Home Assistant Overlaid Over EISY

[DualBandAid]

I know this is probably heresy but I was thinking of playing around with Home Assistant - just to see what all the fuss is. Does anyone have any thoughts about me running Home Assistant with it's own PLM overlaid on top of my EISY system? Can the two co-exist like that? Two systems with two PLMs? Or will the links (or whatever they're called) get all screwed up?

I know Home Assistant has an ISY plug-in and I think the two systems can exist like that. But I was wondering about them existing side by side.

[paulbates]

I ran my ISY and the Insteon hub side by side to test the hub at my last house when that came out, but I remember having to put devices on one or the other. Things would be extremely messy if you had problems with a device on both systems, and functions like "restore device".  Also, not sure which system would win when the device is "switched on"

Home Assistant can connect to/through other HA systems including ISY. My suggestion would be for you to  implement HA that way and have a hybrid system and let each do what they're best at; let the ISY handle Insteon management which it is great at. In the past Homeseer was implemented with ISY by some this way. The dashboard / data / YAML capabilities of HA look interesting to me too.

 

Edited January 6 by paulbates

[Brian H]

As mentioned.

It can get messy. Both would have their own links in their PLM and the controlled modules used by both modules. Changes by either controller would probably not be recognized by the other PLM and controller. Unless the device in question was controlled by both controllers. So both had links for the device.

Any changes could lead to half and orphaned links.

Edited January 6 by Brian H
add information

[DualBandAid]

Thank you for the responses. In terms of the messiness, let’s say I wasn’t concerned about changes in one device being recognized by the other. 
 

(which I’m not - but maybe I’m missing why this would be important - but, at the moment, none of my new install really requires even my own single eisy being “aware” of state changes - and I can’t even think of why I might need that)

So I wasn’t worried about that…AND…it doesn’t sound like you are saying both systems having links for a device is bad either - in a vacuum, at least.
 

It sounds like the only thing that I might have an issue with, is with the “changes” you spoke about. That might lead to half links and orphans. That sounds bad. Haha. Can you tell me more about that?

As for the hybrid system, I have lots of different devices from different manufacturers, and right now the ISY is really only controlling Insteon. I guess I could start with bringing the Home Assistant online for everything BUT Insteon and see how I like it. I do have the Hue node set up in my EISY, but I barely have been using it. 

Edited January 6 by DualBandAid

[paulbates]

Insteon is not designed for multiple PLMs on the same network. Not sure which is picked when a device is switched on.. Probably the last one to update

How will you keep track of which programs do what, for devices on which platform?

I would not attempt having 2 PLMs on the same network, especially 2 PLMs managing the same devices.

[dwengrovitz]

1 hour ago, DualBandAid said:

As for the hybrid system, I have lots of different devices from different manufacturers, and right now the ISY is really only controlling Insteon.

@DualBandAid You may already know this, but if not, Home Assistant (HA) has an integration available for Universal Devices ISY/IoX (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/isy994). There's no need for an additional PLM, as it just interfaces directly with the UD controller (e.g., ISY994, polisy, and/or eisy). 

I use eisy as my main automation platform and it controls most of my home automations, but HA provides a nice platform that can integrate many additional devices and I can view and control them all via a single user interface via HA on my iPhone.  

Edited January 6 by dwengrovitz

[DualBandAid]

Quote

You may already know this, but if not, Home Assistant (HA) has an integration available for Universal Devices ISY/IoX

I did...but then I was wondering...aside from the ease in integrating an existing ISY set-up into Home Automation "master controller" -- do I need the double-systems? Or to put another way, if I was starting from scratch on a new home...ought I not to just pick one or the other? One my goals is simplification. I'm already planning for my death and trying to avoid smart home decay after I'm gone. :)

[DualBandAid]

Quote

 Not sure which is picked when a device is switched on.. Probably the last one to update

Do you mean which PLM is notified that the device is swtiched on? So the ISY can be state-aware? If that's the issue, I'm not worried about that aspect. Bu this...

Quote

How will you keep track of which programs do what, for devices on which platform?

The puprose of all this may help address this question. It's really so I can test the Home Assistant platform out...how it integrates directly with Insteon hardware, without needed a middle man like the EISY (which means connecting a PLM directly to Home Assistant. But I want to do that without having to tweak my existing system. It wouldn't be a permanent situation. I just don't want to screw anything up while I'm paying around.

If that seems like a problem...I suppose I could connect a second PLM to the Home Assistant pi box and just use it with a few totally seperate Insteon switches. Or really...even just one. That would be all I would need to test it.

