Controlling 3 out of 5 modules with Alexa

[CPrince]

We all know about the Insteon Hub. I started a discussion on this a while back; running the hub and ISY.  The consensus was ditch the hub and and let ISY do it all.  What is relay weird here is that my hub failed the day before the SmartHome pulled the plug!  So I am porting all my stuff over to ISY and have Alexa integration working.  Software is 5.3.  I have a few things that baffle me.

I have 4 dimmer modules in the living room and one no dimming wall switch. Their names are, Living room Left, Living Room Right, Living Room Corner, Living Room Reading and Living Room Fan.  Then I have dimming switch Dining Room.  Very seldom do I call the lights out individually.  But I do. These all work right now with ISY.  I know it is suggested not to name things this way.  With the hub I used to say Living Room 50, Living Room 40, Living Room Off/On, etc.  I don't remember how I did it.  In turn Living Room Left, Right and Dining Room would do their thing.  Ling Room Reading, Fan and Corner would not change.  How can I do this with ISY?

 

I also have a similar setup in the bedroom which I want to apply the solution too.

 

Why didn't they just sell the servers to some 3rd party that could charge a subscription for usage?

[MrBill]

16 hours ago, CPrince said:

How can I do this with ISY?

For devices in scenes that i want to be able to dim specifically via Alexa I use helper programs.  My helper programs have evolved since I originally wrote about this to take on some duties with Home Assistant, however a good place to start is this thread:

 

[CPrince]

@MrBill Thank you.  I actually found an easy way after repeatably beating my head against the wall.  Using the Alexa App, I put my 3 switches in a Group.  Done.  Now I will make a "Lights" Group, so I can turn off all the lights on the way out the door. I will finish reading your reply in a bit.  It has a lot of good info in it.

[MrBill]

2 hours ago, CPrince said:

@MrBill Thank you.  I actually found an easy way after repeatably beating my head against the wall.  Using the Alexa App, I put my 3 switches in a Group.  Done.  Now I will make a "Lights" Group, so I can turn off all the lights on the way out the door. I will finish reading your reply in a bit.  It has a lot of good info in it.

I just went back an re-read your question.  I may have misinterpreted it before, i thought you were asking about  dimming scene's with alexa, you really just wanted grouping.

[CPrince]

I just thought I would throw this is.  Groups in the Alexa App are nice.  I made a bedroom, living area and lights group.  All work well.

For the past 2 days I have continued to pound my head a against the wall as to why I can't say "Alexa, kitchen on" or off.  I can say Kitchen light, Kitchen lamp, freaking kitchen, but not kitchen.  Well Alexa took the opportunity to create a kitchen group.  Once I removed that group, I was able to say "Alexa, Kitchen on".  I have never used groups before.  I guess I could have added kitchen to the kitchen group, but I don't like unnecessary code.  For some reason my commands just seemed to work in the past with the hub.  Learn something every day.

[MrBill]

I'll counter that with, I try to keep all the magic in my local controller, using Alexa only a "dumb" I/O device.  In the beginning the only local controller was the ISY, then ISY got a brother Home Assistant.  In the end today it depends which controller has direct control of a device as to which controller get the automation or program or scene or grouping.

My son on the other hand.. has recently had to adopt Home Assistant as he was an Insteon hub user.  In sorting thru all the "stuff" he's bought and added to his house we find it difficult to make Home Assistant the brain or controller because some many of those "things" are "works with alexa" cloud accounts.  At his house Alexa is ending up being a co-controller again, because there are too many cloud only devices not supported by a home assistant integration.  When purchasing items he didn't make the connection between "cloud" vs "local" control.  Now after the insteon debacle he wishes his "stuff" had all local control, so that he could use Alexa as an I/O device only, retaining local control when the internet is off, alexa's down, or the company goes out of business.

[CPrince]

@MrBillI totally agree.  I have an old RemoteLink 2440 that looks like Dr. Will Robinson would have used in the 60's to control stuff when the internet is down.  Too bad Insteon did not make better remotes, like X10.  Those newer little ones are nice, but not practical.  I use Alexa  primarily for the voice commands.

I too bought a garage door opener and a dishwasher.  Both operate on yet another app.  I did not buy them for connectivity.  Connectivity came with them.  Fortunately I don't really care.  The garage door opener I bought because it has a battery backup.  I was told I need WiFi for access buttons.  I am like really?  What happens to WiFi when the power goes out?  I finally found a wired smart button/control panel to operate the door.  Now the door is fully automatic.  If I leave it open it closes in 10 minutes.  Yes, it is safe too.  I don't need for it to get any smarter.  As for the dishwasher; am I really going to start it when I am at grandma's house?

I haven't made up my mind on the blinds yet as I don't want another controller.  If I go z-wave, I can keep it in house.  I can go Zigbee but it would go to the cloud.  I have not tried HA as I can't find a Raspberry PI for less than the price of a laptop!

[MrBill]

19 minutes ago, CPrince said:

I use Alexa  primarily for the voice commands.

I use Alexa primarily for voice commands too.  My counter came with the fact that you were grouping in Alexa, which I suppose if the group only pertains to a voice command is fine.  If Alexa's not home then perhaps the group doesn't matter either.   I have a complicated method using helper programs that lets me set specific dim levels via alexa and also keeps Scenes/KPL buttons in sync.  But Alexa only knows of lights to set, I have a group called Living Room Lamps that in fact is just a helper program in the ISY that gives dimmer values to each of the 3 lamps as if they had been called out individually.

31 minutes ago, CPrince said:

As for the dishwasher; am I really going to start it when I am at grandma's house?

Some utilities now offer off peak discounts.  That is a case where automation could come into play... but why would having an automation platform be better than the time delay feature on the door of the dishwasher.... A human still needs to decide that it's full enough to need a cycle, they still need to add soap.   We haven't reach the point yet that dishwashers are smart enough to know how full they are, and be able to determine how many additional dishes might be coming at the next meal and determine if it's economic to run a cycle at X capacity.  Further unlike Rosie from the Jetson's, Alexa won't put the dishes away....

Garage door-wise mine do have a cloud dependency (MyQ) for control.  Pre-dating that tho there are other door sensors that are now-redundant but not bad to have, as I can at least be told if/when cloud control failed.

42 minutes ago, CPrince said:

I can go Zigbee but it would go to the cloud.

I have Zigbee shades with no cloud dependency... but they are also directly connected to HA.  Stay tuned tho, local zigbee will be coming to Polisy.  In fact I just passed a suggestion for expediting that to the powers that be.... we'll see if it works out.

46 minutes ago, CPrince said:

I have not tried HA as I can't find a Raspberry PI for less than the price of a laptop!

Pi's are hard to come by these days.  Check out the Home Assistant Yellow crowd sourced project.  It will be a couple months until they are shipped.  I ordered Yellow for the built in zigbee (eventually matter) component, and because it's eliminates the Micro SD card by including an NVMe SSD .  I already have HA running on a 4gb pi4 (with zigbee via ConBee2 and an add-on), for the upgrade I ordered the "Yellow Kit" and the compute module separately to get the 4GB option.

 I had the thought yesterday while typing another reply to you, that you would probably enjoy adding HA to your arsenal, it works great alongside ISY/Polisy, the HA Universal Devices Integration works fantastically well.