I have a small number (< 20) of Insteon devices and an Insteon 2242-222rev2.0 Hub/PLM. Home Assistant (HA) saved me from The Great Shutdown! I was able to control my Insteon devices without depending on resources external to my home.
A great group of enthusiasts have now bought the remnants of Insteon and are busy resurrecting the company (which I’ll call the New Insteon). They’ve even said they were looking into Matter and Thread! However, I won’t be enlisting in their subscription service and will attempt to maintain my “entirely on-premises” configuration.
Unfortunately, my Hub has had a hardware failure died so I need to consider how recover control of my Insteon devices.
Fortunately, the New Insteon is still listing Hub/PLMs for sale so I can replace my failed unit. Before I do so, I want to confirm that this is possible.
Can anyone advise whether I can deploy a new Insteon Hub/PLM in my Home Assistant system then discover and control my Insteon devices without the New Insteon cloud? (I don’t want to recover any automation or scenes from the hub; I prefer to recreate them all in HA.)
If I can’t discover the devices without the New Insteon cloud, can I do so by subscribing to that cloud for a short time then continue controlling the devices without that cloud?
In the event the above doesn’t work, can anyone suggest an on-premises alternative to regaining control of my Insteon devices? (I’d hate to have to replace the devices if they still work; they seem to be very well built and sturdy… Anyway, there seems to be few Matter and Thread devices available here in Canada at this time and I’m not purchasing any more products that lock me into external dependencies…)
Thank you in advance!
(This is X-Ray-Delta-One, two-zero-four-niner transmission concluded…)
Hi @XD-1, let me make sure I understand your situation:
Original hub died recently
You intend to purchase a new hub
You want to set up the new hub in Home Assistant but without purchasing the cloud package from Insteon.
The short answer is yes. You don’t need the cloud service for Home Assistant to work with the new hub. When you get the new hub you will need to relink the devices to the new hub. You can do this by using the Set button on the hub itself or use the Insteon panel to “add” the devices which will link the device to the new hub. There is a service that Insteon supplies to copy the existing links to the new hub. I don’t know how that works but it is worth looking into.
Once the new hub has the devices linked to them they will be controllable by Home Assistant as before. All of your existing HA configurations and automation will still work as well.
There are a few things that the Insteon app can do that Home Assistant cannot:
Change the hub username or password
Change the network configuration
Insteon does not expose those services to local control and so they can only be done using their app. Otherwise all services of the app are available using local control.
Thank you! You have supplied “the existence proof”! (Ie: It can be done!) I’ll now purchase the replacement hardware and follow instructions and troubleshoot. I’ll post progress as it happens.
Thank you again!
I understand that automating Insteon is somewhat different than other devices because of their controller-responder model, that just adds to the fun…
@XD-1 did you successfully migrate your devices to a new PLM? I have a dead 2413U, and I’m waiting on a new one. All my devices are already in HA, so I’m hoping this will be something I can easily do from the UI, and not have to walk around the house to each of my 37 switches.
Regret delay now-possibly-redundant response. Either the system doesn’t or didn’t advise me of new traffic coupled with family issues. Sorry!
To answer you: Yes! I purchased a new 2245-22v3.8-4422 hub and all devices migrated. Unfortunately, I don’t recall whether I had to “reset” each device locally on the device, but I suspect I had to. How did your adventure go?
And no, I haven’t got around to automating the Insteon yet. Am currently figuring out Sonos and TP-Link Tapo P125M mini smart plugs with Matter (either PEBCAK or the integration—admittedly beta—is very slow to add these Matter devices).
I ended up resetting every device and re-adding them. However, I didn’t have to walk to each. I was able to remotely send the appropriate command to put into pairing mode. Sorry, it was a while back and I don’t quite remember the process I followed.