I might be finished with UD...

[Toddimus]

I bought my first ISY994 almost 14 years ago.  Had a few Insteon modems die along the way (not UDI's fault), assumed it was just the cost of playing the geeky game.  Somewhere along the line, I think I must have had an ISY994 die along the way because I have an extra.  Can't really remember what happened there.  Now I have a Polisy Pro that initially just ran Polyglot integrations which have since been deprecated (more on that later).

About a year ago, I finally migrated my totally functional ISY994 system/programs/Z-wave network over to the Polisy.  It was supposed to be the bee's knees.  By the time I ended up migrating, there was a new and improved, bee's knees called the EISY.  I get it, they had to change suppliers for their uber-cheap imported box that can run the Java backend to maintain compatibility.  What initially pissed me off was that the recommended Zooz Z-stick was no longer supported on the "latest" version of ISY firmware on the now deprecated Polisy.  You can still use it but you can't upgrade to the latest versions of firmware because it's not supported.  Instead, you have to buy the MatterZ stick because that's the new thing and you just have to have it, or it won't work unless you stay on old firmware.  

Fast forward to now... My Polisy updated itself to v5.8.4 (I think) firmware apparently within the last few days/weeks.  I didn't do it.  Now, it needs rebooting every day.  My old Polyglot 2 integrations are dead.  I had a LOT of archaic ISY Java admin interface code programmed around those Polyglot integrations.  And now, you need a subscription to maintain connectivity to the system from the smart phone.

I get it.  The company needs to make money and needs to monetize this thing.  I totally get it.  I'm just not willing to buy an EISY (~$300) and a Zmatter (~$125) to replace the stuff that worked just fine until the ecosystem I had been using is suddenly deprecated. 

I just did the subscription for the next year for the portal.  I'm fine with a subscription.  I'd probably pay $50/year if it just worked and I didn't have to deal with it all the time.  But, alas it doesn't.  I had hoped I didn't need to babysit it.  But I do.  Why does the Insteon light take so long to react to a motion sensor when the Z-wave reacts immediately?  Why do I still occasionally get an all-on event?  Why does the Polisy reboot when the living room motion sensors have a bunch of triggers (can't I have a party in my living room)?? 

I think I'm done with UDI unless there's a clear path to a stable system that I can rely upon for at least a few years.  I wish it wasn't this way but I'm at my wit's end.  I'll likely be migrating control to either Home Assistant or OpenHAB (both of which I have run in parallel for many years).  I just find that I can't rely upon the Polisy and the ISY/Polyglot infrastructure anymore.  

To be honest, I'm bummed.  I'm not one to be a complainer or squeaky wheel.  I've tried to make the ISY work.  And I have ~50 Insteon devices in my house.  I have a ridiculous amount of time building ISY programs.  And I made some really cool automation stuff over the years.  But I realize this is the state of affairs.  I think I have to begin the process of migrating away.  It's just not stable anymore.  As I said, I'm bummed, or you could even say, disappointed.  

Please tell me I'm wrong and pull me off the edge because I'd love to just have an update and fix everything.  I just don't see it happening.  Especially on "old" Polisy hardware with Zooz Zstick.

[paulbates]

I've jumped ship on other HA integration solutions in the past 24 years 3 times because it didn't work out, to arrive at UDI/ISY. None of them are perfect, changes happen. Make the choice you need to make.

One of the best things UDI offer, not sure any of the competition does to anything close to... and it didn't see it listed as something you tried in your post....is submitting a ticket and getting UDI's high level support. 

[Guy Lavoie]

9 hours ago, Toddimus said:

Fast forward to now... My Polisy updated itself to v5.8.4 (I think) firmware apparently within the last few days/weeks.  I didn't do it.  Now, it needs rebooting every day. 

Maybe you got that bad 5.8.4_1 update the came out just about a week ago. Tried the rollback? Read this thread:

 

[gregkinney]

You're not wrong and I'm not going to pull you off the edge, however, I will say this is a 'grass is always greener' type of scenario. I had the same idea as you and attempted a switch to HA. I have also run HA for many years alongside ISY for the things the ISY coudn't do. The first thing I did was switch Zwave over to HA because ZW was SOOO bad on ISY. So many delays and missed commands. My experience with ZW on HA was that it was worse than ISY ZW. That is not everyone's experience but it was mine. The point of my story is that if you switch, it will fix some of your issues but it will create other issues. Sometimes it's worth it. I mean, the grass does come in different shades of green in different locations, right? Maybe it is a little greener for you somewhere else. Just know, it will likely not be a fix all. I continue to run ISY and HA in tandem as well as a RPi where I write my own little scripts that don't fit neatly into the ISY or HA box. I have decided this is the best approach - not cutting out any one ecosystem but using each one for their strengths.

