A rant about the HA world generally (No criticism of HE)

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I've had a bad few weeks with my Hubitat, mostly with Hue bulb problems, but also sluggish Zwave sensors and it got me thinking about how rubbish the choices we have for HA kit generally are.

If someone was starting out in HA now what would I recommend? Zwave, Zigbee, Hue etc.

My temptation at the moment would be just to say simply Don't!!!!

Zwave

It seems like it all should just work, but general unreliability of it made me ditch my Vera completely as barely a day went by without something dropping of the network. The free air, direct line of sight, connection distance seemed to be about 2 metres on Vera.

On Hubitat it's a lot, lot better but I've still had plenty of driver issues especially on some TKB dimmer modules that drove me and Hubitat support mad for a good few weeks.

Motion sensors in Zwave always seem to be sluggish so the lights come on just in time to for you to see the blood coming from the wound on your arm you've just bashed on the cupboard corner.

Different frequency for different parts of the world, so the plentiful, cheap, US gear is no good to us Brits who have to make do with very limited expensive range of kit.

Zigbee (direct hub connection)

Seems to offer better value gear than Zwave, and at least is only a single worldwide frequency, but that frequency is brilliantly shared with a common Wifi one so you need to understand and delve into which channels interfere.

The one bright spot for us Brits is that, thanks to Ikea, there is actually a reliable UK socket switch that repeats fairly well too.

To balance out that good news though, most Bulbs connected direct to Zigbee don't repeat correctly. Like a politician, they say they will but let you down badly and screw everything up for everyone.

Zigbee (Hue hub interface) (This is a different flavour of Zigbee to direct Zigbee (Zebra v Zebedee or something) so you will have 2 networks running at the same time that must be on different channels so they don't interfere with each other or your or your neighbours' WiFi)

You need to install the bulbs etc on the Hue system, give them a room name you are never going to use, and then wait a day for their firmware to update. Then set up the interface to Hubitat before you can actually use anything. If you add another bulb, rinse and repeat.

Unlike the bulbs, if you add a sensor or a dimmer to the Hue direct, it can't be seen by Hubitat, so can only add them direct to Hubitat. Obviously.

Randomly shows bulbs as "unreachable" even though they are working fine just to mess with your head.

The 2 Zigbee networks don't help each other out in passing on messages. A bit like a rowing couple who won't talk directly to each other and pass messages on via the kids.

Conclusion

This is the world I now find myself in. Channel numbers. Drivers code. Zebra v Zebedee. What the hell bulbs should I go for that isn't going to screw a network or be subject to a third party interface?

Why doesn't stuff just work?!!!!!

Rant over. That feels better :grinning:

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Sort of reminds me the early days of personal computers. Conflicting hardware, dip switches and a whole lot of tinkering to getting sound cards and graphics adapters to play nice using their own IRQs and memory locations. Unfortunately for HA, it doesn't have the same interest as personal computers did so its evolution is going to be slower. I personally enjoy HA because its like the old days of PCs when the hobbyist dominate the field and openly exchange thoughts, ideas, code without the greed of trying to make money off it. Someday it will though.

I always wondered why companies like Samsung (SmartThings) care about a little niche field like HA. Selling hubs for cheap and dedicating lots of resources to keep everything going. In the scope of their world there is little money to be gained so why bother? Other companies that tried to make a go of it are pulling out. It seems to me that Samsung gains a great deal of ideas when it allows the hobbyists to develop (in an open playground) the cool ideas of how to use it. In order words, Samsung uses the hobbyist as their R&D (Research and Development). I for one enjoy this time. Someday it will be more plug-n-play. Someday people will buy automation packages such as, a lighting package, an HVAC package, maybe a free grocery/product order package, a security package, etc. I can also understand why it stared as a cloud based system. Yes, its cheaper but more importantly for Samsung, customer patterns. What they do in their homes, the things they watch on TV, the products they buy and consume. Kind of Orwellian but it seems to be the goal of nearly every single business out there selling stuff. Credit cards, reward cards all do the same thing without as much refinement.

I think HE has taken a different tack and I hope it remains that way. I for one don't like having my personal data harvested and if more people understood the big picture, they wouldn't either.

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Some of these things concern me also. I remember the days of dip switches and tinkering.

When I first started into HA a few years ago after a lot of research I went with ISmartAlarm. Had that for awhile till realized it wasn't going anywhere. By that time IRIS was on the market so I switched. Had that for a year or so and it appeared it wasn't going anywhere either. So I switched to ST.

Since I liked to do a lot of tinkering and maybe doing things out of the ordinary, ST worked out fairly well. I had several of my own smart apps as there was no standard way of doing what I wanted other wise. When ST started talking about changing the smartapp process or programming I started getting concerned. I have been a programmer for 40 plus years, but it has been specialized stuff. I'm not really up on the new languages or methods. Groovy was easy for me to understand. But the new method was leaving me scratching my head. And at my age there isn't much up there to scratch anymore.

Then HE dropped the price on their hub so I decided to take the plunge. So far I have been pleased. I was able to do almost everything in RM that I had special apps for in ST. I still have ST up and running with a couple items that aren't quite up to snuff in HE. And that's ok.

My biggest concern with HE, which has been addressed before, is are they gonna be around for the long term. But again at my age I guess the long term isn't that long..:slight_smile:

So all in all I like HE better than anything I have had before. It has been a learning curve with a lot of tinkering, but enjoyable. But I believe it would be very difficult for a non-techie. As is most of the other systems out there.

