Function, Automation, Simplification, Centralization

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I, like many here, came from the SmartThings system. I tried to use it, became frustrated with inconsistent execution of automations, constantly losing connection with devices, and a lack of answers and service from Samsung.

Now, what I did like there was integrations. They supported the Arlo camera system, Honeywell Lyric T5(+) Thermostat, Ring Doorbell, etc., etc. One system, one interface, one center for notifications, one app, etc. It was far from perfect, but I blame that on Samsung and not supporting the developers.

Many here seem to have a common thought:

"Well executed and dependable local processing of automations should mean that there is no need for an app. There is no need to interact with the system."

If 100% automation is your goal, I would agree with that statement. The problem is, for a great percentage of people, that is not the ONLY goal. Many want well executed, locally processed, dependable automations AND the ability to actively control, view, and interact with our home systems on demand from anywhere..... because we're not always home and not always on the local network.

  • We want to see what the temperature is in a room and what the thermostat is set to and decide to make a change OR let the system automate a change (via Honeywell Lyric T5+ WiFi Thermostat).
  • We want to see if we left the garage door open by accident AND close it if we did, and an automation is not always the answer because someone may be at home when I leave and it can be left open because they are in the garage (and my wife doesn't want to be lojacked or geofenced).
  • We want to see if we remembered to lock the door, and if we didn't, tap a button in an app and lock it, because, again, someone may or may not be home and that person does not want to be geofenced.
  • If a door sensor goes off unexpectedly, we want to be able to turn on a camera nearby and see what's going on (via an Arlo camera).
  • If we leave the house and a door is left open, or a window is left open, we'd like a notification, and not ANOTHER text message to go with the 636 others that we received that day, but from a well thought through app that might bring up a RED notification of an important event that stands out from the 732 texts that I've now received.

Automation is great. Automation and interaction is better. Dependable automation, interaction, and control within a centralized app is ideal.

And why an App?

  • Simplicity.
  • Near universal knowledge of where to get and how to install through App stores. Path of least resistance for more widespread adoption and use.
  • Easier to use for those not well versed in the art of code. Wives, husbands, kids, people who don’t put browser shortcuts on their home screen.
  • The most widely used systems (right, wrong, or otherwise) have established apps as a bare minimum feature requirement, and if you don’t offer what is expected, you’re behind in the mass adoption and sales game (and I don’t think Hubitat is a charity looking to scrape by).
  • Aesthetics - Those market dominators havebuilt beautiful and functional apps that are INTUITIVE and usable by ALL.

And it CAN be done without compromising security.
And it CAN be done for those that desire it whilst letting those that do not desire all of that functionality to continue without any third party logins and integrations.

Maybe Hubitat is not the system for those things but I understand that the system is new and things are changing and updating and improving all the time. It's been well publicized that an app is coming. I pray it's not browser with a dashboard wrapped in a code frame.
All of that said, if Hubitat is not the solution for Centralized Function AND Automation, I'm open to suggestions, but I've done a good bit of research and have yet to find another solution that shows potential.

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Welcome,

When HE promotes local control doesn't means you can't remote control, HE has the dashboard, you can create a desktop shortcut (simulating an app) to turn on or off anything you want or to change the thermostat. Now if you want to change a rule or create a rule, to do a reboot, to install an app, all the admin stuff must be locally in your network, but installing a secure VPN in your network you can do the admin stuff out of the local network, so not sure what you mean with all the above.

Edit, for the notification we have Pushover and it works great, it can even make your phone ring with the phone in mute if you program Pushover to have priorities for the messages, yes it has the red too.

Screenshot_20190423-011857_Pushover
Screenshot_20190423-011857_Pushover.jpg1077Ă—693 139 KB

So basically everything you mentioned we can do it and we don't need an app to do it, we have the tools, the app when released will be a shortcut to the dashboard with geofencing and native notifications (I have the leaked app and uninstalled it because it's a shortcut and I'm using Sharptools as dashboard but soon will use HE native dashboard). We have all that already with the dashboard, Pushover and Life360

Do you believe I enjoy giving my family the Smartthings app with access to all my settings? No, I gave them the dashboard, there they can control everything but no messing with my precious!

