I don’t use a dashboard, so I really don’t care, I use makerapi and use homekit as my dashboard but I see a lot of “I’d switch to hubitat, if the ui didn’t suck”
I never really tried to use the app dashboard until today, and I will say It ’s not “pretty” or user friendly at all. Why hasn’t hubitat fixed it? Do I just not understand programming and it be a much bigger project than I am thinking or does hubitat not really care about catering to layman. Imo homekit ui is very basic yet very user friendly. Just room by room.
I think if this was fixed it be a no brained almost for wink refugees over st
How do you know HE isn't grabbing tons of business anyway? Neither of us know their sales figures. As an entrepreneurial business you do the things that will make you the most money. Clearly they think there are other things that will accomplish that, or they believe they're already accomplishing it (for all we know they're selling hubs like crazy! And maybe even the guys asking for a better dashboard bought it anyway, who knows!). I think redoing the dashboard would be a huge project. On top of that, there are at least a dozen posts saying "If they just did this 1 thing (dashboards/more device support/more cloud integrations/local voice/a better mobile app/etc./etc./etc.) then everyone would choose HE" well not everyone can be right. I'm sure they are doing whatever it is to make the best use of their time to sell more hubs.
I won't speak for you, but I know I've done zero market research. I've seen about 10 people say they'd switch to HE if the dashboard were easier. Are there only 10 people who think that? 10,000? Would those 10 actually even come on board or are they just talking out of their hat? Who knows. Without market research, both you and I are just guessing on what the market wants based on what a handful of people have come to this forum to say.
My personal belief is that if automatons are done correctly (motion sensing, etc.) there is no need for a dashboard. The only dashboard I really use is on my HE app. It lets me control the door locks and view presence. I have a few others that are mainly for monitoring. I don't try to control anything with them.
I have my lighting on motion apps and tied to modes, so I never have to touch anything. When I walk into a room - the lights just turn on. When I leave, they turn off after a few minutes.
I’m just going by forums, the general consensus I hear is it’s not user friendly. Like I said , I don’t care if they totally delete the “ui” as I don’t use it, but TO ME, it didn’t seem user friendly. Do you think it is? Maybe it is and I’m just used to homekit being EXTRA used friendly
I didn't find it unfriendly. Is it beautiful? Nope. Is it functional? Yup. That said, I only started playing with the dashboards about a week ago after not even setting one up for a year. I never saw the need. So even if it were the most beautiful thing ever, it wouldn't have impacted my purchasing decision.
Yeah I've seen plenty of folks complain about it, but remember, the percentage of people who complain is tiny. Maybe on the same day that 10 people complained, they sold 10,000 hubs without having to invest in the dashboard, I don't know!
I am sure if they believe that's hurting their sales they will focus on it.
I’m not a programmer either. So I assume everything they do is difficult and since they don’t have unlimited staff, time or money, they have to prioritize.
And like @dman2306 said, all threads like this (“why don’t they do this?” Or “if they just did that, hubitat would be on top of the world”) are just speculation in the absence of hard data, which all of us lack.
So, respectfully, these threads usually just turn into a bit of a waste of time...
I will say that I've heard the answer is basically
"Dashboards are not automaation" ie this is a home autoamtion product and dashboards don't reflect that value.
I generally agree with this, I don't need a dashboard for most automations "Things just happen". I will save the covid-19 situation has had me at home for 2 mos. and my routines are shot, so I find myself needing dashboards much more then I use to. Ymmv.
I agree. Most post I’m reading are (paraphrase) “my wife just wants to open an app and turn the bathroom fan off if it’s on. And while she does that glances of the temperature”
I’m sure he CAN do that, but it isn’t I nice, friendly u.i
I've seen that kind of post too but it makes no sense to me. So you're in the bathroom or right near the bathroom (because you notice the fan is on so you must be right near the bathroom or you have an INSANELY loud fan, right?) and you decide it's easier to whip out your phone, which I know I don't always keep on me at home so I might have to walk over to it, open an app, navigate to the device, and switch it off
...
