Have budget to hire great leadership and staff across all areas ensuring their services, products and support are the best and they remain leaders in the automation space (or wherever this takes them).
Allow for higher quality and greater innovation on a regular basis.
Even though I complain from time to time I really appreciate the company and the guys running it so I'd like to see them prosper.
But do have some concerns...
I paid $124.95 for my Hubitat hub via Amazon in August 2018. Since then, I've not spent another dollar with Hubitat. Meanwhile I've spent thousands of dollars with other vendors purchasing devices that connect into my Hubitat hub. Then I look to Hubitat to make it all work, rarely if ever contacting any of the vendors who acquired 97% of my HA budget.
We understand there are an infinite number of factors that impact a business's success or failure but its this dichotomy that concerns me the most. It seems to me they're doing all the hard work and earning the least. Can Hubitat survive and prosper the way I hope selling one hub at a time? Is that they're long term plan?
Just want to point out (in case it wasn't already understood) this is a commentary from someone with no factual knowledge of Hubitat's business model, finances or strategic plans. Furthermore, it would be surprising if Hubitat's leadership team wasn't aware of this dichotomy and already addressing it and other challenges facing their business on a daily basis.
This is true about essentially every consumer product in my home (some a lot more expensive than hubitat), so I donât feel the need to independently evaluate any of the manufacturersâ business plans, itâs not worth the time/effort.
All of this has been discussed and argued a dozen times though. Not sure what this thread adds to that debate?
I would imagine most on here want to see Hubitat succeed - myself included!
That said, in my opinion / for my uses, unless two main things happen I don't see much of a future for Hubitat (for me) outside of a handy zwave/zigbee device interface.
Improved resilience for code issues. It is simply too easy for user code and cloud integrations to take down/significantly slow down the hub. This is unique to Hubitat in my experience - I can't remember the last time I was able to crater my Homeseer or Home Assistant installs (without intentionally trying).
Expand the programmability of the system. Rule Machine is great (and I mean that - it is VERY impressive what Bruce has been able to do within the confines of the GUI and platform limitations!), but without the ability to backup rules or edit them outside of the million-clicks GUI interface it is simply too clunky to do anything other than simple automations in it. I write a lot of groovy apps to work around that, but I doubt that is attractive to most end users. Even then, with the fragility of the system in terms of performance impact and or crashes/non-responsiveness most users would be hesitant to put many user apps on it anyway.
I won't presume to tell Hubitat how to fix those items. Maybe a more powerful hub fixes #1 by itself - I don't know. #2 is more fundamental, and less likely to be fixed any time soon.
You may disagree - and that is fine. But I know my needs, and how I use the system, and in my opinion in its current form it is great for zwave/zigbee input/output and very simple automation - and not much else.
As such I've focused most of my effort on making connectors to get zwave/zigbee data in/out of Hubitat (which it is better at than pretty much any other platform) and into other more systems better suited for the cloud integrations, logic, and programming.
I think itâs time to step back from growth-related development (adding features to RM, new drivers, etc) and focus on stability. SmartThings was faced with this in 2016 when outages, slowdowns, and other glitches were hitting the platform almost daily.
Now is the time given how widespread it appears the issue is.
Back on the original topic - Hubitat succeeding. I would even be ok if the fixes to my needs were "pro" features that required a subscription model or additional license.
Examples -
A "pro" connector license to allow for an external Rpi running webcore (in a supported and integrated way) for instance.
Or a "pro" license that allowed for running the hubitat software stack on more capable hardware, instead of being locked in to their low powered hub.
A "pro" license that came with a fully supported MQTT client to puke data to/from a broker to facilitate easier integration with 3rd party systems.
Something... But if it is going to cost extra, I expect an extra level of Hubitat support for those features as well. If it would still be "unsupported" then I might as well just keep 'rolling my own' and save the money.
I would have coughed up a sizeable chunk of money a long time ago if Hubitat would have provided some of the above features and saved me dozens (maybe hundreds at this point) of hours writing custom workarounds. But I am in a specific situation - I have money, I don't have time...
And changes I would not support for Hubitat to raise revenues:
Making existing base functions (like user apps/drivers) require a "pro" license
Making the base system require a subscription cost / aka non-perpetual use licenses on base systems
Pay for support hours (on base systems)
An "app store" for user apps/drivers (that model sucks on Homeseer, and would suck on here). If users want to charge for their creations, they can do that outside of the system (subscription web service, RBoy apps equivalent, etc) [if allowed by Hubitat's licensing / ToS conditions]
This would need them to alter the tos - to do that they require 20% of the income generated.
(Not sure what they are doing for that but there it is)
100% agree with this!
Whatâs the point of adding new drivers etc if the platform falls over, requiring a daily reboot?
Even using a number of hubs, I have still had the dreaded loss of zigbee with it switching to channel 11
This is with almost no apps running on the hub, just using it to connect zigbee devices (around 75)
I have to say that it is somewhat trying my patience
I'm still seeing this as well but TBH I've given up chasing it.
I raised the original thread on this and a support ticket. This was closed as I had not given them more information! Not sure what else I could have done.
I'm using 2 custom apps by other users to reboot my hubs 3 times a week and to auto reboot if the database becomes unresponsive.
Doing the above seems to keep my hubs working as I want them to but we really shouldn't be having to do this.
@Royski had an issue with his zigbee stick not long ago and ended up swapping it out.
Obviously, doing that requires you to rejoin everything again.. not sure I want to spend the time doing that unless I have to.
Although I do have a couple of âspareâ ones, if I have to do that then I might look to see if there is a compatible better usb stick.
On this, does anyone out there know if there is a 'more powerful and compatible' zigbee stick that we could use? (If such a thing exists).
Lets hit google and see what I come up with.
In view of the fact that the zigbee âdrops offâ when the hub is stressed, it got me thinking about power to the usb port..
I wonder if a powered usb hub would make it more stable?
I might well try this just for fun.
I have a virtual âswitchâ driver which I created a while ago.
So you can schedule it with RM if you wish or put it on a dashboard for manual use
With this you can reboot/shutdown the local hub or a remote hub on the lan.
Iâll release it when the website is open
I think if more people start expressing this desire, as they have very recently, it will happen.
Hubitat has a great reputation for supporting a wide variety of devices, and that brings customers in... The lack of platform stability will ultimately push customers out.
That is the reason I'm not constantly generating negative posts on the matter is because I know ultimately Hubitat HAS to find and fix the issue. It is key to their survival.. And with a new CEO and new hub on the horizon, I know they are planning to stick around for a while.
I think both you and @Cobra have hit the nail on the head. Because there's a significant number of users reporting the need to reboot daily, stabilizing the platform has to be an issue of the highest priority for Hubitat.
I just want to point out that the vast majority of their efforts may already be devoted to resolving that issue; however, it is extremely unlikely that we'll see a public statement to that effect because of its impact on sales over the short term, which are likely needed to make payroll, restock hubs etc. etc.
Maybe... Maybe not. Only they know - anything else is just speculation.
I've (many times) seen companies not work on the "top priority issue" the hardest for many reasons - schedules, deadlines, project/contractual commitments, etc.
They've already said they are working on it, though, and they also want it fixed. So we don't need to speculate about that part!
