I am a novice, I have, several Echo's, Wiser smart heating controls (&plugs), Philips Hue lights (& plugs) and some old Kasa kit and a Nanoleaf.
It all works well, but I would like to set up a dashboard and my journey for one has brought me here.
Am I in the right place?
Do I have to uninstall everything and then connect via the Elevation? If so, can I run the Dashboard on many devices? ie PC, iPhone, iPad?? I assume I can ask Alexa to turn stuff on and off still???
I am assuming you have a Hue bridge, which could be integrated with HE without disrupting any of your existing setup. Same goes with Kasa, those can be integrated with a system integration that uses local communication over your LAN.
You could then move your link from those devices to Alexa over to HE, or keep it how you have it now. There is a slight benefit to moving it to HE but would not be required.
The Nanoleaf and Wiser, I am not sure about those. I assume they are Wifi devices? Do you know if they support Matter?
Yes the dashboard can be opened on any device with a web browser, and can be open on multiple devices.
I am finding it a tad overwhelming if I am honest, but I am fascinated and would like that illusive dashboard. Sadly, I have no idea what Matter is. I think I read in a product list of conformity (or similar) that Wiser, also Schneider, is supported. The nanoleaf I am not so worried about.
If your Wiser control is Wifi based I think I found one hacked together community driver on the forums, ported over from an old Smart Things driver. There is no official support. I do not see anything about Wiser plugs anywhere.
Wifi/cloud device generally have very limited support. HE is focused on local control, which is primarily Z-Wave and Zigbee devices, and now also Matter. Some LAN devices have documented local control options, and when they do, support is usually pretty good with built in or community solutions.
Undocumented cloud APIs are usually reverse engineered, flaky and subject to change without notice from the company that runs it, SO may stop working at any given time.
If you are android based, then I would suggest HD+. Dashboard design and use is quite easy. I have several Amazon pads mounted around my house. I use HD+ on those and my phone (android) to control most of my home automation. I also have several Echo devices in the mix for voice control. Unfortunately, there is not an iPhone version of HD+.
It really depends on your needs. I have both. I use the HD 8 for smaller, less used dashboards. But I prefer the most real estate that I can get. So I prefer the HD 10. Both work well. I have considered a big android flat-screen monitor, but the WAF is poor with that idea.
I found dashboard design with Hubitat to be frustrating. But many here have some great projects. I made a down-and-dirty dashboard for my wife's iPhone just for security/alarm control.
Yeah honestly if your only desire is better dashboard you might be better off with Home Assistant. Its a little more work to figure out, and you might need to do some custom YAML configuration, but the dashboard is a lot more flexible and stylish on Home Assistant once setup. Its going to depend a lot on your overall skills and what you are comfortable doing.
Also, they have a lot more community supported cloud type integrations that may work for your Wiser devices.
I think though if you start down the Path with HE, once you see what it can do, it will open you up to all sorts of other things you never even thought of. Soon enough you will be adding Zigbee and Z-Wave devices to the mix and scoffing at the Wifi cloud devices like the rest of us
No offense intended to anyone, but I'm going to guess that these two comments are at odds. You surprised me @richard12 when you said you ordered, expecially after this response...
But then again, maybe your best course of action in this scenario would be to change your devices to those that are not cloud based WiFi and have support on Hubitat. Having said that, you point out in your original post that you have Alexa and everything is working fine.
Maybe the best thing for you would instead be to use the Alexa app as your dashboard on your iPhone and iPads, and/or an Amazon Fire tablet, or one of the Echo Show devices which have built-in dashboards. The Amazon Alexa app is not the best, and not very customizable, but it does the job.
The Alexa dashboard is pretty pants. In that it can display the items I have and control them, but that is about it.
I like the look of Home Assistant software, but the look of hardware didn't fill me with confidence. But as you know, I know nothing.
Thanks for all the replys everyone, I am looking forwards to this wee journey.
You are correct. Robust is not exactly the word I was looking for. Although, that depends somewhat on how the requirements of a dashboard are defined.
The primary requirement of a dashboard feature, beyond basic functionality - which is assumed, is that the dashboards be visually appealing thus enticing the eye and the mind to become one with smart home functionality.
Not easy to configure — are probably the words I would use. With effort you can build some beautiful dashboards with the built in feature. Long before it was that good SharpTools came along and about that same time I build HousePanel. HousePanel does not have many users but those who do use it love it, including me. Here is a link to the HousePanel thread. And more info is at HP Documentation Site
I wouldn’t recommend it for a newbie though since installation requires a local rPI or equivalent Node.js server.
The yaml config could be over soon for some people wanting nice dashboard with HA.
This project is still in beta but it took me 5 mins to setup a dashboard with limited options of course.
Strangely I like messing with yaml because it likes css and give you way more control.
