I'm a retired mainframe Systems Programmer and I started with modern home automation quite accidentally in the Summer of 2014, two years before Hubitat came on the scene. I wanted to replace nine 60W incandescent bulbs in a relatively inaccessible fixture with LED bulbs and found that the only affordable option was Quirky/GE/Link lamps at about $13 each. I bought a Wink starter kit for $30, which included a Wink hub and two Link lamps, seven more lamps, and changed-out the incandescents in that fixture. If I could have found "dumb" LED lamps at the time for less than $35 each, I probably wouldn't have tried home automation at all as I already have a host of my own hobbies with my own related expertise. I did try X10 in the 1970s, but found it wanting (not to mention almost burning down my house), so I don't count that.
This started me off and, now, most of the bulbs in my house, a few wall switches, outlets and sensors are smart. Wink worked well for me over the years, so I had no interest in Iris, Vera, SmartThings, Hubitat, etc., including home-assembled custom systems.
Having switched to the HE platform this past Fall, and having begun to immerse myself in this community, I find myself curious about the history of all of the home automation platforms, and how the various platforms are related. I know there are people in this community who know the connections among the various platforms, as they're mentioned obliquely, and hope that someone will lay it all out, just to satisfy the curiosity of us newbies.
The short version is a group of bad ass SmartThings power users knew they could build a better mouse trap, and they did. The longer version is follow the history of Rule Machine.
Went down that rabbit hole.. And found the point in history when the powers that be got fed up with the old system.. But there is a big gap in the chronology I have been able to piece together..
Spent a whole day researching the history.. Googling, reading old forum posts, looking at archived websites and old githubs.. I came up short.. I missing a huge chunk of the story..
I can usually find all this when researching a company’s past... one day they got fed up.. And then they all disappeared and then one day hubitat existed..
I even found the old shipping information when the units arrived in the US.. But not the genesis story
That might be a cool topic for Hubitat Live @Pete. Not sure how much they would be willing to share but there could be some interesting content. Maybe they could get a cameo appearance of @patrick.
After the release of Rule Machine on SmartThings in the fall of 2015, the stability of the SmartThings platform became shaky. It had never been all that stable to begin with, but at one point application state started randomly vanishing, and scheduling collapsed. @bravenel had been outspoken in the SmartThings community about these problems, and critical about the cloud-based architecture for home automation. During this period, @bravenel was the most prolific poster in the SmartThings community, and hence was quite visible. At one point, SmartThings technical support started blaming Rule Machine for the platform problems they were experiencing.
In early 2016 these issues became quite problematic, and I was convinced that the cloud issues would never be resolved satisfactorily. I thought seriously about the possibility of starting a company to build a local hub, but knew that I lacked many of the necessary skills to do so. By the end of January, I had talked myself out of it. Then, on February 2, 2016 I received a note from @chuck.schwer, who suggested that he thought building a local hub was very doable, and asked if I'd be interested. Our Slack channel was created that day, and we began working on our new project.
It would be almost two years later that Hubitat Elevation was launched. Needless to say, a great deal transpired in those two years. The name Hubitat was proposed by my wife Ellen. Hubitat Environmental, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on October 16, 2016, and would later change its name to Hubitat, Inc. Chuck went to work full time for the company at the beginning of 2017, and Mike followed 6 months later. My house was transitioned from ST to Hubitat early in 2017, and ran as a connected ST/Hubitat system for a few months as we filled in needed drivers, using a precursor to Hub Link. The hub supported a Lutron integration from the very beginning. We had alpha testers in first quarter 2017, using an X86 based hub. Later we would change to ARM Cortex based hubs.
In my semi-finished attic, I had a huge exhaust fan. There were curtain walls over the eaves, with access ports here and there. The fan was wired to a timer switch at the bottom of the attic stairwell, and the wiring was accessible in one of the triangular eave spaces. I simply cut the wire, added an outlet box on the supply side and a plug on the fan side. I plugged an X-10 relay module into the outlet and plugged the fan into the module. So far, so good.
But, apparently, either the X-10 relay module was defective or the inductive load of the very large fan motor was too great and, one day in the early 1980s, whilst the fan was running, my practice wife and I smelled smoke. I ran upstairs to find the relay "releasing the shmoo," as AvE (do you know AvE?) would put it. Happily, I got there in time to save the house, but should the new owner of the house look, now, he'd find a bit of char on the stud to which I'd mounted the electrical box.
@bravenel@chuck.schwer At some point the thought "wait... I think this is going to work" had to cross your minds. That had to be a fun day. Albiet non-stop ever since.