[akss]

Well, I will share my experiences.

I used an ISY994 for many years with just Insteon components. Worked great, but could foresee it was becoming an island and new UD controllers were coming out. So was going to upgrade to new UD device, I don't know, maybe a couple years ago. I had resisted the Polisy device but was ready to pull trigger on EISY.

Something bugged me about the whole polisy / eisy approach. I don't know what specifically, and I'm sure I'll get torched for saying this, but it seemed if the HW was now commodity Intel procs and they were implementing this modular software architecture to run different integrations, it didn't seem that different than other approaches that may have better track records and be less proprietary. No doubt the years suffering through the stupid JVM requirements to admin the ISY had lowered my expectations for UD's flexibility and responsiveness on the SW front.

I think with the ISY there was always this argument that it was built to be rock solid for industrial implementation, reliable, etc. Well, now that the EISY is just a Celeron proc with non-ECC memory running Linux, they had ceded that attribute. I figured it was easy enough to give Home Assistant a test drive on my own hardware without spending any money, so why not?

Home Assistant can now be bought ready-to-go off the shelf (Home Assistant Yellow), which is an RPi 4CM. Since I had an unused computer lying about (Gigabyte Brix with an i7 and 16GB of RAM - way more horsepower than HA needed), and am cheap by nature and into reuse, I just stood the Home Assistant OS up on my own hardware. Now mind you, I've worked in tech industry for decades, so I have zero discomfort with networking, servers, etc., and in fact am "happier" playing those traditional and more "open" spaces. My implementation of HA as a VM was more complicated than a COTS solution like the Yellow, but it was "free" and gave me an incredible amount of flexibility to test HA out in terms of how I wanted to run/manage the system (multiple VLANs, flexibility to stand up other VMs if needed, backups). 

So I installed the ProxMox hypervisor and loaded HA onto it. This is a pretty standard pattern of implementing on your own hardware and there are a lot of guides out there which make it super easy. I had not used ProxMox before, but having been around ESX and HyperV for years, there's nothing crazy about it. In fact, there are ready-made shell scripts out there that will automate the deployment of HAOS to a ProxMox VM.

Pi's will work for hosting HA, but I have seen people gripe about the RAM headroom when adding a ton of integrations. My install of HA is consuming nearly 5GB of RAM of the 6 I allocated to it, so I can imagine that running on a Pi would feel a bit constrained. Further, the SD card in a Pi is a huge vulnerability so you'd want an SSD adapter long term. It seems to me that using a spare Pi is not ideal for a long-term implementation but may be great for a POC if that's what's handy. 

At first, I tried the ISY integration in HA, and I think it worked fine, but it seemed superfluous since there was a direct Insteon integration for HA. I was motivated to integrate the PLM directly without the ISY in the middle. The ISY didn't seem to do anything I couldn't accomplish with HA in terms of schedules, tasks, etc. I tried connecting to my serial PLM and despite a lot of work, just couldn't get it going quickly enough. I bought a USB PLM and plugged it into the PC directly, passed the USB port through to the HA VM. HA saw it right away and prompted me to install the Insteon integration. So this cut the ISY994 out of the loop. It's literally never been powered back on since that day.

I have since added the Sonoff Plus–ZBDongle-E to get zigbee and thread support and have added several zigbee devices, notably humidity and temp sensors, motion detectors, and some Inovelli Blue wall switches to function as ZB gateways. I've added Sonoff and Shelly wifi devices including power metering, geofencing, Schlage locks, Nest thermostats, etc. It has all worked very reliably and wonderfully. My Insteon devices are all still online and working (with the exception of one iolinc that bit the dust), and I have little motivation to get rid of any of them until they fail. They're just as responsive in HA, or at least I don't notice any more latency. Using a PLM still puts some restrictions on where place all your hardware to avoid line noise etc. Just a consideration when running a computer where you probably want a UPS, but I don't think this is any different than the ISY. I had run the ISY on a UPS and I do the same for my proxmox box, just need to find a good location in house that works the PLM and the PC is all.

I think that if I had purchased another UD device I'd still have ended up here in time, even just to augment the UD device. But I can't imagine the EISY would stay in the picture long once exposed to HA. It was mentioned above to run both and let each do what it does best, but you'd have a hard time convincing me that the EISY manages Insteon any better than HA. The PLM is the critical link, so if you have that integration down (and HA seems to), what else is EISY offering? It just becomes another management point with its own discrete automation framework. If I consolidate the integration into HA, the knowledge I build about its automation platform is usable for Insteon and everything else.

