Hi all. I’m a newbie here so will try not to flood the forum with too many questions all at once.
For the past dozen years or so, I have been an ISY user. I had ~50 Insteon devices and loved how the ISY allowed me to set up rather complicated scenes. During that time period I went through three serial PLMs. Serial PLMs failing is a pretty common thing, and my experience was no different.
We sold our home recently and are building a new one. In the new home, over time, I will add Insteon devices though probably not near as many as I had in the old home. I will also have a few Z-wave devices (three Schlage door locks to start), a couple Nest thermostats, a Ring camera, a Harmony Hub, a few Google devices, eight Hunter Douglas automated blinds, and either a Sonos Port or Bluesound Node. (I think I covered everything)
I decided that with so many different protocols, it was time to move to something like Homeseer or Home Assistant. I enjoy tinkering and am fairly tech savvy (though my learning curve at 61 ain’t what it once was), so I have decided to jump into HA.
I just ordered an HA Blue and was planning to use a USB PLM to interface between the Blue and my Insteon devices. Then it occurred to me that one of the things I really liked about the ISY was it’s ability to create fairly complex scenes easily. I’ve read what I could here and have not understood all of it. My understanding so far is that:
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Use a USB PLM and manually link Insteon devices to each other and to the PLM. Then the HA Blue should see the devices (maybe after a little work) and I can start my hands on learning. The disadvantage would be that setting up anything more than the most basic Insteon scenes this way can get complicated rather quickly.
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Buy a new ISY and a new serial PLM (ugh), set up my Insteon network in a similar way to how I did it at the old house and then add the ISY to my HA Blue. My instinct is to add the Z-wave capability to the HA Blue rather than the ISY. Good instinct? The big disadvantages here are the increased cost of the ISY and the fact that serial PLMs are not in stock anywhere (and there is some talk that they may be discontinued). Oh, and did I mention the serial PLMs have a history or routine failure?
So I’ll end my first post asking for feedback and suggestions on my situation. I was originally trying to leave ISY for a more comprehensive HA solution, but unless there is some more elegant way to create and manage Insteon scenes than doing it manually, I may need to use HA and ISY.
I look forward to your responses. I’m sure I’ll be back with plenty of questions as I (hopefully) begin to build my HA network.