Home Assistant Overlaid Over EISY

[lilyoyo1]

3 hours ago, asbril said:

There is another way to look at this.  Non-community systems can go out of business,  make changes for the purpose of making you pay more, remove the public API (MyQ !!!). The vast world of HA makes me think that it will be around for a long time and one day something better will come. I think that Jeff Bezos once said that all businesses, including Amazon, will one day disappear.

Welcome back stranger. 

[Kentinada]

I'm not sure if this will be helpful or not but since I recently (a couple months ago) upgraded my old ISY994i to a new EISY and I just this week installed an HA Green, I thought I'd throw in some of my experiences/observations. 

1. I have been an INSTEON and ISY/EISY user for many years.  I had a least 2 ISY's before recently upgrading to the new EISY. My old ISY worked but was starting to have some sporadic network issues and it was suggested that it might be hardware problem. Since the ISY was no longer supported, I took a quick side journey down the INSTEON Hub path.  The Hub is good for very basic stuff but since I had invested lot of time in learning how to use my ISY in a manner that worked best for me (with a lot of help from these forums), I sent the Hub back and bought an EISY. 
2. My upgrade experience was fairly painless as I did not try to bring over any Zwave devices.  Most recent rabbit trails was learning how to use the Notifications Node Server (Plugin) and get custom notifications to the UD Mobile app.  
3. That exercise led me to the Honeywell Home plugin (which does not work by the way) which led me to look into what else I could do to maybe integrate my Honeywell T9's into my home automation environment.  They were immediately recognized by Apple HomeKit.  And this is what led me to Home Assistant and HA Green. 
4. I thought for $99, I couldn't really go wrong even if I didn't end up using it.  I got my HA Green and installed it, upgraded it to the latest HAOS, and it discovered many devices automatically. I installed the UD Integration and that bridged me to my EISY. It brought over all my EISY devices. 
5. I have discovered that this Home Assistant environment, while very powerful, it's also (to me) very complicated even with the HA Green.  I have spent many hours (I'd guess 20+??) just trying to learn the nomenclature in the HA world (devices, entities, areas, zones, themes, etc.  There is a huge compilation of integration add/on plugins but my experience has been that the instructions are written for seasoned HA users - not newbies like me.  
6. I bridged my HA Green world back to my Apple HomeKit world with an add/on which also lets me see EISY devices from HomeKit as well which is nice.  
7. I'm now trying to come up desktop and mobile dashboards that work.  My Honeywell thermostats are still not visible to my EISY world. I'm not happy with the Honeywell/Resideo app and lack of support.  The thermostats work fine but the app is horrible.  I'll probably switch to Ecobee thermostats next time I see a good deal on them. 
8. I'm not exactly sure where my home automation path is headed.  For now, I'm content to learn more about HA and what all it can do while also keeping my INSTEON world going.  

Again, not sure this helps but I have gotten so much help within the UD forums that I want to contribute anyway I can.  

 

[xlurkr]

Sorry to anyone I offended with the suggestion of moving.  I thought we had strayed into a discussion of removing ISY and replacing with HA or using HA only from the get-go.  And even then, I understand how the conversation would be useful to many in this community - including me!  I'm just always mindful of who is hosting this space, and I'm grateful that they're doing so, too.

-Tom

 

[DualBandAid]

1 hour ago, Kentinada said:

Again, not sure this helps but I have gotten so much help within the UD forums that I want to contribute anyway I can.  

 

SUPER-helpful. I suspect that will be my exact future, nomenclature troubles and all.

[xlurkr]

On 1/9/2024 at 12:55 AM, akss said:

You mentioned you're using your Polisy with HA. Are you keeping your devices and programs on the Polisy and using a separate machine for HA, or are you literally running HA on the Polisy?

Short answer - all devices and automations on Polisy, HA running on a relatively-new Yellow.