[lilyoyo1]

I've tried most systems out there over the years and none really beat the isy family overall. It's not perfect but none are. Especially when it comes to insteon, there's no way im choosing HA over eisy/polisy. It's simply more elegant in the UD family of devices. The only controller that i've used thats better is control 4 but that like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Genesis (there's a reason for the difference in cost)

I use Radio Ra3 so I no longer use my polisy since it cannot control my RA3 keypad buttons (works with regular dimmers/switches). However, if it did, I would have upgraded my polisy to eisy to use with my Ra devices over Control 4. One thing i've learned in life is experience is the best teacher. Since you already have the hardware, give it a try. Make a back up of your eisy to make going back easier should you decide to. Swap over to HA and run that. If you like it better then stick with it. If not, you can always go back to your previous setup.

Edited October 11, 2024 by lilyoyo1

[mmb]

A few thoughts.

For the most part my Polisy (EISY) handles mostly Insteon lighting as I find their switches are still the best by far.

My HA instance has been generally handling more automation tasks over time, mostly DHT ESP boards and Zigbee temperature sensors. I run a separate Zigbee controller on HA.

HA also pulls data from the Polisy for a very useful and dynamic dashboard. It's too bad Polisy can't do more in this area.

[firstone]

On 10/9/2024 at 12:04 AM, Toddimus said:

To be honest, I'm bummed.  I'm not one to be a complainer or squeaky wheel.  I've tried to make the ISY work.  And I have ~50 Insteon devices in my house.  I have a ridiculous amount of time building ISY programs.  And I made some really cool automation stuff over the years.  But I realize this is the state of affairs.  I think I have to begin the process of migrating away.  It's just not stable anymore.  As I said, I'm bummed, or you could even say, disappointed.  

I don't think anything out there does better Insteon integration. So unless you're willing to throw away your 50 Insteon devices, probably don't overreact and use UD's best feature - support. Open a ticket, give them time to work it out. 

Firmware instability is unfortunate, and, hopefully UD can address this in the future by not doing auto updates and/or controlling it better. But as a developer I can tell you this, no matter what your best effort is - the only way to avoid bugs is not to make any changes. This might have worked well with original ISY, but with constantly moving pgx and zwave, etc work, this, unfortunately, is not the case.
 

[junkycosmos]

Also long time user here, just trying to count, ummm 16yrs here.  Started with ISY99 ..  Here this will date me .. ONE OF THE FIRST users to have the ALL ON events after moving to the ISY994 and battery powered devices.    RIGHT not UDI's fault on the ALL ONs .. just same as the bad SD cards (use of fake SD cards permitted the market and killed many products) .. but I would put it this way.   When someone steps out into a busy street - do you try to avoid them if you can or do you just say 'oh not my fault' and mow them down.   Right, even if you are one of those guys you probably chicken out last minute and do the right thing.  So to Michel's credit UDI did a crap ton to hold up Insteon over the years.   I am not in the position to say if more could have been done on the topics of: ALL ON, random link losses, PLM deaths due to overheated capacitors, poorly implemented firmware options in devices.     Enter Zwave - huge credit on to UDI for jumping in - a solid jump in, how many different Zwave boards did they do?    Ok now ISY hardware often struggling on larger setups but super reliable - yank the power and you can always expect your ISY to restart (ok if your power supply hasn't overheated, your SD card isnt fake) .. and, as a user with 300+ devices, 15 minutes for startup and query all but you could count on it.      Honestly that is the amazing ISY brand rock - solid.   Only thing I have ever seen better are some elevator control boards from the 90s running in their isolated environments.      

Now enter EISY - during a market time of a very useable Home Assistant community device - dropping prices of the extreme commercial systems (have you seen the Lutron Caseta system) or even drop in price of the RA2 pro stuff.  Oh yeah then let's mention Alexa of the casual user requiring nearly no "hobby support time" /  Insteon goes bankrupt with a nice community support pickup but long overdue.     Again, I am outside here, with have a ton of respect for the Gang at UDI, all of whom I would give a large hug but their world they are operating in has changed a ton / ummm the world us users are asked to navigate which @Toddimus opening post had me think of.    I bought a EISY with wellness to send the $400 just on principle to support UDI - but my efforts to test it out over the last year have been sadly challenging.    First issue was after pulling power from it when moving it around my network cabinet - completely corrupted free BSD and EISY needed to be shipped into UDI - but noted that was only after Michel spent 3 hours on a Sunday night remotely connected to it attempting to fix .. dang!    However that doesn't make up for the loss in reliability hit  - when designing EISY (or in testing) was a requirement missed  -users will yank power - device needs to live through random power outages...

