Kevin Tofel has just posted a review which he spoke to on Episode 203 of The Internet of Things Podcast with his co-host Stacey Higginbotham. The posted review actually reads more favorable than the verbal description on the show. All-in-all it's a good review and I think provides some valuable feedback.
The only thing I still can't agree with is the notion that SmartThings is plug and play. When I bought my SmartThings v2 hub a few years ago, I was very confused and had to spend a significant amount of time reading the forum to figure it out. I'm not saying that Hubitat is easier in that regard (although my personal initial impression was that is was indeed easier), but it isn't more complicated. I really don't agree with it being as straight forward as a Wink hub.
Kevin doesn't mention in his review how he configured the Cree light and SmartThings button he mentioned on the podcast, so I have to wonder if he didn't try to configure it with a rule, which he subsequently got wrong, instead of simply setting up button controller. Possibly he ran into a bug, but it's not clear.
Anyway, it's a good read. I intend to reach out to him for clarification on some of his points. It's helpful for anyone on the fence about the platform, and it does point out how well HE does what it is intended to do.
I really get what that podcast says about hubs going away, at least in the traditional way. The hubs are becoming Google and Amazon. And Apple, the one that actually controls stuff. Amazon is getting there.
When they really arrive at providing people with automation solutions like SmartThings started to do and now Hubitat does for me, people will see more value in the smart home.
Luckily the people who liked what was good about SmartThings, wink and the like, see what Hubitat has to offer and the people who want more control of thier devices will come to Hubitat. Good luck when they come with thier Bluetooth and WiFi devices.
Hmm, maybe a mistake in the article. I'm sure the hardware contains it by spec, but it is disabled. Most of the time these mini computers will have bluetooth and wifi on a single chip. Hubitat has no plans to enable the WiFi from what I know about it. So there's likely no way the Bluetooth would be enabled either. Probably would be too weak to be useful or reliable anyway.
Yeah I can see production scale pushing the cost of the units down even when there's undesired hardware included. I wonder how the reviewer came upon the info. Doesn't seem like he cracked it open ... I guess it just came up in conversations with Hubitat staff (he does mention speaking with them about it, perhaps I'm just taking the apparent timeline a bit literally).
And this is what I most fear about my Smart Home technology.
Amazon and Google know far too much about me already. The idea of granting them even more access beyond my reading/tv watching and search/web/e-mail habits fills me with abject dread.
From a reliability stand point cloud based solutions are not the best, as we know with ST. Unless Google and Amazon come out with an option that allows devices to function without internet, I do not think the average Joe is going to want to deal with HA that just stops working because of cloud or internet issues.
Wifi draws too much power currently for any battery devices (although this should get better) and even wired devices it could add up in power usage if you have 100+ devices.
Bluetooth just does not have the range that Zigbee, Z-Wave or WiFi does, even with the newer mesh capabilities, I still wouldn't be surprised if there are range issues.
