Insteon Hub 2245 as a PLM

[matapan]

It seems like the likelihood of a PLM Pro release or the return of new PLM stock grows dimmer with each passing day.

From reading other posts here and elsewhere on the Internet, it's possible to repurpose a Insteon Hub as a PLM.

Why are there no details available in the form of step by step instructions on how to do this?

Insteon hubs are more available than PLMs.

Sounds like Insteon isn't interested in selling more PLMs.

For those who aren't EE majors, it would be nice to make these hubs useful.

Anyone willing to share how to do the mod?

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, matapan said:

It seems like the likelihood of a PLM Pro release or the return of new PLM stock grows dimmer with each passing day.

From reading other posts here and elsewhere on the Internet, it's possible to repurpose a Insteon Hub as a PLM.

Why are there no details available in the form of step by step instructions on how to do this?

Insteon hubs are more available than PLMs.

Sounds like Insteon isn't interested in selling more PLMs.

For those who aren't EE majors, it would be nice to make these hubs useful.

Anyone willing to share how to do the mod?

It's not compatible with the Isy. It has been stated that UDI will not support this without full cooperation from insteon which so far they are not willing to do

[larryllix]

The jury is still out on this matter.

Ken, the new CEO of Insteon, has requested people be patient while he attempts to put the puzzle pieces back together.

I'm not giving up yet. My system still works just fine. It's ISY based and not cloud dependent.

[Brian H]

2 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

It's not compatible with the Isy. It has been stated that UDI will not support this without full cooperation from insteon which so far they are not willing to do

There are two different HUBs in the mix. In the FCC Database Insteon HUB Pro and the Nokia Hub.

The Insteon HUB Pro should be compatible. As it should use all the PLM communication protocol.

The Nokia HUB many talk about is reported to not be support. UDI has stated probably not supported.

[Brian H]

5 hours ago, matapan said:

It seems like the likelihood of a PLM Pro release or the return of new PLM stock grows dimmer with each passing day.

From reading other posts here and elsewhere on the Internet, it's possible to repurpose a Insteon Hub as a PLM.

Why are there no details available in the form of step by step instructions on how to do this?

Insteon hubs are more available than PLMs.

Sounds like Insteon isn't interested in selling more PLMs.

For those who aren't EE majors, it would be nice to make these hubs useful.

Anyone willing to share how to do the mod?

I have seen some reports and photos of the older 2242-222 HUB being made a PLM. That has two board in it. By removing the Network board and connecting a serial board to the main board. Not clear if the firmware running it need to be updated.

The newer 2245-222 HUB has all the electronics on one board. Not as easy to find connection needed or what has to be changed if anything. I have seen one thread here where someone did get the newer style HUB to act as a PLM.

I have also seen posts on fixing them as they also suffer from the same poor choice of capacitors we see in the 2413S PLM.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Brian H
Fix statements

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, Brian H said:

There are two different HUBs in the mix. In the FCC Database Insteon HUB Pro and the Nokia Hub.

The Insteon HUB Pro should be compatible. As it should use all the PLM communication protocol.

The Nokia HUB many talk about is reported to not be support. UDI has stated probably not supported.

I wasn't referring to the hub pro since UDI can't support something that doesn't actually exist and would depend on insteon actually making it and releasing. 

The Nokia hub was looked at as an option but Michel stated that was a no go due to the terms. 

From the ops post, he was referring to the 2245. Regardless of hub- Michel has already stated no new insteon support will be forthcoming without full insteon development support so it's still the same end result. 

[matapan]

There is a post here and elsewhere where someone has added a connection between a 2245 hub and a serial breakout board to make a PLM out of it. Unfortunately, the details supplied aren't enough for the layperson to do the same.

If PLM's aren't going to be available near or long term and people have perfectly good ISY setups, isn't this compelling enough to repurpose an existing product which seems to be way more readily available?

We have information on how to resurrect PLM's and hubs by replacing specific capacitors on the boards. Why is making a hub useful as a PLM any different?

 

[lilyoyo1]

16 minutes ago, matapan said:

There is a post here and elsewhere where someone has added a connection between a 2245 hub and a serial breakout board to make a PLM out of it. Unfortunately, the details supplied aren't enough for the layperson to do the same.

If PLM's aren't going to be available near or long term and people have perfectly good ISY setups, isn't this compelling enough to repurpose an existing product which seems to be way more readily available?

