Could A Hub Like Polisys or Hubitat Completely Replace Homeseer?

[upstatemike]

As far as I know they never intended to port ISY to Polisys any time soon. That is a long term goal. For now Polisys is just supposed to be a plug and play platform for Polyglot so folks like me don't have to mess with building something from  scratch. I expect to run my ISY for at least another year or two before the two platforms merge.

 

[upstatemike]

Quick update on this topic as I have now installed both the Polisy and Hubitat.
 
Polisy: has lived up to expectations and beyond. So far I have installed Node Servers for Lifx, Hue, Weatherflow. and Sonos. I now have all of these devices in my ISY and can incoporate the devices into my existing Insteon and Elk events. This combined with Alexa routines for voice announcements makes a pretty powerful platform though it still lacks any option speaking variable values like Hoeseer can. Brultech energy and Caller ID are also lacking. Overall not a complete replacement for Homeseer but a very respectable platform with more to explore as I add new Node Servers in the futute. Probbly the biggest plus is that very little time was invested to get everything running. The installation of Node Servers is simple point and click and is just as easy as adding a Homeseer plugin.
 
Hubitat on the other hand has me stuck. It intalled OK so no issue there but the real question is what can I actually do with it? I can use it as another interface to Hue and Lifx but not really sure what that does for me as opposed to Polisy which provided instant value by making new devices available in my exting ISY to let me combone El and Insteon with other devices. I probably need to install Lifx and Hue plugins to see what that does for me but right now I'm having trouble identifying a useful role for this hub within my overall HA ecosystem. 
 
Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.

 

[Madcodger]

I haven't been on Cocoontech for a while, but signed in today just to see how things are going, and this post caught my eye. I admit I haven't read the entire thread, but I have now shut down my HomeSeer system completely and am using two ISYs on our property to control two separate buildings (Zwave, so can't do it with one). The only major downsides are that the ISY user interfaces aren't great on mobile (third party) and some HomeSeer brand temp sensors weirdly show up only as Celsius on the ISY (FS-100) and no one can figure out why. The ISY's Zwave radio isn't as good as the HomeSeer ZeeS2 radio, either, but that can be easily overcome with a couple of repeaters. Also, I have a discussion thread started on the UDI forum trying to see if the third party UIs can be improved and am hopeful that will one day occur. There are some promising efforts there.

I dropped HomeSeer largely because of reliability issues. If I had anything more than just the Zwave plugin running, it would require a reboot every few days to few weeks. Trying to get support at HomeSeer turned into discussions with basically other amateurs on their board, or perhaps fellow amateurs apparently being paid by HomeSeer to help with "support" questions. Generally useless.. And, I paid for an upgrade to HS4 (actually for a total of three licenses, and to say that's in "beta" is a joke). When I checked a week or two ago, you couldn't try it at all on the Zee.

Basically, it looks like I'm done with HomeSeer. I'm sad about that as it was the software that got me into HA. But our "relationship" has been going south for a while now, to the point they just keep going in directions that don't interest me. I really don't like the UI for the ISY, but at least it WORKS. RELIABLY. At the end of the day, that's the thing I think most of us really need.

 

[upstatemike]

So far my Polisy plus ISY are are great for what they do but there are too many holes that need to be filled for me to shut off Homeseer. There is no way to do announcements that contain variable values for example... I have tons of announcements during the day that inlude weather station info or thermostat settings or run counts for the pumps and furnaces. Static announcements via Alexa just can't substitute for those things. CID announcements are another critical function that not only prevents me from going all ISY but also blocks me from upgrading from HS3 to HS4. I would also miss the Brultech energy integration that triggers events based on current draw on certain circuits as well as announces power being used on those circuits.
 
I am startijng to think of Hubitat as a potentioal replacement for Homeseer Z-Nets. You can link multiple Hubitat hubs together and create network attached Z-Wave networks without needing a repeated path all the way back to a single hub. If I standardize on Hubitat as my primary Z-Wave and Zigbee gateway I should be able to use it for both Homeseer and Poliglot.
 
