That said, while visualisations of our data are useful (imho), the best tool and the likelihood of it being available in HE are two (three?) different things.
I think we need to accept that we can have a constructive conversation about the pro's and con's for including charts in HE, but in the end if Hubitat don't see it as part of their product, then we have to accept that.
While I would like some basic charting, I can accept it if Hubitat want to focus on automations. A company with a vision and drive to see that through, while being flexible enough to introduce new ideas or opportunities has my vote, even if I would prefer to see additional features.
Thank you for this information. I did not know the event log was there. I thought I had to create a dashboard to see the results. This is quite helpful.
To your question - I am not trying to solve a problem. I am trying to determine if there is a problem to solve.
I agree with your thoughts on automating things, and have done exactly that with another hub where there is a known issue - when the humidity gets over 51%, turn on dehumidifier, and turn it off when it gets to 49%. This works wonderfully, But HVAC work and it's associated electrical are expensive. I would prefer not to embark on such unless there is an actual issue. So I have installed a monitor and will review the humidity levels over time in a certain area. I would prefer to review in a graph, but that will apparently not be possible in native Hubitat.
I woke up today and looked at the greenhouse temp data from @bptworld Bryan's Ave Plus App
weeklyHigh : 90.7
weeklyLow : 15.9
Of course this is not all I'd like to know (the average extremes) I'd also like to get a sense of the transitions, when, and how quickly it arrives at those extremes, how long the temps dwell above/below certain levels... i.e. what the full CYCLE (averaged or not) LOOKS LIKE in a GRAPH so I can make some informed decisions. Those decisions would be more empirical than analytical, no first or second derivatives required.
I post this today because I am remembering this discussion. Seeing my weekly winter time greenhouse temperature range surprised me ...and is very informative to get a sense of things. Notifications or actions aren't even required for it to be so. (Of course in the summer I trigger a fan off set points.)
To me the information offered, in just a couple of simple averages, suggests that graphing in HE doesn't have to be data intensive for it to be useful, nor does it have to offer full blown statistical analysis.
Harping on this because it REALLY is something (a dashboard attribute?) that should be a feature of HE, even if it's limited in data points.
Hubigraph was the proof-in-concept if not the PROTOTYPING;
....maybe in a C9 with expanded storage and horsepower ?
I also ported over this app for the Initial State Service which I use, but the code could very very easily be modified to push the data Anywhere you wish.
This was created using Grafana which is pulling data from an InfluxDB database. The InfluxDB gets its data from the Hubitat integration within Home Assistant. Grafana and InfluxDB are also running as addons in Home Assistant. I have to say that I agree with @mavrrick58 that the Hubitat Hub is a HA engine, and isn't a tool for analytics and graphs. Even if you expand the storage and horsepower, it still isn't the right tool.
That's because (I believe) Hubitat is a software company at their core and have focused their efforts on drivers and automation software (IMO). This is evident in the continued evolution of apps like Rule Machine and Basic Rules while it feels like the dashboard app has been considered "good enough." And I'm OK with that. I bought my HE because of its automation capabilities, not because it could draw pretty pictures.
BUT, I do want pretty pictures! And I believe (perhaps without merit) that the hardware (and probably the software) can handle some very basic graphing. I've got an idea I want to try out. Maybe in a couple days I'll have something that meets my needs and possibly helps others too.
I want to post a more extensive comment, but essentially I agree with both the desire to have built-in graphing options, but I can also appreciate the complexity and overhead in providing this across all potential HE setups that may want to make us of such a feature.
This hub kinda supports graphing. These is a community app that still works (although the author has stopped supporting it). Or you can set up Grafana.
Blockquote
This was created using Grafana which is pulling data from an InfluxDB database. The InfluxDB gets its data from the Hubitat integration within Home Assistant. Grafana and InfluxDB are also running as addons in Home Assistant.
Not all of us have the familiarity with this stuff that some on here seem to have. I have NO CLUE how anyone would do the above.
I presume Granfana is software. Don't know what it runs on.
No idea what an Influx DB database is, or what it runs on.
Apparently the Influx gets its data from a Hubitat /Home Assistant integration. I bought Hubitat INSTEAD of Home Assistant - I could not figure out what hardware I needed for HA, and even if I did, the instructions for setting that up convinced me I had no business delving into that - now I'm being told that to get graphs of data from my Hubitat I have to buy the competitions device...
