Review on 🏠 UD ISY994i ZW+/IR PRO: Z-Wave Plus Certified Home Automation Controller - Alexa/Google Home Compatible by Mat Thompson

The ISY994i is a great Insteon controller. The programming style provided by the Java-based management console is essentially an event-driven algorithmic state machine (ASM), which is quite suitable for its intended purposes. This style of controller programming is familiar to anyone who has programmed a PLC (using ladder logic) or performed microcode level work on a CPU or other ASM-based controller. If that makes sense to you then you will have no problem customizing the ISY994i to suit your needs. If not, the out-of-the-box documentation won't help you as there isn't any. You'll need to read the Universal Devices wiki, but it shouldn't be hard. My main problem with the ISY994i is that management and programming has to be done through a Java based console. If you're on a Mac that doesn't come with Java installed by default anymore, you'll have to make an effort to install the JRE and then fiddle with the sandbox settings to get the console to work properly. The default sandbox settings do not allow the admin console to store backups, access module storage, etc. Using Java means you cannot program the ISY994i using an iPad or any other non-Java client, which is a Problem poses because it's actually useful to program by moving to make sure everything works as it should. The console also insists on maximizing itself by taking up the entire screen. There is also no support for multiple users and support for multiple access levels. This is not good at all for obvious reasons. Despite these problems, I find that the ISY994i does its job well and without problems. I would buy it again.