Device Database Cleanup, Home Assistant, and HouseLinc Questions

[stewartcool]

Hey folks! I'm brand new to the forum, but been an Insteon user for around 10 years now. I was active on the Smarthome forums for a while, but once everything was running smoothly and I ran out of projects, I quit participating. I have about 20 devices controlled with a USB PowerLinc Modem (2413U), and last year I migrated from Indigo to Home Assistant. Over the years I've added and removed many devices, re-arranged, repurposed, and expanded my home automation to include some other protocols. The added protocols was why I switched to Home Assistant, plus being able to run it on a Raspberry Pi which consumed far less power than the extremely old Mac Mini I'd been using.

Indigo was really helpful at keeping all the Insteon device databases up-to-date as changes happened. I'm finding Home Assistant doesn't offer this. One example is Home Assistant has a concept of "groups" the same way Insteon does, but if you program a group of Insteon devices together in Home Assistant it still sends individual signals to them all creating a "popcorn effect" rather than programming this as an Insteon group within the Insteon devices. I was making do with this, but then more problems started cropping up a few months ago and it's gotten to a point where I need to do troubleshooting to determine whether problems are hardware or software based.

So TLDR, I need a way to manually configure, update, and keep my devices' databases cleaned up outside of Home Assistant. I'd prefer it be free or inexpensive since I'm not using this as my daily control software, and reading the Home Assistant documentation on Insteon it seemed using the old HouseLinc software might work. I got it installed and communicating with my PowerLinc, so this is where I'm at. I prefer GUI when possible, but HouseLinc being so old and clunky, I'm wondering if it's necessary that I use the Insteon Terminal tool. But maybe there's something I've not yet heard of?

My questions...

1. Is anyone in a similar boat as I am? If so, how do you manage it?
2. If a device is added to the modem in HomeLinc, does HouseLinc store that device in the modem, or just a local Windows-based database?
3. For Home Assistant users (if you're on here), does the Insteon integration recognize changes made outside of Home Assistant, or is there a process you need to go through to ensure they're registered?

[jackman]

It's curious no one has answered your post after more than a year. I'm in a similar situation running both HomeAssistant (HA) and HouseLinc (HL). Events created in HL are stored locally. They do not get replicated in HA. You can have events created in one or both but it quickly becomes a management challenge.

[firefox111]

Well, in my case, when Insteon died last year and later resurrected but with subscription, I said screw them. I learned about Home Assistant and I was able to integrate my Insteon Hub and switches, outlets, and plugs. I don't use any other way of controlling my Insteon devices. I control them solely from HA. I am happy with the schedules I have in HA for the Insteon devices. My only gripe is that the schedules are stored in HA, not replicated over to the Hub, so when my HA hangs, schedules don't work. Oh, most importantly, I blocked my Insteon devices traffic to and from the Internet. Only my HA have complete control of them.