I'm new to HA.  I had set up my permanent home with about 25 switches and dimmers, and created quite a few automations, scenes, NRs, etc. that are triggered by KPL buttons, motions, open/close sensors, double-clicks and so on.  That's on an ISY, and its uber-controller is CQC.  No HA (yet) in that location.  I'm temporarily renting an apartment for a remote job assignment, and I've gone kinda hog-wild here.  This is where I have a Polisy, but it's only controlling a few plug-in Insteon and Z-Wave devices, since I can't monkey with the switches here.  It's also running NSs for Elk and Hubitat.  I'm running a Hubitat to control a bunch of Lutron Grafik Eye units that I wired up with extension cords that lamps are plugged into.  That's most of my lighting.  And there's some Hue, so I can have a colored bulb and use some Lutron Aurora gizmos that fit over switches and keep them from being switched off, while adding a rotating ring for dimming.  Very useful for someone renting like me.  Finally, my rental comes with 2 Z-Wave lights, a thermostat, and a lock that are controlled by a controller I don't own and have no access to.  I got the Yellow just to tinker, frankly, and because of its reputation for supporting a lot of stuff, for free.  It found a ton of things in my apartment, so that's cool.  But I don't rely on it for anything at the moment. I'm returning home soon, and I'll take the Yellow with me, and probably replace the CQC system with it as the new uber controller.  The CQC currently ties together my ISY, my Russound whole house audio system, and all my home theater gear via a URC Total Control system.

-Tom

[xlurkr]

On 1/9/2024 at 12:55 AM, akss said:

What's the advantage of using the Polisy/EISY in a home environment rather than doing a direct Insteon integration with HA?

Well, if it's already set up like my home ISY is, the obvious answer is that you can leverage the work that went into that, rather than redo it.  But starting from scratch, that's not an issue.  The other reason is that, to the extent that you want to manage your Insteon on an ongoing basis, and I do because I love to tinker, any ISY including Polisy makes that super easy.  Since I started with Insteon, I got enamored of its links-based protocol that a) allows some sophisticated automations to work, even when the controller is unresponsive and b) eliminated the "popcorn" effect that other protocols and controllers suffer from.  If those things don't matter, you don't need links, and you probably don't need a UDI device.

-Tom

[akss]

@xlurkr yep, that all makes sense to me, I think. And like @RPerrault said, the ability to "replace" an Insteon device is probably smoothest on an (E)ISY. Home Assistant, AFAIK, will not swap a device like that (relevant discussion: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wth-there-is-no-easy-and-automated-way-to-replace-devices/468863/18). And while I'll likely replace my Insteon devices with something else if/when they each fail, this feature limitation for impact analysis and device/entity replacement affects all integrations in HA, not just Insteon/UD. 

@asbril, my nearly-bricked gen 1 Sonos speakers are feeling triggered by your comment. This video from EEVblog on turning these into "Fronos" speakers is ever on my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeIk-4ItQ70

 @Kentinada, I noticed you didn't mention linux pain in particular. It's been my experience that HA does a good job of keeping that away from users - that everything is happening in the app, but unless you intentionally go looking for trouble, HA keeps Linux pretty well concealed, and in fact discourages users from shelling into it directly. Has that been your experience as you started working with the Green?

I may underestimate how much of a learning curve exists with Home Assistant - sometimes - but I feel like the ISY ecosystem was no different when I first got that guy going. I remember reading forums a lot to climb the learning curve for setting up jobs and logic in ISY's particular idiom, dealing with finicky devices, understanding the PLM's expectations. I'm not sure I can articulate this well, but I feel that the maturity of home automation in last 5 years particularly has been moving locus of control to be more heavily focused on software integration (APIs) and less on bare metal electronics - more the domain of software developers and less so of electricians. There's still the maker community building new stuff with ESP32 and other RTOS or SBC platforms (e.g. WLED and QuinLED), but there is an expectation that all of that work ultimately gets abstracted by an MQTT interface or REST API, allowing standards-based integration. And there is increasing pressure on OEMS to follow suit, I think - build what you want, but give us a standard interface. And in a way, that realignment reminds me of similar shifts in industries like telecom where the importance of low-level knowledge serving all the analog infrastructure started rapidly being displaced by a need to understand the digital protocols and the software stacks built on top of them (fiber, software switches, orchestrated soft provisioning, etc.). And I propose that you see this reflected in Home Assistant: the whiff of software development is all over that product - YAML, Python, MQTT, git repos, etc. - so the learning curve to get into it is of a really different nature than prior generations of home automation equipment. I'm not sure it's "harder" than it ever was, but it's a different focus, maybe? I'm not going to die on that hill, just thinking out loud about it. 

Re: beer trucks and all (assuming that's the same as "greyhound syndrome" - getting hit by a bus), at least with OSS a developer leaves behind their source code and schematics, which can be forked and picked up by others. There is a network effect though, where the deeper and broader the user base, the more likely a piece of OSS is going to have a geographically diverse community supporting it. A niche plug-in for a niche platform has more risk from the beer truck than one which is more broadly used. That idea gives me more confidence in a platform like HA having pretty good longevity in the face of renegade beer trucks.

