Absolutely would take advantage of YouTube videos, I have some device remnants that I have been unable to clean up.
100%. Iād love some demos for creating/editing links.
I have recently retired Universal Devices Polisy and connected my Insteon PLM directly to HA, so Iām in learning mode. **I donāt mean that the PLM is in learning mode. My brain is in learning mode.
One of my Keypadlincs has links ONLY to the PLM, but my understanding is that I can create links directly between a button on KPL and a scene on a Fanlinc. Is that right, or do I need links on the PLM too?
For example, I would create: KPL button A is a controller for scene XX on Fanlinc, which is fan speed 100%. Is that correct?
Similar to you I came from an ISY. You should link all of the Insteon devices to the PLM. You can also do manual links on the Insteon devices and they will show up in the HA integration.
Iām still trying to understand the best way to control a fanlinc. The manual method is time consuming and Iām sure I would mess something up between the button crosslinking. I ended up creating a scene in HA for all my keypads, but itās not working well. Maybe itās time for me to pull out the ladder and just to figure out the manual methodā¦ lol! Let me know if you figure out a better way.
I stopped using the keypads even before HA. You can use HA and control the fanlinc directly. People in my house have gotten use to it and donāt use buttons hardly ever anymore
The app is great and allā¦ but I think Iāll always need physical buttons in my home. Especially for the kids or when we have family/friends visit. I have etched buttons with the scene/device that they control. Makes it easy for anyone to control the house if they need to.
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That is OK and understood BUT I will guess that you will need to implement everything in HA with scenes and not do direct control of the fanlinc. I do not believe it would work if you send the fanlinc a direct command to turn on to say 66% and it would select the āMediumā speed scene and light up the appropriate buttons on the keypadlinc (i.e. activate the scene).
I am not sure and I could be wrong, but those buttons control a scene (on/off). Direct control is by far superior and instant. I did it by just hardwiring the fanlinc always powered to it and removed any switch/keypadlinc.
And this:
type: custom:stack-in-card
title: Fans
cards:
- type: vertical-stack
cards:
- type: custom:mushroom-fan-card
entity: fan.fanlinc_53_38_5e_fan
icon_animation: true
show_percentage_control: true
fill_container: true
layout: horizontal
card_mod:
style: |
ha-card {
box-shadow: none;
}
- type: custom:mushroom-fan-card
entity: fan.fanlinc_53_38_c2_fan
icon_animation: true
show_percentage_control: true
fill_container: true
layout: horizontal
card_mod:
style: |
ha-card {
box-shadow: none;
}
Nice GUI for fans. What I am saying is that I do not see how then because I clicked the slider to 33% it would know to light the āBā button on the keypadlinc so that everything stays in sync.
But I do understand the kids/guests issue. I have 5 android tablets mounted in the house where you can walk up, and touch to control the fans. Kids love it, guests and get it too. Plus many Alexas and Nabu Casa so you can say āSet Master Fan to 33%ā
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I assume lots of you got Insteon working. I am completely new to HA as of today. I got the Device set up, and I actually had One of the switches show up by itself. I have no idea how it happened. I have been trying to get the rest of them to work too. I have at least 40 entries that I would like to read in from the hub. Iām coming over from Homeseer. If you put in a device manually, it asks for the category and subcategory, and I have no idea what that is. I donāt even know if that works. Can anybody tell me what earth Iām supposed to do to make this work? Also, I do not subscribe to the Insteon services since they shut down, even though theyāve come back up again. Iāve been doing just fine using homeseer but Iām tired of things not working properly. I hope I find better luck here. It sure look like it was going off to a good start until I hit this. Can anybody help me?
Wecome to Home Assistant! Myself, I used HomeSeer for 20 years but abandoned it in April 2020. I only have 5 Insteon devices and donāt know my way around it very well but there are lots of folks round here Iām sure will show up to lend you a hand. Itās a fabulous community and I know you will have no regrets!
After spending a long time yesterday, going around and round and round and round, again trying to get the devices off of the Insteon hub to show up in HA I finally went to bed. I had several plans I was going to try this morning. However, when I get up now 10 hours later, it looks like all of the devices are there. I havenāt tested them yet, but thatāll be the next step.
NONE of the devices that was added worked. I do have a brand new Insteon on hub on the shelf that I save for the next time the hub dies. I wonder if I should try using it.
should I get rid of all of the Insteon devices and buy a bunch of Zigbee devices or something?
Well I use a hub (not the serial PLM or USB) and I did absolutely nothing but add the integration. It did take some time to crawl through all the entries in the hubās table and add entities (I have about 60 at least) but they all were added and have been functioning perfectly. It did bring in scenes that are created in the old Insteon app, but will not bring in device to device links (but I expected that because those are likely not stored in the Hub).
I would add the hub into your logger in debug mode, restart HA and see what is happening. Post the debug logs here.
Also, since you no longer subscribe to the cloud, you cannot set a fixed IP address and need to reserve that address in your router. The Hub will be DHCP and if something happened which caused the IP address to change, then nothing would work so describe how your Hub and address are setup.
