I'm not quite sure how to succinclty phrase the question but here goes...
Due to the impending demise of WebCoRE on the ST platform, I recently bought a HE hub specifically to use WC. I was planning on setting it up over the holidays but something happened recently that gave me pause.
Due to an expired certificate, ST WC users were unable to create or duplicate pistons for a couple of days last week. The problem also resulted in an inability to access the "Register a Browser" function in the SmartApp. Which meant you couldn't log in to WC if you had logged out prior to the certificate issue.
The problem was fixed relatively quickly but it occurred to me that WC users are dependent on the ability to register a browser and without this, there is no way to access their pistons and one couldn't conceivably lose the ability to create new pistons or maintain existing pistons.
I don't understand Hubitat well enough to know if a similar situation could occur once I move everything to my new HE hub. If Adrian gives up on WC and pulls the plug, is there another way to access WC? Or is it a non-issue with Hubitat? Any feedback is appreciated.
With Hubitat, your pistons run directly on your hub, and not somewhere on the cloud. You can also setup your own local WC server on something like a Raspberry Pi to create new pistons locally without any cloud dependence.
Or just use any of the several other local automation engines that come with Hubitat.
You make a valid observation in that webCoRE is not totally independent from cloud. It's dependency on browser registration is probably the biggest issue. With that said that issue has been known for quite some time and there have been discussions on removing all dependency from webcore.co API which is doable. It's just hasn't been on the top of the list to do. With the recent outage it brought that issue up front and center and hopefully it's on the TODO list sooner rather than later. Also, just because SmartThings pulls the plug on groovy doesn't mean webCoRE pulls the plug with it.
I used WebCoRE when I still had a ST hub, but have had no reason to since switching to Hubitat.
But as far as I know, @aaiyar is correct. You can setup your own server on a local machine to run the WebCoRE gui to access in a browser if you want to maintain complete independence from the cloud.
But as I implied above, I use Hubitat’s built-in apps to create automations. Some people love WebCoRE, but I never found it to be that much easier to use than other options that are officially a part of the hub platform and will always run locally no matter what.
