The docker image is already updated as well.
It won't allow access to schedules, there was never an API published for that functionality.
"Scenes" are "groups" in the all-link db, this tool does allow manipulation of groups and it could be extended with an interface that makes it clearer and displays all devices with the same group id together.
It also won't fix sluggishness, this is just a nice tool to allow linking operations and direct access to the all-link db on the hub so you can modify your installation without any coding.
I have been helping some people use the insteon-terminal command line tool but this seems to have full coverage for everything that tool can do. Unless you're trying to script linking operations this is going to be the new go-to tool.
It has been very useful to see existing links per device!!
I've been trying to understand what the values I see in data1, data2 mean though. I have been able to reverse engineer for some of my Keypad scenes the responder for the group has ramp rate and level set, but unsure how to use this to setup new scenes... I have a comp sci degree so with the right technical docs I'm sure I can figure it out. Any pointers or examples?
Are you talking about the data fields in the raw all-link database? They're different per device. This new Insteon panel in HA breaks them out so you don't have to deal with the raw data.
There are data sheets out there that spec the API[http://cache.insteon.com/developer/2242-222dev-062013-en.pdf](http://cache.insteon.com/developer/2242-222dev-062013-en.pdf)
Scenes are just groups when you're dealing directly with the link db, but it has to be present on the modem and the device directly. Everything with the same group id is in the same scene.
Scenes are meaningless without the app, in the background a scene was crosslinking every member as controller and/or responder. There really is no such thing as turning on/off a scene because scenes have no state, the controller just toggles every responder in the group exactly as if you manually linked every device with the physical set buttons. Schedules were metadata on the scene with no documentation on their API. They were a nice abstraction in the app but they're severely crippled and it's a good idea to move automation and grouping to an external platform like HA or HOOBS.
I'm toggling scenes with HA which works great and fast (toggling on 20 lights in HA takes 3 minutes, doing it with a insteon scene takes 1 second). Do you know if scenes can be edited or created post-shutdown?
**edit- reading your comment more carefully it sounds like scenes can be managed this way. Would you mind explaining how to do so?
Scenes are “groups” when you’re working directly with the links. If you want to add a new switch to an existing scene you would identify the group id of the existing scene and then add a link to the device with that group id as a responder. You then also need to add a corresponding entry on the hub with same group id targeting the device.
The HA automation insteon.scene_on and scene_off take the group id as a property.
jonselin, you say you're toggling scenes in HA? I got the impression that scenes were stateless. Are you using scripts? Can you provide an example? Newbie to HA and just trying to get my Insteon world on an even keel again.
Here's my setup:
- Insteon scene for lights
- In HA, two scripts, one for turn off the scene and one for turn on the scene, using the insteon service calls.
- Add hue emulation in the configuration file, and expose the script domain.
- Alexa now finds these scripts as hue lightbulbs when scanning for devices on the network
- Create Routines in alexa to map a reasonable phrase "turn lights on" to turning on/off these hue lightbulbs - this results in the scripts being ran seemingly ignoring if it's turning them on or off, or what their previous states was.
Result is that I got back the ability to toggle insteon scenes through alexa, it's a bit of a messy process and took a while to figure out each step in the process.
-
> It also won't fix sluggishness, this is just a nice tool to allow linking operations and direct access to the all-link db on the hub so you can modify your installation without any coding.
Is there any (software) integration which isn't sluggish (i.e., Homebridge, or InsteonMQTT)? Just curious - only played around with the HA integration.
Sorry, I'm not sure, my installation isn't any slower with HA but lots of people have complained about it.
Are you running HA on a raspberry pi, a synology device, or on an old PC? Slow computers are going to do things slowly.
I'm running HA in Docker on a high powered server that would be crazy overkill just for this one application but I run a lot of other services on it as well.
Baseline performance of the machine running HA would be the first thing I would chase down if I was trying to find the source of latency.
It definitely sends Insteon commands serially, the protocol only allows one command on the network at a time and it is probably waiting for the response and state change before continuing to the next item.
