Semantics of the Hub REST API:how does it work and interact with the Insteon network?
I have been investigating and experimenting with the new Hub REST API. I have a fairly good understanding of how insteon works. The documentation is fairly clear regarding the specific request/response data. But the actual semantics are unclear. I have a number of questions and would appreciate any feedback that others may have on this topic:
1) There is a verb to add a device. I have successfully used this verb and the device appears on the android interface, but the status remains yellow and the on/off functions don't work. I was not really surprised by that because there was no activity to link the hub to the device. So it is unclear to me what the real function of adding a device with this verb performs - does it assume the device is already linked? If it is intended to perform the link as well as adding to the interface (which it doesn't seem to do), how can an application interact with any issues of linking (e.g. older devices requiring button pushing)? What is the real process that the API user is expected to perform to add a device?
2) I would ask the same set of questions regarding adding devices to scenes. Again there is a certain amount of manual interaction required to add devices to scenes. So exactly how does the API user create a scene with all the devices updated as required?
3) I mentioned the request/response data is defined for the API. That is true but, unfortunately, the single sentence in insufficient to really understand what the fields mean. Some are fairly obvious but others are obscure. Is there any way to get more detailed information?
4) Clearly, the cloud interacts with the hub using an interface. Some data is stored in the cloud and some in the hub itself. Where is that interface defined? It would be very useful to be able to directly connect to and interact with the hub on a local network. Perhaps that interface would allow us to get at some of the functionality that HouseLinc (now discontinued and not supported on HUB 2014) provided.
To give you some context for my questions, my first project is to try and create a PC application that can migrate an insteon configuration from one hub (in this case 2012) to a new hub (2014). The approach is to read the content of a current hub (2012) , then unlink all of the current devices and delete them. The user would then delete the account, and re-create it with the new hub. The application would then add the devices, scenes, and schedules to the new hub. I have successfully read and saved the information from the old hub but am struggling on how to recreate the network on the new hub. A key here is that the new hub is being integrated into an existing insteon network.
Thank you very much in advance for any information that you may have.
1) There is a verb to add a device. I have successfully used this verb and the device appears on the android interface, but the status remains yellow and the on/off functions don't work. I was not really surprised by that because there was no activity to link the hub to the device. So it is unclear to me what the real function of adding a device with this verb performs - does it assume the device is already linked? If it is intended to perform the link as well as adding to the interface (which it doesn't seem to do), how can an application interact with any issues of linking (e.g. older devices requiring button pushing)? What is the real process that the API user is expected to perform to add a device?
2) I would ask the same set of questions regarding adding devices to scenes. Again there is a certain amount of manual interaction required to add devices to scenes. So exactly how does the API user create a scene with all the devices updated as required?
3) I mentioned the request/response data is defined for the API. That is true but, unfortunately, the single sentence in insufficient to really understand what the fields mean. Some are fairly obvious but others are obscure. Is there any way to get more detailed information?
4) Clearly, the cloud interacts with the hub using an interface. Some data is stored in the cloud and some in the hub itself. Where is that interface defined? It would be very useful to be able to directly connect to and interact with the hub on a local network. Perhaps that interface would allow us to get at some of the functionality that HouseLinc (now discontinued and not supported on HUB 2014) provided.
To give you some context for my questions, my first project is to try and create a PC application that can migrate an insteon configuration from one hub (in this case 2012) to a new hub (2014). The approach is to read the content of a current hub (2012) , then unlink all of the current devices and delete them. The user would then delete the account, and re-create it with the new hub. The application would then add the devices, scenes, and schedules to the new hub. I have successfully read and saved the information from the old hub but am struggling on how to recreate the network on the new hub. A key here is that the new hub is being integrated into an existing insteon network.
Thank you very much in advance for any information that you may have.