Has AnyOne (rant)

At the moment I'm using Node Red on a Raspberry Pi 4, to do the things Hubitat can't, like sending and receiving request from/to google home devices, I know Hubitat has a Chromecast app, but to be honest it's crap and is on beta anyway and has been for years, also using a calendar (with Caldav link) to disable activations when say away or home but on holiday etc, so what I'm asking has anyone come up with way to achieve these thing through Hubitat, would be nice if Hubitat actually listened to it's customers. Thanks everyone, any help much appreciated

For calendar integration:

I dont have google speakers so cant help on the other part of it.

3 Likes

I've never had a problem with chromecast integration doing tts or what have you... (I have issues with their current firmware but that has nothing to do with Hubitat) That said it's easy enough to create a virtual switch attached to whatever you want then expose that to google. So lets say you create a virtual switch and call that Away Mode, then expose it to google as a switch, you just say "Hey google, Away Mode On" and it will switch hubitat to away mode (or what ever mode you made)

5 Likes

Pretty much any community developed app is in perpetual beta. What exactly are you expecting for free ?

Wow. Not sure what you mean by that. If taken literally , that's a patently false statement. I do see quite often, examples of hubitat listening to their customers. Just because you want something doesn't mean it's doable, or even a priority. I see very specialized requests asked all the time won't work, or that honestly very few people would use. It just isn't a priority for them to dedicate resources to developing. Hubitat isn't some huge company like Google with thousands of employees writting code 24/7. It's a small hanful of people , who are also quite active in the community helping in addition to their day jobs. I'm reasonably sure in this case if it was possible it would have been done. Given the restrictions Google places on nest, it's reasonable to speculate that they have similar restrictions on their other services.

Didn't anyone ever tell you you get more bees with honey than vinegar?

Finally you may want to consider changing your post title to actually reflect your question.

8 Likes

Don't real understand your rant, and as for you saying it's free, I paid £136 for hub, I pay for Hub Protection and remote access. So hubitat can come out with update, I've had 3 this week, but nothing for thing people want, calendar access is all over the internet and on YouTube, and potential customers are seeing this remarks and are going else where, Home Assistant has come leaps and bounds in just a year, and that's total free, so remarks like yours help the demise of Hubitat not protecting it's future, and my title is my decision, you didn't have to click on it.

Reread your post. Extremely hostile. You want help, but
trash everyone and everything.

However, I do stand corrected on one point. I was under the impression that the chromecast integration was a community app, not a system app. I don't use it. Are you sure what you want is doable? Are you sure that there aren't restristions on Googles end the prevent third parties fro doing what you are looking for? They have resrtructed nest integrations (which is why there is no official nest integration), so its perfectly reasonable to surmise they have restrictions on their other products as well. Only hubitat staff can answer that. Even in Android they have been steadily removing access to phone fratures, and it is becoming a more walled off environment.

Really? Where do I find one of those free hubs? Thats not even an equal comparrison.

That was why I made the sugggetion. So that you would bemore likely to get more helpful responses. Had you actully said what you were looking for, that whole conversation wouldn't have even happend. Apparently your goal was simply to rant and waste time.

6 Likes

You are entitled to your opinion, but let's keep it civil. As to calendar access (really, that's the sword you're going to fall on?), some of us could care less about it and would much prefer seeing the other advances come out. It's a matter of prioritization of limited resources, will there be a time when calendar access makes the list? It's possible... just not right now.

12 Likes

If you chose a less cryptic title, perhaps you'd receive responses that more effectively addressed the content of your post.

9 Likes

I think he's talking about the built-in Chromecast Integration (beta). Which is an included app from Hubitat. So, yes we all paid for it. While it does work (sometimes), it definitely needs a lot of work.

5 Likes

Also it's not entirely fair to Hubitat since Google changed up a bunch of stuff over time including their API access and auth processes which has killed a bunch of third party apps access. Ostensibly for "security" but also to exert greater control over their platform - rightly or wrongly.

1 Like

I don't know about that stuff but this is straight from HE...

1 Like

Yeah, I'm not sure how it works now - probably Hubitat, Inc will have to apply for using the app or maybe it's too costly time/resource-wise.

Right after that post google started announcing API lockdowns - this one was for gmail

My big sadness was the Nest stuff.. which again, right around the same time.