I don't see any way to eliminate anything from my system at this point but I do need to figure the best way to connect it all:
 
Homeseer talks to: Landline CID, Direct audio out with ability to speak variable values, ISY/Insteon, Elk, Z-Wave (via Z-Net), Hubitat, Zigbee (multiple gatway options), Hue, Lifx, Weatherflow, Alexa, Sonos, LMS/Squeezebox, Nest
 
ISY/Polisy talks to: Insteon, Elk, Hubitat (Z-Wave and Zigbee), Hue, Lifx, Weatherflow, Alexa, Sonos. Not sure if I can add Nest without breaking my legacy connectivity - new Nest interface will not work for me.
 
Hubitat talks to: Homeseer, Polisy, Elk, Alexa, Z-Wave, Zigbee, Hue, Lifx, Sonos, Not sure if I can add Nest without breaking my legacy connectivity - new Nest interface will not work for me.
 
Elk talks to: Direct audio out with ability to speak variable values, Homeseer, ISY. Alexa, Hubitat
 
Alexa talks to: Hue, Lifx, Weatherflow, Sonos, Nest, Homeseer, ISY, Hubitat

 

[captncode]

Hubitat now has a community built driver that allows the hub to talk directly to the Elk M1 via Ethernet.  Just search Hubitat Elk M1 and look on their forum.

 

[upstatemike]

Hubitat now has a community built driver that allows the hub to talk directly to the Elk M1 via Ethernet.  Just search Hubitat Elk M1 and look on their forum.

 
I'll take a look in October. I can't do much HA stuff May through September because of outdoor project priorities.

 

[upstatemike]

So I am about to give up on the ISY/Polisy combination. The main thing I wanted to accomplish with this setup was to have Insteon keypads control scenes to set Hue and Lifx bulbs on/off and colors. The hue Node Server is flaky. It correctly shows 43 devices discovered on the Hue Bridge in the Node Server on Polisy but only 25 of them are reflected in the ISY as devices I can work with. Also I wanted to move my Hue Bridge to a different IP address but Polisy wants to look for it on the original address it was installed at. There is no documentation I can find to edit the config file to correct this and no response from anyone on the UDI forum in the last month on how to proceed. Even completely deleting the Node server and re-installing from scratch will not clear the junk entry from the config file to let me move the Hue Bridge to a new IP address.
 
Working with Lifx has also been kind of flaky and sometimes the Lifx bulbs just don't respond to the actions on the Insteon keypad. Overall what looked like a promising platform is turning out to be a total dud. I guess I will scrap Polisy and move on to try Hubitat to see if that is any better.

 

[LarrylLix]

So I am about to give up on the ISY/Polisy combination. The main thing I wanted to accomplish with this setup was to have Insteon keypads control scenes to set Hue and Lifx bubls on/off and colors. The hue Node Server is flaky. It correctly shows 43 devices discovered on the Hue Bridge in the Node Server on Polisy but only 25 of them are reflected in the ISY as devices I can work with. Also I wanted to moe my Hue Bridge to a different IP address but Polisy wants to look for it on the original address it was installed at. There is no documentation I can find to edit the config file to correct this and no response from anyone on the UDI for the last month on how to proceed. Even completely deleting the Node server and re-installing from scratch will not clear the junk entry from the config fole to let me move the Hue Bridge to a new IP address.
 
Working with Lifx has also been kind of flaky and sometimes the Lifx bulbs just don't respond to the actions on the Insteon keypad. Overall what looked like a promising platform is turning out to be a total dud. I guess I will scrap Polisy and move on to try Hubitat to see if that is any better.

Contact UDI. They will gladly refund your money. Some just can't make things work and it isn't for everybody, especially  if you have a better solution.
 
Let us know how green the grass is over there.