This may be better posted in the Smarthome/Insteon forums, but I figure I’ll ask here as well…
I have a ton of Insteon devices in my home and have also started looking at some Sonoff devices as well. I also have an idea for a custom pool controller using a PLC which I might implement MQTT on. For the most part, the Insteon app has worked well for me (especially the new beta version), however as I add more non-insteon devices, I find myself wanting to combine the interface and interactions between insteon and non-insteon devices.
I have a new HA instance setup (I’ve tried a RPi 3 and a VM) and have the Insteon integration working (somewhat, it seems fairly unreliable and responses are very slow). I am currently using the 2245 hub and have read that there are issues with the hub vs the serial PLM.
I have also picked up a serial PLM (2413S) and an ISY994i off eBay cheaply, but haven’t done anything with them yet.
My question essentially is “what is going to be the most reliable and flexible system, given the hardware I have?”
In HA, I think it’s best to use the serial PLM instead of the Hub. Can both live on the same network at the same time? ie, can I keep the Hub active and use the Insteon app while HA uses the serial PLM interface?
If using the serial PLM in HA, does the addition of the ISY add any benefit? It seems that most of the functions in the ISY could be replicated in HA. Is the ISY integration for HA better or more reliable than direct to the serial PLM?
If adding the serial PLM in any scenario, will I need to start from scratch with all my Insteon devices and need to re-link all my existing 3-way switches?
I would suggest you come to the Universal Devices forum to discuss the ISY. Great community there too.
As for the questions…
You don’t want to have the Hub and PLM trying to use the same devices. Is it possible? Yes, BUT… you may get very unexpected results and have link table corruptions from the Hub and either software or ISY controlling the PLM. It’s best to pick one and stick to it.
As of today the best way of using Insteon with HASS is with the ISY and ISY Component. I recommend the HACS version of the component. Having the ISY and HASS together is a hugely flexible setup. You can mix Insteon in with HASS devices and you can manage your Scenes (Insteon groups) from the ISY with ease.
If you go with the ISY and PLM You will have to reset/relink all of your devices. You “could” add them to the ISY and leave the old links but it will cause you problems down the road. Just bite the bullet and reset everything as you add the devices to the ISY. The ISY makes managing, creating scenes for 3-way so easy that it’s not even an issue.
I guess my first step will be getting the ISY and PLM working together to get familiar with that. I don’t want to remove the hub just yet. I’m not worried about losing the Insteon app as we don’t really use it that often in our household, but I need to keep the Hub for now because we heavily rely on the Google Assistant voice command integration between the Insteon Hub and Google. I’m still not sure how that will work under HA. I assume HA Cloud subscription is required…
What I might do is link the ISY to some older Insteon devices that aren’t currently wired to get familiar with it. That way, the ISY and Hub aren’t conflicting…
Upgrade the firmware in the ISY. Current release is 5.0.16C(RC1). This has updated z-wave support if you have the Z-wave board and supports the Polyglot NodeServer’s
The ISY with the ISY Portal has really good voice assistant support for Google and Alexa and UDI is very responsive to issues and feature updates. The ISY Portal has a cost but it’s really cheap and worth it. You can have BOTH systems linked to Google as well and use the ISY portal for Insteon devices and HASS integration for the rest of your stuff. Myself I prefer to use the “native” voice assistant integrations for things. Such as Hue I link that direct and don’t go through my HA system and for Insteon I go through ISY etc etc.