HE's biggest weakness :crossout: opportunity

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96

One could leverage the Canary Bulb app written for ST and then run a set of rules exactly as you outlined. This would allow a more automated way to determine how/why the hub rebooted.

I'm sure with the long weekend coming up @bravenel can intergrade this into the next release for full scale power recovery like the OP is requesting. Or they could always do it themselves. :joy:

Edit: this actually sounds like a good idea to use the canary bulb app to trigger a rule to refresh the state of all my devices after a power outage.

Watch This GIF by Apple TV

Edit2: Done. Ported from ST and modified for Hubitat. Uses a canary bulb to detect the power failure and restores a set of switches to their original state. Triggers every 5 minutes or on hub reboot.

97

Speaking of which, I can go to Radio Shack and buy a battery holder for 95 cents. It shouldn't cost any more to add that to the product*

*I was once given essentially this exact argument when telling someone that what they were asking for wasn't going to be easy.

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I suspect getting something ready for manufacturing and mass production is a wee bit different and a lot more expensive up front than going the DIY route.. but I have no experience with this other than buying into a few kickstarter projects.. :laughing:

99

Here's me, reading this and thinking....

If multiple smart people have been motivated enough to search for/create/or improvise a solution to some of the vary issues being discussed on at least TWO different vendor's platforms....and it is doable at a reasonable cost.....does this constitute something that:

a) every new purchaser is suppose to stumble with until they eventually look and find the right community developer written solution?

or something

b) a sharp "market proactive" platform would incorporate so that their hub was better than all the rest in all critical ways....and so that no one could ever have the excuse of being frustrated by this aspect of Home Automation with their platform?

Aren't there people that write reviews and make a big deal about these little things that nobody thinks about when they go buy something ....but that make a big difference when you start to use and rely on the product in a real life collection of "use cases" (i feel so young and hip saying that).

I donno, that's just my 95 cent observation :rofl:

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100

Here ya go:

Ported from ST and modified for Hubitat. Uses a canary bulb to detect the power failure and restores a set of switches to their original state. Triggers every 5 minutes or on hub reboot.

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101

And then outta no where, those nice smart creative folk just pop up and say, "here, just use this and stop your belly achin" :rofl:

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102

It depends on what problem it is you're trying to solve! State the problem, the solution and its cost.

I'm pretty sure that people having issues with hub startup after power outage are a very small minority. Don't have any metrics. None of us have ever witnessed this issue, and we have a lot of hubs running for a long time... Which isn't to say that it doesn't happen, but only to raise the issue of how widespread this actually is. As opposed to something that people want to chat about and dispute.

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103

I have referred to this security platform before-

https://www.visonic.com/Products/PowerG-Wireless-Property-Protection

A closed system except for the Zigbee devices that they have produced. Not the easiest to configure but once you do it doesn't have to continue being your hobby, ...rock solid, cellular communication to your phone or central station, sensor batteries that last forever and the platform regularly polling signal on what it knows should be there to let you know if it's failing to present.

Power goes out, you wouldn't know it...because everything...I mean everything keeps working on the small two cell backup battery pack in the box....for hours. Oh wait, you DO know because it calls or texts you to tell you.

Totally affordable for what it does and the level of reliability. I think I spent somewhere around $799.95 :rofl: OK, probably more after I gained trust and bought more of their sensors. Yes it is turnkey, no where near as flexible in function as HE. I value the function and reliability of this device, and ...eventually....I have no less expectations for the duties I am setting my HE hubs out to perform, more wide ranging as they will be.

Putting aside the vendor end devices that you can't control...there are some things you guys could learn from what Visonics (now owned by Johnson Controls) has done.

It's not idle chat, nor is it just merely about looking for 100% fail-safe recovery from a power loss.

It really, in all seriousness, is mostly unselfish desires to help Hubitat.

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How do you think that can be accomplished at the price points in this market segment? I seriously don't think it's possible for a ~$100 product.

A different market segment, one that's not going to have 95% of the users here buying it. Which implies a very different business model than ours. Not saying it couldn't be done, but there's a reason that company is owned by a very large corporation. We do believe that such a market opportunity exists. It entails fully curated HA systems, designed and installed for consumers who aren't DIY.

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105

This obviously already exists. I recently moved into a house with a moderately sized Control4 system in it. Control4 sells end user access to its programming software. But the dealer has to install all new devices among a few other non-end user functions.

Having both Hubitat and C4 I can say that I believe there is a middle tier of people who would pay a fair amount for a more capable controller. As it is Hubitat already isn't that much less capable than the C4 controller for most use cases.

The one area that the dealer systems are much more capable than current DIY systems is AV. The C4 remote is really very good, better than any Harmony or other consumer remote.

It would be nice if there was a home automation controller in the same spirit as RadioRA 2. Targeted towards dealers, but totally DIY-able. I'd buy it. Dealers earn their fees in design, not reselling hardware. Some people are willing and ready to design and install their own higher end system.

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This is ridiculously easy to do with HE!

The only weakness HE has imo is that sometimes after a power outage, my Zigbee and zwave mesh networks take a while to play nice again.

