STOP - This integration is old and if you've come here looking for a solution now that Insteon servers are offline, use this one instead for Hubitat to control Insteon devices.
Thanks to the work of @ethomasii, @idealerror, @kuestess and @finik in the SmartThings community, we have a great start from which we could have local control of Insteon via Hubitat.
However, you donāt have to keep your Insteon devices sitting idly by while your Hubitat automates around them. Thanks to @krlaframboise and Other Hub, you can simply create virtual switches in Hubitat and link their state to the Insteon devices which are made available in SmartThings via the aforementioned SmartThings to Insteon integration.
Itās not fast. Thereās about a 1 to 2 second delay, but it works. Youāre not going to have more than ON/OFF or ON to a specific level, but at least you can include your Insteon lighting in the action until we have local control of Insteon directly from Hubitat available.
Create a virtual switch in Hubitat for each of your Insteon lights (choose Virtual Switch device type, regardless of whether or not the Insteon device is dimmable). For the Device Network Id, you can enter the device name (without spaces) or just some 4 digit unique number. For example 001A, 001B, etc.
Select the virtual switches in Hubitat for use with the Other Hub Event Pusher app.
In your SmartThings mobile app, refresh the āThingsā list. You should see your devices with the prefix āOH-ā.
In the SmartThings mobile app Marketplace, select Lights & Switches > Smart Lights to install the Smart Lighting SmartApp
Create a new lighting automation for each of the Insteon lights you wish to control.
In the case of dimmable lights, you can change the choice for āWhat do you want to do?ā to Turn On and Set Level so your dimmable lights will turn on to the desired brightness.
The field āHow do you want to trigger the action?ā should be set to Switch Turned On/Off
Set the āWhich switch?ā field by selecting the corresponding Other Hub device with the prefix āOH-ā
Set the field, āTurn on lights whenā or āTurn on & set level lights whenā, to Turned On (The name of this field changes depending on the choice made for āWhat do you want to do?ā in step 8.
Test it. Your corresponding Insteon light(s) should toggle on & off when you turn the virtual device on & off in Hubitat.
Yes, this is cloud dependent and is a stop-gap solution to at least be able to use Insteon with Hubitat. It is by no means what we eventually will want. Insteon local control is possible, but not yet available.
I have an API key and can do this with API calls, but do in fact use as youāve demonstrated here.
What Iād love to see, since you can hit the Insteon Hub locally (I did this before the ST integration) having Hubitat locally control it may be possible since we have more control over the platform, Iām just spitballing as itās all way outside my wheelhouse.
I ran a Event Ghost server on my always on server at home, and ST would call it, it would then craft the curl response to the Insteon hub to do actions. I didnāt get feedback though so all my CoRE Pistons had logic built in to set state before and after events occurred to try and keep things synced. The Insteon app did NOTHING automatic, just a dumb passthrough. It worked reasonably well. I bet someone could expand on this somehowā¦
If itās got an open api, itāll have details in there about how to interface with it. I have a similar interest in direct connection to a sinope hub, but the api is all in hex strings sent and retrieved with crc. Makes my head spin. Good luck!
Thatās not a pure local solution. Requires cloud API. Iām using Insteonlocal plugin to Homebridge with @tonesto7 ās modification of @pdlovelace ās Homebridge driver. With Hubitat virtual switches and Insteon devices both available in HomeKit, I use HomeKit automation to keep the two in sync. So when a virtual switch in Hubitat the is exposed to HomeKit turns on, the corresponding Insteon device exposed to HomeKit also turns on, and vise versa. Itās a lot of pieces, but it works well and is all local. There are limitations though. No dimming and itās basically ON/OFF only. Fits my needs for now.
My preference would be full Insteon integration directly in Hubitat. Hopefully weāll get that at some point.
Hasnāt been ported to Hubitat. Donāt know if it can be. You can use OtherHub with HE and ST to connect to the Insteon DTH switches in ST.
But if youāre iOS already, the longer a Homebridge route is a better solution for Insteon. I didnāt have an Apple TV 4 either, but I bought one off eBay for $100. I really just wanted it for automations, but itās much better than my old Apple TV 3, so Iām really glad I have it now. You can also use an iPad for automation if itās new enough. Donāt remember where the cutoff is. Check Appleās HomeKit page.
I don't see anything in there that would keep you from running it on hubitat and just pointing it to the local ip/port of the insteon hub. have you tried that? I see in the instructions something about port forwarding your insteon hub to the internet, I assume that is because smartthings runs everything in the cloud.
Not sure. I tried it, changing all that I know how to change from instructions (I'm not a dev), but it did not work. Probably I missed something important. From this thread he says it can run local (which I couldn't get working), but won't show status updates without access to Insteon's cloud instance.
Here he confirms you need to have an API key, which Insteon isn't issuing anymore, to even legitimate developers. I did it with other API keys, but I had issues on those other products. Not sure it was related, but I stopped using it because I moved onto my completely local solution via Hubitat, Homebridge and HomeKit automations.
If someone could make this work, I would try again for sure, but I'm much happier with a completely local solution, so that would be ideal. I did reach out to kuestess (who is also the author of the Insteonlocal Homebridge plugin), but he said he had no plans to move to Hubitat. However, he did offer to help with a port. I'm not the right guy for that though, and I had already moved on to my current setup, so did not pursue it further.
Nobody should buy the Insteon HomeKit compatible hub. The only person that I know who owns one, hates it and doesnāt use it. Adding Homebridge to your network with the Insteonlocal plugin for Homebridge will expose Insteon dimmers, switches, outlets and plug-in modules connected to the 2245-222 (Non-HomeKit compatible) hub, allowing local control of those Insteon devices. So even if Insteonās cloud instance is offline again, those Insteon devices will still be controllable, and their status will update in HomeKit. Tie that together with HomeKit automation, and you can keep the status of virtual switches in Hubitat in sync with the Insteon devices. So even if your ISPās connection to the internet drops off-line, you donāt lose control or status of Insteon devices in either Hubitat or HomeKit.
I just looked closer at the readme in his repo as I hadnāt been there in a while. Looks like heās also supporting leak sensors and ioLinc now too, which is great news. I need to update my plugin and play with the new features next week.
āImplements local control of Insteon devices including switches, dimmers, scenes, iolincs (configured as a garage door), motion sensors, and leak sensors via Homebridgeā
[Edit] Live dimming works from HomeKit, but (in the version I have anyway), itās slow to update because it has to periodically poll the Insteon hub.
I can try to pull together a few links quickly, but itās my wifeās birthday, so I donāt have time today to pull together step by step. But I am willing to do that. I may have done it already. Iāll have to look around. Iām guilty of repeating myself sometimes and not remembering.
