HOW TO: Trigger an Insteon Scene using Alexa or Google Assistant

This HOW TO is specifically written to address setting up Home Assistant to trigger an Insteon scene using a standard Home Assistant scene, with a goal of having that be triggered via Alexa or Google Assistant. This is specific to the Insteon integration and was written for version 2022.5. Anything enclosed in < > is for the user to fill in specific to your setup.

High Level Steps:

1. Create your Insteon scene
2. Create a Home Assistant script to trigger the Insteon scene
3. Create a Home Assistant scene that triggers the script

Once you have a Home Assistant scene you can then trigger that scene from Alexa, Google Assistant or any other way that a native Home Assistant entity can be accessed.

Detailed steps:

1. Create your Insteon scene:

This step will be replaced in the near future with a menu option in the Insteon panel in the near future. But for now, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Developer Tools → Services tab
2. Select the insteon.add_all_link from the menu with the following data:

  group: <insteon scene number>
  mode: "controller"

and press the “Call Service” button.

3. Set the device you wish to add to the scene to the proper state, such as dimmed to 25% brightness for a TV watching scene then press the “Set” button of the device.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each device you wish to add to the scene.

2. Create a Home Assistant script that triggers the Insteon scene

A Home Assistant script is a configurable set of actions that run when triggered. To create a script that triggers an Insteon scene:

1. Navigate to Settings → Automations & Scenes → Scripts tab.
2. Create a new script with the following:

Name: <scene name>
Entity ID: <script entity id>
Mode: single
Sequence:
  Action type: Call service
    Service: insteon.scene_on
       Group: <insteon scene number>

You now have an entity called `script..

3. Create a Home Assistant scene that

An Insteon scene is built into an Insteon device via the All-Link Database. A Home Assistant scene is a script that runs inside Home Assistant to perform one or more actions. A HA scene can call the Insteon scene, which will result in all of the devices in the Insteon scene changing at the same time rather than the popcorn effect that is caused when HA scenes trigger each device individually. Here are the steps:

1. Navigate to Settings → Automations & Scenes → Scenes tap
2. Create a new scene with the following data:

Name: <Home Assistant scene name>
Entities:
   script.<script entity id>

Now you have a Home Assistant scene that will trigger an Insteon scene.

One important thing to keep in mind. Scenes (both HA and Insteon) are just triggers. They tell devices to move to a different state. They don’t track that state to see if the scene is on or off. So if you have three devices in a scene and someone changes the state of one of the lights HA and Insteon do not know that the scene is no longer set.

1 post - 1 participant

Read full topic