I am migrating from an older ISY, and so far I’m really missing my ISY… I feel like it should be doing things that it does not seem to be doing so, my question is… are the following behaviors expected? or am I doing something wrong here?
when I imported a device that was already connected to other devices, it does not try to connect to the other devices automatically.
when I import a devices that is linked to other devices, those links are not imported as scenes.
when I create a scene in HA, it does not seem to be pushed to the device as links
when I click on a property in the device config, it goes back to the list of devices with the change dialog box… so if I change it I have to remember which device it was, and go back into that devices to push the change to the device?
when I try to link devices, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, even though the devices are the same make and firmware version (so, saying that they don’t accept remote linking doesn’t make sense when the other one did).
I feel like its doing stuff in the background, but there is no view of that that I can see.
I see that there are changes in the properties of a device (which I didn’t change, but leaving that aside for now), when I select write to device, nothing is happening, no errors, no messages, and the modified flag is still there. (or, am I not understanding what the “Yes” under “modified” means?
i can give some hints, but i’m afraid i don’t have all the definitive answers. for that, you’d probably want to hear from the insteon plugin developer @teharris1.
i’m a bit unclear - you mention you are missing your ISY - i assume this means you are no longer using an ISY. are you using an insteon PLM (such as Insteon 2413)? i’ll assume so - or perhaps for the responses below, it doesn’t matter.
i believe you are correct that in general, the insteon integration will not establish contact with a device B just because it has contact with device A and it sees that device A has a link to device B. it may be that this is not even possible without user intervention (physically pushing a button on device B) and i believe this may be by design (for security reasons).
correct. there is no automatic creation of scenes, afaik.
HA scenes are completely separate/different from Insteon scenes. you create HA scenes from Settings>Automations&Scenes>Scenes. HA scenes can include any HA-defined entities including e.g., any combination of z-wave devices, zigbee devices, lutron devices, etc. Insteon scenes can contain only insteon devices. You can view/create/edit them from Settings>Devices>Insteon>Configure>Insteon Scenes.
not totally sure i understand what you’re asking, but generally when you make a change to the properties on an in Insteon device, you must then select “write to device” from the three-dots menu at the top right to actually cause the change to take effect.
“sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t”. sadly, that matches my general experience with insteon. it is an old protocol. the commands that allow a controller configure properties and links on a device are “extended” commands that were added later in the design. the protocol is slow and not as robust to noise and interference as more modern protocols. fortunately, the basic (short) commands that are used more frequently tend to be more reliable. if you encounter a failure when trying to program or setup links, it may work on retry. be on the lookout for sources of noise/interference in your home. remember that Insteon uses both powerline and RF communication and is potentially susceptible to noise/interference from either.
i can say that i concur 100% with your observation. many functions of the insteon integration happen asychronously, and the user feedback as to what is happening can be lacking in some cases, confusing or misleading in some cases, and worse still, 100% flat contradictory/wrong in a few cases. it is easy for a user to get confused. as you mentioned in #5, commands sometimes fail, so you have to retry, but otoh, you sometimes find that you retry a command and the first command is still running, so things only get more messed up. it can be very frustrating. i opened issues on several of these when i first started using the integration in 2024, but they were ignored/closed.
i have observed similar issues. first, see #5 above - sometimes commands just fail, but will succeed if you re-try. however, as to the specific point you are mentioning, i have observed recently, a repeatable bug in the integration whereby if i modify a property on a device, then hit write-to-device, it will always fail immediately, but if i simply repeat the exact same sequence again and do another write-to-device, then it always works. i have no idea why.
hope this helps and i would love to hear from others if they have a better understanding and/or workarounds for some of these issues.
i would also be curious to know if anyone (including especially the integration author) can comment about the state of support for the integration, future plans, etc. as i mentioned, all the issues i opened last year were closed/ignored. a few were acknowledged, but i’ve seen no substantive fixes. … and one would assume the insteon user base is only shrinking over time…