You’re assuming that they want the community’s help for this specific development task. While I’ve seen them incorporate community dev work before, there’s no indication that it will ever be solicited for their mobile app.
I sympathize with the people that really want an app, but for me, I’m finding the currently available options for integrating notifications and geolocation to be entirely adequate. Especially Locative for presence on ios, thanks for the heads up on that @ogiewon!
True.... But if they want to growth fast and keeping their costs down, they should REALLY consider. People in the forums are the early adopters, those that share their passion and pains.
Besides a problem shared is a problem halved.
I disagree with you here, all the existent solutions rely on other online services and are not local. The expected main force of Hubitat is local processing. If my internet is out and I'm home on my wifi and someone gets into my house, there us a leak, the door is left open etc... I still would like to receive a notification from it.
Besides if you want to expand user adoptation of hubitat you should not rely on solutions that are adequate for POWER users.
You really believe that my mom and dad that are on their way to 70's will install and manage iftt and pushover on their phones?!.
Simply of use,simply of mind.
Are they going to install and manage Hubitat at home? If so, I'd wager that the addition of IFTTT and/or Pushover is insignificant.
Zigbee. St contact sensors. I have thried every troubleshooting tip. Other than plugging wink back in
No they will not. I potentially will.
But I don't live there, they live hundred KM away.
Are you saying that only power users should use HA and in particular HE?
I'm sure that they will be simple users that will not even know how to connect to HE. They will Dashboard users.
Should they not have a proper notification system, even when Internet fails.
Also keep in mind that they live in rural areas were they rely on ADSL. So internet is flaky hence HE and not Smarthings
He might not be saying that, but I certainly would! HE is not designed or geared around casual users or novices at this time. In MY opinion.
Really?!
I never heard that statement from Hubitat.
And you probably won't, as they want to sell more hubs - why limit the audience?
That is why I said in MY opinion, and I don't work at Hubitat so take my opinion for what it is worth.
Understood and respect your opinion.
I simply believe that HE will need to implement this sooner than later for user traction.
I can't tell you how you or your family should use Hubitat or anything else, it's not my place and home automation/control means different things to different people. From my perspective though, if I'm supporting someone else's installation, that person probably doesn't care if I install extra apps on their phone, for many different reasons. If that person is supporting their own installation, they are tech savvy enough to install their own apps. Either way, I don't see needing a 3rd party app as any kind of significant roadblock at all.
If local notifications are necessary, push notification on a phone is the wrong solution from the get-go IMO. You can use TTS speakers, alarm sirens, flash lights, turn colored bulbs to red, etc...lots of other ways to notify if there's a problem that don't require any kind of internet connection and are much more obvious than checking your phone.
As long as home automation relies on someone getting in to a central hub or whatever and setting up apps and rules, it will be in the world of power users. I personally don't see any way around that. True mainstream adoption will happen when we have the ability to tell the hub/controller (via Google, Alexa, or something else) exactly what you want, then have the logic rules be built and run in the background, behind some curtain or user interface that end users don't see. Dashboards, phone apps, and voice control of lights are not automation, they are just different versions of remote control.
I agree. The day 1/OOB experience is poor/unapproachable. Again, my opinion.
I would guess most casual users, or less technical users, would expect an easy and intuitive way to control devices on/off/dim without going into the details of a device and reading through a big page of text/technical details. Similar to the default tiles on a ST hub, the device lists in HomeSeer, etc.
While you can obviously fully control a device from the device details page, I would argue that is not easy or intuitive.
As a baby step, I would like to see them make a default "catch all" dashboard that automatically adds all devices (and new devices when added to the system). That way you could at least have something as a starting place for control without going into device detail pages.
Valid thoughts.
In my humble opinion though it shouldn't be one or the other. It should be both. You should provide power users with control to manage the installation and regular users a mean to use the HA.
HA is here to simplify people lives and make it better.
Regular users, like the wife, the kids, etc, will need that automation is present but they also need the ability to interact with the house outside of the automation set in.
