Insteon PLM and Hub coexist

Currently the insteon PLM and hub do not coexist. The Hub and PLM do not update one another and therefore whichever one is connected to home assistant will be out of date when changes are made via the o the other device. For example, if the user turns on a light via the Hub app Home assistant will not see the change if home assistant is communicating via the PLM.

Several users have requested coexistence of the PLM and the Hub. This Thread is to evaluate the options of allowing the two to co-exist. Development of this feature is non-trivial. But given the interest it may make sense.

Here is one vote for coexistance. I have a hub and a plm, but I think hub-hub or plm-plm as well as hub-plm would be a more general target.

I really don’t know enough, but here are some thoughts anyway:
-coexisting devices (seen by both controllers) need 2 way links to both controllers
-the HA controller should act on ACK messages from linked devices even if it was not the cause
-the HA controller should slow poll all devices linked to it to eventually correct for any missed messages
-perhaps in future the HA controller should note the controller ID that caused an ACK from a linked device and raise a security alert if that ID is unknown. (Insteon RF wardriving)

Wes

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I’m in for this. I have not updated the version of HA because of this issue a few versions ago. Thanks!

So it is pretty “easy” to have the Hub and PLM co-exist but with only one of them controlled by Home Assistant. The solution is to poll devices every ‘X’ minutes/seconds. This create nose in the network and will slow down some changes (i.e when HA is polling, commands such as ‘turn on kitchen light’ will be delayed until polling is complete). The obvious use of this is to allow the PLM to be connected to HA and allow the Hub to be used via the Hub app. This way changes in the Hub app will be reflected in HA after the next polling.

@Madelinot your request to allow HA to control both the Hub and the PLM is much more difficult. This requires two separate connection, one for the PLM and one for the Hub. I am also confused as to why this is a requirement for you. As I understand it, you have some devices linked to the PLM and some to the Hub. Why would you not just like all of the devices to the PLM? This would eliminate the need for the Hub.

Yes, you are right. Here is what happened. I initially had a Hub to which everything was connected (all lights, relays and leak sensors). When I installed HA, everything worked except the leak sensors since HA did not support them connected to the hub. So I purchased a PLM just to have my leak sensors working. And this configuration worked well until the code for the Hub and PLM merged into one. Now that HA will recognize leak sensors connected to the Hub, I could get rid of the PLM (or vice-versa, get rid of the Hub). It’s just a matter of finding the time to switch everything over…

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

In the HomeSeer commercial product the Insteon Plug-in by M. Sandler’ has a config option for it to listen
for ACKs as stated in the thread HERE, as follows:

M. Sandler’s plugin allows a switch in the [Config] section of the .ini to listen to traffic not intended for it:
ProcessACKs= True | False Forces the Insteon plug-in to process ACKs received for commands it did not send (ex: those from the Echo); it normally ignores them.

If this were possible in the HA Insteon component the result would be quicker updates and would allow for considerably slower polling and less network traffic…

Wes

Last weekend, I reset all my water leak sensors and removed my PLM. I added all sensors to my hub instead, and everything seems to works normally now. I can see them all in HASS. As far as I’m concerned, having both the PLM and hub co-exist is not a requirements for me anymore.

Thanks!