We have information on how to resurrect PLM's and hubs by replacing specific capacitors on the boards. Why is making a hub useful as a PLM any different?

 

For the consumer it's useful. For business purposes not so much when you're spending time trying to make something work without support from the mfg... Especially for a dead/dying brand.

That's time and resources being taken away from other things that can earn more money for them. 

 

[Goose66]

If "Ken" would open up a local API (with UDP broadcast of state changes) on the hub simply for sending commands and  receiving state changes, someone could write a node server for it. I would be glad to design the API (something along the lines of the Bond Bridge API). That way, configuration of Insteon devices (old and new) could be done through Insteon apps and websites, transition to Nokia devices would be a lot easier, and UDI could drop their native support for Insteon devices in favor of something more open, stable, and with more of a future, like Zwave.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Goose66

[matapan]

Quote

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

For the consumer it's useful. For business purposes not so much when you're spending time trying to make something work without support from the mfg... Especially for a dead/dying brand.

That's time and resources being taken away from other things that can earn more money for them. 

 

 

That’s correct. If you are an installer there is little money in this. You’d be selling them an upgrade to something new and rip out all the Insteon stuff.

My comment is for users who cannot find a PLM and need one for their ISY or other PLM depedent module (like an EZIO8SA module) to function.

[lilyoyo1]

7 minutes ago, matapan said:

That’s correct. If you are an installer there is little money in this. You’d be selling them an upgrade to something new and rip out all the Insteon stuff.

My comment is for users who cannot find a PLM and need one for their ISY or other PLM depedent module (like an EZIO8SA module) to function.

I'm not referring to this as an installer. I'm referring to UDI having to take the time to reverse engineer how it works to get the isy to support it. It's not as simple as hooking up a standard PLM and getting it operable. This is an issue insteon needs to solve not UDI 

***See Goose66 post above. 

[FTL]

Home Assistant has this on their Integration page:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/insteon/

"This integration adds support for integrating your INSTEON network with Home Assistant. It is known to work with the 2413U USB and 2412S RS242 flavors of PLM and the 2448A7 USB stick. It has also been tested to work with the 2242 and 2245 Hubs. Device support is provided by the underlying pyinsteon package."

The Python package is on github - has anyone looked at this to see how they're doing the integration using only a standard Insteon hub?

https://github.com/pyinsteon/pyinsteon

[lilyoyo1]

21 minutes ago, FTL said:

Home Assistant has this on their Integration page:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/insteon/

"This integration adds support for integrating your INSTEON network with Home Assistant. It is known to work with the 2413U USB and 2412S RS242 flavors of PLM and the 2448A7 USB stick. It has also been tested to work with the 2242 and 2245 Hubs. Device support is provided by the underlying pyinsteon package."

The Python package is on github - has anyone looked at this to see how they're doing the integration using only a standard Insteon hub?

https://github.com/pyinsteon/pyinsteon

Reverse engineering. It's not that it can't be done. It's that no one wants to hack it together to make it work. 

HA is open source so anyone can work on things while UDI is a company that has to answer to themselves and investors. It's not cost effective for them to take the time for a dead system that even the owners aren't currently concerned about themselves. 

[matapan]

13 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I'm not referring to this as an installer. I'm referring to UDI having to take the time to reverse engineer how it works to get the isy to support it. It's not as simple as hooking up a standard PLM and getting it operable. This is an issue insteon needs to solve not UDI 

***See Goose66 post above. 

It does not have to involve UDI at all. There was one poster on this forum who took a stock 2245 Hub, soldered two or three wires on the hub PCB, ran those wires out to a RS232 breakout board and connected it to the ISY without any issues. Does UDI have to support this configuration? No. But there have been discussions about how Nokia hubs can be reworked to support ISY's. It's in the same flavor. If it operates just like a PLM, why does it matter? Especially in light of the situation with PLM's essentially no longer being available.

[lilyoyo1]

5 hours ago, matapan said:

It does not have to involve UDI at all. There was one poster on this forum who took a stock 2245 Hub, soldered two or three wires on the hub PCB, ran those wires out to a RS232 breakout board and connected it to the ISY without any issues. Does UDI have to support this configuration? No. But there have been discussions about how Nokia hubs can be reworked to support ISY's. It's in the same flavor. If it operates just like a PLM, why does it matter? Especially in light of the situation with PLM's essentially no longer being available.

