I had previously been running insteon-mqtt on a remote Pi with a USB attached PLM (2413U). All of my 77 switches, dimmers, keypads and fanlincs are already linked and working. I recently got installed and have started to migrate everything over to a Yellow. Today, I did the following to migrate my Insteon devices.
Disable the insteon-mqtt container on the remote Pi.
Disable the MQTT container on my server (only used for Insteon devices).
Delete all of my Insteon/MQTT auto-discovered devices in HA on my new Yellow.
Reboot the Yellow.
Directly connect the PLM to the Yellow.
At this point, I carefully re-read the integration documentation and was a little surprised that the PLM was not auto-detected. Moving ahead, I manually added the Insteon configuration and configured the PLM, then waited. I assumed that the autodiscovery would detect all of the devices that are already linked.
Several hours later, not a single device has been found. I thought I might need to manually add each device. In the Insteon Configuration Panel, when I click on “Add Device” in only see 2 check boxes (Link multiple devices, Add X10 device) and a place to enter an Insteon address. Adding an address does nothing as there is no other button/interaction visible.
I’m at a loss… how do I add my Insteon devices? Can anyone help?
A quick update… overnight, one of my keypads has now appeared. The keypad in HA does reflect physical presses, however the reverse is not working. I cannot turn on/off any buttons from HA.
i’ll give general comments based on experience working with the integration, but i should say i have not been through the specific migration process you mention.
i believe when the integration wakes up and finds itself connected to the PLM, but with no devices, the only way the devices will get created is if/when it hears traffic from those devices. i believe this also requires that the option “enable newly added entities” is enabled. so basically, i think the integration will gradually discover your devices as they communicate. this may require you to walk around and turn some switches on, etc.
you may find it useful to set the option “enable polling for changes”, though to be honest, i’m not completely certain i understand exactly what this option does (it is enabled on my configuration).
a second thing that needs to be done to make the integration work properly is that for each insteon device, you have to be sure that the device has the links it requires to actively communicate all relevant state changes to the PLM (so no polling is required). fortunately, there’s a command built-in to the integration for doing this called “add default links” in the three-dots menu you’ll see when looking at the “all-link database” tab in the insteon dashboard view of a device. unfortunately, for some devices (particularly battery powered devices), you will need to go around and physically “wake” the device in order to be able to edit its links.
regarding the “broader issue” you pointed to… i can say that i am using a 2413U PLM to talk to insteon through my home-assistant yellow and i’m not seeing this issue.
as to your general observation about the integration being “stagnant”. i concur. i’ve been using it for about 18 months now. i’ve opened 5-10 issues in that time, only to seem them either closed/dismissed by the owner or they were just ignored and auto-closed. i must say i am very impressed by the overall quality of the integration, but as far as i can tell the owner @teharris has not been supporting it recently, neither in terms of fixing bugs/issues with the code nor fixing gaps/errors in the documentation.
Thanks for your response! I verified that both of the options (enable new and polling) were enabled. I can now see 3 devices (including PLM) listed under the “integration entities”. In both cases, they show changes made to the physical switches, but are unable control the physical switches. All of the links should already been in place as the PLM was working perfectly with Insteon-MQTT.
In the Insteon control panel, when I look at the PLM’s All-Link Database, I can actually see every single device in my house. However, only 2 of them have been added to the integration. The 2 that do appear show up twice (as expected) as both responder and controller.
Clearly my thinking that the broader issue was the root-cause was incorrect. Thank you for confirming your PLM is working with the latest release of HA.
I’m going to let this “soak” again overnight to see if any more of my devices are “discovered” and brought forward. If anyone has any insight on how to force this, it would be much appreciated!