I'd be interested in hearing other perspectives about the value of keeping an (E)ISY around. I suppose if you're uncomfortable with the setup and management of traditional computers, and the EISY presents itself more like an appliance that "just works" for people, there may be a role for it there, but the HA Yellow would be worthy of consideration by that same audience. If you have a lot of automations, maybe buying/keeping an EISY lets you avoid having to rebuild all of them in HA.

I fully acknowledge that not having an EISY, I don't know what I'm missing, but just saying for me it wasn't worth the money and I feel like I have more capabilities with the path I went down -- the scope of integration possibilities in HA is mind-blowing, the end result for usability passes the spouse test, the community support is incredible.

Edited January 7 by akss
Grammer and developed some of the thoughts a bit

[DualBandAid]

Thank you! I could have written most of that post as well - at least the first part, pre Home Assistant. Sooo helpful.
 

A few questions for you. I’m a pretty tech savvy person and comfortable digging in and learning new things. But I only know what I know - and in terms of the RPi’s and flashing shit…I have very little experience. And much of the literature online isn’t written in a “for dummies” kinda way. So I have to dig through stuff to decode the answers. Basically, I’m a Mac guy. Haha. Though I did have an iOS app on the App Store for a while.
 

1) Before I really knew what I was doing, I ordered a Green. Should I try and send it back and get a Yellow? I’m just so tight on time and the yellows didn’t seem plug and play.

(For context, I will probably have a lot of integrations down the road)

2) Could I start with the Green I have and easily enough transfer my stuff to a Yellow down the road if I need it? Or does it not work that way?

3) Offhand, if I have Hue bulbs, do you know if am I going to need a zigbee dongle with the yellow? With the green?

4) Also, just curious, if you know if HA integrates with Alexa?

5) As a sidebar of that, using Alexa as an example, for Alexa to “see” any smart devices, I need to have those smart devices set up with an app on my phone. Does HA need anything like that? Or can Ha see devices straight out of the box?

And thank you for your thoughtful response. Very helpful. 

[xlurkr]

I just went through the Yellow experience, so I'll try to be helpful.  Its big problem has been the unavailability of the RPi CM4 it requires.  If you buy one with it already installed, that won't matter, but if you want to go Yellow, make sure you can find one with the memory features and price you're comfortable with.  I myself way overpaid for a fully loaded CM4 from eBay.

Once I got everything up and running, it found a lot of stuff automatically - Hubitat, Elk, Hue, and Sonos, and a whole bunch of PnP devices.  It even found my Oral-B toothbrush.  I can't remember if it found my Polisy automatically, but if not, I must have added it in seconds, because I don't remember struggling with it.  It also automatically created a dashboard with everything in it.  It's kind of disorganized, but I can exercise every device, and it's a good starting point.  Since the initial setup I have added one Z-Wave and one Zigbee device, just to see what the experience was like.  It was easy, but that's what it'll take to add things one at a time to HA.  When you let it discover another controller it will bring multiple things in at once.  Something to think about with regards to Hue.

Speaking of which, I think I read the Green has no radios.  It needs to be wired and is really meant to tie together other controllers and services.  You can buy a dongle for it that will let you directly control Zigbee and Z-Wave.

I'm also pretty sure you'd be able to move from Green to Yellow in the future if you wanted to, though I have not done that.  That's assuming that if you bought the dongle, it also could be moved to Yellow.  The other integrations should be very straightforward by comparison.

I've probably spent $500 for my Yellow, all in.  It has WiFi and Bluetooth and tons of memory, and I'm not using any of that.  I'm sure I could get by just fine with a Green, but it wasn't available at the time.  Finally, for $99, I don't see how you can go wrong.

-Tom

[akss]

@DualBandAid - 

1. I concur with @xlurkr in that the pre-built Yellows seem dang hard to find owing to the CM4 shortage. RPi still hasn't caught up to demand. But if you have a green on the way, I say run with it. The specs will get you pretty far, I think. It is ethernet only (no wifi) but that's not a bad attribute for the role it will play - a hardwire is advisable for reliablity. I have my Brix hardwired to the network even though it has a wifi radio. 

2. I think the transfer/restoration would be relatively easy. HA has built-in backup functionality, and there are add-ins that you can configure to automatically upload these backups to Google Drive or OneDrive from within the HA gui. If you have a NAS like QNAP or Synology or some sort of disk storage that supports SMB file shares, you can backup to those as well (local only). 

