Insteon Automation Support

[bluenadas]

Anyone integrated Insteon in to their system?

[mkaylor]

Absolutely!!!  Insteon is already implemented in Mr. House so I think it would be easy to copy what they have done over their.  Insteon is so much better than plain old X10, yet it is fully backwards compatible.

Mike

[PeteK]

Insteon is very high on the developer's requested features list.  I expect it will be one of the first tasks assigned after 1.1 is released (very shortly)

[deeepdish]

Hello PeteK,

When you say v1.1, does this include the recent 0704 release?   Is v1.1 planned for release in 2007 or 2008 at this point?  Is there a status of current Insteon support and perhaps a todo list for those that wish to assist development?

I've seen the video, and like it.   I just soaked a bunch of time and money into Inteon.   Would be very cool if LinuxMCE supported this.   

Perhaps integration with existing solutions, such as the Universal-Devices ISY-26 might be possible and quick at this point.   They have a Java-based SDK publicly published.   

My 0.02.  And hope that this will be implemented soon. 

Keep up the good work!



Thanks.

[PeteK]

We're currently working on Insteon integration.  The plan is to use the Powerlinc V2 controller from Smarthome. I'm sure Paul will let you know when we get to something we can release.

[taylormade]

http://www.linuxha.com/athome/common/iplcd/

Some of the work has already been done.  Also, the Insteon switches can be assigned x10 addresses and be controlled via the CM11 - for those of us that already own insteon stuff and need a stopgap.

[PeteK]

Just thought I'd post an update, since this posting was linked to from the Smart Home Blog.

Right now I have an Insteon implementation working that supports unidirectional control of lights via LMCE through an  Insteon Powerlinc USB controller (http://www.smarthome.com/2414u.html).  The current functionality is approximately similar to the Zwave functionality currently implemented in LMCE.  That is, lights can be controlled via scenes, added to floor plans, etc.  Before initial release, I plan to implement the bi-directional message communication to support message receipt confirmation (which the Zwave implementation does have).  This implementation, while doing the job, leaves room for improvement, especially with large installations that can show a 'ripple' effect.  Insteon has support for features to allow more simultaneous lighting control.  I'd like to implement that next.  I also would like to implement the 'polling' feature that was mostly coded, but not fully implemented by the Pluto developers for PlutoHome, the LMCE predecessor.  Insteon supports X10 control, so that functionality needs to be added at a relatively high priority.

Daniel Kristjansson, of MythTV fame, is currently spearheading an effort by several developers, including Paul and the Pluto team, to set up a public developer environment and version control system to allow developers to contribute to the LMCE.  When that effort is complete, the Insteon code/templates will go into the system and whoever the lead dev team winds up being can decide how/when to release.

[mikus]

Hi Pete,

I'm curious how your endeavours are coming, or when you think mainline code integration could occur for insteon support.  I've checked out LMCE at various releases, but i currently have all insteon installed in my house, and there's never been any support for it.  Nothing my level of hackery could manage to kludge in at least, so I've always passed on.  Problem is, there's nothing else out there worth a damn commercially even to do a better job, so my hopes still lie with LMCE.  I saw your post and this gave me some hope to still use LMCE here yet.  Your bidirectional control integration should allow for interaction with items like the simplehomenet ezio products, no?  I'm keenly interested in the 8sa that offers temperature one-wire sensor input, but I'm not sure how premature my hopes are to play with anything like this easily in the near future. 

If you can get a decent Insteon system integrated, I'd be happy to donate some cash or Insteon hardware, as I'm sure others would too.  It's been sorely lacking in the Pluto/LMCE product, and I've been left surprised it's been ignored for so long as a fairly viable player in HA hardware.

