What Do Europeans Want in Their Home Automation Platform?

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While I am not European, I am happy to prompt discussion amongst any group... Just don't ask me to speak the language :wink:

I'll admit I created this off the back of the "reflection" topic @pascal.nohl setup under:

From my experience here automation device support / availability and support for heating (and occasionally cooling) units are common grievances. Would be good if people could expand on them and add any others that I have missed.

Happy to admit I am largely ignorant to the experience of those North of me, so if there are discussions that capture these questions succinctly, then I am happy for people to link to those rather than produce a lengthy discussion.

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I would like an unsolvable button alongside the solvable button

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Maybe the staff can accommodate that by putting that on any topic you create... :wink:

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Somehow I end up encouraging tongue-in-cheek responses to my posts... not sure why I attract those kind of responses... :grin:

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Because you're not European or American

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It does give us a certain respected latitude where we can speak our minds without the spectre other major powers in the region might attract....

Anyway, that is not the point of this topic...

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I n case that you may be interested, I will not even consider using automation for heating etc, I'm being screwed by the govt with energy prices and don't want to be screwed by my smart home either, also I find it therapeutic to get up off my backside and manually alter settings

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Two points from my side:

  1. In most of Europe, heating is handled through radiators (water or electric, device or underfloor), not through forced‑air systems with fans. Because of this, the thermostat device page (and the Classic/EZ dashboard tiles) should not display fan controls for radiator‑based setups.

    I understand this isn't currently feasible because the standard Thermostat capability includes fan‑related attributes and commands by design. Perhaps a dedicated RadiatorThermostat capability could be introduced for TRVs and EU‑style thermostats, with corresponding support added to the Classic/EZ dashboards.

    Edit: A more accurate name for this new capability might be FanlessThermostat. The term "radiator" can be misleading, since these devices rely not only on heat radiation but also on natural (and sometimes non‑controllable fan) air convection.

  2. There are several areas where Hubitat’s Zigbee implementation still lags behind ZHA/Z2M in terms of features and device compatibility:

Hope this helps.

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Nice clear, concise list for @mike.maxwell to peruse...

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A Hubitat Elevation which identifies as HomeKit.

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How is that different from Hubitat’s built-in HomeKit Bridge functionality?

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I've bought a C8-Pro a couple of month ago, expecting it to be the core of my home automation platform build on Matter devices. That failed spectacularly so far, I'm still deciding whether it's because of Hubitat Matter drivers not being generic and built-to-spec, or the home automation system being a mess and specs not being followed.

My primary use cases were:

  1. Heating control - control radiator TRVs based on readings from independent temperature sensors.

  2. Humidity control - control humidifiers based on readings from independent sensors, as the built-in sensors usually suck and display utter nonsense

  3. Scenes for activities - for example Movie scene which dims the lights, closes the blinds, turns on the receiver

  4. External blinds control, with timing to automatically close in the evening and open in the morning. Possibly add a light sensor later.

  5. Vacation mode to turn off lights, turn down heat, control blinds for plants to have some light and otherwise be closed. Turn on the heat a day before returning to not come back to a cold apartment.

  6. Water leak sensors with notification

Currently I've stopped buying more devices because I'm stuck with the TRVs and water leak sensors, and I haven't yet decided if Hubitat is worth spending more time on, or I should just bite the bullet and get Google Home. I'd chosen Hubitat to start because it promised wide device support, Matter support and most importantly works offline without requiring a cloud service.

My current biggest problems are:

  • Provisioning Matter devices through Hubitat does not work. You need to first provision the device in a different hub/app, and then share it to Hubitat. This is a major problem during the first impressions phase, where right off the bat you're told you need another hub. That undermines all Hubitat advertises to be.
  • Matter TRVs don't work with Thermostat Controller app. The Generic Matter driver probably requires some functionality (Fan control is always mentioned) that is optional for generic Matter thermostat, breaking the app.
  • Lack of Thread radio means you also need another device that acts as a Thread border router. This is another very bad initial impression.

As far as I understand, the built-in apps and drivers don't have source code available, and I don't have the time to spare to build all that from scratch. I've opened 2 threads about the TRV problem, and there's no solution in sight from the developers.

I haven't started building dashboards or rules, because if I can't get the heating system to work I might abandon the platform altogether.

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