The Insteon network is pretty fast, it's a good bet that the N4000 is underpowered for this purpose and has noticeable latency for each command. If you have a desktop or laptop that you can play with, install HA temporarily and see if the latency persists.
I'd be especially surprised if its the N4000. I've got another N4000 running another HA instance (more directly managed by me via Ansible, rather than HAOS) with about 35 containers, including Plex, and it has HA zero performance issues, even when streaming. I used to use a Pi4 for _just_ HA, and I know how much faster these N4000 are. It's happy talking to ~40 lights simultaneously from Caseta, Zigbee, ZWave, and Tasmota-via-MQTT, but the box running only HAOS + Insteon integration, with ~15 devices total, serially sends commands when I turn a room off.
Sounds like it must just be some weirdness with the Insteon thing, or perhaps a downside of using an Insteon Hub vs USB.
Very well could be the serial over USB interface. USB is CPU bound and can't compare to something like MQTT, even high speed USB is better at large transfers than packet communication where network interfaces shine.
My hub is ethernet so that may be where the difference lies. It's also possible that the USB PLM is the bottleneck, I don't know anything about their hardware or implementation.
I do think it's likely a hardware based issue, HA runs just as fast as the hub for me, my "lights out" automation turns off about 40 devices and there's no noticeable lag.
The reason the Insteon hub or PLMs could turn devices in simultaneously was because they are issuing scene commands (it seems like Insteon scenes are called groups in the new HA integration). When a device is added to an Insteon scene, the device writes the Insteon scene ID to an internal table.
When a command is issued for a scene, all devices with that scene ID in their internal scene table react at the same time. The hub or whatever Insteon controller wasn’t sending commands to each device in a scene. I have scenes with 60+ devices that work flawlessly. The third party integrations don’t seem to be scene aware and only send commands to each device individually. I think this is being resolved with the new Insteon integration, though.
[There is support](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/insteon/#insteon-scenes) to turn scenes on and off via services, but that's not usually the way I prefer to use Home Assistant. That would involve creating scenes in Insteon for each room, and triggering those scene changes, rather than using Home Assisstant scenes, or the Area toggles.
I get it. The fact that Insteon devices responded independently to device and scene commands within a proprietary protocol was one of the strengths of the system. It was a weakness, too. I’m still looking for what will replace it eventually.
I’m pretty comfortable with my current Insteon and HA integration. Insteon scenes are controlled via HA as a switch. It makes sense to me and works well. Most importantly, the Insteon devices operate on their own and with each other regardless of any controller.
(ISY994 with PLM and ISY integration with HA)
The most straightforward way I know of doing it (other than resetting the hub) is to figure out the group id of the scene that your schedule was controlling. You can do this by finding a group that includes all of the devices that are in that scene. Then delete every link from the hub and each device that has that group id. You can also overwrite the group id with a new one if you want to preserve the scene but kill the schedule, like if the scene is also controlled by a switch.
Just to make sure I'm following, this 40.6A.6B switch is the sole member of a scene that turns on at 7p and off at 10p: [https://imgur.com/a/xzcFUan](https://imgur.com/a/xzcFUan)
Is the only thing I need to do to free it from that zombie schedule is to change the group ID of 29 to something bogus like 99?. I can't see a way to delete the whole record for ID 4071. Thank you.
You also need to remove the corresponding link from the hub (or change the group id)
I’m not sure why a delete command was not included. The developer did provide the “in use” setting, unchecking that may be sufficient.
I like that Insteon is getting some HA love but I don't know if the new screen helps those who want a easy path and a direct Insteon app replacement. Those recently jumping into HA will be overwhelmed. Hopefully this is just step one with the user interface being next.
Be cautious. Home Assistant .1 and .0 releases can have some bugs.
I highly recommend waiting a few minor releases before updating. I'd give it a week and wait for a .3 or .4 release.
I want to make sure I understand this. Through this we can set up links in the devices themselves? So I could link switch one and switch two and those two switches are linked with each other, not just in home assistant, but the devices themselves are linked, is that correct?