That's easier than either walking over to the switch and shutting it or saying "Alexa turn off the bathroom fan?"
I agree that was a rather dumb post I found but I could see someone being out and just wondering if they turned x appliance in room x off. And I personally agree with “y’all”. Hubitats for automation mainly. I’d never use hubitat dashboard no matter what as imo the homekit layout is PERFECT FOR ME
"why is it on the first place, shouldn't something be managing that?" That's why a dashboard is less important, if something bothers you and you find the need to turn it off there should be an automation.
I go back to my daily routine being shot and so automation has been harder to anticipate and a dashboard bridges the gap nicely. But generally the idea was to automate everything making dashboards a smaller over all component.
Now I will say from a business perspective sexy dashboards sell product and I as someone who works with technology and appreciates nice interfaces. It's painful to use hubitat. Even the technical bit ui is AWFUL.
Instead of a new CEO they should have hired a UI guy to clean up the product. It's so bad that a few weeks of work would have gone a very very long way.
I do agree, a UI/UX designer would help. I say this as a developer --- a great developer can build very functional stuff, but it's almost always ugly. I'll often build a UI I'm really proud of then hand it over to a designer and realize "wow, mine looked awful"
Yea, I keep mine simple. Garage, camera, thermostat. And if I leave the front or backdoor open it’s apparent at first glance Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Ha, I have a team of engineers that work for me, one guy is awesome but his UI is just awful, we don't let him do UI anything (even implementation of our ui persons designs) he's just not wired for it.
Crazy thing is you can go out online find interface templates with already supplied ui framework and get a commercial license for < $1000. It deals with much of the big ticket items (Good color contrast, breadcrumbs, font's , tables etc)
Then you just have to do interface for weird stuff (like rule machine) which would greatly be improved by a good ui guy taking a run at it.
Imagine what the talented team at Hubitat could do if they had the same resources as Apple.
I’m not sure what kind of answers you were expecting? They don’t have infinite resources, and like everything else in life, they have to prioritize some things but not others. I think it’s safe to say it’s not because they’re dumb or lazy, and it’s not because they want their platform to fail.
Beyond that, like I said above, we would have to just keep on speculating without any real end to the conversation.
I actually think hubitat, well the community, made the PERFECT solution, for me atleast. Let Apple spend millions on the “front end ui” and we just “borrow” it. I didn’t mean that to try and “diss” hubitat. I really couldn’t see ANY company designing a better front end ui better than a company worth $1.3 trillion. The answer I was looking for is why hubitat hasn’t made a more friendly ui, and I “kind of” got the answer, they’re focused on automation more and because of that a ui redesign is low on their list.
Perhaps. My personal guess is that their highest priority would be improving reliability and stability to make the platform attractive to third party integrators.
Why even use an app, or even a physical switch for that matter?
A motion sensor and contact sensor, and a very simple rule and you don't HAVE to worry about the fan. I have two "rules", this covers bathroom uses, and I use Smart Humidity Fan app that handles humidity.
Speaking of that, seeing winks email about myq makes me ASSUME, read guess, big companies want a $100k+ at minimum and a subscriber base. That’s probably why MyQ, ring aren’t officially supported. I thought it was a simple maybe $5k liscense. It SEEMS to me it’s a lot more. I’d be willing to bet harmony and ring are somewhere around there too
“ Dear Wink Community,
Effective June 1st, 2020, Chamberlain will be terminating its partnership with Wink. Newly proposed terms from Chamberlain would have required Wink to generate tens of thousands of new MyQ users each year as well as pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual licensing fees.
Wink would have liked to continue its partnership with Chamberlain, but we are unable to meet these demands. Chamberlain was unwilling to agree to more reasonable terms, and they will continue with the termination of all existing Wink + MyQ integrations. Please plan accordingly, as users will no longer be able to control MyQ devices from the Wink platform after June 1st.
We will continue to explore our options with Chamberlain. For questions about this decision and how it affects your MyQ products, we encourage you to contact their customer service at: https://support.chamberlaingroup.com/s/contact-us