[Kentinada]

16 hours ago, akss said:

 @Kentinada, I noticed you didn't mention linux pain in particular. It's been my experience that HA does a good job of keeping that away from users - that everything is happening in the app, but unless you intentionally go looking for trouble, HA keeps Linux pretty well concealed, and in fact discourages users from shelling into it directly. Has that been your experience as you started working with the Green?

@akss I try not to dip down into code as much as possible.  While I can still write simple programs (EISY programs for example), I much prefer to have a GUI to work with and keep things as easy as possible.  I'm not getting any younger and really am trying to simplify my life rather than complicate it.  

 

[Kentinada]

I'm almost ready to bail on HA Green.  While it supports a lot of home automation stuff, it has definitely added to the complexity of my environment which is not my goal.  If UD would add HomeKit/Matter integration, that would end this entire trial.  I know the INSTEON world and how to do what I want with the EISY.  If I had: 1) thermostats that were compatible with it (Honeywell/Resideo is dead for me); and 2) and ability to see devices in Apple Home app, I'd be a happy camper.  The biggest weak point to the EISY is the dependence on the PLM which is why I have a spare.  Just my thoughts at this point.  Might be putting my HA Green on eBay soon. 

[Kentinada]

I bailed on Home Assistant.  It was just adding way more complexity than I want at this stage.  Hoping the HomeKit integration comes soon to EISY.  Now I need to find replacement thermostats for my Honeywell T9's.  Leaning towards Ecobee.  

 

[DualBandAid]

Can you pin point what added to the complexity? And have you been using the EISY plug-ins?

[Kentinada]

1 hour ago, DualBandAid said:

Can you pin point what added to the complexity? And have you been using the EISY plug-ins?

@DualBandAid The complexity, for me, was in the nomenclature of the HA world mostly. I found the documentation to be lacking especially for people like me who had no experience with HA.  They really need an "HA for Dummies" to kick people off.  I did use the HA Integration for UD and it seemed to work just fine.  But in the end, UD and INSTEON do all I need (except for my thermostat issues) so I'm going to stay at least mostly in the UD/INSTEON home automation environment for now. 

[DualBandAid]

Quote

But in the end, UD and INSTEON do all I need

 

Yeah, why switch at that point. And I totally hear about the documentation. You'll read something like "It's easy...just install the plug-in manager" (what? where? how?!) "and run a DSM loop" (huh?!) "and you'll have access to everything from the dashboard." (which I get to how?)

I had this problem with Hue integration with the ISY years ago and finally figured it out. Then wrote this crazy post:

When I look back, I can't believe I wrote that. I guess I had more free time. And was younger...

But I'm gonna give it a go and see what happens.

[akss]

47 minutes ago, Kentinada said:

"HA for Dummies" to kick people off 

Yep, true. It's complicated by the fact that the field of options is so broad, any guide may contain things that are entirely irrelevant to your needs, which can send one down roads of fruitless complexity. Such a guide, I imagine, would need to be structured like a choose your own adventure novel, while also previewing the impacts of choosing one path over another (like how do I know what path I should take??). Also complicating it is the pace of iterative development: a guide from 2021 is probably unnecessarily complex compared to the 2023 (sorry 2024) product. More and more functionality is being smoothed over, the automation workflow in particular just within the last month (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV_bSXwh3-g)

I'm more of a "plunge in and thrash wildly about" kinda guy, where RTFM is just a contingency plan, but the docs are pretty good, the glossary is a helpful link to keep handy, and of course google with the filter of "site:community.home-assistant.io" to search the forums (my most used resource). And reddit. But as with all things, a bit of RTFM up front would have saved me a lot of thrashing, but what fun is that? 

Getting Started - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)

Glossary - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)

 

[tlightne]

@Kentinada I am contemplating the Honeywell T-6 Pro with Zwave to eliminate the need for a plugin altogether. 

[Kentinada]

5 hours ago, tlightne said:

@Kentinada I am contemplating the Honeywell T-6 Pro with Zwave to eliminate the need for a plugin altogether. 

@tlightne that thermostat gets 2.3 out of 5 stars on Honeywell’s site.  It great. I have a sour taste about Honeywell aka Resideo since their support is totally non-existent. 

[tlightne]

@Kentinada I understand the concern with support. May be I will just stick with my Nest and wait to see if they open up an API again then a plugin... The Ecobee looks great also. Too many decisions..

