A couple of questions about Insteon Hub

[TAS99]

I currently have an older isy994i and it does not support the newer Insteon i3 devices. My choice is to upgrade to the new EISY or move to an Insteon Hub. Other than price what are the pros and cons of Eisy vs Hub. I will only be controlling Insteon devices. Some quite old and of course the newer i3.

Second, I down loaded the latest (I think) Hub Owners Manual and it says it supports 2242-222. Does this manual apply to the newer 2245-222? If not, is there a link to the newer manual?

Regards,

Tom

[BLH]

On the Insteon.com web site. For the 2245-222 HUB2 (2014). Is dated 05.16..16. The 2242-222 is the older original HUB.
The HUB and HUB (2014) are completely different and I would think they do not use the same manuals.
A look at the I3 offerings. They mention the HUB2 with their Directer App. Will control them and requires a Subscription to use all the features.
It also mentioned the older HUB App. Maybe better for legacy systems with many of the modules being the older ones.
I suspect but can not verify. That the Director App may not support fully or at all. Some legacy modules.
You can go to Insteon.com and then check the I3 products and on their pages describe what controls them best and what is needed.
As you have seen. I3 support is only in the Eisy and Polisy firmware. Not available for the now discontinued ISY994i.

[paulbates]

2 thoughts:
1) I've moved to a new house, leaving a 994i and Insteon devices behind. I'm now starting over in a new house and in a similar situation; which controller to buy? My view is that the Hub is easier to use, but lacks flexibility and solving complex problems of the EISY. On the flip side, the EISY is super flexible and can solve many/any problems, but it's not as easy to use.

So the bottom line is, you'll want to make sure the integrations you've created on the 994i will be possible to implement on the hub. I've been looking the new hub, and the detail integrations I had on my 994i are not possible on the new hub.

2) Something else to think in the decision is handling your existing network: If you decide to get the hub, you'll want to get the additional service to migrate your current PLM's address into the HUB to avoid reprogramming every device and scene. You may have to recreate scenes, I'm not sure how the hub would learn that. With the EISY, you can plug the current PLM into it, possibly with the addition of an adapter cable if you have the serial PLM. There's a menu feature for downloading the PLM map, including scenes, into the eisy..

[TAS99]

As I thought, not a simple choice.

I was able to find the owners manual for the newer HUB and you're right, it's completely different and very disappointing. The information presented in the manual is about connecting and a brief overview of the phone app for various devices but nowhere does it explain how scenes are created, how to connect the various devices or any of the myriad of things one needs to know to use the HUB properly. It's more of a "Quick Start Guide" than an owners manual. Any idea where detailed user instructions might be?

A service to migrate the addresses into the HUB was mentioned. Where can I find more information about this service. That would be very convenient.

From a cost standpoint the HUB would be a desirable choice and my needs are quite simple; mainly various scenes to control various devices - mainly lights and on/off plugs - at various times of the day. Hopefully it has at least that kind of flexibility.

Any additional information would be greatly appreciated.

[paulbates]

It turns out that the service is hub to hub only. I used a similar service years ago when they swapped out first gen hubs that had a manufacturing issue and were replaced. My recollection was I had to send them the Insteon ID of the defective hub.

But its worth contacting tech support and see if its possible to have your current PLM address used as the hub address using the service... if possible, it would save some time not having to factory reset all of the devices. Otherwise, you will be rebuilding your Insteon network from scratch.... factory resetting all devices, re-adding them to the new hub one at at a time, and then setting up scenes.

https://shop.insteon.com/products/mi...hub-2-2245-222

[paulbates]

To your point about figuring out scene management details, I looked at the App Store and there is one screen there...if you look in the splash for the app, you'll get an idea

image.png

[TAS99]

Thanks for the screenshot. You'd think it would be easy to find documentation on the Hub but after a couple of hours on YouTube and other internet links I was able to piece together enough information to make a reasonable judgement of the Hubs capabilities. Even though I think they sacrificed flexibility for simplicity it's still an option. As an example, you can set a device to operate at sunset or sunrise you do not have the option to select a time before or after sunrise or sunset. In my part of the world sometimes sunset is just to light to have the lights come on.

[paulbates]

Yes, I'm in the same situation. My main driver for automation right now is premise and landscape lights. I'm used to dusk - xx time and also dusk dawn sensor for cloudy days.. Also for security, a random timer for off, so the lights go off at slightly different times each night. I think I'm going for the complex solution that I know.

My other learning is that the motion sensor 2 doesn't have dusk/dawn nodes any more.

[TAS99]

I stand corrected.

I purchased a inexpensive used Insteon Hub off of eBay to test and found that you can apply an offset to Sunrise and Sunset. The only issue is that the offset will apply to any schedule set for Sunrise or Sunset.

Other than that, so far so good.