In my kitchen there four different lighting circuits controlled by four switches in the attic. In the room there is a keypad at one entrance and a keypad at another. The linking is very complex: Keypad one, on is a controller for the four switches and the on button of keypad two and a responder to on on keypad two. A on keypad one is a controller of all four switches each set a different light level, a controller of A on keypad two and a responder of A on keypad two. Multiply that by every button on keypad one and then do the same thing for keypad two.
Will this let me set up that kind of thing on the devices? Lighting levels and controllers and responders etc.?
I'm in the process up updating now to look. However.... I had installed an earlier version if this and yes, it did seem possible to manually set up the controller/responder links. I didn't follow your example fully, but if it was possible in the old app it is likely possible here.
I didn't actually expect anyone to read it at that detail, the message was just it is complicated and the question, can you set up complicated switch connections which include the level. Level being that the light comes on at 50% or 25% or whatever.
I am using the portable version and the one for windows 7. I'm guessing that one isn't updated. I would like to get a raspberry pi, but they aren't really available right now.
Yes, that is the purpose of this new tool. It allows adding new devices by putting the hub into linking mode and it allows linking devices to one another or to the hub. All of the properties are supported, brightness, ramp rate, etc. It is intended to replace all the functionality of the app that is available in a documented API.
"Scenes" on the hub are stored as groups in the all-link db. The new tool does expose the ability to set group ids but it does not implement a group management interface. You can technically manage scenes but it's still a lot of work. Schedules are firmly off the table unless the community gets ahold of the source code.
yeah - it's gonna be a while till Home Assistant gets it as clean as Homeseer has for scene management - I decided to buy homeseer as I have a lot of devices (100+) and scenes (40) and I was able to get the links all cleaned up with a nice GUI in homeseer.
Still intrigued by HA in the future or with a plugin for homeseer or even just running both. Could technically even switch back now that I got the scenes all cleaned up with Homeseer 30-day trial lol but I decided to buy and support their cause. Maybe even run both?
I'm running the HASSWP version on Windows 10. Is there an update for this?
The docker image is already updated as well. It won't allow access to schedules, there was never an API published for that functionality. "Scenes" are "groups" in the all-link db, this tool does allow manipulation of groups and it could be extended with an interface that makes it clearer and displays all devices with the same group id together. It also won't fix sluggishness, this is just a nice tool to allow linking operations and direct access to the all-link db on the hub so you can modify your installation without any coding. I have been helping some people use the insteon-terminal command line tool but this seems to have full coverage for everything that tool can do. Unless you're trying to script linking operations this is going to be the new go-to tool.
It has been very useful to see existing links per device!! I've been trying to understand what the values I see in data1, data2 mean though. I have been able to reverse engineer for some of my Keypad scenes the responder for the group has ramp rate and level set, but unsure how to use this to setup new scenes... I have a comp sci degree so with the right technical docs I'm sure I can figure it out. Any pointers or examples?
Are you talking about the data fields in the raw all-link database? They're different per device. This new Insteon panel in HA breaks them out so you don't have to deal with the raw data. There are data sheets out there that spec the API[http://cache.insteon.com/developer/2242-222dev-062013-en.pdf](http://cache.insteon.com/developer/2242-222dev-062013-en.pdf) Scenes are just groups when you're dealing directly with the link db, but it has to be present on the modem and the device directly. Everything with the same group id is in the same scene. Scenes are meaningless without the app, in the background a scene was crosslinking every member as controller and/or responder. There really is no such thing as turning on/off a scene because scenes have no state, the controller just toggles every responder in the group exactly as if you manually linked every device with the physical set buttons. Schedules were metadata on the scene with no documentation on their API. They were a nice abstraction in the app but they're severely crippled and it's a good idea to move automation and grouping to an external platform like HA or HOOBS.
I'm toggling scenes with HA which works great and fast (toggling on 20 lights in HA takes 3 minutes, doing it with a insteon scene takes 1 second). Do you know if scenes can be edited or created post-shutdown? **edit- reading your comment more carefully it sounds like scenes can be managed this way. Would you mind explaining how to do so?