Just my 2 bits worth.

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@Geoff_T: I think the current HA offerings are amazingly better than what I used to deal with on X10 gear, but you are correct that there is a lot of work to go.

Don't forget, there are also Wifi HA devices and Bluetooth as well, plus a bunch of proprietary implementations. I find a lit of it fascinating. I just wish I had more time (and other resources) to devote to it. So many interesting possibilities.

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It will keep getting worse before it gets better.

There are too many competing standards, and proprietary connections - and those are INcreasing not DEcreasing.

WiFi devices opened up the wild west of proprietary, and cloud based connections. Integrating via Alexa or Google Home helps bring them together - and is where 99% of Home Automation integration efforts are happening right now. This makes it better and much less confusing for the casual consumer.

For more advanced users that want local control, or less cloud, though.... Things will continue to get worse - and more complicated - as we will have to do more and more local LAN based integrations the hard way.

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Though your rant is quite valid you are taking this completely out of context. There are two flavors of home automation: DIY (Hubitat, ST, Wink, RPi, etc) and the professional systems (HomeSeer, etc).

DIY/Personal is a you get what you paid for. Since many of us can't afford $300+ per outlet or $100 LED bulbs we opt into the "holy cow I got a deal on this XYZ PoS device." The Zigbee/Zwave/WiFi DIY market is not made to be reliable, stable or without issues. The device manufacturers have hardly any margin to develop and build a professional device.

I have a coworker who pokes fun at my little Hubitat automated home. He points out how I fiddle with it almost daily because the devices connected to it are not 100% reliable. None of them...zero! But he admits that his $10k home automation (though very reliable) lacks the cool factor that I am able to achieve at a price point that is almost "free." I say almost free because all the programming, fiddling and such does cost time which does costs money if the project changes from a hobby to really low WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). He on the other hand, to have a cool automation such as "MovieTime" or integration into a new voice system, costs him thousands of dollars in consulting, software acquisitions and time.

So I agree that the DIY home automation isn't as great as one would hope..but come on you are paying <$50 per device to do something you never could do prior. Also, if you really want to take ownership of reliability you could venture down the path of making your own devices. @ogiewon specifically created Hubduino to enable tinker-gadget-hobbyists to do just that. And now that Hubitat can communicate via MQTT you have a whole new world of
DIY ESP-board solutions, Tasmota-MQTT, SON/Off-MQTT, Shelly and other cool options we never could do before (which can be more reliable than Zwave/Zigbee). Venture out...try something new...but always remember not to start a new automation until you have the last one rock solid. :wink:

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I wish!!
The number of half baked projects I have are INcreasing not DEcreasing (as a wise man put it :wink:).

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I actually have quite fond memories of my old Homevision Pro X10 system. Built-in relays that I used for heating control and native IR input and output, it was a very reliable bit of kit, however limited by today's standards.

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See, a lot of it is YMMV. Mine were often unreliable (not turning on or off when desired) and sometimes stuff would just come on. Not always... But enough it always bothered me. MOST of my Z-Wave and ZigBee stuff has been fine (outside of initial setup and batteries) and all wired devices have been basically good (if supported by whichever controller I am using, so that is one of my huge caveats) except for one particular variety that annoys me to no end. So bad even, they are on my list to replace.

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X10 was great when I was the only one in the block with it as my HA system. But once neighbors caught on and are on the same electrical transformer, it was a nightmare. I was lucky enough to have the ability to sniff out what House codes and unit numbers were being used on our grid. I had to change all my modules to codes away from (the common folk).

And let us not forget electrical interference from appliances.

But I digress...

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Yes but one of the most reliable bits of kit I have is the Ikea Tradfri outlet which is less than 10GBP, so being inexpensive doesn't have to mean unreliable. It doesn't matter how much an item is it should be fit for purpose and perform to the relevant protocol standards.

I have no idea what any of that means and no real desire to learn. That is the problem, I want to spend my tinkering time working out what rules and automations I want and how exactly I want them to run, not figuring out why a device has stopped communicating or getting dragged deeper into that level of complexity.

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That is the point. You can create a reliable device that fits exactly your needs. Unlike a device that "could" do some or most of what you need except the parts that create a significant issue. Great example is the Bosch Sensors, water sensors and most battery enabled devices. Just saying you can create what you want for a fraction of the cost.

Example 1: I used @ogiewon's Hubduino code to develop a remote car starter with auduino connected to HE. Cost me a total $6 for the auduino and a relay. Nothing on the market that can do this for me.

Example 2: My MQTT Salt Tank monitor cost me $5 to make and implement. It is rock solid (pun intended)! Monitors exactly what I need and reports over MQTT every 12 hours. Works awesome! There isn't a device on the market that can do what I created.

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I too used, and still have, the Homevision Pro. A very capable controller. My x10 system was 99.x % reliable. I often wonder why I abandoned it. It was integrated to my Elk M1G and did everything I needed. I think it's just the fun of a new system and components that sucks us in. I started on cpm computers before there was a Microsoft. I hated Windows.....DOS was so much faster and flexible......but loading 40 floppies to install the latest word processor and then patching it with debug to get your iot matrix printer to underline was a pain too.

Lastly I really, really hope the Hubitat team and hub are here for a long time. I too would gladly pay a fee for whatever they come up with. HE is probably the least expensive HA controller I've owned, but the most powerful.

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