Lowes IRIS Transition

After spending the last month on this transition, I think the thing that's missing for Iris users are quick tutorials in words and screen shots, that show how to duplicate the Iris functionality we are used to. I doubt I'm unique in my basic needs: when you leave the house, you want most lights to go off, and the thermostats to save energy and an intrusion alert system to arm. When you return, you want that reversed. You want different climate at different times of the day. You want a button to shut off the stuff when you go to sleep. It would have saved me weeks if a power-user just chose a method (there are so many ways to do this in Hubitat!) and provided pictures of what to install, and how the rules (or modes or whatever you decide to use) end up looking. And did you use a trigger for that thing? An Action? Too many terms to pick from. Once people copy that recommended package and have it up and running, they have an idea how this works and they can start to deconstruct it for their more specific needs. But coming from the simplicity of Iris I just couldn't grasp the myriad possibilites or parse the huge forum. If I had a job right now, this would not have been possible. Summary: Simple step by step written tutorials are missing.

Some of this is covered in the official documentation.

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Button_Controllers

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Hubitat_Simple_Lighting

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Mode_Lighting

These give how to set these up and some examples.

I'm gonna miss that when a contact sensor is opened or closed, the hub and keypad beep, letting me know something opened or closed.

Right. But I found most of these tutorials simultaneously too simple and too complex to help me. First, they are too fragmented. They don't show how to join all this together into a system that does what I just described... the thing that Iris does out of the box. Then they assume you already understand that there are Modes and Rules and Triggers and Actions and Groups and Scenes etc. and that you can use these things or NOT use these things. That also is insanely confusing. The way Hubitat uses the word "Mode" was not understandable to me at all, and really still isn't because I'm not a programmer used to using Global Variables. Luckily someone finally explained that I don't need to use Modes. I can just use Rule Machine. (Which I'm still trying to perfect my grasp of! But at least it's a little more IF -THEN.) So, I'm back to the same recommendation for migrating IRIS users... Just pick a method and give us a step-by-step tutorial that shows how to replicate the entire lighting, climate and security set up most people had with Iris. Then, if we are sufficiently geeky, we can take that apart at our leisure to unlock the full capabilities of Hubitat.

Trust me, I do think documention (How To, examples, whatever) need some love.

But you also have to remember that HE was not created to be an Iris specific transition platform, at some point and at some level Iris users are going to have to transition and evolve to their new platform whatever one they choose.

How is everyone supposed to know how people did something in Iris? Only so many HE users ever used Iris. I used it to only update firmware of my few Iris devices.

Not to be harsh, but how much time and resources is supposed to be used for say the 50% of the 20k something Iris users that transition to HE? And remember, in a few months those documents are going to be as useful as a Iris hub, not useful at all.

I think it would be much more effective for Iris users to ask how to do something and show how they do it in Iris. Then people can give you specific ways of doing it.

“I did this in Iris > this way. How do I do it in Hubitat?”

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I can see the value of some kind of an Iris Transition Package - Best Practices for Iris Users or something like that. The problem is, by the time it's done, most of the Iris users will have made their transition to wherever they decide to go and then the value of that work is diminished. It might still be useful to have some "starter" suggested configurations . . .

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Everything that I have read online indicates that Lowe's sold an estimated 10-15k hubs. My hub counts in that satistic, despite the fact I switched away from Iris 3 years ago. I doubt Lowe's would have been as generous as they have been with the buyouts if they had anywhere close to 20k active hubs. Considering they're paying users $100 per hub, that figure alone would indicate a $2 million payout. I seriously doubt they're paying out that much more than that across all customers and devices.

I'll second that HE shouldn't focus exclusively on IRIS users making a transition but it would serve HE well to hear users out. I think what I'm missing most from IRIS is the "Scenes" function. A "Scene" was just a list of device actions with no regard to anything else. [Example, Turn on light A, Turn off Thermostat, Turn on Switch, etc.] You could then write a rule that ran the scene. [If 7AM run scene "x"] I loved this because I can craft scenes not only for Home vs. Away but also for "Dogs in Backyard", "Doors and Windows are open", "Im watching a Movie" etc. This was helpful because I would make very complicated scenes that would run with a very simple rule. I would automate 1 rule that ran 1 scene that changed many devices. It would make writing rules simple and would allow you to change automations on the fly. An example would be this, I had 1 rule X that ran 1 scene X for outdoor lighting. This rule ran at sunset and sunrise. I had another rule Y that ran scene X and scene Y that turned on more lights whenever my dogs went outside. Whenever the dogs came inside I simply ran Scene X or did nothing and let the automation run scene X at sunrise. What IRIS let me do was make use of Scene X and Scene Y for as many rules as I pleased. Once Scene X and Scene Y are saved I can run them a myriad of ways by writing a rule. Writing the rule didn't require to edit a long list of devices. I'm not saying HE cant do this so please take my comments with a grain of salt. At the moment it appears that I'll have to edit all the devices I want changed whenever I write a new rule.

You can make a headless Action in RM, and use other rules or triggers to run it. Hubitat also has the Groups and Scenes app, which creates a virtual device to represent that group or scene, which can be turned on or off through other automations.

Sorry for being generous :rofl:
I read somewhere that there were 18k.

I do agree with @Eric.C.Miller, there should be a “NEW USER - START HERE” thread pinned. But ultimately, outside of Please RTFM, look at the wiki threads, use search, if you can’t find it ask... what else is there?

The Iris shut down was a surprise to us also. I have little doubt that had we known, we would have gathered together Something.

For example... Who's ready to predict Wink is next or 2nd next?? What do we have ready for Wink refugees?

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Groups and Scenes, from what I have noticed take a bit of preplanning ahead of time.

I assume you read this already too?
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Groups_and_Scenes

I am slow in that I like to write everything down so I can logically think it all through. :slight_smile:

Wait, Wink is still around? I thought they already went out of business. Maybe that's Quirky I'm thinking of?

Groups and Scenes in Hubitat is pretty powerful and pretty easy to use. I just found it last week and started using it. It sounds like it might do a lot of what you describe.

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Don't let that happen again! :). I suppose the 18k could be the number of hubs shipped, which would undoubedtly be higher than hubs sold, which would still be higher than the number of active hubs.

I don't think an "IRIS Transition" package would serve the community any purpose. I do think there's an opportunity to provide better documentation for best practices or for how to make use of HE's tools like Modes, Virtual Switches etc. The documentation that exists doesn't always come full circle IMHO.

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The extra 3k where probably just bought that last month by non-Iris users to update firmware only.

I do think the official docs and videos are good, maybe not enough, but as a first time user of HA anything.... it was enough for me. If I need help on something specific, I know I only need to ask.

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When I was on ST, I was using Alexa/Google Home for "rooms"/"groups" functionality. Since moving over to HE, I've since deleted all the groups out of Alexa and relied solely on HE for my grouping. It works REALLY well.

Tinkering with groups and scenes is next on my list. It looks promising. Can I use Groups or Scenes to run other devices as well? Like thermostats, and irrigation, etc.?

Some people just want an Easy Button, so I guess Staples Connect is the answer to that.

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