Difference between Polisy and EISY? Why upgrade?

[EDilks]

I have been using a Polisy since it was first introduced.  I upgraded from the ISY 994i

What is the difference between my Polisy and the eisy? Why would I want to upgrade at this time (other than to take advantage of the price increase)

My primary use is managing Insteon devices and some programming

[paulbates]

If you don't have a need to upgrade, not experiencing problems or limitation, I'd stay as you are. Not sure the time and $ involved would serve you vs investing in additional automations. Maybe proactively change your SD card in your ISY.

The product history is
- ISY 994
- Node server capability added years ago and a separate server was needed
- Policy became UDIs official method of hosting node servers
- eisy does both functions in one box

Edited Wednesday at 02:41 PM by paulbates

[EDilks]

Why change my SD card?

I don't have my ISY 994 anymore.  I am only using Polisy box.

Edited Wednesday at 03:11 PM by EDilks

[paulbates]

Ok. Policy has both, my bad recollection.  I wouldn't upgrade if you're not experiencing problems

[bcdavis75]

I am considering this as well, given the coming price hikes.  For those that have moved from Polisy to EISY, I'm curious is there's any difference in execution times. The Polisy and its predecessor have always an annoying lag when executing stuff via programs.

I'm also wondering if it's reasonable to consider the potential increase in nodes and the Matter/Thread rollout progresses. That could mean adding many more devices to Polisy.  Does EISY have higher capacity overall?

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, bcdavis75 said:

I am considering this as well, given the coming price hikes.  For those that have moved from Polisy to EISY, I'm curious is there's any difference in execution times. The Polisy and its predecessor have always an annoying lag when executing stuff via programs.

I'm also wondering if it's reasonable to consider the potential increase in nodes and the Matter/Thread rollout progresses. That could mean adding many more devices to Polisy.  Does EISY have higher capacity overall?

Any time lag perceived by a human is from the comm protocol being used. Insteon is a very slow protocol once you add in all the transmission security, echoing and retries of any bad device or noise picked up and translated to valid signals fr devices that don't exist. Of course it is fast enough in a clean system. I always needed to put in Wait 1-2 seconds between every group of 3 Insteon devices or buffers would overflow and lose commands and statuses.

WiFi and some other protocols are much faster.

ISY was only about 200 MHz CPU while polISY is aprox 1,000 MHz, and multi-processor core. It is not slow to a human.

Edited Wednesday at 07:48 PM by larryllix

[Guy Lavoie]

The initial question hasn't been answered: how much faster is the eisy compared to the Polisy? It would be interesting to know.

[Geddy]

On 4/23/2025 at 8:34 AM, EDilks said:

What is the difference between my Polisy and the eisy?

From recollection when the eisy was released there is marginal differences on the surface level as far as IoX and Plugins are considered. I think all the underlying programming that UD handles is the same (or at least very close to identical).

The reason for the eisy introduction when it was released was lack of ability to source the hardware for the Polisy (one of those issues that can be blamed on covid and the supply chain issues that followed). 

As stated above if you've got a working Polisy at this time just keep it updated. UD pledged to support the Polisy for several years after the eisy was released. That timeframe I do not recall for certain, but think it was several years. We are a couple of years since the eisy was released so expect the Polisy to continue to be supported for a few more years as long as UD can keep the code for the two devices similar.

 

On 4/23/2025 at 11:21 AM, bcdavis75 said:

For those that have moved from Polisy to EISY, I'm curious is there's any difference in execution times.

I moved from Polisy to eisy when the eisy was released. I do not experience any difference in my use. I have a mid-size Insteon install (~70 nodes +/-), 6 z-wave devices, 4 zigbee devices, and maybe 5 plugins. I don't get crazy with programming or variables. 

 

15 hours ago, Guy Lavoie said:

The initial question hasn't been answered: how much faster is the eisy compared to the Polisy?

Since the underlying IoX code is identical there's no "speed" difference. I'm sure the device processing power might be different/better, but at the end of things IoX computes the change and sends signals out via the PLM so there's not any speed difference, at least probably not that a we could tell in the real world use (as @larryllix points out).

[larryllix]

17 hours ago, Guy Lavoie said:

The initial question hasn't been answered: how much faster is the eisy compared to the Polisy? It would be interesting to know.

I think the answer may be the speed difference is irrelevant to any home automation user if you use any remote devices via a communications protocol.

If you want to listen to music while watching a 4K video and still have your HA operate at the same speed, there my be somewhat of a difference.

IOW: in polISY and eISY the CPU will be 95% of it's speed wasted, waiting for the comm line to talk to, or hear back from, it's peripheral devices.

[Guy Lavoie]

Thanks for the replies, and that is pretty well what I expected: there there would be no real difference, at least as far as making an "upgrade" from Polisy to eisy worthwhile is concerned. I'm happy about that. I first got the eisy, and then came across a used Polisy with the ZMatter board that cost me little more than the ZMatter board itself. I have the Polisy as my "lab" system and as a standby spare if the eisy should die an untimely death. 

[xlurkr]

The only thing that I'm jealous of Eisy owners over is the ability to connect an HDMI monitor and run a gui on FreeBSD.  That would be kind of cool, but tbh it would not make it work better as an automation controller than my Polisy does.  Or maybe if I were a plugin developer, doing it all on one device - with a gui - would be a step up.  But I don't have the chops - yet.  Now that I'm retired, though, who knows?

-Tom

[Guy Lavoie]

2 hours ago, xlurkr said:

 Or maybe if I were a plugin developer, doing it all on one device - with a gui - would be a step up.  But I don't have the chops - yet.  Now that I'm retired, though, who knows?

-Tom

That's another purpose of my Polisy as a test controller: to learn plugin programming. I've done a couple of simple plugins to get the hang of it. It's a steep learning curve