[PeteK]

Mikus--

Right now I have a stable lighting control interface.  The lights are accessed just like X10 or Z-wave lights in LMCE.  The area where my code needs improvement is in the area of robustness.  The 2-way communications is not in there yet, so for now, I'm sending commands out without feedback, ala X10.  My short-term plan is to get my initial implementation in its current state committed by the end of this week.  Daniel K and company are working hard to bring up a full LMCE development environment (svn, build scripts, etc), but in the meantime, the Pluto guys have offered me access to their SVN.  After that, I'll continue to work to add the features I want to expand and improve the Insteon interface.  Right now I have an Simplehomenet sprinkler module I've been working with for fun, and I plan to expand support to include the I/O modules as well.  My main concern with Insteon is the same one I have with Zwave, which is that a single company controls the core I/P.  So far, though, Insteon has made their interface and hardware fairly open and cheap to develop with (as opposed to Zensys), so I'm pretty happy with it.


-Pete

[mikus]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it's something you can't really argue with considering the vendors that produce the gear essentially create the protocols to sell their hardware.  Old mentalities of ownership and royalties versus free information still hold true, but slowly I see even they are releasing their grasp as they're finally realizing they can't control what people do with it once it's out there.

Insteon bugged me that they "sell" sdk's to their products, but for the most part is you just need to know how to interact with the their plc's, which didn't take long for most people to reverse engineer or cobble together information anyways.  Problem is, most every HA hardware product vendor that is worth a damn does too.  So long as the companies don't mind the info being out there and don't sic lawyers on those for making their software better than they could, I'm somewhat ok with it, and hence invested by buying their product.  Until there is some truly open-sourced hardware specs produced to do this, zigbee is about as close as you're going to get to it that is at least 802 spec.

As far as your work, for which I'm quite appreciative of, how does/has it trickle down to lmce releases as far as _any_ insteon functionality in their installs?  Is it capable of integration into an existing install yet?  My big thing was always wanting to avoid needing to rely on x10 compatibility, and was willing to wait for support (which still befuddles me is just coming now).  I pissed away money on homeseer that I could never get to behave, and I'd have bought pluto by now if it had the support.  I'll honestly take any scraps thrown.  I need to get something to act as a HA controller, and LMCE was always my most promising option, short of the fact it worked with none of my hardware. 

[totallymaxed]

Just thought I'd post an update, since this posting was linked to from the Smart Home Blog.

Right now I have an Insteon implementation working that supports unidirectional control of lights via LMCE through an  Insteon Powerlinc USB controller (http://www.smarthome.com/2414u.html).  The current functionality is approximately similar to the Zwave functionality currently implemented in LMCE.  That is, lights can be controlled via scenes, added to floor plans, etc.  Before initial release, I plan to implement the bi-directional message communication to support message receipt confirmation (which the Zwave implementation does have).  This implementation, while doing the job, leaves room for improvement, especially with large installations that can show a 'ripple' effect.  Insteon has support for features to allow more simultaneous lighting control.  I'd like to implement that next.  I also would like to implement the 'polling' feature that was mostly coded, but not fully implemented by the Pluto developers for PlutoHome, the LMCE predecessor.  Insteon supports X10 control, so that functionality needs to be added at a relatively high priority.

Daniel Kristjansson, of MythTV fame, is currently spearheading an effort by several developers, including Paul and the Pluto team, to set up a public developer environment and version control system to allow developers to contribute to the LMCE.  When that effort is complete, the Insteon code/templates will go into the system and whoever the lead dev team winds up being can decide how/when to release.

Well as far as I know in the current lmce-0704 zwave binary there is no code that implements message receipt confirmation. The Zwave protocols support message receipt confirmation its just that the zwave binary does not. This is a pity as there many situations where this capability would add a powerful new dimension to lmce.

[PeteK]

Are you sure about that?  Looking through the code, it looks like a lot of that has been implemented.  There's also a lot of code there for asynchronous polling, but it looks like work on that stopped short of completion.


I'm going to try to work with the Pluto guys to get Insteon in the upcoming 0710 release.  No guarantees, but I think it's doable.

[ddamron]

Great News!! 

People with Insteon products now have another cool device they can play with..

simplehomenet (www.simplehomenet.com) just announced their new EZX10IR/EZUIRC device to be available mid december!

The initial batches already have EZX10IR on them, but due to suggestions in their forums (hehe, mine) they decided to rename it.

It's basically an IR - X10/Insteon bridge - could be very useful here in linuxmce..

Whatya all think???

Dan