I really loved @tonesto7 's NST stuff (ported from ST by @nh.schottfam)

:cry:

1 Like

What a load of BS...

"The reasons for this are security and simplicity, according to Soucie. WWN allowed many partners to access data about Nest products that today Google doesn’t feel they should have access to. These include Home/Away data, motion, and temperature set points from its thermostat, and the ability to turn on and off Nest Cameras based on external events."

If I'm the owner of the hardware, shouldn't I be allowed to decide who and what can use its data?

6 Likes

Have you tried the following, i have it working with o356 and iCloud calendars. I have automations to adjust my wake up time for PTO days and day i need to get up early to work out.

2 Likes

@dkilgore90's Nest integration works great bringing in a lot of Nest data and allowing me to control my Nest thermostat. BIG thing that is missing is the Nest Protects.

Just those D@#n speakers I'm having issues with! :wink: :upside_down_face: :grin:

4 Likes

Thanks guy's for all your help, but I haven't got a Google workspace account, did try the manual way, did get everything working until I had the Auth Link, and it went down hill from there, it's so much easier on Node Red, I have a Cast node and a Google Assistant Bridge node, which was setup in second, was hope to keep everything on 1 device, and the iCal has very limited abilities unlike Node Red iCal Trigger, which i have setup to alert me on up come calendar events. I've had the C5 hub now for about 2 years, will give Hubitat another year, and if I cant get what I need out of it then, I don't think it's worth keeping Hubitat, and will try Home Assistant. Thanks anyway guy's.

Home Assistant is great.. you can do a lot of things with it but managing devices is much simpler and arguably more reliable in HE. You can also end up going down a rabbit hole of issues if not careful. I just had this happen when a Sonoff Zigbee 3 stick unexpectedly stopped communicating. with some test stuff. Keep in mind you can always bridge devices to and from HE using the available community apps so still leverage the advantages of the HE ecosystem.

For my home system I am currently testing HomeAssistant running with the Node-RED addon as my HE "companion server".

Home assistant is my "app manager" - allowing me to easily install and maintain things like Mosquitto MQTT Server, Ring, Node-RED etc via the UI. In addition HA can also provide access to other devices/services that are unavailable or not yet complete in HE. Everything talks to Node-RED where most of my "rules" live.

My HE hubs (2 C5's and a C7) do everything else including device management and certain apps like Alexa, Lutron, groups, scene control etc.

edit1: You might consider doing something like this.. it should give you the flexibility to change things around if you continue to experience issues and test drive HA in the process.

edit2 Also wanted to say if you've been using your hub for 2 years and are willing to go another year surely you must be getting some sort of value/use out of the hub right?

5 Likes

Hi, Yes I'm getting good results from HE, I just want everything in 1 place, Room Lighting apps is a big improvement on Rule Machine, but still need work, most of my automations were on Node Red, because Rule Machine was so long winded, but am in the middle of moving over to Room Lighting and actually find Rule Machine useful at time now, It's just so annoying, I have to stick with Node Red. I contacted Hubitat over a year ago about Calendar and the problems I had with Chromecast Integration, but nothing has changed, they can produce updates for drivers every 5 minutes, but nothing for real life actions, even if there created a Calendar app in Hubitat would be grate, but nothing.

NR is definitely not for everyone but can provide some useful things like the very intuitive visual flow style "programming" (ymmv), ability to control everything down to the hardware and the flexibility to integrate with a wide range of systems including HE. I use it as a "companion server" to HE for all most of my client deployments and for my personal setup.

Certainly there is a lot of great stuff that's been added over time to HE. Keeping everything local to the hub is probably the simplest/most reliable strategy and recommended for most people.

This is one of the great things about HE - the ability to choose different solutions based on your use-case.

2 Likes

It simply boils down to what makes sense for them. Drivers take a few hours to make whereas an app takes far longer to make and then debug. I mean even in the beta to now, @bravenel is debugging Room Lighting because @jtp10181 is too damned sharp eyed ( :rofl:) One person asking for an app and one that would be low priority on their road map in the first place isn't going to move to the top of the list. In cases like this the community has already provided an app that works. They can even be more receptive to adding a feature to their app to improve it. As to the chromecast integration, it does do what it was designed to do (basic tts and turning on/off switches) but yeah could use improvement but that too is low priority at the moment. Have you looked at the community google app? Far more feature rich...

3 Likes