Good luck.

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VJV,

I appreciate your notes and will consider them.

Please go back and review my edit which included several reasons for a well designed and functional app. I am interested to know your thoughts.

Put simply, most people know how to install, interact with, and enjoy using apps. They are not hobbyists that enjoy coding, copying and pasting scripts, or even saving links to a web-based dashboard on their home screen. Millions or Billions of people know, use, and understand apps. They are the path of least resistance if a company desires mass adoption, sales, profits, success.

As a comparison, we don’t need a mouse to make a computer function, but when they became widely Accepted AND Expected, IBM couldn’t give away a computer that did not have one.
We don’t need a GUI to compose documents. That said, which program will sell more, have more widespread adoption, and have the funding and revenue to continue innovating and functioning for its customers?
A DOS word processing system or Microsoft Word?
Can you even name any non-GUI word processing software sold today.... period???

If the goal of Hubitat, or any other technology or software company is to remain a small, hobbyist enterprise, by all means, resist the minimal expectations of consumers and their wallets and continue to argue against the well established standards of mass adoption.

BUT....

If the goal is mass adoption and profit, umm, give the people (the vast majority of people) what they want. A well designed, functional, beautiful app....

PS: An app can incorporate user level permissions for access to functions and settings, or exclusions from access to settings.... “Precious” can be protected.

You do realize that “Precious” made Gollum, well, Gollum. He wasn’t like that before he found it.

PPS: You kind of made my point. 90% of people would not have the slightest clue what a VPN is, let alone how to install it, or WANT to go through the additional step(s) to create a dashboard, install the VPN, create a short cut to an app-like web page that’s not an app, rather than:
App Store, Search Hubitat, install secure app, done.

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I agree in your "why an app", I thought you are not buying HE because we don't had your needs. But for now, that's what we have. Gollum Gollum.

At this point, my wife is using Google Home app and speakers to control HE. This is why I'm not even thinking about an app anymore, but yes, definitely is needed.

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You don't need to convince them to make an app--they're working on it. :slight_smile: (It just happens to be taking a while.) But as mentioned above, you don't really need one: everything you'll be able to do with the app when it's released is something you can already do today. Some require third-party apps/services, like notifications (you can route them to ST with the community Hubitat to ST Notification Pusher app, or for something natively supported that is also a bit more flexible, you can by Pushover--which can actually do the "special" notifications you requested). So does location/presence (I'm using HomeBridge because my phone is iOS; if you had a presence solution on ST, not that it was ever known for working well, you should also be able to get that integrated into Hubitat via ST; and there is also Life360). So the biggest difference there is that these options will be natively supported (as some already are) and come from the "official" app.

Most of what else you want can already be done with Hubitat Dashboard. Again, the app will provide a way to more easily access these. But you can already do it yourself with a link (bookmark/favorite in your browser or put an icon on your home screen for easy access--something that would trick 99% of people who ask for an app into thinking it is one :slight_smile: ). We don't know for sure, but I wouldn't hold your breath on the Dashboard access not just being more or less what you can do now as a WebView (or similar for Android) embedded inside the app--there's little else I see them being able to do since Hubitat drivers do not expose a UI like SmartThings "tiles" do and their intention has always been stated that Dashboard is the way to do this. If you give the new version of Dashboard a try (v2 is a lot better than "legacy"/v1), I think you'd be happy with how well it works. And functionally, it can certainly do what you want: remotely (or locally) view/monitor and control devices.