I saw the other post about pulling data in a text file being trivial. It is not trivial to me. Is there perhaps some other add on or download or whatever Hubitat calls them that I download to pull out text files or that will dump the data to Google sheets? I suppose once the data is in Google sheets I could teach myself how to make graphs in Google sheets (i'm presuming it does that - people where I work make graphs in Excel, and GS is a competitor, so I'm presuming, but...)
I bought the Hubitat because it is a smarthome device to which I could connect Zwave and Zigbee devices and Hubitat supposedly comes ready to work out of the box. It does not seem like it to me.
Perhaps the Hubitat is just not the device for me. I read about it and was very excited to buy it, but every single time I want to do something it turns into 2-3 hour Google search.
I can feel your frustrations, it's exciting to take on a new platform and make best use of it's features. My take on HE is that there is a strong focus on three things, device connectivity, automating the home and the user experience in achieving these outcomes. By focus, I mean both in terms of the features offerred but also continued work in expanding the offering in these spaces.
Again my take on your situation would be that Hubitat prefer to focus their time on developing automation solutions for us, rather than analytical visualisation solutions that can be provided in more feature rich offerings elsewhere. If my interpretation of Hubitat's approach (and I could be wrong) is right, I to a large extent agree. They, and the HE hub are here to provide local control and automation of our home.
That said, I would like to see some basic charting as a built in feature, but am willing to wait.
I'd like to spend more time responding to your influxdb / Grafana questions, as I have these setup on a raspberry pi to then provide charta on my he dashboards. Hopefully others can offer their experience in this space... While I get my dinner
It does come ready to work but it just doesn't have a feature you want built in. There is no one ring to rule them all (Hubitat does come close though). As @sburke781 points out, Hubitat concentrates on devices and automation. They do realize however that others may want more and that is why they have an open API for developers to graph things. I still very much use Hubigraph for some things (especially for gauges) and it works perfectly fine. The code is open for change. Now I understand that you feel it may be beyond you but with a few questions from the very helpful people here and the willingness to learn, I'm sure you can get what you want running.
All well said in response, as well as your validating his frustration quotient. It is a natural thing to want to do something with the data collected right there within HE, and it doesn't HAVE to be a "rich" offering, just some offering. Same with the Dashboard facilities. Done with the argument that... "it just doesn't belong on HE".
You've got $500 phones that have the capabilities & storage of systems many old timers worked on that (all total) cost upwards of a million dollars at one time. You could have argued back then that A LOT OF THAT didn't belong on a flippin phone. But wow, it's there and it's nice.
And here's his key line -
Nor do they have the desire or time to....and that's a evergreen decision that I guess the HE folk address every time they lift the lid to work on the platform; that is, to meet these folks "in the middle" or to go "a little further towards" total HA platform built-in capabilities.
EDIT: Now setting my egg timer to clock how long it takes to close this thread down.
webCoRE: Invested about 2 hours attempting to get it to work. No idea what I'm doing wrong. I'm willing to put SOME time into this, but more than 2 hours with no idea of how much more just to graphically view my own data that the device already has in 2022 seems excessive. atm this seems to be the only applicable solution for me, but I have not had the time...
Quick Chart:
From the link:
Note: This uses the free quickchart.io backend. No signups necessary, but does require the internet to work.
I bought the Hubitat specifically because I understood it claims to not need an internet connection, and it operates totally locally. I'm not going to spend time trying to get something to work that needs internet, when my goal is to disconnect my home automation from the internet. As I write this it occurs to me that webCoRE probably also needs internet to operate....
It's on me that I did not research more to figure out it can't do basic graphing, but honestly it never occurred to me that in 2022 anyone would sell a device that purports to be a Home Automation hub, that is the hub to automate and collect data from Zwave and Zigbee devices, and the device would not include some level of basic graphical interface for all that data...
I went with HE instead of HA specifically because I could buy an affordable HE device that supposedly comes preloaded with software - "pay, plug & play". For HA, I was going to have to spend additional time figuring out what device I needed and how to load an HA OS and the HA software. So I bought HE. Then I got it and figured out that to get almost anything I needed to work I have to download added software...not so hard and I figured out how to do it, but seems unnecessarily complicated for a "pay, plug & play" device.
If memory on the HE is an issue, I would happily have paid $20 more so they can put more memory in the thing....I've wasted 100's of multiples of that in time trying to figure this out.
webCoRE does not require the internet to create or run pistons, the graphing module does, I believe, use an external source.
As to the rest of your dialog, HE's niche is local home automation using ZWave and Zigbee protocols, not reporting, not graphics... That's all they've ever claimed to do, and I personally believe they do it well. The community has chosen to provide the means to extend that niche capability, but that does not obligate HE to support that expansion of scope.
