Has Anyone Thought of Creating a Primer for Using Hubitat?

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I mean a real one. Not some random hodge-podge of one guy's idea for this, here, then some other guy's idea for something else, there, etc.

Is there something that covers the logical concept of the design and how to find things by concept? Is there even a logical concept behind this thing?

In trying to learn this device and how to use it in my spare time over the last couple of days, I keep coming up against random ..."things".... which are just kind of stuck into the interface, with little logic or systematic organization to help one understand how to use anything. Yes, I am slowly plodding my way along ...about 35 times slower than I suspect that I ought to be... learning bits and pieces, here and there.

Sure. All of the "apps" are in one place. So are "devices", "rooms", "dashboards". But, it is kind of a Neanderthal-think system.

Once you start clicking things, you enter into a nightmare of monotonous text labels and simple line boxes with little differentiation between them. Each page looks like it was drawn by little asperger Johnny on a piece of paper with a lead pencil. Normally, I do not care for needless window dressing. However, this is not exactly needless. The technical terms used are all rather redundant and unhelpful sounding with virtually no explanation or other clarification.

This seems more like something that was designed for IT guys in a technical support department. It is one of the most conceptually unhelpful systems that I have seen in some time.

And, so far, I am not much past scheduling a light to go on and off. I can also make it change colors with a delay. "Oo-oooh ...try THAT, you cloud-based apps!". Mmmhmm.

The biggest stumbling block that I am having is figuring out where to find anything by a sense of organization and purpose. I have to click everything and play around just to find out what these things do, which is truly one of the stupidest designs that I have ever seen. However, maybe it really does not matter: I am not sure, but I think that I have seen three or fours "apps" that all schedule lights to turn on - each, in their own way, no doubt.

Most of these redundant apps seem to make no use of the other features that smart lights have. However, if they can, then I have absolutely no clue about it, in plodding through this monotonous, slow responding, step by step interface, until I get there. Some well placed documentation would be nice - though, it would probably just tell me what I already suspect: Nothing listed has any of the features which I want to use.

Presets..? Special effects...? Something tells me that I am dreaming. This thing seems like little more than an expensive wireless on/off switch for a variety of smart devices. Worse, you have to go through hell just to figure out how to go through the slow, painful process of making it do anything with them. I seriously doubt that it can make use of the other features of most devices. It is unsupported junk.

Through sheer dumb luck I just found out about HPM, a short time ago. I thought "YES: That must be where everything is". NOPE: More on and off buttons.

I installed it and only found more apps for scheduling lights and others for specialized devices. I saw one that might possibly have a firelight effect: "Holiday Lighting". I installed it but I will probably never know. I can't find it, anywhere.

My guess is that you just have to know something about how it works so that you can figure out where to look. Well, I do not do things that way. Hubitat just seems to be some kind of hobbyist project for diehard fans of another piece of hardware that is out of touch, falling behind and can't do anything serious in the real world. "Learning curve" is just a euphemistic way of saying "badly designed and badly supported".

But, hey. If I am wrong, and I stumble upon my error, through this great hit-and-miss system of theirs, then I will come back here and own up to it.

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Well there are the docs, but it maybe beneficial to actually state what it is that you’re trying to do that you cant fiquire out. You can also search the forums, there are plenty of examples of how different people tackle home automation.

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I'm just wondering if you are happy with anything at this point... You just seem to be another angry Hubitat user that expects it to be running Windows 11.

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So you have some sort of RGB(W) bulbs (or strips?) and you are trying to program special effects? Or do they have effects packages already and you want to activate them? This is a very vendor specific thing on RGBW devices, so would need to know what devices you have. If they dont have preset effects then I think the Holiday Lighting app you found may work. You need to add it to your apps list. If you already installed the code via HPM skip to Installing Your User Developed App in the docs: How to Install Custom Apps | Hubitat Documentation

For presets, maybe Room Lighting is what you are looking for?
You can program set scenes (level and RGB) for groups of lights / bulbs.
You can also have it change based on the time or day, and have various on/off triggers.

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tl;dr.

Have you thought of reading any of the hub documentation?

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Let’s see where this one goes, should be entertaining…

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I am Right with you .. It is a crazy and wild wild west type of system.
I have 50 years of computer / networking experience and had a hard time setting things up!

It takes a wile to figure this system out .. it definitely is not very user friendly.
And will / takes a very long while to figure this stuff out !

The "Learning curve" is really not for the faint of hart.
Would be very nice and helpful if they had some of the useful apps preinstalled ..

I also Wish they had a app that " walked you through " some of the basic setups.
walk you through .. add a device .. add the device to a basic on/off routine ..
add that device automatically to a dashboard type thing for new users..

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But once you start figuring stuff out .. its crazy powerful & amazing & very addicting !

What is very nice is the people on this forum that help / the documentation that's available.
All the different apps / drivers and the ability to add 100000's of devices and make them do
100000's of things you want them to do !

My take on all of this is start small and build on that - ask questions, read docs.
and go down that Hubitat rabbit hole with all the amazing other addicted users !

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I would just like to offer some words of encouragement. Hubitat’s possibilities are practically endless. As such, they have made very few trade offs between capability and usability.

Think of it as the difference between an organized Lego kit that comes with detailed instructions on how to build 1 thing. And a giant box of Legos with photos of a few things you can build with those pieces.

