Questions about migrating to Polisy

[TriLife]

Greetings!

Thanks to all of your efforts, I seem to have a path to migrating my 994 to Polisy.

Before I embark on this project, I'd like to get some clarity though.

The Set-Up:

1- my Polisy is one of the first ones, i signed up for it before they were shipping.

2- I have an ISY with a Z-Wave dongle AND and Elk dongle (Elk M1)

3- about 100 Tasmota flashed Sonoff switches controlled by the Polisy MQTT NS

4- About 20 Aeotec Z-Wave multisensory, which currently are controlled by the 994. These sensors are sitting at 15ft elevation, powered by USB 5V.

5- Google Home Assistant for everything! There are no switches in the house!

I also have an Aeotec Z-Wave dongle, Gen5.

 

Now a few questions:

1- can I use that Gen5 Z-Wave dongle or should I just order a new 700 series unit, as recommended in the instructions? Any way to test that?

2- there are 4 pages of instructions there. At what point do I get to a point of no return? Or can the IoP coexist with my current setup with the 994? As I mentioned there are no switches in the house, so either with hey Google or with with the UD app I will need to be up and running before sunset... Or else my wife will have a word with me. She loves the home automation when it works. When it doesn't.........

3- that brings up another point, since I have a very old Polisy: adding ISY to the Polisy by itself will not crash the rest of the system, correct?

I'm an occasional user, and if things don't work smoothly, my troubleshooting skills are limited. @Michel Kohanim had to bail me out more than once, from SoCal, via Lake Tahoe into the Polisy sitting in Colombia... 

Thanks for understanding

Cheers.

 

[Geddy]

@TriLife - I split your post out of where you had it for hopes of getting some individual attention. You bring up a lot of questions and ideas that are more specific to your system rather then general migration path topics. 

My only suggestion is don't try to migrate to Polisy or IoP with a deadline in mind. It will never fail that something will cause you strife and perhaps delay your enjoyment. 

As for the z-wave specific question I think others with more experience of the process will be better able to answer your question. Perhaps others have their own take on #2 and 3 questions as well, but my thoughts...

23 minutes ago, TriLife said:

At what point do I get to a point of no return? Or can the IoP coexist with my current setup with the 994?

I don't know "the point of no return", but YES, IoP and current 994 can operate at the same time. HOWEVER, controlling the same devices from two devices will be an issue (i.e. don't do it). I have 100% Insteon and still have it on ISY994i, but have IoP running just for testing and review of PG3 node servers. I'm waiting for family to take a vacation for me to make the switch to IoP where I have several days to make sure any kinks are worked out. (that and my system works as is...I'm a little worried about breaking it, but it might finally be time soon)

The only "what if" on this...if you're currently using the Polisy with PG2 (polyglot v2) node servers and you try to update the Polisy to get PG3 and IoP running. You could run into issues...see below...

26 minutes ago, TriLife said:

3- that brings up another point, since I have a very old Polisy: adding ISY to the Polisy by itself will not crash the rest of the system, correct?

There were reports of a chip issue in some very early versions of the Polisy. I don't specifically know if there's a batch that @Michel Kohanim could identify as having a problem for sure or not, but it might be worth either opening a support ticket with UDI just to check if your unit has the chip in question. Otherwise, keeping everything off the Polisy and just setting it up and getting it updated and current you'll know if/when it has issues. Make sure you're checking the ISY Wiki for the Polisy User Guide and watch for the 3rd light problem.

Hope that helps. Perhaps others can now see this better and chime in with additional assistance.

 

[Techman]

First you should upgrade your Polisy to the 5.4.4 firmware

After the upgrade you'll see an option to upgrade your bios, which you should do.

There's no migration option for Z-wave from the ISY to the Polisy. You'll have to exclude your Z-wave devices from the ISY then Include them in the Polisy. Keep track of any programs that include Z-wave devices as you'll have to manually update them.

The Polisy only supports the Z-wave 700 dongle. About September UDI will be releasing a new internal Z-wave board with numerous new features that are not currently available with the external Z-wave 700 dongle. 

Be sure to first read the Support thread for ISY on Polisy for updated info.

