Adding ISY to ELK

[VE9PTR]

Hello All,
I'm a first time home automation user and I just received my new M1G last week, along with an ISY controller. I'm an electronics tech by trade and looking to setup a complete home security/automation system as time and the bank account allow.

I'm got the M1 all set up on my test bench along with the ISY and a test appliance switch. I have them both working independently on my M1 PRO iphone app (very cool!) but I'm wondering how/if I can pull the insteon lighting controlls into the ELK 'lights' portion of the M1 and thus the app? Also, I'm assuming this would allow me to call on them in the 'rules' (I haven't even touched these yet!)? I've tried a few different things in ElkRP lighting section without any success.

Thanks in advance, I'll have many more question...but I'm hooked!!!

Peter

 

[electron]

hi Peter,

Welcome to CocoonTech! Please update your profile so it shows what kind of hardware you have, it will make it easier to help you in the future

As for your question, I'm not sure I understand 100%. Are you using eKeypad Pro? If you want the M1 to control your insteon lighting, then you will need to get an insteon interface connected to an M1XSP serial port. As far as I know, the ISY doesn't support the M1 that well yet, but it's something they are working on.

 

[Digger]

Actually you dont need to have a PIM connected to your M1 to control lights through the ISY. The ELK and ISY constantly communicate if you have the M1XEP (which you do since you are using Ekeypad Pro) and you put your M1 information in the ISY configuration (needs IP address and port).

In the configuration tab of the ISY there is an ELK-Export button that will export an XML file that you need to save to your desktop or some folder you designate. That file will have ALL (and it is really all) of the devices and scenes. Technically it is to much information and UDI I think is working on an ELK module to let you edit that.

Ok once you import the XML file to the ELK (right click the lighting icon in the drop down menu under automation) you have to select which device/scenes etc you want to "show" in Ekeypad Pro. Once you do that and save it you can control those devices via ekeypad Pro (you need to refresh your configuration in Ekeypad) and it will have an accurate status.

You will also be able to control your lights in rules.

You will probably find ALL of the imported devices and scenes confusing at first. Hopefully the ISY/ELK module will be out soon.

The ISY is perfect for bringing it all together. Hopefully the UPB version will be out in the first quarter of 2011 for those people that use UPB.

 

[wuench]

Yep it works great. They have lighting control down between the ISY and M1, the M1 can control the ISY lighting no problem. What UD is working on is the ability to control the ELKM1 through rules on the ISY. So you will be able to host all your lighting rules on the ISY and no longer need them on the M1. The ISY has a little more power rule-wise and doesn't have the same rule space limits the M1 has. I guess at that point theoretically you wouldn't even need to do the Elk import anymore, unless you still wanted to control it from Ekeypad, etc.

 

[apostolakisl]

I keep hoping that UD will get the module for Elk finished since I would much rather use ISY to write programs than Elk. The only thing Elk has that I wish ISY had is variables.

Keep in mind that when you export your ISY lighting profile to Elk it will overright anything already in Elk. You are also limited to 255 devices/scenes in Elk. If you add new devices to Elk you need to do export/import if you want to see them on Elk. My experience with this is that it keeps the addresses the same even if you replace an Insteon switch and add new stuff to the end, which is nice.

Pearls of wisdom.
1) Elk is limited in how many letters long a name can be. If it is longer, it gets truncated. I forget how many letters you get, but make sure you figure that out and keep your names short enough to not go over, or at least make sure the overage won't be missed when it gets truncated.
2) Since Elk gets all of the scenes as well, you may have trouble remembering if what you are seeing on the list in Elk is a scene or a device. Especially if you have a scene whose name is the same or almost the same as a device. I put the letter "S" at the end of the names of all my scenes and keep the names short enough to fit in Elk so I know what is what in Elk.
3) In Elk it will look like all of the devices are X10. This is not the case. Elk will output a command that may have a x10 type name, but ISY knows that it is Elk referring to a specific device and will then create the Insteon command and put that out to the PLM.

 

[VE9PTR]

Thanks for all the info and help, but I'm still struggling to make the M1 control the ISY. I've done the import and the light shows on the elk pro app but switching it on/off does nothing.

Ip and port seem to be ok but where should the security code come from? I've tried some of the defaults.

Any thoughts?

Peter