Iirc rule machine does have some options to refresh or repair zwave mesh networks, but I havenā€™t looked into it yet.

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107

Of course! This is how Control4 got started, in high end AV.

For both Control4 and Lutron the hardware markups are quite high for the dealers. They can make a living from those. A typical Control4 system is $40,000 to $80,000, and the dealer only does a relatively small number of systems per year.

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Or they can pay people knowledgeable in the ways of Home Automation tech to create a non-proprietary and highly flexible system for less money using off the shelf components.

Those kinds of consultants/installers do exist.. :wink:

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109

A DIYer can skip most of the Lutron markup. Not with C4 though. The C4 controller cost is $500-$2000, with he higher-end ones have more AV capacity. So most of that $40-80k is lighting and AV equipment and installation. C4 lighting is about the same retail price as RadioRA 2. If you were fully into C4 it's a good lighting system, the control architecture is much easier to deal with than Lutron and the keypads are cheaper.

And just a note, my house has a combination of C4 and RadioRA 2 dimmers, including about 10 C4 devices. I control the C4 devices in Hubitat via Home Assistant and the Hubitat Home Assistant Device Bridge app. Works great. My plan is to remove the C4 dimmers, but it's not super high on the list right now.

I think that's what a lot of people here have, or attempt to have. I think it's possible to do for almost every thing other than AV. The dealer systems do end up being more reliable, I don't think I've rebooted the C4 controller in almost a year. The dealer systems also are still the only place to get highly capable AV remote controls. And dealer audio systems can be cheaper than Sonos if the home has more than a few audio zones.

I just think there is a middle tier group of people who are willing to pay for something more robust than current Hubitat level but don't want to get locked in to a dealer system. But the fact that there isn't such a thing provides some evidence I might not be correct.

110

Depending on what SmartThings hub you had, the batteries would have also had a constant draw that would make the batteries bleed and screw up the contacts. They fixed it with a firmware update.

However, with Hubitat having batteries, it would then know:
a) the state of the batteries
b) the state of your home's power situation

So, it could warn you to replace the batteries when they're low. Or it could safely turn itself off if it's about to run out of batteries (a big deal, since database corruption on random shutdown is a problem for these hubs).

I'd even be happy with it simply being an add-on that you snap to the bottom of the hub to offer this functionality. (Say) $50 for a battery backup (plain batteries, no recharging) that also reports battery status and whether you have power. A Hubitat-built app specifically for this item could be added where it has safe shutdown parameters.

111

Here's a little history on Visonic, it started overseas, very small like you guys.

They wanted to come in with brilliant technology just under the old wired big name dealer/installed/monitored Security Systems and offer an easy-to-install system with stability, reliability, and resilience that would garner the certification/rating of national standards bodies (and thus the acceptance by insurance industry).

They ended up growing in both directions up the feeding chain, and down, as a new breed of installer adopted them for the ease of installation and affordability. These were installers that weren't tethered to the big companies mired in the past.

Meanwhile, the product started going gangbusters in Europe (where I first encountered it in the 90's) by breaking ground with a new generation of consumer, a young one that "cried BS" on the old model of Dealer/Installer/+ endless Monitoring Subscription.

Everything good about the Visonic platform, including the smarts, resilience, wireless stability, wireline + cellular connectivity, and more came together during their small to medium size corporate period....long before they sold out to big Tyco/Johnson Controls.

The product line isn't nearly as aggressively marketed and sold as it once was...because it represented a bit of disruption to the traditional model of the Security biz when they bought them. Of course they did get a big contract with Comcast once under the big company umbrella but the product isn't being manufactured (maybe not even designed) where it use to be...and I think quality may have slipped a bit.

I guess this all boils down to your vision, your intended customer, how easy and outfitted the product should be out of the box to make up for the challenges of Home Automation and the myriad of device, ...and lastly how far/broad you really intend to take this product/company.

Personally, I think you've left some money on the table in pricing your product. But with that I believe you are deciding to ignore some opportunities in design and componentry that would easily fit under the higher price tag ...and cater to a broader customer base.

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112

Thanks for your insights. Good food for thought.

113

Couldn't HE set a flag when shut down or restarted on purpose via commands. Check for the flag on startup, if missing implement unexpected shutdown routines? I don't know what could be done from there but at least the hub would have a reasonable idea of why it was restarting. Would that be a good time to check integrity of the database? Pole all devices and see what's online? Just some thoughts on the subject.

114

What "unexpected shutdown routines"? Who defines those? The user would have to. Sure, such a flag could be set/checked, and a value passed on the System Startup event, and then trigger rules. But that doesn't really solve the larger problem of what to do on such a startup. My assertion is that this would be a grand waste of time for all involved. It's an uncomputable situation; any attempt to deal with it would be as large an undertaking as having set up the hub in the first place, with its own complexity, rules, etc, and even with all of that done, still wouldn't work reliably. And all this effort to deal with what real world problem? Or should I ask, which of the many possible real world problems?

What's being suggested is tantamount to running a Machine Learning system on top of the HA hub, and applying major AI methods to analyze a very complex situation in order to turn on/off a light.

And with that, I think this topic has run its course. Time to move on to fresh topics....

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