So if you got a new machine, you can just restore from those. This link has some deets:

Home Assistant: Ultimate Backup Guide - Derek Seaman's Tech Blog

If you've done app development, you may be familiar with Git/GitHub. If you want to get really nerdy you can keep all your config information in a git repo, which is what I do. This augments a full backup to some degree, but where it's really helpful is the ability to diff the changes over time and keep a record of what changed and when. It's a more technical rabbit hole, but pretty cool that the platform plays nice with this kind of thing and I think reflects the sophistication of the ecosystem.

3. If you have 4th gen Hue, they do Bluetooth or Zigbee, and just Zigbee for earlier gen stuff. With the Green, as @xlurkr said, you'd need to be adding your own radios for this, like the Sonoff Zigbee Dongle-E (v2) adapter and/or a Bluetooth adapter. Zigbee is a solid bet though. I use the Zigbee2Mqtt (Z2M) and Mosquito Broker (installed as add-ins through HA) for a lot of things and am very pleased with it. The latest Zigbee adapters often will be multi-protocol, in that they'll support Thread.

So I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of on-board radios on the Green, as you'd probably want after-market devices anyway that are more capable than any onboard radio and have the flexibility to move the antenna away from the computer (e.g. via extension cord). It makes sense to me why they didn't put radios aboard the Green. 

4. Yes, HA does integrate with Alexa. I don't use any voice reco in my house, but I know it's a thing that HA supports. Amazon Alexa - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io) Much of this makes more sense when you can actually get into the HA interface and see the context.

5. HA will frequently auto-detect things that show up on your network and prompt you to install integrations for them. But sometimes you need to use a manufacturer's app to get a device on the network (particularly if it's wifi). But this really depends on the device in question. I try to eschew any devices that make proprietary apps or cloud connectivity a critical part of the operation, favoring pure local control. It plays a big role in my purchasing decisions.

In some cases, you'll have devices that natively just show up in HA (like Insteon, for example, once you've activated the native Insteon integration).

A device like the Shelly T&H sensor will come with instructions telling you to download their app, etc., but this can be safely ignored and the device paired over Zigbee or wifi directly with HA (using the native Shelly integration). From reading forums and reddit you can pretty quickly get an idea of which manufacturers play best with HA vs ones that seem more closed by design.

Some devices like a Sonoff smart plug which is based on ESP32 can be flashed with Tasmota firmware to make them local only devices - this is more advanced stuff but cool AF since it lets you co-opt a manufacturer's hardware (Getting Started - Tasmota).

These are ways of getting around the whole "install my app" nonsense. That said, sometimes there is value in using the manufacturer's app if you can get more control over the device than is exposed through the direct HA integration. Some devices are going to want to lock you in to having a cloud account with them (e.g. Google Nest and Roomba are going to push this hard, though I believe the devices can survive pretty well being blocked from the Internet, but Google and Roomba won't tell you that - HA community forums will, however).

Sometimes the app is just for initial activation (e.g. Ecowitt might still do this to get the device on your wireless network, but from then on you can block its access and it will continue working fine locally), but sometimes it's for ongoing use (e.g. Schlage Encode Plus exposes more functionality in the app like access code schedules, etc). But it does really make you start to be a bit more selective about privacy and all.

If you outgrow the Green, I guess your migration path would be to purchase a Yellow and restore your HA setup to that new device, or purchase a micro PC or similar from Ebay (often less than $200) and install HAOS directly on it ("bare metal" install). It's not too hard to pull this off, and micro PCs from years ago are still more powerful than the latest RPi's. If you have an old Mac in the closet you could probably install on that if it has x86 chipset. You can run HAOS in a VM on your current Mac, but I'm not sure you want to be using your daily driver as your home automation server tethered to a PLM. Nonetheless, here's a link that may give you some ideas:

MacOS - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)

But I'd really recommend considering an old Dell Optiplex or HP Mini Computer from Ebay if you're comfortable with buying from randos online. 

HAOS is just linux, so the process is similar to building any machine - make a boot disk out of a USB thumb drive using something like the Balena Etcher app (works on MacOS) and then boot the spare PC off that thumb drive. Plenty of online guides walk you through this, but just pointing out that it's nothing to be too intimidated about. Since HA just exposes a web app when it boots, you'd connect to that and restore the backup from your Green. Should work pretty spiffy, but I'm talking theoretically here.

I think this agrees with everything xlurkr was saying, but I'd not try too hard to find an RPi CM4 when you can save a workable droid from the landfill using EBay and get more capacity for doing so.  

