environments were similar components start at about $30 and most are more.

Sorry this came out a bit defensive, I wasn't trying to be.  Just wanted to address some of your concerns which are always welcome.

[btreinders]

56 minutes ago, bpwwer said:

One of the reasons PG2 is being deprecated is because of support issues, or lack there of.  The main developer of PG2 has stopped supporting it, many of the node servers are currently unsupported because the developers don't have the time to support them for free. 

PG2 and most of the node servers have an open source license and the source code for them is readily available so if anyone wants to maintain and support them, they are free to do so.   It is just the support from UDI that will be going away eventually.

UDI has no control over the individual pricing of node servers.  Developers are just starting to figure out what that should look like.

I'm a bit surprised that most prices are as low as they are. There are other Home Automation environments were similar components start at about $30 and most are more.

Sorry this came out a bit defensive, I wasn't trying to be.  Just wanted to address some of your concerns which are always welcome.

Thank you for the information!  I really do appreciate all the hard work of the people in this forum and UD people.  I am just frustrated with the amount of work it is taking to convert to Polisy.  I don't have any issues with paying for these node servers it was just a surprise to me and was unexpected since they have always been free.  I wish there was a way to let people know about the future when they decide to start depending on the node servers.  And if the node servers cost money why aren't you charging for PG3 as well?   I hope you are getting paid for all of this somehow.

[bpwwer]

1 hour ago, btreinders said:

I wish there was a way to let people know about the future when they decide to start depending on the node servers.  And if the node servers cost money why aren't you charging for PG3 as well?   I hope you are getting paid for all of this somehow.

We've tried to communicate all along that one of the big changes for PG3 was designing things so third party developers could get compensated for the work creating node servers.  

As to why PG3 is free, I suspect it's for the same reason the ISY software is free, but that's something @Michel Kohanimwould have to answer. 

I do understand the pain of migrating.  I haven't put much effort into mitigating that yet as PG3 is still being developed and I've been working to get a lot of basic functionality and bugs resolved.  Documentation and tools to ease migration have been low on the priority list.