Hi to all,
Am I alone with the feeling that Hubitat is actually an US centered company, selling a european version but not supporting european requirements at the same level, mainly when it comes to heating ?
In Europe heating regulation is mainly done by a thermostatic walve on a radiator in contrast to warm air heating in the US and Canada. The only way to control heating correctly is a TRV (Thermistat Regulation Valve). Looking to supported devices the Spirit Z-Wave is the only one. There are so many different TRV's on the market working on Z-Wave, Zigbee or Wifi, but none of them really works officially with Hubitat.
The Spirit's are not really reliable and often have to be restarted, but as said they are the only ones supported.
When it come to dashboard, the only thermostat tile has always ventilator stearing on it and is not adopted to TRV's.
I can live with most of the restrictions for european systems but when it comes to heating it's really a pain.
Do you have any specific TRV in mind?
Quite some number of devices are supported by community drivers. Have you tried to search one for the device of your choice?
One that is very promising is the Shelly TRV with a beta community driver that works half the way, can not be handled by the thermostat tile in the dashboard, and the developer does not answer to posts.
I have no specific on in mind but there are so many ones from Bosch, Tado, Brennenstuhl, other models from Eurotronic (not Spirit), Tuya ...
When you go to amazon.de (German -> European) and type TRV in the search field, you will find many ones. The same works for amazon.fr (France -> Europe).
What holds back Hubitat from looking at the apprently supported ones with community drivers (most work done) and to check with the developper if they can work on his code and implement them completely as a supported device. Hubitat does add devices with nearly every update and that's cool, but not for TRV's that are a main component of european heating in smart homes. I also mentioned multiple times the missing of a tile type for TRV's.
Another example are smoke detectors. I looked a long time for one working with Hubitat. The list of supported devices showed some ones, but none of them available in Europe. I can order in the US, but have to pay taxes and I'm neary sure the radio will not be compatible with european frequencies. I recently detected that one from Firent was supported and bought it. It works like a charm, BUT it took en eternity to see a model supported that works in Europe.
Most times I find workarounds, but for heating I really don't want to rely on not officially supported devices.
I'm using the Honeywell EvoHome system which I had before Hubitat. There's an integration but it's not without its issues as it was ported from a SmartThings app and had been generally butchered to make it work. Some of the issues:
Excessive logging - I've messed around in the code and managed to reduce some of the unnecessary logging
Unneeded capabilities/attributes - The driver has settings for fan, heat, cool etc that are not needed in the UK
It doesn't work properly in Homekit - It gets found as Temperature device rather than Thermostat. I've managed to get it working in HD+ dashboard with a minor change
It does what I want it to, being able to switch modes from a dashboard and set rules to reduce/resume the set point in a given room when windows are opened/closed.
Indeed Shelly devices are quite interesting. But my personal preference is to stick with gen2 devices, And Shelly TRV is gen1.
I have a custom driver for Fibaro TRV. Eurotronic drivers seem to be available from community.
Man/hours do hold I believe. From what I can see the team is not so big. And a list of released devices is constantly growing in different directions.
I can understand your point. This all goes to the interested party. If TRV developer company has focus and priority to support its propietary platform (hub and service), the tendecy for complicating support for 3rd parties emerges. It is closely related to marketing strategy. In such cases there are not so much choices: stick with custom drivers and wait for official to be released, go for officially supported platform for the device, make your own driver in a way you like (basically a deeper level of smart home tinkering).
Full list of "system" thermostats
Ecobee Thermostat
Eurotronic Spirit Thermostat -> TRV
Fibaro Heat Controller Thermostat Head -> TRV
Generic Z-Wave Plus Thermostat -> should have basic support for TRV
Generic Z-Wave Thermostat -> should have basic support for TRV
Generic Zigbee Thermostat -> should have basic support for TRV
GoControl Z-Wave Thermostat
Heatit ZM Thermostat
Heltun Fan Coil Thermostat
Heltun Heating Thermostat
Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave Thermostat
Lutron Thermostat
LUX Zigbee Thermostat
Qubino Flush Thermostat 2
Qubino Thermostat Module
Radio Thermostat CT101
Sinope TH1123ZB-G2 Thermostat
Sinope TH1124ZB (4KW) Thermostat
Sinope TH1300ZB Thermostat
Sinope TH1400ZB Thermostat
Zen Thermostat
Some are TRVs. Some are generic drivers that should provide atleast basic functionality.
I suppose this is a question, although there’s no question mark at the end of the sentence so it’s hard to know for sure.
But as you’ve surmised, the Hubitat team is based in North America. They don’t “support” devices, but they do ensure devices are compatible by testing them in-house and then either adding device fingerprints to generic device drivers, or when necessary they create new, device-specific drivers.
Being in the US. it’s simply more difficult for them to extensively test devices from Europe, and they don’t just incorporate community developer work into the hub platform as-is. They’ve actually added community dev work into the firmware several times (e.g. TP-Link’s Kasa devices, WebCoRE), but it appears to require close collaboration, as it should, so that will presumably never be a process that applies to most community developed code.
I think most of the lack of device support is they can't blindly write drivers, test compatibility with the hub, and ensure reliability of how the device acts with the drivers they wrote. The staff has indicated multiple times they test every single device physically and not just write a driver and hope it works without ever testing it in real life.
If Hubitat can get their hands on the device, they write drivers. Some European manufacturers (Friendt as one example) have sent Hubitat samples and that is why their catalog is incorporated into Hubitat. You could ask your device manufacturer to sent Hubitat samples, but many won't do so for some reason.
There have been multiple instances of users sending Hubitat a device to test and write drivers for that device. If you have a particular device that you want native drivers for, you could contact staff and ask if they want a sample. You would then send them a device for testing. Depending upon cost or shipping charges, this may or may not get returned to you, but you would likely get your device supported.
Staff have also said they purchase some devices that are not native to North America for testing. But you have to realize that the cost of them doing so for every single device made would be a burden for the company or an individual. Besides the fact that in the USA we aren't aware of what products are sold, or what products are popular in certain regions.
So maybe come up with a plan to get a sample of your TRV to Hubitat. Have the manufacturer send one, or send Hubitat one on your own, or maybe even split the cost of purchasing one between a few of you on this forum that are in the same region.
Hubitat's built in driver for the Eurotronic Spirit TRV provides basic support for Eurotronic's shell-enclosed (and probably more water resistant) z-wave+ Comet TRV 700226.
The developer, me, had 3 strokes 2 years ago.... no need to bash me and this has been stated over a year ago in the main Shelly thread. So ya I'm not coding anymore.
My intention was never to bash you. It is simply a fact that the driver is only half finished and will never get finished. So it's not a valuable option for me. Take care about you, that's more important than finished drivers.
B.T.W., I integrated a Shelly TRV in home assistant, and it seems to work, but sometimes the valve does not close completely, and it continues to heat like hell. Bug in HA, the driver or the Shelly, who knows ?
Possibly just the valve itself. Take the Shelly TRV off and give the pin/actuator a good working. I had one recently do the same. Pushing the pin in manually was just not fully stopping the flow. With the TRV removed (a Honeywell HR92) I just lubricated the pin with plenty of WD40, then using a pipe wrench (with the jaws set wide between the bottom of the valve body and top of the pin) I continually pressed and released the actuator. It hasn't failed to fully close since.
Not fun, glad you're still around to hang out.