The latter has many more possibilities. Hubitat is a giant box of Legos.

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One thing to remember is that home automation in general isn’t something you need, it’s something you want.

There are a zillion things in Hubitat you can do and at first it can be a bit overwhelming. You don’t have to know everything about this platform, heck, you may not use half of it.

But my recommendation is to start with a problem you want to solve and learn about the apps/capabilities that will help you solve that. Read the docs on that, have some fun with it.

Any real major home automation platform is gonna have a learning curve.

If you can’t or don’t want to do that, then you might be better off with something simple like Alexa, Apple Home, or Google Home.

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I'll say the same things I say every other time this comes up - and I genuinely mean this in the most constructive way possible (not trying to be a smart arse).

  1. Start with the documentation and see if it answers your questions or not. If not, please post some specifics on what you think is missing. Posting something akin to "the documentation stinks" doesn't help anyone improve it.

  2. Feel free to write a guide yourself and post it. People that ask for these things almost always end up figuring out how to do what they wanted, yet (approximately) zero of them come back and post a guide to help others... Seems odd considering how emphatic they are that there should be better guides.

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@Chant

In less than 24 hours, you've been concerned that your hub and home network were hacked, that community members have stalked you, and that there's insufficient help/documentation for your needs.

I know two of those three assertions are simply untrue; therefore, I am left feeling this may not be the right automation platform for your needs.

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Andy, i thought you've been working with Hubitat a long time.

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Pretty sure he said that.....

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There are still many things they could do to improve usability without sacrificing capability.

This is a complex product and you have to RTFM, but the Hubitat user experience is needlessly obtuse in some ways. Well, it isn't fair to say "needlessly obtuse." It's a small company and they have to make choices about what to work on. Still, for the sake of new users I think some effort on usability would be a good idea.

For example, on the device page, functions like Configure, Refresh, and Hub Mesh Enabled and the pre-staging options for lights could be accompanied by terse descriptions, or links to the relevant documentation.

If the documentation exists, anyway. Even those who wish to RTFM can have problems. I tried looking up "pre-staging." It's not in the friendly manual at all.

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There is one reference to "prestaging" that isn't too helpful.

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There is room for improvement.

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If they could do things over, I think they just wouldn't offer this functionality at all; it's not supported by most devices, and the random Zigbee ones that do work with it are apparently misinterpreting the spec, so it probably shouldn't work. The preference-based (as opposed to command) approach also causes issues with many apps (and users) that some may not expect.

That being said, documentation of common commands in the device detail page is on "the list," and along th e lines of what you're requesting, custom commands have the option to offer tooltips to explain what parameters do.

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I understand the list all too well. Things take time.

Tooltips will be a great addition.

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I don't dispute this in the slightest. There is always room for usability improvements. But as a rule of thumb, the open-ended product always has a much steeper learning curve than one that limits the user to a subset.

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I too have struggled at times to make sense of Hubitat, or more broadly, Home Automation. But I do not believe that Hubitat is either badly designed or badly supported. On the contrary.

It is, however, a completely different paradigm than other software applications. And that difference means that there will be a pretty substantial learning curve. It does not seem much different to me than when I learned to use Microsoft Excel. Having Excel calculate a value using "=A1 + B1" is not intuitively obvious if you have never used a spreadsheet before. Then there is the Formatting of the Cell, and then the Conditional Formatting of the cell, etc., the functions for which are all located in different places within the interface. Perhaps we need a "Hubitat for Dummies" book that lays out the big picture, and some of the details. :grinning: User Interfaces are a "black hole" for resources that end up pleasing no one!

With the above said, it seems to me that the Hubitat Principals are a bunch of Software Wonks (said with admiration and envy), that don't place a lot value on usability. I do wish they would set aside a small percentage of their resources for improving the usability.

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I like how hubitat works. It makes me think and learn. If I wanted something simple and dumb, I would buy an apple product and use smarthings, maybe pay geeksquad for it work.

You can do darn near anything with it. Maybe in the future they will make a basic consumer level thing that can't be hacked or tweaked with.

I'll pass. Hubitat solved all my problems related to the other smart hub junk.

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This has been a popular topic of late.... My take is that both sides have a good case and we should be equally respectful of those we find on the other side...

It's a harsh reality that to get such a feature rich platform in the automation space like we enjoy,
with a budget price for the hub.... that does come at a price in terms of the various things we would like to see.... So it is completely understandable that people continue to ask for features like UI enhancements and usability enhancements that come in and out of focus for the small team who continue to deliver so much for us. It is also understandable that many of these requests come from those migrating from other platforms where they enjoyed certain features for many years in some cases.

On the flipside.... It is understandable that existing HE users, many of us who have "grown-up" through the various iterations of the hub, platform and key apps, being appreciative to the improvements we have seen over this time, wanting to defend both the legacy and current state of the platform.

As someone who has been around here for... a while.... I am torn between those who will prosecute the strong case for what HE has to offer.... whilst wanting to remain open-minded to suggestions from those with fresh ideas and perspectives having come from "outside the bubble". I feel like we can sometimes be too defensive... There are definitely times where we need stand firm in the face of inaccurate comments.... but when it comes to potential improvements to help new users... there are times we still adopt this same combative approach....

Just my 2c....

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