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.