Is it Possible to have 2 Insteon Interfaces Registered and updating in HomeSeer?

[Sinandgrin]

Sort of a longer post so hopefully you can bear with me. I'd very much appreciate any help someone can give with this.

I've been wanting to setup a Home Assistant installation for a while now and decided to take a stab at it. The biggest reason is for the dashboards that I'm looking to build out and host on iPads around the home. I have lost interest in updating my HSTouch screens and have built into my total home automation setup many devices that are HomeKit or other technologies that I can't pull into HomeSeer, so I have a fractured implementation. Home Assistant looks to be a bright option to pull in everything I have and allow me to have very nice looking front end dashboards.

So to cut to the question - Is it possible to have 2 Insteon interfaces registered with Homeseer?

Why I am asking:
I am needing a way to pull my Insteon devices into home assistant so I can present their state in a dashboard I'd build out. I am using the Insteon integration and first started to link that to my USB PLM that is registered with Homeseer and pulls in all my devices to HS via Mark's plugin. What I noticed though is that I can only seem to maintain control over the PLM from 1 plugin/integration. When I enabled HA's Insteon integration, Homeseer would lose the connection to the PLM (Error: Could not open COM7 - The port 'COM7' does not exist.). Below is a question with HS log output that I posted on a HA Subreddit but haven't heard back. Maybe someone here would know that question?

Either way, my next thought was to dig out my Insteon Hub2 2245 that I had lying around. I connected that up to HA and left the PLM connected to HS. I registered a few Insteon devices to the Hub2 and voila I could see and control a single Insteon device from both Homeseer and Home Assistant BUT the device status would get out of sync between the 2 interfaces. I thought the device would share state changes back to both Insteon interfaces (PLM and HUB2) but that does not seem to be happening. So my thought then was to see if there was a way that HS could help and broker status changes from one interface to the other to keep them in sync, hence the question about being able to registrar them both in HS.

Now if there is a better way to handle all of this, please let me know. For example could I register the HUB2 as a device with the PLM in HS in order to keep status changes in sync? Would that work somehow?

A final low-tech thought is to setup polling on a consistent interval in HS in order to capture changes made from HA, but I sort of need the opposite here (as am more likely to make changes through HS and want my HA dashboards to be reliable and accurate but I can't see a way to setup polling using the HUB2.

Thanks again for any help on this!

Next question... I am looking to run Homeseer AND Home Assistant together on the same windows host machine both connected and controlling my Insteon devices through the PLM. I am watching the HA integration run the Autodiscovery and populate Devices and Entities but now notice that Homeseer has lost access to the PLM. Below is a snippet from the HomeSeer Log but look s like the USB PLM COM is no longer available when the HA Insteon integration is running. Turing off HA restores access to the PLM in HomeSeer.

Do you know if this PLM can be shared across 2 home automation programs like this?




LOGS

Jul-22 12:19:33 AM Insteon In PLMBuffer_ProcessBufferThread

Jul-22 12:19:33 AM Insteon ..Error: Could not open COM7 - The port 'COM7' does not exist.

Jul-22 12:19:33 AM Insteon Initializing Interface...

Jul-22 12:19:28 AM Insteon ..Error: Could not open COM7 - The port 'COM7' does not exist.

Jul-22 12:19:28 AM Insteon Attempting to restart the port and Interface...

Jul-22 12:19:28 AM Insteon In PLMBuffer_ProcessBufferThread

Jul-22 12:19:28 AM Insteon Initializing Interface...

Jul-22 12:19:25 AM Insteon Saved ini file. msecs=13

Jul-22 12:19:23 AM Insteon Attempting to restart the port and Interface...

Jul-22 12:19:23 AM Insteon ..Finished Scheduled Polling for 1 devices.

Jul-22 12:19:22 AM Insteon Scheduled polling temporarily stopped.

Jul-22 12:19:22 AM Insteon ProcessInsteonTrigger Parameters: DeviceID=Interface, Command=9A, Command2=00, Group=1

Jul-22 12:13:53 AM Insteon Saved ini file. msecs=11

Jul-22 12:13:50 AM Insteon ..finished saving comm stats.

Jul-22 12:13:50 AM Insteon Saving comm stats...

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon Transmit failed to device Office Office Ceiling Fan (40.56.46) for cmd 00 00 00 40 56 46 0F 11 FF after 3 tries.

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon Sending command 02 62 40 56 46 0F 11 FF to RF PLM, (Expecting 0 bytes extra back) Pre-Payload ACK:False, NAK is ok:False

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon **Internal transmit attempt failed for CMD: 00 00 00 40 56 46 0F 11 FF

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon Sending command 02 62 40 56 46 0F 11 FF to RF PLM, (Expecting 0 bytes extra back) Pre-Payload ACK:False, NAK is ok:False

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon **Internal transmit attempt failed for CMD: 00 00 00 40 56 46 0F 11 FF

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon Sending command 02 62 40 56 46 0F 11 FF to RF PLM, (Expecting 0 bytes extra back) Pre-Payload ACK:False, NAK is ok:False

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon **Internal transmit attempt failed for CMD: 00 00 00 40 56 46 0F 11 FF

Jul-22 12:12:23 AM Insteon CAPIControl: Label=On, Value=100, ControlType=Button

[Eman]

You could have contacted the dev by PM... Are you asking for help on how to configure Hass? Well...Need we say more?


Eman.

[mnsandler]

the plugin doesn't support two interfaces.

some people use a PLM with homeseer, and then use the insteon hub as a second controller for specific use-cases.

[Sinandgrin]

Understood. Thank you Mark for confirming this.

Apologies if I stepped outside of SOPs and posted this rather than PM'ing you directly.

