Hi. I’m very new to OpenHab, and I’m interested in hearing about others’ experience integrating Insteon devices. I’m primarily using Insteon dimmers, on/off switches, and outlets – nothing too fancy yet. I have an ISY 994i. Wondering whether I’m better off communicating with the devices directly (using the PLM binding) vs through the ISY binding.
I see there’s a project to communicate with the ISY through MQTT. Wondering whether anyone here has experience with it, and what your thoughts are versus using the ISY binding for OpenHab. https://pypi.org/project/ISY994-Homie3-Bridge/
Just wondering where to start, I suppose! I’d appreciate any guidance the group can offer.
Shane, seeing as you already have an Isy I would recommend you try the Isy binding which is available via the marketplace.
I have 2 locations which has openhab installed. For one I have an Isy, the other I use a few insteon devices with a PLM. Manually linking devices for use with the insteonplm can be painful. Also, the Isy does a great job with groups/scenes which I don’t think anyone has been able to replicate with the insteonplm. Also devices like leak detectors are much easier to use via the Isy, again it is related to the various links that need to be set up between the device and the plm.
I wrote most of the isy binding quite awhile ago, and it has pretty good support for Insteon. Others also chipped in with support for some other device types.
Full disclosure, I don’t do much development on it currently for various reasons, but I find it suits my needs in its existing state.
You should be able to get discovery working within 5 minutes. Check the forums for posts, and some posts on it over at universal devices forum. Again it is available via the marketplace.
I second using the ISY binding since you already have an ISY. I have one too and the binding works great, I only wish there was a way to exclude programs from being discovered as I have a lot of “glue” programs on my ISY to sync my Keypadlinc buttons to the state of my Fanlincs and it’s a bit of a pain to ignore them all in the inbox in the rare instance I need to do a full rediscover, but that’s a pretty minor issue. There’s probably a better way of doing that too, like maybe only control the KPLs in OH instead of the Fanlincs directly and eliminating the glue programs altogether but that’s a conversation for a different thread.
@zolakk@craigh …or anyone else: Would you mind sharing some examples of isy-related entries from your items and rules? I’ve been tinkering with this for a bit, but I’m having a hard time finding resources online. Thanks!