[Kentinada]

@tlightne I am going to try and open a new thread that is purely focused on EISY compatible thermostats and see what other people’s experience has been. 

[xlurkr]

On 1/10/2024 at 5:29 PM, akss said:

the ability to "replace" an Insteon device

I had forgotten about this great advantage to employing an ISY.  I've had to do this three times I can recall - one Togglelinc and three KPLs, and the latter had a lot of links and programming associated with them.  In all cases, it took longer to screw the cover plate back on than to have the ISY program the device.

-Tom

[stevehoyt]

Not to mention I believe if you try to do scenes in HA  it is a hassle 

I believe there is a thread discussing this. I have both HA and a Polisy.

The HA integration allows me to take advantage of all the work I have done over the years, and add it to a user friendly/ nice looking touch interface using just a raspberry Pi. 

Also some node servers / plugins send different info to HA than the native integration.

 

[Kentinada]

@stevehoyt I did like the Dashboard of HA a lot!  You could customize a very nice looking interface to HA.  Hopefully UD Mobile will come along in that regard. 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello everyone, I am thoroughly enjoying this thread as it's become a rite of passage for me: for the last 18 years, I have read our obituary more than I can count. Be it the app, the UI, Java, lack of plugins, .... and now commodity Intel (vs. commodity RPi), beer truck away and quoting Bezos. Quite amusing especially since we had record sales last year in both automation as well as utility contracts. For the sake of accuracy, eisy runs FreeBSD and not Linux which, in and of itself, has been cited as yet another reason for our imminent demise. 

I don't and have never discounted HA. It has many integrations that we don't have, and it has a pretty awesome UI. This said, I am not interested in being another HA. Our goal has always been to be very good at limited things, provide support (even for the plugins), and implement things with deliberation in order to ensure we don't break things. Understandably, this paradigm might not work for everyone, and thankfully everyone is free to choose. 

Back to what we are doing:

1. Matter support has taken longer but it's definitely very close

2. Zigbee support is being expanded

3. HomeKit support is being actively worked on. Unfortunately, there was a breaking change in the libraries that delayed everything.

4. By next week, we'll have a script that allows you to run HA in bhyve + hypervisor in eisy (on the NVMe SSD). The limitation would be that it will not have access to hardware. 

With kind regards,
Michel

 

[Kentinada]

18 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

Back to what we are doing:

1. Matter support has taken longer but it's definitely very close

2. Zigbee support is being expanded

3. HomeKit support is being actively worked on. Unfortunately, there was a breaking change in the libraries that delayed everything.

4. By next week, we'll have a script that allows you to run HA in bhyve + hypervisor in eisy (on the NVMe SSD). The limitation would be that it will not have access to hardware. 

 

Great update, @Michel Kohanim.  Thank you!

[slimypizza]

On 1/10/2024 at 12:24 PM, Kentinada said:

I'm not sure if this will be helpful or not but since I recently (a couple months ago) upgraded my old ISY994i to a new EISY and I just this week installed an HA Green, I thought I'd throw in some of my experiences/observations. 

3. That exercise led me to the Honeywell Home plugin (which does not work by the way) which led me to look into what else I could do to maybe integrate my Honeywell T9's into my home automation environment.  They were immediately recognized by Apple HomeKit.  And this is what led me to Home Assistant and HA Green. 

4. I thought for $99, I couldn't really go wrong even if I didn't end up using it.  I got my HA Green and installed it, upgraded it to the latest HAOS, and it discovered many devices automatically. I installed the UD Integration and that bridged me to my EISY. It brought over all my EISY devices. 

Again, not sure this helps but I have gotten so much help within the UD forums that I want to contribute anyway I can.  

 

Maybe you mentioned this but did you install the Honeywell Total Connect Comfort integration when you were experimenting with HA?  What happened?  I no longer have Honeywell.  Our new house came with NEST but those interface very well with HA as did the Honeywell thermostats in our old house.  It's just my opinion, but I greatly prefer the UI in HA as well as its built-in phone tracking for geofencing purposes.  I let EISY do the rest of the programming chores for the house.  

Edited January 12 by slimypizza

[Kentinada]

1 hour ago, slimypizza said:

Maybe you mentioned this but did you install the Honeywell Total Connect Comfort integration when you were experimenting with HA?  What happened?

No I did not because Total Connect Comfort doesn’t support the T9’s. You have to use the Resideo Smart Home app.