I miss a community driven device product review page in the forum with a standardized device product review form,
As you keep developing your Hubitat environment and keep adding new devices to your smart home, you regularly find yourself in the situation that you need to by some sensor or device that is new to you. And when you start searching for such devices you almost always find out that there are lots of them. Sometimes with clear differences, sometimes with not so clear differences. In this situation I think we would be helpted by a community driven device review section.
I live in Europe. That means I regularly read lots of interesting things about devices only to find that they are not sold in Europe, or miss that they use another z-wave frequency, only work in HE 7 but not 8 and so on. There are a lot of pitfalls but also a lot of devices that do work but that is not offically supported. But to know about this you need to make the right friends here in the community and be part of testing out new drivers.
That is all good and well, but would it not be a lot easier if there was a catalog of officially supported and unsported devices where users could add devices they are using? Perhaps a form to add some data and pictures of the device and where they are using it an in what capacity and some personal review findings on good and less good features, suitable for the US, Asian or European market?
I also think this would increase the scope and possibly sales of new hubs if it became public knowledge how easy it is to find and add devices all over the world in Hubitat, don't you?
Seems like this would be a challenge. There are LOTS of devices in use that are not officially supported. Someone would need to spend a lot of time scanning the list and removing devices that users add but are not officially supported.
And it's complicated by the product life cycles. Lots of supported devices are no longer made, and new devices hit the market all the time.
This is one of the challenges of using an open, interoperable platform. The alternative is to go all in on one brand like Hue, Sonoff, etc. but then you accept the limited devices they have available.
I recently 'smartified' some of my radiators and existing 'doumb' light switches. In that process I deliberately bought different devices to test them out before buying a lot more of one or a few of them. As it is required by law I also hired an electrician to install them. He also gave the devices some thoughts depending on his experience of installing them. These were all supported devices. If more information on devices were available I would not have to do this little market research on my own. And having done it, there is no standardized way of sharing it. I just think that's a pitty.
In my opinion, this would be a wanted feature, to add devices that are not officially supported, yet that works with a driver.
EDIT: This feature might be more applicable to HE users that are not stateside in general and particularly useful for users in Europe.
I agree. Still, most of us in the community go through all this info anyway, so why not share it?
Note that this also exists, and it contains devices that users have used successfully that have not necessarily been tested by staff (as well as many that have):
Everyone could potentially benefit from a thorough review of all devices that are officially compatible or have a working community-developed solution.
The problem is that it’s unusual to find someone motivated enough to turn that idea into reality due to all the effort required to create and maintain such a list over time, which is considerable.
The compatible devices list is the result of the effort the staff are able to put into keeping users informed about which devices have been tested by staff with built-in drivers.
The community devices wiki thread is the result of the efforts that community members have been willing to put it into it.
One doesn't even need to know about the forum to find this; it's linked to at the top of the documented compatible device list.
It honestly might be a little less relevant nowadays; it was created before there even was an official list -- when the hub was brand new, no one knew exactly what devices might work with what drivers (beyond whatever staff tested before that). But it is still updated by the community from time to time, it appears.
Making things "prominent" on Discourse is generally difficult since once a pinned topic is viewed, it automatically unpins itself--but maybe something for Bobby to consider if it's still worth it.
I'm confused.
I thought the OP was looking for a list of HE Compatible devices but are NOT on the HE list of officially supported devices.
The list you linked states at the top that it is a list of "Devices compatible with Hubitat Elevation using built-in drivers." Wouldn't that be officially supported devices?
To be clear, there are no officially supported devices. There is a list of compatible devices that staff have verified to work with Hubitat hardware.
There are many other compatible devices that have not been verified by staff to work with Hubitat. But which community members have shown to function using built-in drivers. It is that second list that @bertabcd1234 linked to.
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