Warning the following is a rant born out of frustration of the industry stagnation:
There seems to be a few areas that are seriously lacking these days in a few key areas, that I wish manufacturers would step up and fix! They are making WiFi versions of some of these but not proper z-wave / zigbee.
Thermostats
There are tons of cool innovative high tech thermostats coming out, but they are all wifi / cloud (ugh!) WHY! .. Just so it can work for a little while until the manufacturer moves on to something else and eventually shuts down those cloud services.. The best on the market right now is the Honeywell T6 PRO and it's already feeling dated..
Keypads
Where are the keypads! The only ones that are being made are for "proprietary" systems. Someone needs to come out with a DIY keypad so we can stop buying these ancient defunct Iris keypads!
Smoke Detectors
This one really peeves me .. Why is it that the only smoke detector on the market is ancient and pre-plus z-wave .. They are making smoke / co "listeners" and WiFi (cloud) ones .. but where did this go? I find this to be a critical piece of the smart home and it's a void..
Lighting / Automation Controls
Where are the central scene multi device controls! Everyone keeps putting out dimmers and switches that have (multi-tap) scene controls.. But We need more physical buttons, maybe even screens, and / or lights.. (On NON-SLEEPY devices)
I keep seeing the same devices come out over and over again.. The same ho-hum just slightly different.. Where is the innovation! Why is all the smart home innovation coming from things that require wifi and cloud that we all know will shut down someday!
I'm looking at you manufacturers! Let's step up the innovation here! Quit playing it safe! I know many of the vendors are white labeling, and I have seen some really cool stuff at these white-label companies that are not being picked up by these vendors.. The DIY market needs innovation so that people will stop recommending products from defunct brands off ebay, because they are the best options!
Ok.. Rant is over .. Please continue whatever you were doing..
AMEN!!! WAF is low on the battery-power Eria Dimmers, RGB Genie Controller and even Picos (GASP!!!!). Even the Picos don't always respond to first push when they haven't been used in a while. I want something I can install in a single-gang box w/ multiple buttons; that is hooked to mains power; and doesn't require 6 taps to do what I want. Also, it shouldn't cost me over $100.
Until Joe consumer stops buying the "easy to use" Wi-Fi JUNK, manufactures will still make it. On top of that, why not if 90% don't care that you track and sell their data now.
I saw it suggested here to just go buy some cheap $20 android phones w/out a data plan and put dashboards on them. If there was an easy & clean way to wire them to power at the normal switch location, I might consider it.
Why is the best solution the super slow Harmony.. IR codes are really small and could easily be configured driver / app level to support an insane amount of devices easily..
My $0.02 is that safety devices should be on a native alarm system outside of HA, with a link into an HA system for automations and secondary alerting.
I am dealing with this issue now, where I had back-filled some secondary locations in our house with Kidde/Wink detectors over the years and now need to find an alternative due to Wink's pending demise. I have a dedicated alarm system with remote alarm monitoring and a few hard-wired detectors (and Alarm Decoder for my local HA interface), so it made sense for me to just pick up a few Honeywell wireless detectors to replace the Kidde ones and get the added benefit of multi-path remote professional alarm monitoring if there ever is a fire.....
Most home's smoke detectors are not on any connected system.. They just make a loud noise.. The z-wave equivalent still makes a loud noise but also sends a z-wave message.. In my opinion that's a step up..
I have a driver for the ring smoke / co listener .. I almost didn't write it because I think it's stupid.. Why not have it in the same device.. why 2 devices..
Agree 100%. It's all about the market. Think about it, HE passed the milestone of 10,000 users here (let's guess that the # of hubs is in that ballpark). That's exciting. But it's a gnat in terms of market. Let's sum up all of the ST, Wink, HE, Vera, HA, etc. users in the US. What percentage of homes in the US have zwave/zigbee networks? .2% .5% maybe 1%? What percentage of homes in the US have Wifi networks? The number I found puts it at about 70%.
So if you're going to make a device, that is expensive to make, which do you want to target? 1% of US households, or 70%? The market is just not there yet.
Also yeah, frankly I don't even think about privacy. I assume that people are listening in on me everywhere I go and my information is sold to the highest bidder all the time. It's the nature of the world. If I'm being honest, whether or not a company sells my data doesn't factor into a single purchasing decision. I assume that 99% of the companies that tell me they don't sell my data are lying anyway
I'm looking at you manufacturers! Let's step up the innovation here! Quit playing it safe! I know many of the vendors are white labeling, and I have seen some really cool stuff at these white-label companies that are not being picked up by these vendors.. The DIY market needs innovation so that people will stop recommending products from defunct brands off ebay, because they are the best options!