You might want to re-read those discussions about nokia hubs. It was UDI discussing adding support if they could get their hands on them which unfortunately fell through. 

Even if what you say were possible- who has one? Are they supposed to support something that only a handful of people has, has not been released,  and that's next to impossible to get?

Reality is; insteon is dead. You have a new guard acting like the old guard which looks like 3rd party support/cooperation isn't a priority.

It's not worth it to anyone to spend time and effort trying to reproduce a hack that 1 person popped up on here saying they did and then disappeared when there is a tried and true method of restoring bad poms along with a resident expert that's more than willing to help (along with a repair person on ebay). 

Edited September 8, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[Goose66]

18 hours ago, FTL said:

The Python package is on github - has anyone looked at this to see how they're doing the integration using only a standard Insteon hub?

I believe the hubs offer a local API (I think a TCP socket) to read and write serial data from the PLM inside the hub. Requires polling and speaks low level Insteon PLC commands. It could be something that UDI implements into their native Insteon support to add available Insteon interfaces, but makes little sense for a node server because a lot if not most of the higher level Insteon functionality implemented in the ISY would have to be duplicated.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Goose66

[matapan]

18 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You might want to re-read those discussions about nokia hubs. It was UDI discussing adding support if they could get their hands on them which unfortunately fell through. 

Even if what you say were possible- who has one? Are they supposed to support something that only a handful of people has, has not been released,  and that's next to impossible to get?

Reality is; insteon is dead. You have a new guard acting like the old guard which looks like 3rd party support/cooperation isn't a priority.

It's not worth it to anyone to spend time and effort trying to reproduce a hack that 1 person popped up on here saying they did and then disappeared when there is a tried and true method of restoring bad poms along with a resident expert that's more than willing to help (along with a repair person on ebay). 

I'm not talking about Nokia Hubs, or having UDI support this. 

Truth of the matter is that someone reported on this forum it was possible to make a 2245 hub, which is very commonly available, more so than the esoteric PLM's. If there is a way to use them as drop in replacements to the PLMs, UDI would not require supporting this by code changes or modifications. 

Insteon may be effectively dead, but there are people who have invested a lot of money in Insteon equipment who want to keep their investment going for as long as possible. If no one on this forum thinks this is a good idea who actually can verify the claim made by one poster by replicating the mod, so be it. I personally think there's value in this. If not, I guess there's always Home Assistant.

[lilyoyo1]

5 hours ago, matapan said:

I'm not talking about Nokia Hubs, or having UDI support this. 

Truth of the matter is that someone reported on this forum it was possible to make a 2245 hub, which is very commonly available, more so than the esoteric PLM's. If there is a way to use them as drop in replacements to the PLMs, UDI would not require supporting this by code changes or modifications. 

Insteon may be effectively dead, but there are people who have invested a lot of money in Insteon equipment who want to keep their investment going for as long as possible. If no one on this forum thinks this is a good idea who actually can verify the claim made by one poster by replicating the mod, so be it. I personally think there's value in this. If not, I guess there's always Home Assistant.

I apologize for thinking you were talking about Nokia hubs. You mentioned being able to use them so i assumed you were referring to those as well. 

Yes, there would be value in using the standard hub. What would be easier is simply fixing your old PLM.

A drop in replacement however does require code not modifying something. 

Maybe you could try to pm the poster of the hub mod and see if they could provide clearer instructions and give it a go yourself. Hubs are cheap enough on eBay to get a few to practice modding with. 

[Brian H]

I looked at the insides of a 2445-222 and unfortunately there was no easily found points for serial in and out signals. The original poster maybe able to provided added information.

Ebay posters are all not totally truthful. The HUB has the same switching supply as our 2413S PLM and capacitor problems. So you may find some that are close to being dead.

Some of the chips in the HUB are made for 3.3V supplies. Some where 5V.  So I don't know what precautions you have to use when using an external serial board. Some of the 3.3V chips have some 5v tolerant ratings.

[matapan]

1 hour ago, Brian H said:

I looked at the insides of a 2445-222 and unfortunately there was no easily found points for serial in and out signals. The original poster maybe able to provided added information.

Ebay posters are all not totally truthful. The HUB has the same switching supply as our 2413S PLM and capacitor problems. So you may find some that are close to being dead.