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Techman

[TriLife]

Thanks @Geddy and @Techman;

Most useful information. I submitted a ticket. Let's see, what UD says.

I now have ISY Version 5.3.0 on the 994. Is there really a need to upgrade to 5.3.4. if I'm going to retire the ISY 994? Haven't done any changes on Polisy, pending feedback from @Michel Kohanim.

With Techman's comment about my zwave dongle, the whole spiel is on hold anyway. Living in Colombia anything that I can't get here via Amazon takes more than a month and is supremely expensive in shipping costs. Aeotec and ZOOZ have the 700 series dongle on Amazon, but it won't ship to Colombia. go figure...

To be continued...

Cheers

Edited June 8, 2022 by TriLife
give credit to Geddy and Techman. The @ didn't work initially

[Geddy]

@TriLife first on the ISY994 upgrade to 5.3.4…there were minor updates through the steps, but probably nothing major and since you seem to be running fine it might be okay to stay where you are.  Read the release post for 5.3.4 and maybe prior releases to see if any issues you might have might be fixed. While I would typically say yes, it’s more difficult given your location as to if you would notice any difference. I assume you have the 500 series controller since you’re up to 5.3.0.  Read the release posts and see what you think might help your setup.   
 

There is a recent post from @Michel Kohanim that UD is developing hardware for the Polisy for Z-wave and Matter. It will be released later this year. If might be worth waiting for that board to be relegated for your use (as you say given location and difficulty to get z-wave 700 dongle.  
 

[TriLife]

1 minute ago, Geddy said:

@TriLife first on the ISY994 upgrade to 5.3.4…there were minor updates through the steps, but probably nothing major and since you seem to be running fine it might be okay to stay where you are.  Read the release post for 5.3.4 and maybe prior releases to see if any issues you might have might be fixed. While I would typically say yes, it’s more difficult given your location as to if you would notice any difference. I assume you have the 500 series controller since you’re up to 5.3.0.  Read the release posts and see what you think might help your setup.   
 

There is a recent post from @Michel Kohanim that UD is developing hardware for the Polisy for Z-wave and Matter. It will be released later this year. If might be worth waiting for that board to be relegated for your use (as you say given location and difficulty to get z-wave 700 dongle.  
 

Thanks @Geddy;

Yes, I do have the 500 series dongle.

Let's see, what UD says about my Polisy and the new dongle. I'm willing to wait if it makes sense, that's for sure.

My only worry is about the reception of a built-in dongle. I have a 6,000sqf home with poured and  reninforced concrete walls. I put my 994 with built in 500 Z-Wave module 10' off the ground, so it can seek through the glass that sits above those concrete walls and below the steel roof. All zwave sensors are literally line of sight. With a built-in z-wave module inside the Polisy, I may have to move that whole thing to 10'. Doable but MPITA.

Cheers

[Geddy]

@TriLife z-wave 700 has much better range. I don’t know about getting through such construction, but from the board it should be better.  
 

 

[Techman]

If you have Insteon devices on the ISY that you intend to migrate over to the Polisy then it's recommended that you update the ISY firmware to 5.3.4 prior to migrating.

If you're only using Z-wave devices, then it's a moot issue.

It's possible with the upcoming new UDI Z-wave board, that should be released about September, that it may include a migration option from the ISY 500 to the Polisy 700. Taking that into consideration I would wait the few months to see if those options materialize.

[TriLife]

15 minutes ago, Geddy said:

@TriLife z-wave 700 has much better range. I don’t know about getting through such construction, but from the board it should be better.  
 

 

Thanks @Geddy; @Michel Kohanim just informed me that the 700 dongle will have an EXTERNAL antenna. I'm sold!!! will wait for it. Much cleaner implementation than a Polisy sitting above the clouds?

11 minutes ago, Techman said:

If you have Insteon devices on the ISY that you intend to migrate over to the Polisy then it's recommended that you update the ISY firmware to 5.3.4 prior to migrating.

If you're only using Z-wave devices, then it's a moot issue.

It's possible with the upcoming new UDI Z-wave board, that should be released about September, that it may include a migration option from the ISY 500 to the Polisy 700. Taking that into consideration I would wait the few months to see if those options materialize.

