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.