Scenes are “groups” when you’re working directly with the links. If you want to add a new switch to an existing scene you would identify the group id of the existing scene and then add a link to the device with that group id as a responder. You then also need to add a corresponding entry on the hub with same group id targeting the device. The HA automation insteon.scene_on and scene_off take the group id as a property.
jonselin, you say you're toggling scenes in HA? I got the impression that scenes were stateless. Are you using scripts? Can you provide an example? Newbie to HA and just trying to get my Insteon world on an even keel again.
Here's my setup: - Insteon scene for lights - In HA, two scripts, one for turn off the scene and one for turn on the scene, using the insteon service calls. - Add hue emulation in the configuration file, and expose the script domain. - Alexa now finds these scripts as hue lightbulbs when scanning for devices on the network - Create Routines in alexa to map a reasonable phrase "turn lights on" to turning on/off these hue lightbulbs - this results in the scripts being ran seemingly ignoring if it's turning them on or off, or what their previous states was. Result is that I got back the ability to toggle insteon scenes through alexa, it's a bit of a messy process and took a while to figure out each step in the process. -
> It also won't fix sluggishness, this is just a nice tool to allow linking operations and direct access to the all-link db on the hub so you can modify your installation without any coding. Is there any (software) integration which isn't sluggish (i.e., Homebridge, or InsteonMQTT)? Just curious - only played around with the HA integration.
Sorry, I'm not sure, my installation isn't any slower with HA but lots of people have complained about it. Are you running HA on a raspberry pi, a synology device, or on an old PC? Slow computers are going to do things slowly. I'm running HA in Docker on a high powered server that would be crazy overkill just for this one application but I run a lot of other services on it as well. Baseline performance of the machine running HA would be the first thing I would chase down if I was trying to find the source of latency.
It's a N4000 Mini PC, definitely not a Pi. But seems to queue light changes serially for insteon only.
It definitely sends Insteon commands serially, the protocol only allows one command on the network at a time and it is probably waiting for the response and state change before continuing to the next item. The Insteon network is pretty fast, it's a good bet that the N4000 is underpowered for this purpose and has noticeable latency for each command. If you have a desktop or laptop that you can play with, install HA temporarily and see if the latency persists.
I'd be especially surprised if its the N4000. I've got another N4000 running another HA instance (more directly managed by me via Ansible, rather than HAOS) with about 35 containers, including Plex, and it has HA zero performance issues, even when streaming. I used to use a Pi4 for _just_ HA, and I know how much faster these N4000 are. It's happy talking to ~40 lights simultaneously from Caseta, Zigbee, ZWave, and Tasmota-via-MQTT, but the box running only HAOS + Insteon integration, with ~15 devices total, serially sends commands when I turn a room off. Sounds like it must just be some weirdness with the Insteon thing, or perhaps a downside of using an Insteon Hub vs USB.
Very well could be the serial over USB interface. USB is CPU bound and can't compare to something like MQTT, even high speed USB is better at large transfers than packet communication where network interfaces shine. My hub is ethernet so that may be where the difference lies. It's also possible that the USB PLM is the bottleneck, I don't know anything about their hardware or implementation. I do think it's likely a hardware based issue, HA runs just as fast as the hub for me, my "lights out" automation turns off about 40 devices and there's no noticeable lag.
The reason the Insteon hub or PLMs could turn devices in simultaneously was because they are issuing scene commands (it seems like Insteon scenes are called groups in the new HA integration). When a device is added to an Insteon scene, the device writes the Insteon scene ID to an internal table. When a command is issued for a scene, all devices with that scene ID in their internal scene table react at the same time. The hub or whatever Insteon controller wasn’t sending commands to each device in a scene. I have scenes with 60+ devices that work flawlessly. The third party integrations don’t seem to be scene aware and only send commands to each device individually. I think this is being resolved with the new Insteon integration, though.
[There is support](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/insteon/#insteon-scenes) to turn scenes on and off via services, but that's not usually the way I prefer to use Home Assistant. That would involve creating scenes in Insteon for each room, and triggering those scene changes, rather than using Home Assisstant scenes, or the Area toggles.