[mnsandler]

No problem. Posting to the forum with questions is fine.

if you enable 'process acks' within the plugin, hs will attempt to update status based on messages sent from the Hub.

stop the plugin, add the following to [config] section in the insteon.ini, and restart.

ProcessACKs=1

if you upgraded to the latest beta, there is a UI setting on the Advanced tab to do the same.

[upstatemike]

Curious if there is a way to have HAAS get the info from Homeseer instead of from the PLM? I use the ISY integration for Insteon and have many systems exchange data with it simultaneously while the PLM only has to connect to one thing. It seems like Homeseer could fill the same role as an ISY994 to be the primary contact point for the PLM and have all other platforms share the data through Homeseer.

[Sinandgrin]

Great, thanks for the tip here Mark, but as I may not need this now as you can see below I was able to go a slightly different direction.

upstatemike - I am early in my Home Assistant journey, but I had the same exact thought as you did and finally came across (I know I had searched for this before and came up empty handed) a custom (non-official) HA Integration that does just this. Short story is, I was able to get it installed and it seems to do exactly what I wanted!. Because it is a custom integration it requires a few hoops to jump through getting HACS install in HA and then this integration.

The key for me was to clear browser cache when I was looking to install the Homeseer integration. The Readme calls this out for a previous step, which was not needed for me but when I got to this latter step I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why it wasn't working. Clearing my browser cache allowed the HACS injected Homeseer Integration to show in the Add Integration modal.

This Homeseer HA custom integration uses JSON and ASCII commands to HomeSeer directly and cuts out the Insteaon PLM/Hub need that I was first going down here.

So I'll share a link and some notes below in case others are looking to find a way to pull in their Insteon, or Z-wave, etc. devices from Homeseer into Home Assistant.

1. HomeSeer Custom Integration for Home Assistant This is the option that I found and have started to work with. It is up and running for me and pulls in most of the devices I need. I have 1 issue I need to work through to get an entity for a door senser to come over. Not sure what is going on there but the bulk of my HS setup is available in HA now.

2. A second option that I came across but have not explored yet, being satisfied ATM with #1, is establishing an integration between Homeseer and HASS via MQTT. There is an out-of-the-box MQTT Broker for HA that can be used here from what I understand.

I hope some of this helps folks who may be looking to do something similar. I am by no means an expert here, just getting started but happy to lend a hand and answer questions or point you in a direction based on what I have found so far.

[Airey001]

So to though in my items the HomeSeer Custom for HA does a great job except for KepadLincs because of the way the current system is setup with nonroot devices it cause the keypad to import to HA as multiple devices or even crossed devices. You might get a few keypads with missing buttons or a keypad with buttons from another key pad. I beleive this is how Keypads are created in the HS3 Plugin. I think this is something mark hit with converting to HS4 that he needs a root devices with items under it.

Marks plugin is the only reason I am still on HomeSeer 3. I was on HS4 for a while but i thouhgt HS missed that ball on that one and tried to make a step foward but where still 100 steps behind the competition and was realsed to prodiction too early. They really need a better development process.

However the official HA Insteon Plugin has a change in dev to give us a user interface to be able to fullly control our Insteon Devices with the ablitly to add/edit/control links. However its still will need alot of work to be on par with Marks Plugin. I know as of right now it doesn't support KPL with detached load. The API's for this new intigration where merged into the code for the August release now the front end control panel just needs approved and mergerd but the august release looks good for insteon support.

[Sinandgrin]

However the official HA Insteon Plugin has a change in dev to give us a user interface to be able to fullly control our Insteon Devices with the ablitly to add/edit/control links. However its still will need alot of work to be on par with Marks Plugin. I know as of right now it doesn't support KPL with detached load. The API's for this new intigration where merged into the code for the August release now the front end control panel just needs approved and mergerd but the august release looks good for insteon support.

Is this the official Insteon Integration for HA you are talking about? https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/insteon/

This is where my journey started but realized it would require that I cannibalize my HomeSeer integration in my total home automation implementation to do this. That is a pretty big undertaking for me to find suitable replacements for all the event automation (Node Red is in my cross hairs), homekit injection for insteon devices, etc. It will be cool to watch it progress though and if it looks like they have ironed out some of the hurdles, maybe I take the plunge.

[Airey001]

Yes thats it but its about to get a big upgrade:

Here is the forum where the dev of the HA Intigration has a demo video and talk about the new updates:
https://community.home-assistant.io/...anel/234145/19


Here is the Push for the new code needed for the back end to support the new front end and is already part of the dev branch now - so it will be in the August version
https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/49785

Here is the Push for the Front End Control panel which is in the review process so has a good chance for the to make in into the august release to
https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/pull/9010


I only have Insteon Left on Homeseer

I now am integrated with the following
AppleTV
FireTV
AmazonAlexa
Apple iCould
August Locks
BlueIris NVR
Coinbase
Deconz for Zigbee
MQTT
MyQ Garage Doors
Node-Red
Philips Hue
Sense Enegery Monitor
Tasmota
TP-Link Smart Home Devices

As per insteon i have tried may times testing the best part is the HA interface will read whats already programmed and pull that into HA. So what i have been doing of past few months is unpluging the modem from homeseer and pluging it into Homeassistant to use

Then when i need to make a change i plug back in to Homeseer change the links add new device ect... then unplug and plug back into HA.

I am going to miss the support and care we get from Mark with HS and his Insteon plugin but i feel Homeseer is on the downward slop of being able to compete HS4 was released outdated compared to what else is out there.

I have found that everything i could do in HomeSeer i can still do in HomeAssistant Plus more.

[Sinandgrin]

Wow this is all very exciting! Thanks for sharing, I may hit you up Airey001 for some questions/help as I think I am following behind you with this migration to HA.