Thanks @Techman, please see above. If the migration path exists as well, that's even better! 

And no, no Insteon. A friend talked me out of that and into Z-wave about 6 years ago. Foresight??? Although most of my devices are WiFi based Sonoff now (Tasmota/MQTT) - 100 and growing and only 20 or so Z-Wave...

Cheers;

[Bumbershoot]

@TriLife, one more thing about the early Polisy machines: I got one of those, and OS image that was burned to the storage media was set up with only 4GB of file storage.  I had to send mine back to UDI to have another OS image flashed onto the storage media.  If you're familiar with secure shell and know how to log into your Polisy using it, then run this command at the command line:

df -h

You should get output that looks something like this:

[admin@polisy ~]$ df -h
Filesystem           Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
zudi/ROOT/default     24G    2.1G     22G     8%    /
devfs                1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
procfs               4.0K    4.0K      0B   100%    /proc
zudi/var/isy          10G     18M     10G     0%    /var/isy
zudi/var/empty        22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/empty
zudi/tmp              22G     29K     22G     0%    /tmp
zudi/var/crash        22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/crash
zudi/usr/home         22G     37K     22G     0%    /usr/home
zudi                  22G     24K     22G     0%    /zudi
zudi/var/log          22G    507K     22G     0%    /var/log
zudi/var/tmp          22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/tmp
zudi/var/run          22G     42K     22G     0%    /var/run
zudi/var/db           22G    166M     22G     1%    /var/db
zudi/var/db/pkg       22G     11M     22G     0%    /var/db/pkg
zudi/var/polyglot     10G    432M    9.6G     4%    /var/polyglot

If you only see 4G available in 'zudi/ROOT/default', then you're going to need some assistance from UDI.

[TriLife]

7 hours ago, Bumbershoot said:

@TriLife, one more thing about the early Polisy machines: I got one of those, and OS image that was burned to the storage media was set up with only 4GB of file storage.  I had to send mine back to UDI to have another OS image flashed onto the storage media.  If you're familiar with secure shell and know how to log into your Polisy using it, then run this command at the command line:

df -h

You should get output that looks something like this:

[admin@polisy ~]$ df -h
Filesystem           Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
zudi/ROOT/default     24G    2.1G     22G     8%    /
devfs                1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
procfs               4.0K    4.0K      0B   100%    /proc
zudi/var/isy          10G     18M     10G     0%    /var/isy
zudi/var/empty        22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/empty
zudi/tmp              22G     29K     22G     0%    /tmp
zudi/var/crash        22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/crash
zudi/usr/home         22G     37K     22G     0%    /usr/home
zudi                  22G     24K     22G     0%    /zudi
zudi/var/log          22G    507K     22G     0%    /var/log
zudi/var/tmp          22G     24K     22G     0%    /var/tmp
zudi/var/run          22G     42K     22G     0%    /var/run
zudi/var/db           22G    166M     22G     1%    /var/db
zudi/var/db/pkg       22G     11M     22G     0%    /var/db/pkg
zudi/var/polyglot     10G    432M    9.6G     4%    /var/polyglot

If you only see 4G available in 'zudi/ROOT/default', then you're going to need some assistance from UDI.

Thanks for the  @Bumbershoot;

just checked:

Filesystem           Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
zudi/ROOT/default     25G    2.3G     22G     9%    /

Looks like I'm good there.

Cheers

[TriLife]

I'm chomping at the bit to get this migration started.

Seems the UDI dongle is not yet available.

Browsing through all of your very helpful past posts, I'm wondering, if I can move everything from the ISY to IoP, except the Z-wave (all the Z-wave sensors).

Is that possible? ELK seems logical. But how to separate all the programs from the the Z-Wave...

Cheers.

[asbril]

The Zooz Zwave dongle 700 is available on Amazon. It is the one that I (and many) use with Polisy and in the past few days I completed my migration from ISY to Polisy and removed the ISY from my setup.

[TriLife]

3 hours ago, asbril said:

The Zooz Zwave dongle 700 is available on Amazon. It is the one that I (and many) use with Polisy and in the past few days I completed my migration from ISY to Polisy and removed the ISY from my setup.

