Questions regarding moving from Insteon/ISY 994i to HomeSeer HS4

[TrEigh]

I am currently running a bunch of Insteon devices with an ISY 994i and a 2413S Powerline Modem. With the availability issues with Insteon products going forward and the fact that I never really liked the ISY, I have decided to transition over to something new. I will be running HS4 on a WIN10 PC along with a Z-Wave Plus V2 USB Stick. In the future I will add the MNS Insteon Software Plugin to incorporate my existing Insteon stuff.

I have a few questions regarding this project.
1) Can I run my current Insteon setup as I am now and add the HS4 to just control Z-Wave stuff?
2) Once I incorporate the MNS Plugin and start bringing in my existing Insteon stuff, do I have to go all in and move ALL of my devices from ISY to HS4, or can I do a few at a time, essentially running both platforms at the same time?
3) I have 2) 2443 Access Points. Will these still function or be necessary after moving over to the HS4 platform?

Any other insight is welcome for my project. I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, it has already been done. Thanks in advance for any comments or direction.

Tom

[timlacey]

It doesn't look like you ever got an answer on this, but did you move from ISY to MNS Insteon? I am contemplating the move as switching to the EISY has been buggy and I'm worried about a day in the future when Bob's plugin stops working. Do you have any suggested processing for moving over?

My biggest challenge is not setting up the insteon devices and groups but reconstructing all the timers and such that I use on the ISY. I have programs that run events for autolights and a dim mode of autolights in various rooms. . . it seems like replicating it in Homeseer will produce a ton of events.

[TrEigh]

Hi Tim. I did transition over to HS4 running Z-wave and Insteon devices.I really like the interface to the HS4, point a browser from a phone, iPad, PC and it just works. Anytime I went to connect to the ISY I spent way too much time just getting on the system with Java, etc. The devices are easy to setup, timers and counters as well. With ISY I always felt kind of in the dark if that makes any sense.

[brmeeke]

I run both Z-Wave and Insteon very successfully. Only challenge is that the two technologies don’t communicate directly so I use Events as a bridge. They are not as fast as linked devices but all in all, everything works.

[JimG]

I also run both Z-Wave and Insteon devices on HS4. (Lutron Caseta dimmers too!) For Insteon, the computer running HS4 has an Insteon USB PLM connected to one of its USB ports. I use Mark Sandler's MNS Insteon plugin which works quite well. (There's a separate sub-forum for that plugin). For Z-Wave I have a Z-Wave USB controller in another USB port, and the support comes from HomeSeer's own Z-Wave plugin.

Although these two technologies don't communicate directly, you can have either type of device be a trigger, and actions can control any device, so yes that's the bridge. You're correct that there is a lag as HomeSeer executes each of the actions in an event in sequence.

If you want to have Insteon-style "scenes," controlled by HomeSeer, you can do that through Mark Sandler's MNS Insteon plugin. So the way I have it going is that one event turns on an Insteon-style "scene" with several lights coming on together, then the Z-Wave lights follow in succession. Not perfect but not bad either.