Do any home automation systems, other than open source like HASS, allow offline updates?
Wink doesn't. Alexa devices don't. Vera as well as Smartthings don't appear to,. Homeseer looks like it does allow downloads, but you need a purchased key to activate, so basically locked?
Pretty much all of the commercially available hubs appear that they not user updatable via download. Why would Hubitat be different?
See the thing with these smart hubs is there really ins't much to them. I had debated about just rolling my own solution with HASS. All the software is already out there. I specifically chose Hubitat as I figured it was less development heavy than HASS and would "just work" which I have found really isn't the case in a lot of situations. Hubitat themselves I don't see any valuable IP. What they are really selling at the moment is the hardware which can be pretty easily replicated and their software which to me is just a worse version of even the orginal HASS UI. Hubitat to me fills the market where things like Wink are too simplistic but HASS is too complicated. It fells that middle space and I don't think anyone else is really living in the same market besides SmartThings. I think it actually hurts Hubitat more not to listen to the prosumers than it would give an advantage to their competitor.
Well with Wink it was technically possible, they didn't publicize the fact that it could be done. I had to do a local install when they had the whole certificate deboggle several years ago. And you could always redirect any of the requests to Wink's server to yours. Alexa is really cloud based, nothing really runs locally on those devices, no internet = useless device. I am used to things like Smart Phones, Networking equipment, Security Cameras, and just general usage laptops and such. All those different devices all offline updates. You should really be comparing Hubitat to all those sorts of devices who guarantee local access to devices. Not only that but at the heart of it these devices are all linux.
I haven't really dug into it yet. It's a weird time as I am trying to acquire a second Hubitat but 3rd party sellers are selling maybe $5 cheaper than Hubitat's website and I am not really trying to throw $75 at this at the moment. Hopefully the new hub will get released soon and that will drop down prices on the older model or the 3rd party markets start getting used Hubitats
If a new hub is actually released soon. We need a good way to upgrade to it. Instead of pairing everything over again.... is that possible ?
For zigbee yes. You can just restore a backup. For z-wave, supposedly in the works.
May be I'm not able to chatch the point but firmware updates and platform updates are two completely different things.
The first one is related to the microcode needed to drive a electronic board (same as BIOS in PCs), the second is related to the base software (db manager, application code and so on) with a question mark about OS.
This topic is addressing both as if they were the same.
I personally do'nt feel deprivated to not be able to get firmware as it is not in commercial use to provide it.
About the on/off line platform updates, the main concern using an interpreted language as groovy is the code protection. I think HE will never allow to "enter the box" as it is very difficult to protect the sources.
We all can claim, sing, dance or scream as we like but, if this is the problem, we'll never be allowed to.
I personally, even if I have a long tech background, do'nt care about: I've choosen a consumer product instead to develop one by myself. And I would like/pretend it to work as a black box, with (unaccessible) native drivers, custom app and so on.
Stubborn billygoat said.
So with most embedded systems everything is rolled into the "Firmware". They may be doing it differently, like the firmware isn't getting update and with these platform updates they are simply downloading their code from like a git repo and installing it. So when I have been mentioning firmware I really have been talking about everything since if it gets bricked they have to have some sort of firmware they can flash onto the chip that includes the platform,etc.
As for the little black box, I actually choose Hubitat for the same reason oppose to just rolling my own. But at the same time until they enable HTTPS by default and uploading your own SSL certificates, I do have an interest in tinkering with it. That is my biggest complaint right now. Now sure i would love to be able to upload my own graphics onto it for like the login screen and add a dark theme for the dashboard,etc. But all that UI stuff isn't the end of the world to me, that would be more of something for if I rolled my own. But the lack of HTTPS by default and the inability to upload your own SSL certs really irks me. Therotically with the SSL Cert and HTTPS I wouldn't really ever need to touch the internals again until it is time to resign.
If they publicly released the firmware yes this could be an issue. But at least from a manual update perspective where you could download the firmware and update yourself, if it was properly encrypted this would be a non issue.
'All local' home automation is what sold me on Hubitat. I just purchased it, and setup a zwave plus thermostat. I'm running into problems with long waits when I click 'help' and all the other web links within the hub that will never resolve. I can get past that, but I'm running into issues with the dashboard frequently failing to respond and setting up a thermostat heat schedule. I see that the schedule was worked on from 2.1.7 to 2.1.8, so I'd like to update.
When I updated the WiFi router that I'm using with the Hubitat, I used a browser to download a (most likely encrypted and/or signed) file to my notebook. I took the notebook to the location with the router, and plugged into the router, selected 'update', and the router asked for the location of the file for me to upload to the router. It found the file and performed the update.
I'm not seeing such a process with Hubitat. It looks like I have to move the Hubitat to a location that has the infrastructure to connect to the internet :_(
I realize this is an old topic and probably covered somewhere else, so I'll keep looking, but to pile on in favor of the OP, I'd like the ability to ROLLBACK any updates which broke previously working rules.
Rule Engine 5 rules are not being triggered afer an update to v2.3.1.140 or maybe before.
Also, agree with the OFFLINE capability. The device should'nt require internet access to the update.
Hubitat SHOULD provide that ability for folks to pull down previous revisions.
Correct. HE needs connected directly to the internet to update or downgrade. It can not be updated/downgraded by a firmware file.
They do. Log into the diagnostic tool to roll back to earlier versions on your hub. There are also endpoints to download previous versions.
For example try:
http://your.hub.ip.here/hub/advanced/download226
or
http://your.hub.ip.here/hub/advanced/download230
Ahh I thought it pulled down the previous version not stored it. My bad.
What you've posted is correct.
That endpoint downloads and installs a previous version. It doesn't store the previous version.
My bad again... Doh!
In another post somebody kindly pointed these URIs out also, but I get 404.assuming the naming convention of download### is that "###: is concatenated major minor values?
No method to browse contents of that path?
Previous versions can be found under the diagnostic tool at http://yourHubIP:8081. If you want to revert to a firmware version that is not listed, you’ll need to contact support.
Download the Hubitat app