I mean, look at all these little guys who just want a new home: micro pc i7 16gb for sale | eBay

[DualBandAid]

Wow! All so very helpful. Yeah, I’m familiar with Balena Etcher, I could probably set up a boot disk. What worries me about a non Mac system is it’s a whole new ecosystem to lean for troubleshooting the main machine. But that’s down the road. It sounds like for now, I should stick with the Green, get my feet wet. And take it from there. I’ll get the zigbee dongle. But shouldn’t I be getting a zwave dongle, too?

[akss]

Re: new ecosystem - I hear ya, and in my experience with linux variants, "there's always something" that requires fiddling with. I will simply say this, however - HAOS boots and it expects you to use the web interface / mobile app exclusively. In fact, I feel like they actively discourage one from SSH'ing in and fiddling with things. But I know what you mean. 

Re: zwave - that's a whole thing.

For example: this discussion on reddit; There's a lot of bias (and BS) on both sides about why the other sucks. 

 

 

 

I'm not an expert but personally I viewed it as trying to do one or the other, and I settled on zigbee for a variety of reasons and it works fine for me. But regardless, both Z protocols will require some planning on deployment for repeaters, interference, picking parts for quality, etc.

But more broadly, I feel like home automation wireless technology is in a pretty huge transitional and shake-up phase right now, specifically as different wireless protocols are explored for HA devices in new, creative, and efficient implementations: LoRa, Thread, Wi-Fi, BTLE. For this reason, I'd be cautious about investing too much money and labor in either zwave or zigbee. Some people a year ago were like, "shit, quick, replace all the Insteon with a Z protocol". That can represent a sizable investment, the product of which may start to feel a bit stodgy and dated sooner than we think.

 

[DualBandAid]

I didn't mean whether or not I should be investing in Z-Wave versus Zigbee devices. I just meant that I think I have products already that use both protocols. So if I'm gonna get a Zigbee dongle, is there a Z-wave dongle I should get to communicate with my existing Z-Wave devices? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

[akss]

Oh I see, no, that was my misunderstanding. Z-wave is definitely not my wheelhouse but I see people say good things about the Aeotec brand sticks (with 700 series support), and of course Silicone Labs has made a good impression on me. If I had to buy one today, I'd likely go with one of those I guess. 

BTW, you've got me kind of energized to hear how your tests go..  

Edited January 9 by akss

[DualBandAid]

And this is going to seem a very basic question, after the more complex ones I've asked already...haha...But, all this "HA just recognized my stuff when I turned it on!"

If I don't have a zigbee dongle, my HA Green ain't gonna recognize anything that uses (exclusively) zigbee?

If I don't have a zwave dongle...same thing, right?

Quote

BTW, you've got me kind of energized to hear how your tests go..  

I will def report back here. I'm just waiting on the zigbee dongle. The one everyone is recommnding (including you) is on backorder.

[xlurkr]

That's what "no radios" means.  No dongle, no hardware to receive RF signals.  And if you get a new dongle, AFAIK, for both Zigbee and Z-Wave, nothing will be recognized fully automatically.  You'll have to tell the Green that it should look for a new device, and then do something on the device, like pushing a button.  The exception is if those devices are already connected to another controller (like Hue can be), or if they're connected to a dongle already and you plug the dongle into your Green.

 

btw, if there's no Insteon involved in your future, and you don't otherwise plan to start using or keep using a UDI device, it might be time to take this to another forum - like HA's.  I plan to keep using my Polisy with HA, so I'll be here for a while.

-Tom

[RPerrault]

17 minutes ago, xlurkr said:

btw, if there's no Insteon involved in your future, and you don't otherwise plan to start using or keep using a UDI device, it might be time to take this to another forum - like HA's.  I plan to keep using my Polisy with HA, so I'll be here for a while.

-Tom

i disagree - i am enjoying the discussion and learning from it

 

[akss]

@DualBandAid - yeah that's correct. When I plugged my USB PLM into to the HA machine (and reloaded HA, which isn't a reboot), it recognized the PLM and prompted me to install the Insteon add-in. I'm pretty sure that when I had the ISY on the network, HA saw it and prompted me to install the integration for that, but I can't recall precisely. For my situation, since the use of HA prompted me to upgrade my PLM to a USB device, I re-paired all my Insteon devices with the new PLM. With HA that process will be a very familiar two-step - in GUI tell it to add new device(s), then on device hold the set button for three seconds and it gets picked up and added to list of devices. 