Curious where others land on this too.  I get the ISY994 is outdated hardware wise .. sad but true - although some of your favorite elevators are probably running firmware from 1999 on them still today .. 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 02:42 AM by junkycosmos

[junkycosmos]

oh I didn't mention but the cross roads I am at 

1x isy994 with 300+ devices = willing to dump all off the Insteon devices for something like Lutron casita OR keep and do EISY

12x other locations with ISY994s in them - some with 2-3 devices or simple setups like monitor for flood / control a light or lack of motion etc.   Kinda spendy to buy a bunch of EISYs .. but honestly would IF the readability was close to ISY ...  without needing ongoing hobby support .. (wish that was better understood by UDI) .. if we wanted hobby devices we probably wouldn't have bought ISY994 in the 1st place and have been running HomeSteer, HA, or the other junk which was on market.   Could do some of these on Home Assistant with cheap Raspberry Pi units to meet the needs and that maybe the way we roll here.     

[apostolakisl]

4 hours ago, junkycosmos said:

oh I didn't mention but the cross roads I am at 

1x isy994 with 300+ devices = willing to dump all off the Insteon devices for something like Lutron casita OR keep and do EISY

12x other locations with ISY994s in them - some with 2-3 devices or simple setups like monitor for flood / control a light or lack of motion etc.   Kinda spendy to buy a bunch of EISYs .. but honestly would IF the readability was close to ISY ...  without needing ongoing hobby support .. (wish that was better understood by UDI) .. if we wanted hobby devices we probably wouldn't have bought ISY994 in the 1st place and have been running HomeSteer, HA, or the other junk which was on market.   Could do some of these on Home Assistant with cheap Raspberry Pi units to meet the needs and that maybe the way we roll here.     

Why not just leave the 994's?  Do you need something more where those devices are located?  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  I have a 994 at one of my sites and I can't think of anything more I want to do at that site and just let it keep doing its thing.  Super reliable without any of the beta updates that I have such a hard time not installing.  That 994 is seriously so stable I don't even think about it for a couple years now.

I have a polisy at my home now and I keep having to hold myself back from installing this latest update.  I don't need it, at least not at this point, but that damn temptation keeps coming after me.  It is like the ring in the Lord of The Rings.  I don't have that temptation with the 994.

Edited yesterday at 07:41 AM by apostolakisl

[smokegrub]

I have been a UDI champion and an Insteon champion for many years. I have two  ISY 994 based homes and they have functioned near flawlessly. I have no need for change! Plus, I am near 80 years old and change is becoming more difficult. I feel I am being pushed where I do not want to go.  If its money, charge me for support but please do not strand me.

[mmb]

22 minutes ago, smokegrub said:

I feel I am being pushed where I do not want to go.

My 90 yr old parents are still on an ISY and Insteon switches.  Making changes for them at this point would be too confusing for them so I leave things as is. 

In any event, aside from a massive ISY failure, nothing has come along feature-wise that I feel compelled to change things for them anyway.

[lilyoyo1]

14 hours ago, junkycosmos said:

Also long time user here, just trying to count, ummm 16yrs here.  Started with ISY99 ..  Here this will date me .. ONE OF THE FIRST users to have the ALL ON events after moving to the ISY994 and battery powered devices.    RIGHT not UDI's fault on the ALL ONs .. just same as the bad SD cards (use of fake SD cards permitted the market and killed many products) .. but I would put it this way.   When someone steps out into a busy street - do you try to avoid them if you can or do you just say 'oh not my fault' and mow them down.   Right, even if you are one of those guys you probably chicken out last minute and do the right thing.  So to Michel's credit UDI did a crap ton to hold up Insteon over the years.   I am not in the position to say if more could have been done on the topics of: ALL ON, random link losses, PLM deaths due to overheated capacitors, poorly implemented firmware options in devices.     Enter Zwave - huge credit on to UDI for jumping in - a solid jump in, how many different Zwave boards did they do?    Ok now ISY hardware often struggling on larger setups but super reliable - yank the power and you can always expect your ISY to restart (ok if your power supply hasn't overheated, your SD card isnt fake) .. and, as a user with 300+ devices, 15 minutes for startup and query all but you could count on it.      Honestly that is the amazing ISY brand rock - solid.   Only thing I have ever seen better are some elevator control boards from the 90s running in their isolated environments.      

