Insteon configuration panel

kbrown01 · August 7, 2023, 10:11pm

@teharris, what is the official link to enhancement requests?
I will note that after this last few upgrades I can now see all the devices in the Insteon scenes.
Thank you!

I would like to suggest that insteon.scene_on and insteon.scene_off take a scene number or name.

service: insteon.scene_on
data:
  group_name: "Dogs"

Would be great, instead we have to do this:

service: insteon.scene_on
data:
  group: 51

Or even insteon.scene_name_on and insteon.scene_name_off as different services

teharris1 · August 9, 2023, 2:01pm

Interesting suggestion. I can see where this would be helpful.

Right now my focus is getting the new i3 KPL supported. After that, I am working on a change to eliminate the “Configuration” options under “Devices & Services” which requires me to bring all features into the panel. This will simplify the navigation for users and make it more consistent with configuring any other integration. Then I am looking at making configuration settings available as HA entities. This will allow users to change configuration using automation (ie. turn on/off LEDs at night). Finally, I am also looking at some other utilities for the panel which includes:

Linking two devices - similar to the “Scenes” editor but for inter device config
Utilites for the following:
a. Remove a dead device completely from all devices’ ALDB
b. Identify broken links (i.e. one device is a controller but no corresponding responder link and vise versa)
c. Replace device A with device B - Useful if you need to replace a device and you want all scenes etc to work on the new device.

teharris1 · August 9, 2023, 2:04pm

BTW, the new leadership of insteon have been extremely helpful in supporting my efforts. I am also very excited about their new devices. The i3 devices have a lot of cool features. They are also looking into the Hub connectively issue seriously. (Plus they are given me free devices like the new i3 KPL so that I can build them into HA )

RPros · August 13, 2023, 3:41pm

@teharris1 Thank you for the continued support and development. I for one am VERY happy to hear the Insteon leadership is seriously looking into the Hub connectivity issue :). Separately from your other post I am looking forward to your future utilities, especially to “Identify broken links” as I believe I have a lot with older devices and linking that never seemed to work right years back with different hubs. Thanks again.

wgstarks · August 13, 2023, 3:57pm

@teharris1
I’m sure this has been asked here before but I’m not finding it, how can I delete all the links and devices in the database? I’ve moved and most of the switches, door contacts, etc were left behind at the old house. I would like to start over with newly adopted devices if I can.

teharris1 · August 14, 2023, 1:33am

@wgstarks marking a link as not “in_use” is the equivalent of deleting the link. There is no other way. Don’t forget to write the changes to the device after you make the changes in Home Assistant.

If you REALLY want to start with a clean slate. You can factory reset all the devices then relink them to the modem.

wgstarks · August 14, 2023, 2:02am

Thanks. Don’t still have the devices though. That’s why I didn’t want them showing up in HA.

grantwood · August 22, 2023, 1:25am

I’ve been struggling to create a scene where a key on a keypad dimmer can trigger a scene that includes the dimmer in the keypad itself.

All the other dimmers in the scene work great, but I cannot get button 3 to trigger its own dimmer in the scene.

I am programming the scenes manually by editing the ALDB on each device.

Having consumed every scrap of information I can find on programming the keypads, and still having no luck, I thought I’d just ask “is this even possible by editing the ALDB manually”?

EDIT: ------------------------

I’ve resolved the issue, and can answer the question I asked above: NO, you cannot program a button on the keypad to control the load on the keypad by editing the ALDB manually.

Yes, It is possible to trigger a scene from the keypad, that includes the keypad’s built-in dimmer, but you must use software that knows how to program the keypad directly to do it. Insteon Configuration Panel today (2023-08-26) does not have this capability.

To fix my problem, I had to find a backup of an old laptop which contained a windowsXP virtual machine image that had Insteon HouseLinc software on it that I’d originally used to program my original keypad and dimmers. I had to factory reset the keypad, then was able to create all the (insteon) scenes using HouseLinc.

Back in the HA Insteon Control Panel, I can “load from device” to get the latest ALDB information, and I am able to make changes to ramp rate and brightness on all the dimmers, except the one built in to the keypad. If I want to change the keypad’s dimmer, I need to use HomeLinc to make the change.