Thanks Asbril,

A couple of reasons, why I'm waiting for the UDI dongle:

1- future support for Matter

2- separate antenna connection

3- I like the idea of having the hardware hidden inside the Polisy. Looks cleaner.

4- financially supporting UDI, who support me in my home automation journey...

That gets me back to the question, if i can migrate everything but Z-Wave away from ISY to IoP...

Cheers. 

[asbril]

1 hour ago, TriLife said:

Thanks Asbril,

A couple of reasons, why I'm waiting for the UDI dongle:

1- future support for Matter

2- separate antenna connection

3- I like the idea of having the hardware hidden inside the Polisy. Looks cleaner.

4- financially supporting UDI, who support me in my home automation journey...

That gets me back to the question, if i can migrate everything but Z-Wave away from ISY to IoP...

Cheers. 

I fully agree all your points (*). I bought my dongle when Polisy was announced and before UDI had these for sale.

If I understand the paths of development, you want to skip Polisy and go straight to Eisy. That makes sense.

(*) I personally like the USB dongle, so that it would (should) be easy to upgrade when the 800 dongle comes out. My assumption is that UD would be able to upgrade Polisy/Eidy to 800 with a firmware update.

[TriLife]

20 hours ago, asbril said:

If I understand the paths of development, you want to skip Polisy and go straight to Eisy. That makes sense.

Hello Asbril,

That wasn't quite my intention. I wanted to migrate ISY to my Polisy PRO, initially all the non Z-Wave items, while waiting for the UDI Z-Wave dongle.

Hence, my original, still unanwered question: Can I migrate everything from ISY to IoP, except the Z-wave for now?

But now you bring up Eisy, which was news to me. I just found a thread on it here:

This obviously begs the huuuuge question:

What is the difference between Polisy and Eisy?

If I already have a Polisy, should I upgrade to Eisy?

If I'm a developer (budding, very budding!), should I go straight to Eisy developing, or stick with Polisy, or do they work the same?

Cheers.

[Geddy]

@TriLife 

27 minutes ago, TriLife said:

Can I migrate everything from ISY to IoP, except the Z-wave for now?

Yes...well...I believe you can, it should be possible. Are you going to leave z-wave items on the ISY994? Also, since you are going to be removing the PLM from the ISY994 you should change the firmware on the ISY994 to the non-PLM version so if/when you log into the admin console it's not showing being in "safe mode" because there's no PLM connected. You can find the different firmware in the release threads. 

Basically, the Polisy would run PG3 and IoP. You would enable Insteon support on the IoP and then follow the migration process in the wiki (Polisy User Guide). 

Once you got all the Insteon devices moved over you should then reset the ISY994 with the non-plm firmware. I don't use Z-wave so can't help with the process there. I'm not sure if there's a way to backup just z-wave and then just restore that to the new firmware on the ISY994 or if you would have to set everything up again. I know @lilyoyo1 and @asbril more proficient with z-wave that they might be able to answer that specific process. 

 

32 minutes ago, TriLife said:

What is the difference between Polisy and Eisy?

There is still little known about the eisy. That's just been a few posts from UDI about that and think it's a new device that will work just like the Polisy. It seems that Polisy and eisy will maintain some similar support for the time being. PG3 is still the route that development appears to be going. It's so new that I doubt it would make a major course change at this point. (All just speculation...I don't know...I'm just a user like most of us here!)

So I'd say stick with the Polisy since you have it in hand. Keep learning to develop for PG3. If you're in the UDI developer system then you have all the tools needed to keep current as Polisy and eisy are available and as PG3 continues to advance.

 

 

[bpwwer]

24 minutes ago, TriLife said:

Hence, my original, still unanwered question: Can I migrate everything from ISY to IoP, except the Z-wave for now?

Yes, but... the ISY and IoP don't really communicate state between them.  So while the ISY can continue to manage z-wave devices having them interact with other devices (scenes, programs, etc.) on the IoP isn't going to work.  Given what you posted about your setup initially, I don't think you want to try and do this.  

I haven't read through everything about, but it sounds like you're trying to decide if you should spend the money on a z-wave stick for the Polisy now or wait for the new UDI z-wave dongle.  

My question is, what is compelling you to want to migrate now (as opposed to waiting a few months)?  Is there something specific that IoP will solve now that the ISY isn't able to do?