Now enter EISY - during a market time of a very useable Home Assistant community device - dropping prices of the extreme commercial systems (have you seen the Lutron Caseta system) or even drop in price of the RA2 pro stuff.  Oh yeah then let's mention Alexa of the casual user requiring nearly no "hobby support time" /  Insteon goes bankrupt with a nice community support pickup but long overdue.     Again, I am outside here, with have a ton of respect for the Gang at UDI, all of whom I would give a large hug but their world they are operating in has changed a ton / ummm the world us users are asked to navigate which @Toddimus opening post had me think of.    I bought a EISY with wellness to send the $400 just on principle to support UDI - but my efforts to test it out over the last year have been sadly challenging.    First issue was after pulling power from it when moving it around my network cabinet - completely corrupted free BSD and EISY needed to be shipped into UDI - but noted that was only after Michel spent 3 hours on a Sunday night remotely connected to it attempting to fix .. dang!    However that doesn't make up for the loss in reliability hit  - when designing EISY (or in testing) was a requirement missed  -users will yank power - device needs to live through random power outages...

Curious where others land on this too.  I get the ISY994 is outdated hardware wise .. sad but true - although some of your favorite elevators are probably running firmware from 1999 on them still today .. 

 

 

I no longer use UDI equipment so I am limited in what I can say about them. From my ISY-Polisy days, I have zero negative things to say. The only reason I switched, was due to me using Radio Ra3 instead of insteon. At the time, UDI equipment did not support Ra3. Even now, it does not support Ra3 Keypads so I couldnt go back if I wanted to. Had EISY offered RA3 support before I invested in Control 4, I never would have stopped using it. 

14 hours ago, junkycosmos said:

12x other locations with ISY994s in them - some with 2-3 devices or simple setups like monitor for flood / control a light or lack of motion etc.   Kinda spendy to buy a bunch of EISYs .. but honestly would IF the readability was close to ISY ...  without needing ongoing hobby support

if its not broke, dont fix it....Why swap out a perfectly good and working system for something new if you're using it for basic needs? Its not like the 994 suddenly stopped working because of the EISY.

14 hours ago, junkycosmos said:

1x isy994 with 300+ devices = willing to dump all off the Insteon devices for something like Lutron casita OR keep and do EISY

With 300 insteon devices- you're kinda stuck with what you have. No other system (DIY) can support that many devices. Caseta tops out at 75 devices. Unless you plan on having multiple logins and hubs, thats a non starter...Even if willing; you've added unnecessary complexity to your system...especially since they do not have keypad support. Zwave! Zwave is a non starter for me for many reasons. Some like it but after using Insteon/Ra3, there is zero chance of me ever using it.

 

For a basic system, the Lutron DIY/prosumer stuff works really well. If all I wanted was Alexa control over a few devices i'd be willing to use them to a certain degree. For customization, you will need to add another layer of control to really get the most out of them. Lutron's Prosumer stuff (ra2/3) were really designed to be used with other control systems. That's partly why they are so basic when used by themselves but so easily integrate with other select systems.

 

The same people who want standalone systems controlled by Alexa are not looking to use EISY and home assistant. For the most part, those same people aren't looking at RA2 (while cheaper is still the most expensive option you mentioned)

 

 

 

[bpwwer]

6 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I no longer use UDI equipment so I am limited in what I can say about them. From my ISY-Polisy days, I have zero negative things to say. The only reason I switched, was due to me using Radio Ra3 instead of insteon. At the time, UDI equipment did not support Ra3. Even now, it does not support Ra3 Keypads so I couldnt go back if I wanted to. Had EISY offered RA3 support before I invested in Control 4, I never would have stopped using it. 

So there's no misunderstandings, UDI wanted to add support for RA3, but Lutron would not provide the protocol specification.  The support that exists today is based on the work someone did to reverse engineer the protocol.

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, bpwwer said:

So there's no misunderstandings, UDI wanted to add support for RA3, but Lutron would not provide the protocol specification.  The support that exists today is based on the work someone did to reverse engineer the protocol.

I remember when they were trying and it wasn't a knock against them. I love UDI and their products. You did an excellent job with getting their switches supported for the community which is an excellent thing. I was just letting the poster know that there is no perfect situation out there definitely none better than eisy/Insteon