I bought a C-8 after seeing broadly positive on-line reviews and having a poke around the forum. It seemed that it would be perfect for replacing HomeSeer (which was fine until I made the mistake of upgrading from v3 to v4).
I knew there would be a period of adjustment and that things would be done differently, but I've had a play around and have the following concerns:
Lack of support for a lot of my Zigbee devices
Ikea switches, generic switches and motion detectors. One out of five worked and I'll either have to find a work-around or replace those that didn't.
Lack of support for 433MHz kit (specifically, LightWaveRF)
Again, not insurmountable, but the cost to replace the 15 mood switches I have is not insignificant.
Problems with the dashboard
I only use a dashboard for an overview or to override an automatic setting, but this problem is the real sticking point - I've detailed my problems with this below.
No graphical calendar scheduler
As per my other post, I use my HomeSeer system to set timed schedules for our central heating and hot water systems. At first I thought 'Modes' looked like it might work - have a heating mode and a water mode, each with their own 'on' and 'off' status based on times. Then I realised that there is only one mode - the system mode. Then I realised that even if I used the system mode, to set around 60+ different time slots across a week would be completely impractical anyway as this would require 120+ separate rules.
Somebody recommended the rules machine for the logic, but this seems to be completely impractical also - having to create 120+ time based rules will take forever and making changes would be a nightmare.
I've looked into Google Calendar and have ruled it out - mine is a completely on-premises system and I'm not going to compromise that.
So the only other option I can think of is to create a MySQL database on our home server which holds the time schedules, query that and somehow get the data into Hubitat. Again, not ideal, but the best I can come up with (although how I get that information into Hubitat is a different problem - Perhaps NodeRed and MQTT....).
However, as I mentioned, the real problem is I can't work out how to display and control some devices in the dashboard.
By way of example, consider a Tasmota relay board which shows up in 'Devices' as follows:
Current States
- Status : Complete:Tasmota Sync
- switch : off
- switch1 : off
- switch2 : off
- switch3 : off
- switch4 : off
- switch5 : off
- switch6 : off
Adding the device to the dashboard with the 'Switch' template only shows and controls the 'Switch' state which is an alias for 'Switch1'. I can't work out how to control 'Switch2', 'Switch3' and so on. The dashboard devices list shows the states as per the device list, but I can't work out how to control/display 'Switch2' on the dashboard. None of the documentation gives any hint over the device states.
Even if I could display 'Switch2' it seems there's no way of changing the text on the dashboard element - it seems to just show the device name rather than a friendly name. I must be able to change this somewhere, but I can't find it.
Having had a play with it for a while, it seems that what is displayed is controlled by templates. Great, thinks I, I'll add a template for 'Switch2'. But no, I can't for the life of me work out how to edit or add a template.
If somebody could help me with the dashboard problem I'd be very grateful and if anybody has any ideas for the other points I've mentioned, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, I'm afraid this C-8 is going back.
Nicholas.