Elk M1 & ISY99? How do they work together?

[RichTJ99]

Hi

 

I am in the middle of a redoing some of my home. I was curious if there is a quick explanation of what you can do with the ELK M1, and what you could do using the elk & isy994 together?

 

Thanks

Rich

[elvisimprsntr]

The Elk is a high end commercial quality security system which you can install and program yourself. If you add the Ethernet interface and you can remotely access the security system via a web interface or using iOS handheld devices using third party apps.

 

If you add the ISY the two can communication between one another so you can controls lights based on security system events (e.g. garage door opens, turn on exterior lights at night). You can also control the security system from the ISY with the addition of an add on plugin for the ISY. See this post for links to the third party apps. viewtopic.php?f=42&t=6983 I have the Elk programmed to send me text messages if security system goes off which avoids having to pay a monthly fee, but I have read that you can have a professional monitoring service hooked up to the Elk.

 

The ISY also allow you to create time and events based lighting changes without having a separate computer running 24/7. How you split the security/lighting programs between the two is up to you. In my case all security event driven (e.g. turn on exterior lights when garage door is opened when its dark outside) programs I have programmed in my Elk since those I am less likely to tweak. Time driven events (e.g turn on kitchen light at dawn). The ISY also has the ability to interface with energy monitors, thermostats, drape controllers, etc.

 

I started with the Elk and ISY and slowly added lighting modules over time as I carefully thought about what lights i wanted to control. I can control my security and lighting from anywhere in the world and even at 35000 ft and don’t have to pay a monthly fee or go through some third party server to do so. The only word of caution is you have to have some patience with the Insteon lighting modules. It takes a little common sense and and tweaking to get it working perfectly. Most of the problems come from electrical interference from wall transformers which tend to operate at similar frequencies the wired Insteon communication operates at.

[apostolakisl]

Elk and ISY with the Elk module for ISY almost completely merges the two systems. There are a few things left out of ISY's Elk module but not many. My 2 cents here, ISY guys should add those couple things even though they aren't that big of a deal just so they can say "it is a 100% marrigage". But anyway.

 

The basic jist is as follows. ISY has tremendous home automation programming abilities which far surpass Elk's built in programming. ISY can do a lot more with your Insteon stuff and can do it with less work and more readable and organizable formatting. Elk on the other hand is rock solid stable (not that ISY isn't, but Insteon clearly is not 100%). So you can't use Insteon technology for security or mission critical stuff. But by using the ISY module, you can get the Elk to control those security and mission critical things (like anything that deals with water or motors) and use the ISY programming interface to do it.

 

The ISY Elk module really expands Elk's capabilities a lot and vice-versa. And not just in programming, also in notification such as emails and texts of system events.