When I first got Insteon I picked it because it had a great tool (HouseLinc) to manage links and debug communications issues. I received no warning that Insteon planned to take that tool away.
I need to set up a virtual machine environment that I can back up and preserve to run houselinc.
What is the best version of Windows for this?
And what is the best hypervisor VM software? I'm partial to kvm/libvirt on a linux host, but I'm interested to hear what works for other users.
Should I try to pass through the PLM's USB device to the VM or is it sufficient to merely pass through it's serial port so the guest OS sees it as COM B or whatnot without any USB involved?
If I pass it through as just a serial object, can I concurrently use it with software running on the physical host? OR share it with other VMs?
UPDATE 2020: I used a windows 2000 VM on libvirt with much success and I could 'pass through' the usb PLM. But I became dissatisfied with having to have a physical cable between the PLM and my laptop. So I saught out a long forgotten third option, an IP-based PLM, the 2242-222. That worked and for the first time I could have houselinc connect over IP to a PLM, which of course also worked over WIFI for the win!
UPDATE 2022-03: I also grew tired of running a whole VM environment. Even as light as windows 2000 is, VMs hog a huge block of ram just for themselves. So I revisited wine (which I fornerly wrote off because it couldn't pass the usb PLM through). Wine was still finicky and wouldn't complete the installer. But then I found PlayOnLinux (a repackaging of wine), I've got HouseLinc running natively on Fedora GNU+Linux now. PlayOnLinux/wine is setup to emulate an XP environment. Houselinc connects to the 2242-222 PLM over WIFI! Great!
I need to set up a virtual machine environment that I can back up and preserve to run houselinc.
What is the best version of Windows for this?
And what is the best hypervisor VM software? I'm partial to kvm/libvirt on a linux host, but I'm interested to hear what works for other users.
Should I try to pass through the PLM's USB device to the VM or is it sufficient to merely pass through it's serial port so the guest OS sees it as COM B or whatnot without any USB involved?
If I pass it through as just a serial object, can I concurrently use it with software running on the physical host? OR share it with other VMs?
UPDATE 2020: I used a windows 2000 VM on libvirt with much success and I could 'pass through' the usb PLM. But I became dissatisfied with having to have a physical cable between the PLM and my laptop. So I saught out a long forgotten third option, an IP-based PLM, the 2242-222. That worked and for the first time I could have houselinc connect over IP to a PLM, which of course also worked over WIFI for the win!
UPDATE 2022-03: I also grew tired of running a whole VM environment. Even as light as windows 2000 is, VMs hog a huge block of ram just for themselves. So I revisited wine (which I fornerly wrote off because it couldn't pass the usb PLM through). Wine was still finicky and wouldn't complete the installer. But then I found PlayOnLinux (a repackaging of wine), I've got HouseLinc running natively on Fedora GNU+Linux now. PlayOnLinux/wine is setup to emulate an XP environment. Houselinc connects to the 2242-222 PLM over WIFI! Great!
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