I’m working on using Apple’s Shortcuts app with Roomie Remote to control my home automation, which is mainly Insteon devices with a Universal Devices ISY994 controller. I’ve found a solution for what I’m trying to do, and thought I’d document what does and doesn’t work, and point out that some of the implementation seems incomplete. I’m using Roomie 7.12, the latest version of Shortcuts, and the ISY994 firmware is v.5.0.13c.
What works:
I was able to create Roomie activities that turn on a number of individually listed devices (light switches) and pass them dimness parameters.
The Shortcuts implementation for Roomie can start an activity.
The Shortcuts implementation for Roomie can set the volume level of a Sonos speaker directly, without any need to do any more than add the Sonos device in Roomie.
What doesn’t work:
Roomie activities cannot turn on/off UD scenes.
Roomie activities cannot run UD programs.
The Shortcuts implementation for Roomie appears to be designed to access UD devices directly, but it doesn’t work. The same goes for UD scenes and programs.
So my solution is create separate Roomie activities to turn on and off the lights in a room, listing each light in the activity separately, rather than the scene that they belong to. Then I create separate Shortcuts to run the activities, For example “Start Kitchen” and “Stop Kitchen”. I can control my kitchen lights by speaking those commands into my watch.
An example of an implementation that is incomplete, is that the Shortcuts implementation allows you to send a device command to the ISY994. You set the device field to the “ISY994”, the command field to “.LIGHT ON”, there is a Parameter field, presumably to set the dimness level, but there is no field to define the underlying Insteon device to control a specific light switch. I tried passing the switch name as a parameter, but that doesn’t work.