When I say Google to set my home to movie time and it sets all my routines and also sets my lighting to dim blue. There is a day I don't want blue I want them red. So I need a easy way to apply that change on the spot.
This is clause 1c of the HE terms of service (in other words, pretty close to the top):
Customer acknowledges that the Hubitat Platform is under continuous development, is not complete or otherwise at the final stage of development and that Hubitat makes no representation that the Hubitat Platform is error or bug free. Customer acknowledges and agrees that the Hubitat Platform may experience unscheduled downtime and agrees that Hubitat shall not be liable for any harm resulting from unscheduled downtime.
My personal opinion is that the mobile app will be ready when it’s ready. As early adopters/power users, we are all signing up to use the platform on their terms.
100% in agreement with this.
This is just my personally feedback,
I'm just one in hundred of users. That shares their challenges and hopes.
Any company will need to obtain feedback (VOC) to understand what roadmap to implement. HE does this through this forums.
I'm just sharing my personally view on one topic within so many. This is my feedback to them.
Nobody reads that crap. And certainly not the novice/non-techie people we are talking about.
But I agree that early adopters should always be prepared for bumps in the road.
Totally agree, just pointing out that this is the platform they offer at this time. I trust that they will expand it in the future in a way that they have decided makes the most sense. Taking into account not just early adopter feedback, but any number of factors that we as power users (ie customers) couldn’t possibly be privy to.
They have said there will be a mobile app for notifications and presence. Although local processing is clearly a priority for this platform, I’m not sure that it makes sense to expect either of these features to work without functional internet/cloud services, btw, as @destructure00 mentioned .
Til then, I am in the camp that is content to make use of currently available integrations, and wait it out. I don’t think my feedback on how to bring this platform to the masses is of much use.
Makes sense to me. I like HE as it is now.
In fact, even if they added an app to do presence detection and notifications, I doubt I would use it over Life 360, which I like very much and use for more than home automation presence.
Things I absolutely need to know locally no matter what, I use my Dome Siren and/or alarm system siren for. So I don't need an app for notifications locally.
Remote notifications use external services by definition. So whether it is a Hubitat app, pushover, email, SMS, other - they approach the same reliability levels. And there are options for that today, without a Hubitat app.
For the newbie, I'm sure as the product matures they will make it more engaging 'out of the box' for other users.
Have you looked around this forum?? I'm ready to posit that more than a handful of the early adopters are in that category. Few here state their age, but several have. Many here have made cultural references that place them well along the way to that age. 
Unless of course they are only parroting their parents 
What Zigbee channel is your Hubitat Hub using? Many of the old, original SmartThings devices do not like high Zigbee channels. I had to change my Zigbee channel to 20 to get my old ST devices to pair properly. Of course, you also have to reset each Zigbee device per that device's manual before it can be paired with a new system. (I am sure you know that, but just had to point it out for completeness' sake.)
That in no way translates to "only power users should use HA and in particular HE"... That just says that the platform is under continuous development (as any other product) and may contain bugs (as any other product), they are just protecting their arses, there is no possible interpretation of this that means it is only intended for power users...
I for one believe the idea that control should not be necessary if you do proper automation is ridiculous, there are tons of scenarios and use cases were control is still desired, they should not be exclusive and although many solutions currently exists (dashboard, 3rd part apps, etc.) they all have their own shortcomings. There are many benefits to having an app that can do control, so I would like to be counted as one who would like to see such app. Do I need it RIGHT NOW? nah, current solutions work well enough for now, does not change the fact that an app that includes control would be good to have, or that there is indeed demand for it...
I totally agree with @Somel, a lot of people here interpret the feedback provided in these forums as a demand of what the product HAS TO HAVE OR ELSE to the point you get a little bit discourage / cautious when providing it when instead it should be encouraged. Maybe they feel if the Hubitat team use their time to implement a feature they are not interested in then they will not implement the one they want? Feedback is just that, let people express it and if it ends having a lot of support AND the Hubitat team does agree then cool, they will also be the ones figuring out the priorities based on demand too...
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