Some of the chips in the HUB are made for 3.3V supplies. Some where 5V.  So I don't know what precautions you have to use when using an external serial board. Some of the 3.3V chips have some 5v tolerant ratings.

According to the original poster on this forum in a different thread:

"It is easy to figure out where to connect the serial just by looking at the 18f25j10 datasheet for the tx/rx pins."

"But all I did was connect tx,rx,3.3v,gnd and held the pic32 in reset."

For the serial card used:  "a max3232 chip breakout board would be good enough."

I believe you actually responded to this posting when it was posted a year ago. The proposed mods are above my pay grade in terms of understanding it - I am not someone with an EE degree. Maybe it is very simple for someone who does as the OP alludes in his post.

Edited September 9, 2022 by matapan
add more detail.

[matapan]

2 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Yes, there would be value in using the standard hub. What would be easier is simply fixing your old PLM.

A drop in replacement however does require code not modifying something. 

Maybe you could try to pm the poster of the hub mod and see if they could provide clearer instructions and give it a go yourself. Hubs are cheap enough on eBay to get a few to practice modding with. 

Fixing your old PLM is an option. I've recapped mine. However, there are products other than the ISY that also use a PLM like the EZIOSA8 which require a PLM. PLM's are hard to come by. If you look at the prevailing prices paid on eBay for them, they are like gold unless you get really lucky.

There is also no guarantee that replacing the caps which typically fail will resurrect a PLM. I have one PLM which still had issues after replacing the caps.

The original poster of the thread I am referring to on this forum reported they modded the Hub and was able to use it as a PLM. No code change on the ISY required.

The original poster posted the information about their discovery over a year ago. I attempted to PM them but have not received any reply. I have a number of hubs and would be very interested in giving it a try. We're literally talking about four wires soldered to the hub PCB connected to a generic serial breakout board if the OP is to be believed.

Edited September 9, 2022 by matapan
added more detail.

[Brian H]

Thank you for the tips. I will look at the items you mentioned.

[lilyoyo1]

22 minutes ago, matapan said:

Fixing your old PLM is an option. I've recapped mine. However, there are products other than the ISY that also use a PLM like the EZIOSA8 which require a PLM. PLM's are hard to come by. If you look at the prevailing prices paid on eBay for them, they are like gold unless you get really lucky.

There is also no guarantee that replacing the caps which typically fail will resurrect a PLM. I have one PLM which still had issues after replacing the caps.

The original poster of the thread I am referring to on this forum reported they modded the Hub and was able to use it as a PLM. No code change on the ISY required.

The original poster posted the information about their discovery over a year ago. I attempted to PM them but have not received any reply. I have a number of hubs and would be very interested in giving it a try. We're literally talking about four wires soldered to the hub PCB connected to a generic serial breakout board if the OP is to be believed.

I understand what you're saying. With you having multiples, I would use one or 2 to practice on. Going off Brian H. post, I have my suspicions since he understands the insides of the devices. But if there's a way to work and the original poster isn't around anymore, it's hard to see anyone taking the time in that manner for something with minimal gains for themselves. Especially when there are other alternatives that most are turning to so they aren't caught in a bind again. 

Unfortunately, from the way it sounds, most likely it's not something that's going to be easily recreated for others to follow suit like recapping (or using a service) can do. 

For your sake and others in your position, I do hope you or someone does figure out how to make it work and easily replicated by others. It's not a bad idea. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[matapan]

24 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Unfortunately, from the way it sounds, most likely it's not something that's going to be easily recreated for others to follow suit like recapping (or using a service) can do. 

 

I Googled MAX232 breakout boards. eBay has them for less than $5. Some for $1.29. You still have to convert from a DB9 connector to what the ISY uses in the form of a different cable. To me, once this is replicated, it is a solution some enterprising individual like the recap service eBay seller can easily do at an affordable price.

[Michel Kohanim]

For anyone interested in converting Nokia Hubs to PLMs, I am sharing what one of our beloved engineers at x-SmartHome came up with. This is what we were going to do but, as with anything INSTEON/SmartHome related, got stopped. Hopefully someone can convince insteon tech to sell these Nokia hubs and someone else to modify them. 

With many thanks to Chasen, here it is:

https://www.universal-devices.com/docs/NokiaHub2PLM.zip

With kind regards,
Michel