I have many questions, but figured I ask this first. I see most of the stuff I want to use on compatible list and wiki (as long as somfy and Grable are same zwave). I live in NY and have vacation house in SC. I visit maybe 4 weeks out of the year, but family and friends use more often. I have HS4 in NY. Is HE 7 good for me to use devices remotely (mobile) and for my family (Immediate fam) to use on mobile device? Don't want to know if it can be done but can it be done without a lot of effort?
Thanks in advance
Been reading some folks say it can be done some see security issues.
Shouldn’t be a problem. Once you have it set up 95% of what you or family will want to do can be done via a dashboard. You’ll want to have a VPN connection available for the other 5% though - several ways of doing that and the community is always here to discuss the pros and cons if you need help.
Should work. For family local use you might want to find an inexpensive tablet, set up a dashboard on it for them to use, and leave it at the house - nice large icons and easy to use. There's an Android dashboard app that is very full-featured and easy to setup/use. It does require configuration on each device where you want to use it so that might be an issue if you want them to have access from their own mobile devices. But for a tablet left in place it's a very good option.
For remote configuration you're going to need a VPN or other way of connecting to your hub remotely. A VPN on a Pi at the vacation house (I recommend Wireguard, but there's also PiVPN) would probably be the easiest if your modem at the vacation house doesn't natively support a VPN.