The 2023 Year in Review, would not be complete without voting for the one and only device that exceeded our users' expectations, this year, in terms of reliability and ease of use.
Is your favorite device not listed in the following top ten?
Be sure to drop a comment below to share what device has made your home smarter in 2023, and perhaps your life a little easier.
Inovelli 2-1 Smart Switch (On/Off or Dimmer) - Blue Series - Zigbee
With its good looks characteristic to the Inovelli products, the Blue Series delivered new features based on their community feedback. To me, allowing users to pick between the on/off capability, dimming capability or just simply disabling the actuation, is a really awesome feature.
Aqara Door and Window Sensor P2, Matter Over Thread
Is one of the first Matter over Thread devices that I tried this year. I really like that it can connect seamlessly with different controllers via Matter and it doesn't require an Aqara hub or a cloud connection.
Aqara FP2 Presence (Occupancy) Sensor.
While it's a great product, too bad they didn't enable Matter (yet?) so that it can be connected directly to Hubitat Elevation.
Comments on this thread are welcome, so feel free to share your feedback on any of the products mentioned in this thread.
Aqara FP2 integrates locally with HE via Hubitat HomeKit integration (virtual switches).
Hopefully, via Matter ... next year.
The "game changing" overall product category of the year for me in 2023 is mmWave sensors, which closed the loop on my remaining motion lighting automation challenges in home office and bathrooms:
The Linptech/Moes 24 GHz mmWave sensor is my mmWave sensor of choice. Like it's design/looks, flexibility provided by its magnetic mount, the fact that its less likely to sense unwanted "ghost presence" of people on the other side of a wall than a 5GHz mmWave sensor, and of course most importantly, its accuracy.
I can add that the Linptech radar sensor (it is not Tuya-specific) could be a good candidate for the first inbuilt Hubitat mmWave Occupancy driver.
Re: FP2:
This is a messy and convoluted work around to integrate all the features into HE - it shouldn’t be considered an integration in any sense. But that is Aqara’s issue and not HE, they need to implement Matter as Bobby said.
Something a little more humble. My nomination is the Skytech fireplace remote. It's for automating a Skytech battery operated fireplace controller. It's not actually smart by itself. It uses any smart plug to control the fireplace.
Inovelli Smart fan/light canopy module. It's been a long time since there was a reliable way to get a Zigbee ceiling fan.
Just a side thought here....
I wonder if you guys might enlighten the User Community with another list;
the Top Ten (or Top Five) device vendors (of 2023 or otherwise) that have been good/easy to work with, committed to success with Hubitat, and overall a good partner when it comes to getting and keeping their devices compatible.
Sure, this might snub some vendors by not being listed.... but I would much rather support vendors that make it easy on you guys to make things work than ones that could care less about Hubitat. @mike.maxwell
EDIT: OK, thinking about this further I guess you'd want to add a "Special Category" of vendors for whom you NEVER have to talk to because what they make ALWAYS works (is compatible with Hubitat) and follows the standards as written.
The Year in Review is driven by Hubitat users' experience. As you may know, we do not endorse one manufacturer over another. We may recommend a device over another, from time to time, but that is based strictly on our personal experience and not on professional relationships.
With that being said, I can see how users might be able to share their experience with a manufacturer based on direct engagement with their support. That is an interesting idea. We will definitely consider it next year.
Aqara temp sensor. I added them to all of my fridges/freezers/kegerators and set up alerts if they get too warm, and added a tile to my dashboard. This stemmed from me being an idiot and leaving my chest freezer unplugged after I moved it, having to throw away a TON of food that spoiled. I now have precautions in place to keep this from happening again. These sensors are cheap, the tape is solid, and the battery life is fantastic. The range is also good as I have them 2 floors away from my hub and out in my garage, and they still report back regularly THRU THE FRIDGE/FREEZER walls, with no interference. Great product!
This caught my interest....I haven't had very good success with Aqara sensors staying connected but maybe I'll give the Temp/humidity sensor a try. Which hub are you using?
I assume you are using this sensor?
And this driver?
That is the correct sensor I use, but I use the Generic Zigbee Temperature/Humidity Sensor driver.
I use a c7 hub
I voted for the zooz scene controller. After 2 years of trying to teach my non tech family about double and triple taps I gave up. They rarely got the timing right and always had to pause before pressing anything trying to remember which tap does what. The scene controller solved all that. I even ordered the engraved buttons that say what they do. "Normal" people just wanna press a button. Triple tapping is not a natural motion and it just doesn't work for some people.
I'd like to see a more attractive scene controller come out. Maybe something back lit with a touch screen that fits a standard light switch box.
When did that come out? I just bought my scene controller a couple months ago and never came upon this one. The button labels are a bit confusing, but it's attractive at least. Thanks.
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