Moving to new home

Posted on
Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:13 pm
Mouserbry offline
Posts: 4
Joined: Jun 15, 2020

Moving to new home

I’m purchasing a new home that will be ready for move in later this year. Right now I’m trying to decide on what’s the best course of action as I think about transferring a decent size Insteon setup to a new place. I’m hoping some of you in here might have some best practices.


Try to keep it simple
My initial thought was to remove all of my switches and plugs, label them and try to reuse as much as possible. I’ve got a decent amount of action groups and triggers that I hate to lose or go through and recreate. Walking through the new home model, I believe I can keep many of the existing setups and three way switches exactly the same in the new house.

Wipe and start over
I can’t remember the last time I wiped my entire install. My current home has survived a couple new computers and several restores. It’s very seldom that I run into an issue but maybe I should start over to remove old scripts and other problems that could pop up later down the road.

Insteon or Caseta
The majority of my lighting and fan control is all Insteon with about ten hue bulbs thrown into random table and floor lamps. I’ve had a few switches go bad and replaced a couple Powerlinc modules but beyond that, my setup has been reliable. I recently picked up a Brilliant-Tech switch to replace a defective insteon keypad and on/off control for the fan. It’s a perfect fit to control my fan, lights, a couple Hue bulbs and the Sonos speakers in that space. The only downside is there’s no Insteon control. I’ve been able to work around that through creative use of virtual devices, HomeKit Bridge and and HomeKit groups but it’s not ideal. HomeKit Bridge is another reason I’m thinking of switching.

Other than a networking issue and few HomePod bugs, HKB has been amazing and voice control, is very important to me and the family. Going Caseta would give me native HomeKit support while also allowing me to keep Indigo control. I’d hate to switch to Caseta and lose the reliability (and better appearance) I have with Insteon but even worse would be losing voice control if HKB breaks or Apple does something on their end.

My apologies for the long-winded post. Any insight, experience and thoughts you all may have would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on
Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:11 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Moving to new home

When I moved in 2016 I attempted to label switches and then put them in the same relative place. For direct Insteon links, like KeypadLinc to FanLinc, it worked fine. For almost everything else it didn't, and it brought with it a lot of cruft. I stuck with that DB and just hacked it, but honestly if I did it again I think I'd just start over (leaving the direct links as indicated above). Even now there is probably a bunch of stuff I don't use any more but just haven't deleted yet.

That is, of course, just me, so YMMV.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Jun 17, 2020 6:13 pm
Mouserbry offline
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Joined: Jun 15, 2020

Re: Moving to new home

Appreciate the feedback. It's probably best to start over fresh with the new home. Is there any type of global reset for the Insteon switches or PowerLinc I should be aware of and run prior to pulling things down?

Posted on
Thu Jun 18, 2020 9:31 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Moving to new home

Just factory reset them, either right before you remove them at the old house or right after you install them in the new house. Including the PowerLinc.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Nov 03, 2020 1:19 am
koensayr offline
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Joined: Jul 10, 2013

Re: Moving to new home

@Mouserbry

I would really love to hear how you integrated your Brilliant Keypads into Indigo through Home Kit. I've been struggling on and off with using a Smartthings bridge with MQTT but alas the code I've found is old and crufty. If you have a short overview of how you used HKB with Brilliant.Tech Keypads, I'd be really grateful.

Posted on
Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:06 am
peszko offline
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Joined: Mar 07, 2012

Re: Moving to new home

I would start fresh. There is always cruft hiding in the setup, and insteon links that are not visible. I had insteon for a long time, but I'm switching to z-wave. I could never get insteon to be stable enough for me. I know little about Caseta, just that their app requires a cloud login, which is a no go for me. If it was me, I'd start fresh, take my insteon in wall switches (factory reset), and replace everything else with z-wave.

Posted on
Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:02 am
FlyingDiver offline
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Location: Southwest Florida, USA

Re: Moving to new home

peszko wrote:
I know little about Caseta, just that their app requires a cloud login, which is a no go for me.


You can control Caseta from Indigo using the Lutron plugin. It talks directly to the Smart Hub Pro, no cloud involved. You might need the cloud login for initial setup, but not for operational use.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

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