insteon-mqtt VS esphome

There aren't really any Insteon logs per se. I use Insteon-MQTT which has a log of course (excerpt below), but it's not really useful. Insteon-MQTT communicates with an Insteon Power Line Modem (PLM), which really is just a bridge between USB and the Insteon network (both RF and powerline, despite being called only a "PLM"). The PLM presents itself as a tty to the host PC, and reports all of the traffic on the Insteon network as well as accepts commands to be sent to the network. Light switches (and some other devices) have four events as a result of physical activation: ON, FAST ON, OFF, FAST OFF, where that "fast" variety is a double tap (Insteon has no support for more than two taps, although I suppose one could fake this in software).

I have ISY+HA at home and Insteon-MQTT at work. Frankly, I like the latter more. It is faster and simpler. Once I get my last IOLinc replaced at home with an esphome on esp32, I'm most likely going to go Insteon-MQTT at home.

There's also a pretty excellent Python library which I leaned on for understanding the protocol here: https://github.com/TD22057/insteon-mqtt

Insteon-MQTT is a addon for Home Assistant. Link below...https://github.com/TD22057/insteon-mqtt

This is just not true, for anybody with a PLM or ISY, insteon-mqtt works GREAT. I use it and I can do everything I used to do with Indigo.

I was in the same boat i COULD NOT STAND how bad insteon hub pro worked with Homekit and homebridge and i tried the hub v2. (i did not like the delay when trying to turn on a light or multiple lights at once) i am a heavy apple homekit guy and i have a whole insteon home and i did not want to have to change out all my light switches so after having a hub pro and hub V2 i decided to get the USB PLM (model number 2413u for about $99 CAD) I originally set up Home Assistant just for insteon but (later transferred everything from homebridge to home assistant but that’s not relevant lol ) after setting up my Insteon devices with the PLM i went to get the tool that helped solve my entire problem: Insteon MQTT this add on saved me and my entire insteon home. It may look complicated but i was a complete newbie when i did it and it took some trial and error but i got it working perfectly in the end. ( When turning on a light in homekit the insteon light turns on INSTANTLY) (u may need a raspberrypi to do this but it was the best investment ever). If u need any help give shout me a DM and i’ll help ya out :)

This is the one I use - https://github.com/TD22057/insteon-mqtt. Glad I looked at it. It seems that I should probably update my system.

For the ESP32, an hero is in the process of adding LVGL to ESPHome. You can try it out now: https://github.com/esphome/esphome/pull/6363

Here's the (very good!) preview documentation: https://deploy-preview-3678--esphome.netlify.app/components/...

This is such a game-changer for me that I'll be using the ESP32 over the ESP8266 for any projects involving displays from now on.

Solid state relay is probably a bad idea with all the extra heat-sinking, extra cost, and chance of getting counterfeits.

I do this with ESPHome & a J115F21C12VDCS.9 relay (note only the NO side is rated for 40A resistive): https://i.imgur.com/MqqOkoY.png

Choose any of the temperature sensors here for air temperature sensing: https://esphome.io/

Configuration is so easy. For the sensor, just copy the config from here, for example: https://esphome.io/components/sensor/bme280. Add a gpio output (https://esphome.io/components/output/gpio) and a bang-bang climate controller (https://esphome.io/components/climate/bang_bang.html)

You might want to take a look at https://esphome.io/ for an easy integration of an ESP32/8266 into home Assistant.

You can do this with a $30 Sonoff S31 running ESPHome [0]. Since the Sonoff wall switch can run a ping sensor against your server you could create a watchdog automation right on the S31 to shut off the mains power to the S31 switch and turn back on after X seconds.

There are other ways you could have the S31 do operational checks but ultimately ESPHome is probably an interesting consideration and supported by tons of off the shelf hardware.

[0] https://esphome.io/

They're pretty great and compatible with most things. ESPHome [1] is a great resource for getting ESP32's working nicely with HA and you can find lots of projects using it to learn from.

You'll likely need to do soldering if you want to connect sensors, batteries and the like.

Personally I really like what SEEED Studio [2] does with their ESP32 boards and they have nice docs.

1. https://esphome.io/

Maybe you could set up ESPHome on the ESP32. It might make connecting those components easier, plus a decent web server built in. Then your app can be set up to access data provided by the ESPHome web server.

# # Setting pins for sda and scl will be required until https://github.com/esphome/esphome/pull/2970 is released

Probably an unpopular opinion, but for the simple stuff you may just want to use something like EspHome where you just need to create a yaml file. Once you’re comfortable with that maybe get into something a bit more advanced, but esphome make it a breeze. It integrates with home assistant if you already have that in place as well.

ESPHome