Here are the first few steps everyone should do:
- Ensure the hub is plugged into the network and plugged into the wall
- Ensure you have a green light on the Hub itself so you know that it is on the network (not required I believe but best for starting off)
- Use some IP tool of your choice to get the IP address of your Hub. I use Advanced IP scanner but you can use many tools
- Reserve that IP address in your router to always assign that particular IP address to your Hub from now on. This will ensure HA will always find the Hub at that address. How you do that depends on your router but most all routers have IP address reservation ability.
- Then add the Hub to Home Assistant.
If you did not take those first steps then any reboot of Hub or network or anything could reassign a new IP address to the Hub and Home assistant will not find it. You cannot assign a fixed IP address to the Hub unless you have Insteon Cloud services. If you have already added it, check the IP address using your tool of choice and reserve that address.
In case you do not know, at the very least most IP scanning tools report the Manufacturer and it would be āSmartlabs, Inc.ā for the Hub.
I would not use a new Hub. The All-link Database (ALDB) is stored in the Hub. If you put a new hub in then you would essentially be starting over and would need to add every device to it. If HA found the devices then it is working but maybe something simple like an IP address changed is all.
Ah, the infamous $5 all day merry-go-round ride!
I see no need to abandon your loyal Insteon army of soldiersā¦ I have my original 5 Insteon plus several Z-Wave switches and blind motors but now have some new TP-Link Wi-Fi switches and quite a few Zigbee devices. Z-Wave being sub-1 GHz cooperates well with 2.4 GHz Zigbee or Wi-Fi but those 2 can interfere with each otber. Wifi ch 1 or 6 and zigbbee ch 25 is where most people end up. Wifi ch 11 can work if the antennas are far enough apart.
Hi all, like some of you Iāve decided to try to make the switch from Homeseer. Itās been somewhat difficult to find my way around the various forums/message boards, so apologize if the solutions to these questions are out there.
I have a fairly large insteon installation with something like 80 devices, and I was successful in plugging the PLM directly into my HA Yellow box. I think all of the devices came over along with a bunch of scenes. Some of my scenes donāt seem to be complete (missing devices), but thatās a problem for another day.
My first question is can I expose an Insteon scene to voice control in HA (through Google Home in my case)? The Insteon scenes I setup in Homeseer are much nicer than a similar scene I tried to create directly in HA (outside of the Insteon integration)ā¦the Insteon scene results in all devices moving at the same time, while HA scene does things sequentially. My Insteon scene also has pleasing ramp rates for lights coming on while the HA scene abruptly turns lights to the set level in a flash.
My second question is related. With this Insteon integration in HA is it possible to set ramp rates for each device in a new Insteon scene created in HA? If not, would like to put in a feature request for that one. I may have to keep Homeseer running just so I can go in there and create nice scenes with slow ramps.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Iām not sure about the Google Home integration in HA as I use the Alexa integration which does expose HA scenes to Alexa in addition to scripts which are scenes in Alexa. I expect the Google Home integration is similar.
BTW, are you aware of the HomeSeer Custom Integration for HA?
I kept my iBlinds Z-Wave motors in HS for about a year after I started HA which was almost 4 years ago now. Then Z-WaveJS came along at which point I migrated them and shut down HS.
I have not tried but certainly you can add a script ā¦ and that script could call insteon.scene_on which would not give you the popcorn effect of devices one at a time.
I would try that.
Thx @dbrunt, I was not aware of that integration. Itās got a big notice at the top of the page you linked to saying itās no longer maintained, but I may check it out anyway to help with the transition.
To make sure Iām clear, are you able to use Alexa voice commands for Insteon-native scenes or for scenes that you built in HA (outside of the Insteon integration)? I was able to make a scene directly in HA and expose it to Google Home from the āExposeā screen below. But none of my Insteon-native scenes show up in that view.
Thx @kbrown01. Iāll have to look into creating a script. I believe scripts do show up in the āExposeā screen above. So can make a simple one that calls the scene. Not sure how much delay a script would add, but sounds like that might be a good solution.
It is correct that Insteon scenes are not HA groups. That is why I said the script route. I had posted long ago some code that basically creates HA groups from the ALDB Insteon scenes. However, that would still not get you what you want as turning āonā an HA group would pop them one at a time. Using insteon.scene_on or insteon.scene_off sends that one command to the Hub and would therefore do them all at once.
I am not so concerned with the āpopcornā effect and I use HA groups that replicate the Insteon scene. I would note that If I ask Alexa to āTurn on the Kitchenā ā¦ there are four distinct lights in that group and all four come on within 1 - 1.5 seconds which is Alexa ā Nabu Casa ā My HA ā Insteon (x4).
The other reason I use HA groups (old style, YAML defined groups) is because I can create groups that contain other groups. So I have a group āDogsā which contains āBackyard groupā and āSteps groupā which each have several lights/switches in them.