Thanks for all the fish, Hubitat

The only people that care about that are people using your drivers... a small comment on the original release post for the drivers was all that was needed for that.

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Are you the kind of person that calls up a past girlfriend and reminds her why you broke up? A new younger girl came along that had the features you wanted that the old girlfriend would have a hard time changing quickly?

New tools and new platforms come along. Being a fast follower is easy. You should migrate to something else if that something else gives you what you need. It's just poor taste to dirty the transition with cricism.

Platforms need to make choices that are hard. Controlling and protecting a system while allowing users to run code. That's hard. Groovy and Lua are pretty common for this task.

Hubitat is now just 1 automation platform in my house. I run 5 at this point. They all have their ideal role. Think of it as agentic. Do I care that Hubitat can't do all 5 things? No.

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You're fine. It's remarkable how often authors of critical posts are questioned for motive. I personally am not interested in that.

This, I am interested in, however:

Based on my own recent experience with closed-loop tooling like Claude Code, I see both a risk and a (huge) opportunity for Hubitat:

  • HA being open-source, the feature set - including ease-of-use, maintenance and stability features for "lay users" - can be expected to grow faster than ever.
  • HE's API coverage is incomplete, limiting community contributions. Hopefully the handful of on-staff developers are leveraging the new tools themselves. Not to say that a lot can't already be done in Groovy, but there is room for improvement. This is the opportunity.

So I for one appreciate you sharing your insight and bringing up this important challenge for discussion.

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Thank you. If Rules Engine has an API, there's a big opportunity for someone to write a Hubitat MCP server.

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At least one exists already.

I disagree - This is in the Lounge

I value hearing other's opinions and learnings, given that @klinquist has been an HE developer, I'm interested in hearing what he has to say. He's not just a frustated new user, that gave up.

So while YOU may not be interested in hearing other's opinon's about the platform, as well as the pros/cons of other's experience with other platforms - I'm certainly willing to read (or ignore) other's feedback around HE.

He wasn't harsh or rude, and the justification for his platform change (and posting) seemed rational, so I'm missing the reason for the desire to silence any negative feedback. - This is the reason that I continue to read the Reddit HE threads.

Clearly our tolerance for dissent is calibrated differently. :man_shrugging: - Feedback is a gift (for HE staff), especially negative feedback from a veteran developer (IMHO)

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Has he actually said anything that isn't already on the surface?i don't think so. Seems ego motivated tbh.

Again, I disagree.

I thought the two main points (that I took away) are:

  1. ActionTiles went away (aka the HE Dashboard implementation is weak), and the recently change for "easy Dashboards" didn't scratch that itch, and the removal of a 3rd party option has made advanced Dashboard options even worse - May not matter to those that don't use Dashboards, but it clearly mattered to @klinquist

  2. Configuration of any system via text files, is very powerful, and becoming more so, with more AI agents (I was just reading about OpenCode for work, this very AM). HE has incomplete API's especially around configuration and some of the higher end Apps. - That's OK for new users, but clearly "getting more behind the scenes" in an "advanced mode" matters to higher end developers, enough that they are willing to leave without that access. - And with AI, that bar for "who is an advanced user" is getting lower all the time.

Those seemed like rather insightful commentary, at least to me, and made me realize that I need to personally dig more into HA - But perhaps that was all just "superficial commentary" and self-evident to others. Again, :man_shrugging:

Again, I'm missing the reason for the negative tone in a bunch of these comments.

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Is that necessarily a bad thing? Or is it always the goal of every tech start up?

They’re still around now. It sounds like the startup you worked for may not be.

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Same here. It's one thing if someone comes here and starts a long emotionally charged rant about something. Calm, reasoned discussion (and even criticism) is always a good thing if done in a respectful manner. Everyone is free to read, or not.

I have two houses that are automated exclusively with HE. I have a lot of time invested in it and have no plans to move to another platform, but I'm not emotionally attached to HE.

I had a lot of time invested in SmartThings as well, but they moved in a direction that I didn't like. It's conceivable that HE might do the same at some point. Priorities and directions change, people retire, companies are sold or merged, etc. Having information about alternate platforms isn't a bad thing, especially from the perspective of someone who was a serious HE user.

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HA still sucks :).

With HA, there has historically been 12 ways to do anything, and 5 of them are still maintained, haha.

When it comes with automating my smart lock coding, after reading through all the possible ways to do it (various lock code management integrations, various rental lock automator add-ons), I thought I was going to stick with Hubitat for the Airbnb. They were all extremely complicated, created hundreds of "entities", etc.

...but I spent about 30 minutes discussing alternate solutions with Gemini, and "we" came up with a rather novel way to accomplish want I wanted, very simply, using HA's built-in iCal integration. I need to do a write up on that to share the knowledge with other airbnb+home automation owners.

It is great just asking AI "here is my current dashboard (pasting in the yaml). I want to combine the status of my door lock and door contact sensor, so that it shows Locked, Unlocked, or Open. Make the tile border red if it's not locked."

and voila, done.

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@klinquist -

Kris - just wanted to say you'll be missed. I've appreciated your work in the HA arena ever since you developed Stringify, which is close to a decade ago. So I wish you luck, and hope we'll see you here again in the future.

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Good point that this the lounge, I still just think it is not necessary. I follow HA on their forums and Reddit, that is the best way to learn if you think you should switch to HA.

I don't even see any lounge area in the HA forums, and a post there about an HA user moving to Hubitat, along with the reasons why, is going to be viewed the same way by HA folks as this post here.

THIS :point_up_2:t4:.

At the same time, has his post changed my use of the HE platform? No. His experience, use-case, time, and effort are different than mine. However, if things change, having his clearly laid out use-case and reasoning can help if I need to reevaluate my own situation.

Exactly. In addition, thank you @klinquist for the original Rheem Econet integration. It has made life much easier - mine as well as WAF, which in turn makes my life easier again.

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That's fair. Maybe I've simply read more forum threads than you. All typical stuff. Nothing new.

Meh, I can see it both ways.

But I’m not sure that number of forum posts read lends credence to one opinion over the other, per se.

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This is a casual comment really. Anyone care to highlight what is new an insightful that hasn't been covered by other users in the last year or two?

Does it need to be new and insightful to be valuable?

If a “farewell” post hits on similar pain points that others have raised in the past (but remain), perhaps there’s something to the issues mentioned that staff can consider, even if not a new insight.

In this case, I agree with others that the OP listed specific issues that drove his decision-making.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard anyone point out before that yaml in home assistant could actually be considered a positive thing, if used with something like Claude Code.

But then again, I may not have read as many forum posts as some :slightly_smiling_face:.

ETA: there have certainly been more than a few goodbye posts over the years that come off more like the unhinged ramblings of a person that may not be fully inhabiting the same reality as the rest of us. This thread does not read like one of those, IMO.

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Thanks Ashok! Always enjoyed our interactions. I'm sure we'll find each other online on occasion :slight_smile:

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I think you missed the title reference. It's saying goodbye this platform is doomed.