ISY994 Insteon Migration

The ISY994 Insteon support requires the Insteon 2413S (serial) PLM to communicate to the Insteon devices. Unfortunately the 2413S is discontinued by Insteon and availability of these devices is non-existent. The 2413S is prone to failure after about 3 years. Some people have been successful in restoring the devices by replacing a number of capacitors but not many. Basically this means that anyone using the ISY994 to manage Insteon devices is out of luck and anyone wanting to use the ISY994 integration with Roomie for these devices is also out of luck.

I have migrated to a Home Assistant (HA) automation controller which can manage Insteon devices via the 2413U (USB). I have tested this and it works well. The 2413U is a current product with plenty of stock. What I have been unable to do is get my Roomie Remote to talk to HA to manage the Insteon devices.

There are two ways to send commands to HA: HTTP or WebSocket. I am playing with the HTTP way now.

My question is has Roomie looked at any native integration for Home Assistant? If so would you provide the status? If not is it something you might consider looking at?

My second question is do you have a sample plist file for a custom device using WebSocket via the DDK so I can see how it is implemented and make a decision on whether WebSocket would be better than HTTP?

Thanks in advance.

They have an API:

https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/api/rest/

It looks straightforward. I don't see anything there that you can't do from the Custom Code Set Editor in Roomie.

Whatever happened to the Insteon Cloud? https://connect.insteon.com

We still include support for that though I have no idea if anybody uses it. I am considering removing it unless I hear otherwise over the coming months.

Isn't what you're saying really an ISY issue? If they don't support Insteon anymore, you would want to take it up with them.

This is an example from an unrelated device of the kind of formatting you will need for that REST API above:

POST /api/states/<entity_id>

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_LONG_LIVED_TOKEN_FOR_HA

Content-Type: application/json

{&quot;ids&quot;:[&quot;##&quot;],&quot;command&quot;:&quot;on&quot;}

Note that the JSON block above is unrelated to HA, I'm just giving you the right format for the encoding.

Thanks Will. Can I put these commands into a custom plist file and import via the Import Custom Device link?

That's the old way. You could just use the editor UI now and then their API link to create the JSON, up to you.

Thanks Will. I was unable to get the API working as documented, I played with all kinds of permutations but no luck. What I was able to do though was to get it working with the Node-Red integration on Home Assistant.

However, what I now have is 10+ devices being listed in my device selection list, almost all of them called Insteon. Every time I imported the plist file it created a new device by the same name. I had always deleted the previous custom device (and any device I created from it) before importing again, but I can't seem to find a way to get rid of all these Insteon devices.

Any pointers?

Also, are you interested in me documenting the process I got working for others who might have the same requirements? I can do so and post as a new thread or however you want it.

Their API is very straightforward. I would just get it working that way. Use the pinch to zoom log to see exactly what you are sending to debug your code set.

I am not familiar with the pinch to zoom log, where would I find that?

Also, any suggestions for the 10+ devices?

Pinch the screen. Just like in the Photos app with a photo. Doing that pretty much anywhere in Roomie switches you to the log view.

I don't know what you're saying on the devices. If you created too many, delete them. Sounds like your custom device doesn't have a UUID field.

Any reason not to use Home Assistant's HomeKit integration for this? If the devices are already accessible in Home Assistant it's just a couple of clicks to expose the devices to HomeKit (and therefore Roomie). I use it, works great.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/homekit/

Hi Brian, I did look at this earlier and played around a bit but didn't get anywhere. Would you mind passing along some pointers to get it going?

Thanks.

HomeKit is pretty good when you're using real HomeKit devices, but given the choice between a direct, native API and a API to a bridge (HomeKit) that converts to a direct API, I would definitely choose the direct API. Perhaps I'm just too technical and the HA API is utterly trivial to me so I just don't see why that wouldn't be the obvious choice especially given that I provided the syntax for this in my post above. If I knew what was difficult about using that, perhaps I could make it simpler in the product.

Yes, I see no reason to overcomplicate this with Homekit. I was unable to get the API working, Home Assistant would either not detect and process the call or it would complain about missing CRLF. I tried to debug the issue but was unable to find the python file that was complaining.

I attempted to enter the API call via the gui interface on the device but it was extremely clumsy and laborious trying to enter that much info via the small screen and keyboard on a iPhone 7. Importing the plist file created on bbedit was much simpler.

I was able to get it working using the http node interface of the Node-Red integration within HA. At this point it is doing what I need it to do so am not going to spend any more time on it. Will, if you want me to try anything with the API for testing I am happy to do that for you.

What I would really like to get resolved is the massive number of custom device types that are littering my device table. I did email a screen grab earlier but I am also attaching it here. I would like to get this cleaned up if possible.

Thanks.

[screenshot]

I have successfully used the Hoobs Hub ISY plugin to link 60+ Insteon Devices into HomeKit and then into RR. However the process is not automatic some manual intervention is needed and once in HomeKit we need to change the names just for the sake of changing then RR shows up with the respective device name as stored in ISY…before that they all show up as Insteon Device.

Do you think if we use ISY with Polisy will all devices show up natively in RR? Then we don’t need PLM correct?

Now that Insteon servers are back on and they got a new life, are there plans to enable the Could integration?

BTW l was able to add the Insteon Hub Manually as a SmartLinc and it works by addicting each device one at time in an activity…great workaround! But it will be nice to see the could integration back…thanks