I’m pretty new to Home Assistant and have been working on using it to manage my existing Insteon devices. Since starting out I’ve had problems with Home Assistant losing communication with the Insteon Hub (2245-222). It will work for a while and then suddenly stop communicating. The Insteon devices still work correctly from the Insteon app, so while it isn’t really offline, Home Assistant can’t talk to it or control the devices. I putting together a workaround automation that will reset the power to the hub and restart Home Assistant, but that is not the best solution.
Just wondering if the 2413U USB device works better for Insteon integration with Home Assistant? Are there any advantages to it over the hub?
I too use the insteon-mqtt. If you go with it, you’ll have to use the serial modem.
The 2245 is not as reliable as the serial modem. In short, the 2245 only provides a Web interface to communicate with it so it has to be polled. The polling uses a “circular buffer” inside the 2245 that can overload, and even worse the 2245 itself can sometimes clear out before being read, so information can get lost.
Thanks wmaker. Web polling seems inherently unreliable. Sounds like the modem is a more practical and reliable approach. I’ll order one and so I can stop working on an automation to detect a problem with hub communication. It has been a fun learning experience, but is only a hack to get the hub back online.
@richt how did you make the transition from hub to plm.
I have the Hub working on the main system and I am testing a USB PLM on a test setup.
Did you have to do something to “authorize” the plm to control your devices. I have been looking looking at the add_all_link but i have been unsuccessful so far
Not sure what you’ve done so far, but first make sure you have the PLM correctly set up with HA. After you have activated the Integration, it should show up as a device in HA.
I paired the Insteon devices to the PLM using the Insteon instructions and then rebooted Home Assistant so it would more readily pick up the new devices. At that point they were all available as entities in HA. The devices were still showing as paired with the Insteon Controller, but I eventually decommissioned that. If you are decommissioning the controller, and want to make a clean transition, it may be best to reset the Insteon devices to factory settings and then pair to the PLM.
Once HA is connected to the PLM, I found that if you continue to use the controller, the status changes of the devices may not show up in HA.
Can you share exactly how you “pair to the PLM”, i paired one device using a trial of Indigo and verified device control worked there but could ever get that device to show up in HA.
I’m really curious about this too. I was playing with Insteon with HA a few months ago and didn’t really understand what the expected process was. Can someone explain it in the most basic of terms?
Still not sure where you are at, but I’m going to assume that when you look at Devices in Home Assistant you can see “PowerLinc USB Modem xx.xx.xx”. If not you need to install the Insteon Integration in Home Assistant or troubleshoot why you are not seeing it.
How to pair an Insteon device with the PLM varies with the type of device and type of relationship it has with the PLM. Insteon - Understanding Linking
You need to follow the instructions for the specific device, but to simplify things it goes something like this
To have the PLM act as a controller for the remote device such as a Plug In Dimmer Module
1.) Press the “set” button on the PLM until it beeps and the LED flashes green.
2.) Press the “set” button on the Dimmer Module until it beeps. You will observe that the PLM LED stops flashing.
The PLM is now a controller for the Dimmer Module. The trick is that I have not been able to see any of the devices added to the PLM until I restart HA, so restart HA.
One other item to note is to make sure that the Integration is configured to automatically add new devices. To check that setting go to the Integrations page in HA and under the Insteon Integration click on the 3 vertical dots, and select “System Options”.
Yes I have device “PowerLinc USB Modem 22.3E.53” in HA. I was trying to use Indigo to avoid all the manual linking but I will try that as well as the HA reboot option as well.
press set button on modem, press set button on device, not excited to manually do this with 30+ insteon devices some of which are mini switches embedded inside wall and ceiling boxes but at least it worked.
While I haven’t added any modules this way, there is a service provided by the Insteon integration that should put the PLM in linking mode - insteon.add_all_link. You should be able to use that from a tablet or phone so you don’t have to run back and forth from the PLM to each device. Linking Insteon device to Insteon Modem
Can I suggest looking at Insteon-mqtt. I’ve been using it for the past 3 years. I have my PLM connected to a Raspberry Pi, and am running Insteon-mqtt in a docker container.
This package gives you the ability to link all your devices via the command line or MQTT messages. No more messing around with pressing buttons etc. It takes a little time to fully grasp it, but the documentation is decent.