33 minutes ago, TriLife said:

This obviously begs the huuuuge question:

What is the difference between Polisy and Eisy?

If I already have a Polisy, should I upgrade to Eisy?

If I'm a developer (budding, very budding!), should I go straight to Eisy developing, or stick with Polisy, or do they work the same?

Cheers.

The big difference between Polisy and Eisy is performance.  There are some I/O differences as well but those will really only effect limited use cases.

For node server development, there should be very little difference.  Node server development doesn't typically run into performance limitations on the Polisy.

Just for reference. For doing PG3 development, the UI build takes about 5 minutes on a Polisy and I expect that to improve by at least 10x on an Eisy.

[TriLife]

2 minutes ago, Geddy said:

Once you got all the Insteon devices moved over you should then reset the ISY994 with the non-plm firmware

Thanks @Geddy,

I already run ISY994 on non-PLM firmware, as I do not have any Insteon devices. I only have the ELK, a bunch of Tasmota/Sonoffs (already on Polisy with MQTT) and two dozen Z-Wave devices.

ELK seems relatively straightforward.

5 minutes ago, Geddy said:

So I'd say stick with the Polisy since you have it in hand. Keep learning to develop for PG3. If you're in the UDI developer system then you have all the tools needed to keep current as Polisy and eisy are available and as PG3 continues to advance.

Cool, I was considering buying a second Polisy as I dive into developer mode, so I can keep my home stable (and my wife happy). Maybe I'll wait for the Eisy now...

[TriLife]

23 minutes ago, bpwwer said:

My question is, what is compelling you to want to migrate now (as opposed to waiting a few months)?  Is there something specific that IoP will solve now that the ISY isn't able to do?

Mostly a lack of patience😂. And some odd behaviour on the Google Home front, which I was hoping a rebuild would take care of. Google Home responds to my Program calls, but ignores my wife! It follows the basic open/close turn-on/off for both of us, but won't execute the program calls. This is critical, because the wine cellar is a program call (linear motor control, fan and light control). She thinks I did this on purpose!!!! She now Signals me and I make the wine call... The funny thing is I was joking about installing a toe print sensor (the access is a trap door)

 

23 minutes ago, bpwwer said:

Yes, but... the ISY and IoP don't really communicate state between them.  So while the ISY can continue to manage z-wave devices having them interact with other devices (scenes, programs, etc.) on the IoP isn't going to work.  Given what you posted about your setup initially, I don't think you want to try and do this.  

 So I won't. I'll wait until I get the mail from  @Michel Kohanim to order the dongle. Plenty of other projects to work on around here

Thanks @Geddy and @bpwwer.

[Geddy]

1 hour ago, TriLife said:

Google Home responds to my Program calls, but ignores my wife!

You're still having these problems? Didn't you post about that a year or so ago? I would have thought it had resolved. I would have scrapped Google home long ago if I couldn't make it work for something simple like that. 

[TriLife]

1 minute ago, Geddy said:

You're still having these problems? Didn't you post about that a year or so ago? I would have thought it had resolved. I would have scrapped Google home long ago if I couldn't make it work for something simple like that. 

you have a good memory! yes, It has not been resolved.

I think it has something to do with which account is the primary one linked into Google. Mine is the one linked into ISY, but somehow Heather's shows up as the primary on Google Home. I have not been able to change that, despite resetting the system. And I don't want to do it again until I have ISY migrated, just in case I have to do it again after that. It's a giant PITA, with over 100 devices to name, group etc...

[Dub]

2 hours ago, TriLife said:

The funny thing is I was joking about installing a toe print sensor (the access is a trap door)

 

Thats great!  Really cool picture too!  

[TriLife]

Note the little white box on top of the stairs? That's a Sonoff/Tasmota temp/hum sensor. I compare the temperature of that to the outside temps from my Davis Instruments Vantage Pro (via MQQT node server). If the outside temps are lower than the inside temps (every night, without fail), I turn on a fan that exhausts the warmer air and sucks in the cooler night air. That keeps my cellar at around 19deg C. Beats installing an aircon unit.

Edited August 9, 2022 by TriLife
added missing information