There is also SharpTools.io if you prefer it over Hubitat Dashboard (no local option and no longer 100% free, but still natively supported). The Alexa app (and I think the Google Home equivalent) also provide rudiementary device control UIs which can be used with devices from Hubitat. And there are now two options for integrating Hubitat devices into ST (HubConnet and Other Hub) should you prefer keeping the ST UI, though of course a huge downfall there is anyone who has access has control over your entire location (including hub and device administration) and not just device viewing and control.

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I bought HE.
I haven’t found a better alternative and I’m cautiously encouraged by what I saw before I bought.
I’m in software development and product management/development, so creation, solving a problem, fixing a product, improving a product, and making a case for it all is in my blood. :grin:

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Despite clearly describing the features or capabilities of their proposed App, I’m getting the feeling that the HE team will be damned if they do release an App and damned if they don’t release an App.
Not a nice position to be in. :woozy_face:

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I think that the only thing I want the app for is reliable presence detection. I suppose it might be handy to have control over some things when I'm away from home, but I can probably count on the fingers of one hand what those might be.

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Agreed. I learned with ST, using a phone for device state is inconvenient. If that's the case I've done something wrong. Physical control needs to be available in the room.

But, I'm looking forward to geofencing.

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Your assuming the app presence detection will be more reliable/robust than Life360... Hopefully that is the case, but I don't think it is a guarantee at all.

Reliable presence reporting on a phone is a tricky balance between speed and battery. And on Android all phones don't even respond the same to the same code (as an Android app developer, I see this firsthand all the time).

The life360 app is very good at what it does...

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I think @patrick (on the Home Gadget Geeks podcast) said that they've spent a lot of time getting the presence detection working reliably, but I could be misremembering.

I've not had a great experience with Life360 to be honest

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I'm skeptical it will be better than life360, but I hope it is!

I'm sure 80%+ of the app development has been trying to get the presence working right. Alerts typically aren't hard, access to the dashboards probably wasn't especially hard.

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Life360 is unreliable and slow compared to ST's native app implementation. I'm very optimistic that it will be better. It should be a unified solution, with both local and cloud messages. Right now, I use a lot of a different options and aggregate them for reliability. It's working really well, but I hate the complexity.

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I only use Life360 - same as when I was on ST. Works 100.0% of the time on all 4 phones in my family.

Well, it works as long as I force refresh it in HE every few minutes, which I do with an RM rule. I did the same when on ST with a webcore rule.

But for my needs, if it lags a few minutes until the force refresh happens, that's fine. I set my circle pretty wide.

I'll definitely check out the HE app presence when it comes out, though. But unless it supports multiple locations like Life360, I doubt I'll change. And I use the location finder feature in life360 A LOT to see where my wife or kids are, so probably sticking with life360 for that in any case.

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I had the exact opposite experience. Life360 on both my wife's phone and mine is extremely reliable. Granted, I excluded the app from battery optimizations, but I had also done that with ST.

I do it every 12 hours. Seems to work just fine.

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Obviously what @JasonJoel said was correct about Geofencing reliability being dependent on the phone. Everyone seems to have different experiences with the Geofence methods. Our iPhones have been much more reliable on Life 360 in the past few months (not one missed event, without ever having to press refresh or setup a rule to do so) than they where using the SmartThings native app, the downside/upside to the Life 360 method is you can see everyone's current location, this is fine for my wife and I and my wife's daughter as we also do this with the Find My Friends app however we also have my parents, and aunt on our place so they can come and go without setting off the alarm when we are on vacation so they can take care of our cat but I didn't figure they would necessarily want everyone to be able to see each others current location. With the native ST app that wasn't an issue however they then all had access to mess with our devices of course they never did, but I'm hoping with the Hubitat app there is a way to let them join the presence detection without having configuration capabilities which it sounds like will be the case if it is just an interface to the dashboards as I should be able to lock them into a dashboard with access to what they may need. I tried presence sensors for vacation access but the battery life was so bad I gave up on those. I'm using the Life 360 and ST integration with Hub Link right now to have some devices still report their presence state to Hubitat via the ST native app since I still have ST for my Neato Botvacs anyway.

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