The last thing I need to figure out is the button illumination on the keypad is out of sync. Button 5 is always “on”, and ICP reports that there are 4 button groups now, but won’t let me reassign buttons. I seem to remember from years ago that for each scene, I needed to manually set the illumination for each button to on or off. Again, a pain.

For anyone else with this same issue, I would say that if you can track down an ancient copy of HomeLinc, it works, but isn’t a flawless solution either. It has made erroneous links and broken links a few times when I’ve saved my changes. You can’t manually edit the ALDB from HomeLinc, which would make correcting errors very simple, but if you’re patient, and can switch back and forth to HA/ICP you can get most all of what you need working.

I hope this is helpful to someone trying to get their insteon keypads working properly.

kbrown01 · August 27, 2023, 1:50am

I have read your post many times and I am sorry I do not understand it.
If you are talking about a keypad (aka like a 6 button controller that have OFF/A/B/C/D/ON as the six buttons) … A,B,C,D have nothing to do with the load. They merely can send commands on the load line. In no way do they control ON/OFF unless you want them to and of course they can … through an Insteon Scene.

I fail to understand what you are trying to say:

“All the other dimmers in the scene work great, but I cannot get button 3 to trigger its own dimmer in the scene.”

Button 3 is what? Button “C”? And what is “it’s own dimmer” as it does nothing at all with the load except if programmed into a scene in which it controls something.

I really think you know what you want yet you are failing to describe it in a way we would understand.

“I’ve been struggling to create a scene where a key on a keypad dimmer can trigger a scene that includes the dimmer in the keypad itself.” — do you mean that I hold down button C (button 3) on a keypad dimmer and you figure out how to create a scene that sends dim commands to the same Keypad main button?

grantwood · August 27, 2023, 7:15pm

Hello kbrown01,

You’re right I didn’t explain well in this post what I’ve been trying to do.

I have:
keypad Dimmer 70.6A.7D (6 button) [dimmer W]
inline dimmer 25.85.8C [dimmer X]
inline dimmer 25.85.F5 [dimmer Y]
inline dimmer 25.83.40 [dimmer Z]

That’s 4 dimmers controlling lighting loads in the same room. One happens to be a 6 button keypad.

Lets say I want to create a simple insteon scene [scene 3], triggered by button A on keypad 70.6A.7D that sets the dimmer level to 80% at a ramp rate of .5 seconds on all 4 of these dimmers.

I have manually created responder ALDB entries for dimmers X,Y,and Z, that are triggered successfully by pressing button A, which has corresponding controller ALDB entries for each. (These are the 3 dimmers that work great.)

What I have been unsuccessful doing, is having keypad dimmer 70.6A.7D respond to the same scene. Specifically: press button A on keypad dimmer 70.6A.7D, trigger (scene 3) and cause keypad dimmer 70.6A.7D to set dimmer level to 80% at a ramp rate of .5 seconds.

My assumption was that I could create two ALDB entries on keypad dimmer W for scene 3.
controller scene: 3 target: 70.6A.7D data1: 204 data2: 28 data3: 3
responder scene: 3 target: 70.6A.7D data1: 204 data2: 28 data3: 1

But this does not seem to work. I’ve tried many variations, none successful. For weeks I’ve assumed that I missed something very simple in the examples and documentation I found.

After factory resetting W,X,Y,and Z, and using my ancient copy of Insteon HouseLinc to recreate the Insteon scenes, then using HA/ICP to read the resulting ALDB on each device, what I saw was there were no ALDB entries on the keypad dimmer 70.6A.7D for scene 3 that correspond to the two controller/responder examples I provided above, but there were nearly identical controller entries with X, Y, and Z as the target to what I had manually created before. This led me to the conclusion that I cannot make the scene work the way I want by only editing the ALDB by hand… there are other software commands involved that HA/ICP does not support today (teharris1 has said scene editing in ICP only support on/off and not dimming at this time).

— EDIT ----

Ok, I think I just figured this out.

To get Button A on 70.6A.7D to change the dimmer level on 70.6A.7D, you don’t use the ALDB, instead you edit “on_level_3” in the advanced properties for 70.6A.7D. Button B = “on_level_4”, Button C = “on_level_5”, Button D = “on_level_6”. Ramp rates work similarly with ramp_rate_3, etc.