So I'm no Insteon expert, but I think that if you were to use the same PLM, each device would already have links to the PLM in it's local ALDB and everything may just come over. The primary advantage of the UD/ISY integration (it seems to me) would be not having to rebuild all our automation logic in HA (you can kick the can down the road). 

And that process is very similar to adding new Zigbee devices. When I plugged the Zigbee dongle in, HA recognized it and prompted me to install ZHA, I think, which is its native Zigbee integration. That's a straight play and pretty easy to get Zigbee working. If you like making life more difficult like I do, you install the Silabs multi-protocol add-in to get Thread support on your Dongle-E, the Mosquito MQTT broker add-in, then the Zigbee2MQTT add-in, then the MQTT and Thread integrations in HA. This basically converts the Zigbee signals to use MQTT, which is a barebones message queue. But anyway - pairing a new device is similar to the above - in HA you tell it to allow pairing either from the core dongle, any device, or a specific gateway you installed out in the field. The latter is helpful when you want to make sure a device pairs with nothing except the particular gateway it's in close proximity to. Then press and hold button on device for a time (varies by device) and it pairs up.

@xlurkr - heard, but it sounds like OP is keeping his Insteon devices and may start the tests with the UD integration. But to your point, this conversation is HA-heavy and weedy. The HA forum is a very useful place that will have more and better info than I'm handing out: Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io).

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? What's the advantage of using the Polisy/EISY in a home environment rather than doing a direct Insteon integration with HA? Genuinely curious. Like what would cause me to recommend that someone go this route rather than building their own HA or buying a green/yellow? Is the market more for people that need off the shelf openadr certification? Is it just easier to get going (i.e. "it just works") and less fiddling required by people? If you're in the boat of running HA anyway on the polisy or on a separate machine, I guess you've already got that trouble in your life, so then what's the advantage of keeping the Polisy device in service? I can certainly empathize with not wanting to migrate and name scores of insteon devices and redo automation logic if I could avoid it for some number of years.

[DualBandAid]

17 hours ago, xlurkr said:

btw, if there's no Insteon involved in your future, and you don't otherwise plan to start using or keep using a UDI device, it might be time to take this to another forum - like HA's.  I plan to keep using my Polisy with HA, so I'll be here for a while.

-Tom

Fair enough.   Though...

This isn't just an HA convo. This is an HA-Integrating-With-Insteon And/Or ISY conversation. I just need to figure out the best way to get the HA up and running first.

[DualBandAid]

13 hours ago, akss said:

then what's the advantage of keeping the Polisy device in service?

I think this question sums it up. The answer is, I've been a ISY (and now EISY/Polisy) user for...I think over a decade. Maybe two? Is that possible? I'm more HA-curious than ready to switch over to HA completely. I just wanted to tinker, but was wondering how to do it with my existing set-up.

I'm not planning on running HA in the EISY. Actually, the opposite. My guess is, ultimately, I will end up with HA as my "master controller" where all my logic is, and where every NON-Insteon device gets managed. Then I will keep the ISY integration, since I'm familiar with it and already have an Insteon world set-up at my place. I suppose at some point, I may want to directly integrate Insteon with HA. But I do a few kinda off-the-wall things that I'm not sure HA can do. Probably can. But who knows? And it's all time intensive, so any full move to HA would probably take...well, years to be honest.

I was prompted to do this because even with the Polisy node-things, I still have a lot of smart devices that Polisy doesn't handle. My hope is that HA will be able to manage everything. Everything but Insteon. For now. If that makes sense.

I think I have enough to get started. If there is anything EISY-related that I think is helpful, I'll post back. Thank you all again. Soooo appreciated. 

[RPerrault]

with the failure rates of insteon devices, the one function of the isy i find invaluable is the replace device function - not sure anyone else can do that

the node servers are one beer truck away from being orphaned - that spooks me too

if i were not unix phobic, i'd check into ha - even though the eisy is unix, i am generally isolated from it

 

 

[paulbates]

6 hours ago, RPerrault said:

the node servers are one beer truck away from being orphaned - that spooks me too

I'm trying to think of one of the major DIY home automation systems that does not rely on community sourced software solutions on GitHub... homeseer, ISY and... home assistant - they all do. I view myself as a beneficiary of these developers' time and talents.

Edited January 10 by paulbates

[asbril]

2 hours ago, paulbates said:

I'm trying to think of one of the major DIY home automation systems that does not rely on community sourced software solutions on GitHub... homeseer, ISY and... home assistant - they all do. I view myself as a beneficiary of these developers' time and talents.

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.