Insteon integration vs isy994

I haven’t had any luck getting Insteon to be controlled directly by HA. The auto-discovery only found a few switches, and I manually added a couple more to the config.yaml file. I see all of these switches on the dashboard, but they don’t turn on or off when I click them. I can’t figure out how to troubleshoot this. Any suggestions?

I was able to get the isy integration working, and that brought in all of my insteon switches, and I verified that changing the state in the dashboard works. My assumption is that it would be better if HA can control the insteon switches directly, rather than going through ISY, though perhaps it is better to go through isy so that I could see changes made by HA, immediately in the isy. In the long-term, my plan was to move all from isy directly into HA.

What are the general recommendations here? Integrate with isy, or remove it from the picture. Currently my isy controls my Elk security, Kwikset z-wave locks, and about 50 insteon light swicthes.

“In order for a device to be discovered, it must be linked to the INSTEON Modem as either a responder or a controller.”

Are you using a PLM or a HUB?

Personally, I use the ISY integration as the ISY is my main automation controller. I use HA as a GUI to control Insteon through ISY.

If you want changes to show up in HA without a restart, you can call the isy994.reload service

I am using PLMs. I have the 2413S connected to the ISY, and it has all 50 insteon switches identified. I then added the 2413U to the Pi where I am running hassio, but that doesn’t have the insteon switches identified yet. My long term plan was to add more capabilities that are not available in isy. For example, I can lock / unlock my kwikset lock with isy, but can’t change codes remotely, and was hoping I could find this functionality with HA.

I guess my assumption that it was better to control the insteon switches direct from HA may not be correct? Is there anything that I am losing by leaving the isy integration, and calling these switches from HA? I assume I will still be able to add other integrations in HA to integrate with these switches? I am currently using the Mobilinc front-end on my phone, but was hoping to explore other front-end options here on HA.

I believe having 2 PLMs is going to be problematic UNLESS each and every Insteon device is linked to either one or the other, but not both. The ISY will be “out of the loop” in knowing what the other PLM is doing, and vice versa. It sounds like your Insteon devices are (mostly?) linked to the ISY PLM only. This would explain why the Insteon devices are not being discovered by HA, as they are not linked in the HA PLM.

If you are going to get rid of the ISY, then you should be able to move devices over to HA and get the job done. But if you want to keep the ISY, my suggestion would be to run the HA integration to the ISY and get rid of the PLM that is attached to your HA rpi.

Thanks. That makes sense. Given that I have no issues with using both the ISY and HA in parallel, would you recommend leaving it as is, and removing the PLM connected to HA, or in the longer term, am I better off getting away from ISY and migrating everything to HA only? As I am fairly new to HA, is the Insteon control equivalent if not better on HA, versus ISY? I imagine other integrations will work between HA & ISY devices, so I am more interested in whether there is much extra value in moving away from ISY completely. I’m not overly concerned about the effort; just want the best solution.

I have 4 locks (all kwikset) in ISY and can set codes via the admin console. Just select your lock and then hit users. The dialogue will pop up to set or delete users codes.

I was hoping someone else would jump in and tackle this, as I don’t feel I’m the right person. I’m an ISY guy and I’m biased. I only came over to HA because the ISY does not offer the GUI dashboard concept that I can get from HA. Short answer from me… if you need integrations with systems that ISY doesn’t offer, then maybe switch over to HA. But if ISY has the integrations you need, then why switch? ISY offers integrations with many of the major players, like Ecobee, Harmony, RainMachine, Sonos, and Ring. But the number of integrations HA offers is probably 10 or 20 times more. Also, I prefer having my automations running a dedicated box, rather than an RPI or VM. You can certainly run both and get the best of both worlds, but having 2 Insteon PLMs will be a nightmare and is completely unnecessary. If using both HA and ISY, then get rid of the PLM hooked to your RPI and use the HA integration to ISY instead.

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Thanks…I am also ISY-biased, since I have been using that for 10 years, but wanted to explore some of the integrations with HA. I do agree about only having one PLM connected, and I have already removed the USB version that was connected to the RPi. I only started using the ISY Portal, and I suspect that I need to learn that better before giving up on ISY. And now that I know that there is the ISY plugin for HA, I can have both interfaces at the same time. I am interested in the UI that HA offers, which you mentioned that you built on. Can you point me to any starter documentation to build something nice with that?

Well, once you have the ISY integration running on HA, then the Insteon devices will be available as devices and entities in HA, just like any other integration. How you build your interface(s) is what much of the HA experience is all about.

I’ve had the most success using the Insteon MQTT integration. It works extremely well, but there is no auto discovery and you need to do some manual pairing when you add a new device, so it’s not exactly for everyone. https://github.com/TD22057/insteon-mqtt

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I recently switched from the Insteon integration to the ISY integration. I manage my scenes and lights in ISY so I can get instant on/off. Everything else I do in Home Assistant. I love it. It works amazingly well.

Insteon is insanely complicated to program for anything beyond the simplest case. The mix of ISY + HA is perfect, and working for ~50 devices so far with 100% reliability.

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Thanks Danbutter, my zwave board is fried, so I’m waiting on a new one to arrive, thus I can’t test your solution. I don’t see the option in Mobilinc, which is the front-end I use on my mobile devices. I’ll try it in ISY in a couple weeks when the new board comes; but I was wondering if you needed to add anything special, or if it just works with the discovery of your Kwikset locks. I have the Kwikset 914; was curious if this is one of your four.

I think I have two 914 and two 910. Need the ISY to be close to the lock…well I always have with ISY… I have tried two other zwave controllers that didn’t need to be within a couple feet to enroll a lock. I think the insteon is as good as it gets with the ISY…the zwave… could be better in my personal experience.
Exclude first then include and after it is done enrolling you should be able to do what I said in the last post.
I use the ISY integration with home assistant and use it for my frontend.

Hi other ISY experts, I have been setting up haas. I can turn Insteon devices on and off from HA just fine. But it isn’t picking up state changes initiated elsewhere. For example if I turn an Insteon dimmer or light on HA still thinks it is off. What am I missing?