If you want to trigger it from another controller, like a switch or other keypad, you link it in the ALDB like any other remote that is linked.

feistyacorn · November 16, 2023, 12:25am

I finally moved all of my Insteon devices from ISY into Home Assistant with this integration. There’s been a couple strange issues so far. My bedroom keypad and foyer keypad have randomly tripped automations. They randomly report on and the automation is triggered. I’ve woke up in the middle of the night to the bedroom lamp on… It also appears that there are some slight reaction delays. For example: when an Insteon keypad triggers an automation to turn on an Insteon switch and Zigbee light bulb, the Zigbee light bulb always turns on first. With the ISY, there wasn’t a noticeable delay.

@teharris1 How’s the next update going? I’m lazy and don’t want to dive into manual ALDB setup with my keypads (13 in total) for local scene control and I’m really looking forward to the scene editor update. My family is mad at me because things aren’t working like they used to. lol

teharris1 · December 6, 2023, 10:34pm

@feistyacorn sorry for the long delay. IM me direclty with your automation details. What are you triggering off of? I.e. are you using a HA entity or are you using the Insteon event? Also, can you put your Insteon integration into debug mode and send me the logs?

Also, the scene editor is out and available. It is in the Insteon panel under the Scenes tab. Was there something else you were expecting?

kevin.aubertin · December 7, 2023, 4:49am

@teharris1 thank you for your continued time, effort and improvements in HA to support Insteon. I’ve had this page booked marked from the beginning, as I was transitioning to HA after the Insteon shutdown and come back to it from time to time. Other than the hub connectivity issue(great to hear Insteon is supporting your efforts) my experience has been good using HA with Insteon. I’ve blocked internet access to and from my Insteon hub which has eliminated my hub issues for the time being. Thank you for the addition of the scene editor, that’s a great step forward! Do you have any updates on the following:

Hub connectivity issue
Linking two devices - similar to the “Scenes” editor but for inter device config
Utilites for the following:
a. Remove a dead device completely from all devices’ ALDB
b. Identify broken links (i.e. one device is a controller but no corresponding responder link and vise versa)
c. Replace device A with device B - Useful if you need to replace a device and you want all scenes etc to work on the new device.

I moved 6 years ago, and from time to time I notice flashing red lights which I believe indicates broken links. I’ve thought many times to just rip off the bandaid and do a full factory reset on everything, but for the most party most things work well and reliability but I know I have broken links. Having a utility to identify and fix this seems like a better option then just starting all over.

teharris1 · December 7, 2023, 2:17pm

Hub connectivity issue: No update. The Insteon team has not been able to reproduce it
Linking two devices: Target is end of Q1 '24
Utilities: First round of utilities will be in early Q1 (hopefully the January release). It will include:

Reconfigure the modem (Hub or PLM)
Delete a device
Manage device overrides (reminder: this is not something you should use unless all other options fail)

The other thing is the that the Insteon panel will move under Devices & Services → Insteon → Configure. So the current configuration options wil be moved into the Insteon panel for consistancy with how other integration configuration works.

kevin.aubertin · December 9, 2023, 3:47am

This is great! Thanks for the quick reply. Looking forward to the new features. Back in May of 2022 in this post you posted some examples on how controllers, responders and the different data fields work. Would it be possible to add this and perhaps other examples particularly around keypads to the official Insteon integration page. I sometimes find it confusing trying to understand all the different links, so I would be very helpful to have some examples to reference. Just a suggestion, I know you have lots on your plate.

teharris1 · December 10, 2023, 8:37pm

I am thinking of creating a Youtube channel with some videos of how to manage the ALDB correctly. Let me know if you think that would be something you would subscribe to.

feistyacorn · December 10, 2023, 9:30pm

That would be awesome if you did something like that! I would certainly subscribe.

wgstarks · December 10, 2023, 10:47pm

I absolutely would.

kevin.aubertin · December 11, 2023, 2:24am

That would be really helpful, I love Insteon devices but managing links has always been tricking and it’s not something you do on a daily bases. So a video would be even better, I would definitely subscribe.

kbrown01 · December 11, 2023, 4:42pm

Without a doubt.