I have some questions about Hubitat: Bluetooth and Rules

How tech savvy you have to be to use Hubitat?
Is it possible to create complex rules without writing scripts?
The hub has no Bluetooth? Is it possible to use a BTLe dongle to let the hub communicate with BT devices?

RM rules can be easy or complicated, that’s really up to the user. I don’t know how to write Groovy code and the WebCoRE type scripts from SmartThings make me cringe.

You use a GUI to create rules, not text. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. It’s a building block style. One rule can support another to do complex things when needed.

Bluetooth dongles cannot be used with the hub.

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I think to make rules like in HE are a big Plus ( do not know any other hub, or RPi software wich has that).
But I really want to control my BT operated blinds and make use of my BT speakers.
So for now I just keep reading here to see if I actually am going to get a HE.
( Community here is ok though :slight_smile:)

What's the interface to operate the blinds today?

Looking for a way to use BTLe on HE. (Also to convince me to buy HE)
Is it possible with RPi + Node + Bluez?

Technically, yes. But you would need to write a custom driver for HE to be able to interpret the incoming/outgoing data. It wouldn't be a difficult driver, just one that can communicate with the RPi to pass commands back and forth to Bluez.

Out of the box, HE doesn't support BLE.

I was considering to buy a hubitat.
But no bluetooth available makes me thinking about not to buy it.

Welcome. No offense intended, but seems like a silly reason not to buy. What hubs can integrate with almost anything and support the highly experimental and not very reliable Bluetooth presence capability?

Why not buy a developer kit for Bluetooth presence and integrate it. If you could make it accurate, (something that many individuals and companies have tried, but concluded that it is not accurate without a large number of beacons) then I’m sure many people here would be interested.

Homey has a lot of possibilities to integrate almost anything.
Bluetooth is important to me for other devices also, not only presence detection. Still can't find a reliable presence detection, maybe combine something with wifi, gps and btle from phone?
And no offense intended from my side but I do not have ability, patience nor desire anymore to develop anything.
The reason why Hubitat got my attention was the RM.
No programming skills required to make rules? Cool, but Bluetooth is a big desire for me.

Ok sorry I misunderstood your intention. I don’t think Bluetooth is appropriate for arrival and departure types of presence detection. Too weak to properly detect you outside the home. You would need outdoor beacons.

I have handled detection by combining iPhone presence and Wi-Fi presence. Search the forum for WiFi presence. There’s a new community project for that. I’m using the capability of my router to trigger iFTTT and flip a virtual switch in HE when our devices connect to it. RM evaluates the two conditions and with that indicates our presence or absence, and then performs actions based on either the true or false result.

I’m going to add a motion sensor input to that evaluation for improvement to accuracy and false trigger prevention. I’m currently also seeking a new way to accurately detect presence from our iPhones. I was using Homebridge and that was great, but recently I’m having issues that slow my hub when I use it and haven’t determined why exactly. Not everyone is experiencing the same thing, so some people that are also iOS users are able to use that method with no issues.

There’s several ways to detect presence and more are in the way. However if you need Bluetooth for some other reason and it’s a deal breaker, then you’ll need to accept that it isn’t here and is highly unlikely to be added in the near future.

IFTTT and Live 360 integrations are native to the hub, but much of what I’m talking about for presence is not built in at this time and are supported by the community only.

I already placed something in the category "Why HE" because I do not want to get off topic here.

I'm not all that familiar with BLE developments - are there (fairly) mature presence solutions that leverage BLE? What's the scope? I think it would be really useful to be able to identify the location of things and people within the house - right now I think most of us rely on motion sensors for that. There has been some discussion about whether it would be feasible to use environmental monitoring - temperature, CO2 concentration, etc. to determine presence of people/animals.

I was a backer of the Atlas project that TrackR was working in to do just that based on phone BLE but it just wasn’t accurate so they abandoned the project and refunded backers.

Interesting. Thanks!

Triangulation based on disruption of Wi-Fi signals is an interesting concept, but this has proved to be just as challenging for researchers.

For now the lack of BT is the only reason holding me to order HE.
All other things look fine to me including the community.

You posted essentially the same question in 3 different threads, I have combined them here.

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And my apologies, I posted comments and questions to those in several different places. Thanks for reorganizing it!

@cendeni Who's BT enabled blinds are you talking about? MySmartBlinds?

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Something like MySmartBlinds but other manufacturer.