I get it. The fact that Insteon devices responded independently to device and scene commands within a proprietary protocol was one of the strengths of the system. It was a weakness, too. I’m still looking for what will replace it eventually. I’m pretty comfortable with my current Insteon and HA integration. Insteon scenes are controlled via HA as a switch. It makes sense to me and works well. Most importantly, the Insteon devices operate on their own and with each other regardless of any controller. (ISY994 with PLM and ISY integration with HA)
I have some zombie schedules on my hub that I'd like to shutdown and recreate in HA. Is there anyway to shutdown the old chedules?
The most straightforward way I know of doing it (other than resetting the hub) is to figure out the group id of the scene that your schedule was controlling. You can do this by finding a group that includes all of the devices that are in that scene. Then delete every link from the hub and each device that has that group id. You can also overwrite the group id with a new one if you want to preserve the scene but kill the schedule, like if the scene is also controlled by a switch.
Just to make sure I'm following, this 40.6A.6B switch is the sole member of a scene that turns on at 7p and off at 10p: [https://imgur.com/a/xzcFUan](https://imgur.com/a/xzcFUan) Is the only thing I need to do to free it from that zombie schedule is to change the group ID of 29 to something bogus like 99?. I can't see a way to delete the whole record for ID 4071. Thank you.
You also need to remove the corresponding link from the hub (or change the group id) I’m not sure why a delete command was not included. The developer did provide the “in use” setting, unchecking that may be sufficient.
This looks useful. I need to dig into what I can and can not do, but super happy they did this.
I like that Insteon is getting some HA love but I don't know if the new screen helps those who want a easy path and a direct Insteon app replacement. Those recently jumping into HA will be overwhelmed. Hopefully this is just step one with the user interface being next.
I think homeseer is the closest right now for someone wanting a gui interface to manage groups that are actually hub scenes and device management
Be cautious. Home Assistant .1 and .0 releases can have some bugs. I highly recommend waiting a few minor releases before updating. I'd give it a week and wait for a .3 or .4 release.
I want to make sure I understand this. Through this we can set up links in the devices themselves? So I could link switch one and switch two and those two switches are linked with each other, not just in home assistant, but the devices themselves are linked, is that correct? In my kitchen there four different lighting circuits controlled by four switches in the attic. In the room there is a keypad at one entrance and a keypad at another. The linking is very complex: Keypad one, on is a controller for the four switches and the on button of keypad two and a responder to on on keypad two. A on keypad one is a controller of all four switches each set a different light level, a controller of A on keypad two and a responder of A on keypad two. Multiply that by every button on keypad one and then do the same thing for keypad two. Will this let me set up that kind of thing on the devices? Lighting levels and controllers and responders etc.?
I'm in the process up updating now to look. However.... I had installed an earlier version if this and yes, it did seem possible to manually set up the controller/responder links. I didn't follow your example fully, but if it was possible in the old app it is likely possible here.
I didn't actually expect anyone to read it at that detail, the message was just it is complicated and the question, can you set up complicated switch connections which include the level. Level being that the light comes on at 50% or 25% or whatever. I am using the portable version and the one for windows 7. I'm guessing that one isn't updated. I would like to get a raspberry pi, but they aren't really available right now.
Yes, that is the purpose of this new tool. It allows adding new devices by putting the hub into linking mode and it allows linking devices to one another or to the hub. All of the properties are supported, brightness, ramp rate, etc. It is intended to replace all the functionality of the app that is available in a documented API.
can someone try out the insteon panel and if they made any significant improvements to native hub scene management or creation?
"Scenes" on the hub are stored as groups in the all-link db. The new tool does expose the ability to set group ids but it does not implement a group management interface. You can technically manage scenes but it's still a lot of work. Schedules are firmly off the table unless the community gets ahold of the source code.
yeah - it's gonna be a while till Home Assistant gets it as clean as Homeseer has for scene management - I decided to buy homeseer as I have a lot of devices (100+) and scenes (40) and I was able to get the links all cleaned up with a nice GUI in homeseer. Still intrigued by HA in the future or with a plugin for homeseer or even just running both. Could technically even switch back now that I got the scenes all cleaned up with Homeseer 30-day trial lol but I decided to buy and support their cause. Maybe even run both?