Agreed. Not an end game for me. Itās a hobby I enjoy. As @Navat604 suggested, the Do it For Me hubs are out there if thatās what you want. Everything you buy today carries risk that it will be discontinued and no longer supported, or parts will become unavailable.
Itās the reality we must accept, or change by starting a business that doesnāt do that. But then You are responsible for turning a profit and paying your investors to ensure you donāt have to disappoint your customers. If youāre up for that, pitch me on your new hub, maybe Iāll trust you enough to buy one and setup all my stuff on it.
I'll be honest, I'd rather support a little guy company with small overhead than a larger company trying to be mainstream and overextending themselves. Samsung could decide tomorrow that SmartThings isn't profitable and shelf the whole thing. Wink bought tv ads and ran out of money trying to do too much with an investor who didn't care about the business.
Pretty terrible first post by the way..welcome to the community.
I think most people rely on some internet connectivity to provide geobased location information, notifications to their phone when away from the home for HSM, access to the cloud based dashboard. The hub would be seriously handicapped by the loss of internet connectivity but, some things, like motion lighting, would still work. I think most people would be looking for a new hub at this point.
I think this is really the home automation market's only hope of having a product around long term without the risk of bankruptcy, acquisition or discontinuation.
I am not worried or concerned. The Hubitat will still function locally if their Cloud server shuts down.
In all the years ( and platforms of home automation I have had since 1989) Hubitat is the most stable and reliable.
I think posts like this thread instill an unnecessary fear in people.
Letās just enjoy this platform while it is in this portion of our lives.
I just want to chime in here before I head out for a while.
If Hubitat goes awry, then you could just use MQTT or the Maker API and a custom Alexa/Google Home integration via a raspberry pi or something. Everything locally will still work, and you could build around that.
Itās not something Iām going to worry about, though.
edit: the HomeKit integration is also local, so thereās that, too.
Well, none of us is privy to the business plans of either company. Hubitat could become hugely successful and it's owners decide to cash out or not. Samsung could decide tomorrow that the margins on their smart home division are too small to be worthwhile or not. Realistically, my <$100 Hubitat hardware is likely to be like any other consumer electronics purchase I've made--it'll probably eventually end up in a drawer of hardware I no longer use. I hope that's not the case and I'll continue to use and enjoy it for as long as it makes sense to.
I came from Wink over a year ago when it became clear to me that Wink was in a flaming death spiral. I was sad to make the switch but in retrospect it was a great decision and as much as I liked Wink, Hubitat has been so much better.
Maybe there will be a day when I'm faced with the same decision with Hubitat, or not. I'm hoping for the latter but at the end of the day there's always something else around the corner.
I'm not worried about it at all. There has always been a option from the get go that a premium tier is possible so I am assuming that would cover any cloud usage and help pay the tiny fraction of cloud access HE already provides.
Even IF, and that's a big IF, they should scale back in FW updates I doubt @bravenel@mike.maxwell and Pete would simply kill any active HUB or cloud without some sort of option for people here.
I also need to point out that both @bravenel and @mike.maxwell came from ST and know the pain first hand with SmartThings which is why Hubitat was created with LOCAL control. Not one setting, app or driver is cloud.
Good to know... but realistic item 6 is always the plan in one way or another... may not sell out but making cash is the goal of business
Which is why you don't communicate the nitty gritty details of business or updates or releases etc. We'll know you've lost it when you start providing timelines.
