Enabling Internet Access for ISY994i

[JGallombardo]

I have been using both an Insteon hub and UD ISY994i on my home network for about 5+ years now with many Insteon devices installed. Yesterday, as many of you know, Insteon shut down a large number of cloud servers which caused the Insteon hub to fail and I can no longer control my devices via Amazon Alexa or the Insteon app.  As such, I want to use my ISY994i instead, so I downloaded the MobiLinc Pro app for starters.  I cannot get the ISY994i hub to connect to the internet as I get a "Failed enabling internet access" error.  UPnP is enabled on my router. What am I missing? Goal is to use app and Alexa to gain control back of my devices.  The UD Admin console works fine on my laptop and able to control devices, so within my LAN, it's fine.

Thanks!

Jim

[MrBill]

Don't use the enable internet access option on the admin console menu.

Instead your best bet is to subscribe to the ISY portal.   It's less than a buck a month, and you can use it with mobilinc pro or the UD Mobile App.

If you insist you can open a port, but I don't think the "Enable Internet Access" option works with UPnP anymore.  UPnP kinda became unfavored in general a number of years ago.

[JGallombardo]

MrBill - thank you for that info.  As you recommended, I subscribed to the ISY portal and while I was at it, I manually updated my firmware from 4.90 to 5.0.16C.  Is there a reason why when I try to use the Admin console I can no longer log in as Admin?  I get a "Failed. Retry Authenticating" message.  I know my username and password are correct - just logged in prior to updating firmware when it was running 4.90.  I can now successfully control my devices using the UD Mobile app on my iPhone, but have not figured out why MobiLinc Connect does not work.  When I try to register my account, I get a "Failed to Register" error stating "Invalid UUID" but in the ISY UUID field the 12 character code is accurate.

[Javi]

8 minutes ago, JGallombardo said:

MrBill - thank you for that info.  As you recommended, I subscribed to the ISY portal and while I was at it, I manually updated my firmware from 4.90 to 5.0.16C.  Is there a reason why when I try to use the Admin console I can no longer log in as Admin?  I get a "Failed. Retry Authenticating" message.  I know my username and password are correct - just logged in prior to updating firmware when it was running 4.90.  I can now successfully control my devices using the UD Mobile app on my iPhone, but have not figured out why MobiLinc Connect does not work.  When I try to register my account, I get a "Failed to Register" error stating "Invalid UUID" but in the ISY UUID field the 12 character code is accurate.

Username and password are both reset to "admin" after upgrade from 4.x to 5.x

[MrBill]

23 minutes ago, JGallombardo said:

MrBill - thank you for that info.  As you recommended, I subscribed to the ISY portal and while I was at it, I manually updated my firmware from 4.90 to 5.0.16C.  Is there a reason why when I try to use the Admin console I can no longer log in as Admin?  I get a "Failed. Retry Authenticating" message.  I know my username and password are correct - just logged in prior to updating firmware when it was running 4.90.  I can now successfully control my devices using the UD Mobile app on my iPhone, but have not figured out why MobiLinc Connect does not work.  When I try to register my account, I get a "Failed to Register" error stating "Invalid UUID" but in the ISY UUID field the 12 character code is accurate.

As mentioned by @Javi credentials are reset to admin/admin during that v4 to v5 upgrade.

To further comment on the remeainder of your post Mobil Connect and the UDI portal are two competing portals and only one can be used at a time with the hardware.   Stick with the UD portal at my.isy.io for compatibility with both the UD portal AND mobilinc Pro.

[JGallombardo]

Thanks Javi and MrBill - thanks for the info on the Admin ID and pwd.  I didn't see that in the firmware upgrade notes.  MrBill - re Portal... I have listed Portal Integration - UDI  online and registered.  Active Services is also registered.  I don't understand the "Mobil Connect portal" statement.  Also, even though I added the ISY skill to Alexa and linked my account successfully, Alexa is not recognizing the devices in my ISY account.  And my MobiLinc Pro iPhone app is still not working.

[MrBill]

33 minutes ago, JGallombardo said:

Also, even though I added the ISY skill to Alexa and linked my account successfully, Alexa is not recognizing the devices in my ISY account. 

You probably need to add spoken's in the my.isy.io website.  See this wiki article: https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Portal_Amazon_Echo_Integration_V3

I'll have to give you mobilinc instructions later.... mines not set up with portal right now and I need to locate my notes.

[MrBill]

@JGallombardo

Mobilinc Pro via the ISY portal is very easy.

On the lighting controller page:

Secure https:// my.isy.io

Secure port 443

Username and Password are your Portal Credentials

Note:  due to the fact your portal credentials are used, you can't mix in a local connection on the same Profile.  You can create multiple Profiles in mobilinc however-- One for your local network using HTTP and one for access via the portal. 

In reality, I don't use mobilinc too much anymore, but it is handy for a few things but I always use just locally now.

[JGallombardo]

Thanks, MrBill... I was missing the secure https field and secure port.  I did add one of my devices in the myspoken and when I ask Alexa to turn it on or off it replies the skill is not enabled, however, I added the ISY skill and linked it successfully to my account.  I even disabled the ISY skill, enabled it and relinked my acct successfully.

[JGallombardo]

MrBill - I changed nothing since my last comment after disabling/re-enabling skill, tried it, didn't work. Tried it this morning and it worked. Go figure.

[JGallombardo]

Actually, I am still having issues with the "UD ISY Optimized for Smart Home V3" skill.  Alexa finds the devices and scenes, I have the spoken word to match, Alexa keeps returning "The skill linked with {device} is not enabled. Please enable the skill to control this device."  I keep checking and it is enabled and my account is linked successfully.  I have previously removed the Insteon skill to make sure there is no redundency.

Wow, this is frustrating!

[MrBill]

@JGallombardo  You may be experiencing problems with rate limits.  Amazon only allows so many API calls per minute, per hour, etc  disabling/enabling has been proven to eat alot of traffic.  It's more time consuming but I think it's better to delete and rediscover devices and scenes than disabling/reenabling the skill.  one of the problems with Alexa is they don't publish some of the rate limiting rules of the API, but it's designed to keep any user from using up all the resources, or getting stuck in a loop.

[JGallombardo]

@MrBill thanks for this - didn't know the Amazon API call limits.  Another thing I did which helped was I went into my alexa setup (https://alexa.amazon.com/), then Smarthome, then Devices and removed everything that was linked via my Insteon hub.  I also got rid of any groups that were defined in alexa.  I think the better way to go is to create scenes in ISY, now I'm battling with having alexa turn on/off all lights included in scenes.

[MrBill]

38 minutes ago, JGallombardo said:

I think the better way to go is to create scenes in ISY, now I'm battling with having alexa turn on/off all lights included in scenes.

ISY scenes are definitional greater than Alexa scenes!    I use Alexa only as an I/O device... all the controller type functions and grouping are done in the ISY.   Hint: you can also use programs in the ISY... for example "Alexa, goodbye" could run a program that turns off everything.