Insteon Device Linking Maintenance & Troubleshooting

Configuration
1

Lots of bizarre things have been happening with my Insteon setup and I’ve been trying to get to the root of it. So I have several questions on Insteon devices and their device link databases.

  1. My understanding is the list of devices and their links are stored on both the PLM as well as all other controller devices. Is this correct?
  2. If an Insteon PLM is reset and its database is wiped, would Home Assistant still be able to control them? I had a hunch that if two devices contained links to each other, they could still control one another, and that maybe Home Assistant would be able to facilitate that via the PLM. (Asking because I thought I did a reset on my PLM but the devices still seem to be controllable.)
  3. Does the Insteon Home Assistant integration automatically keep device and PLM link databases updated, or should Insteon users maintain this manually either via Developer Tools or another one of the tools mentioned in the docs? For example, if I add a new Insteon device, will the integration recognize this and load the new device to the appropriate databases?
  4. How would a person migrate a database from one PLM to a new one? (I bought one thinking my old one was having problems, but then realized I didn’t know how to migrate the old database to the new device.)
2

Quick shoot from the hip replies to your questions

  1. yes
  2. no
  3. no, the integration only reads the database and then is able to control the devices
  4. you will need to relink all the devices

I currently use insteon-terminal to add, delete, maintain… and backup plm database. I recently had my PLM quit. I contacted Insteon and they recommended a factory reset. The reset fixed it. I had a backup so recovery was quick and easy with insteon-terminal.

Bottom line… the linking needs to be complete in both PLM and device ( controllers and responders ) In your case you won’t have a back up so you would need to relink all the devices