THIS! I didn't even bother showing my wife a hubitat dashboard knowing that it would be outright rejected. I just have everything in Google Home, which is what we were using before I bought a Hubitat. While most things are automated via Hubitat, Google provides the dashboard for the family in a way that they are already familiar with.
Now as for feature(s) I would like to see. A few have already brought up Matter and I do hope that Hubitat becomes a controller. However, if I was to push Hubitat a little bit further, I would love for them to develop Hubitat to be a Matter Bridge as well even if it required a second hub. As a Bridge, we could develop a Matter connection to Google Home, Alexa, Apple Home, SmartThings; and heck, even Home Assistant. As a Bridge, this would simplify connections and not require separate apps (built in and community) since Hubitat could just use Matter to connect to third party systems.
I'm not even sure if the above is possible, but it would be absolutely fantastic if it was.
If you have a very rigid routine and daily life where you can predict what lighting youre going to want in 3 days I totally understand that you wouldn't need a dashboard.
We have an 8 year old and constant company coming over. Things are impossible to predict. Some times the kids want to take over the living room with crazy color schemes and movies. When they want this my son knows he can just go to the tablet and flip on/off/color whatever he wants, I get to be left unbothered with tedious ■■■■.
Sometimes my wife wants to hang with us but wants to read a book. I need the corner lamp on that side of the couch to be brighter than it normally is. How to I predict this?
With a dashboard I can have the level/temperature changed and back to what I was doing in 4 seconds.
First of all I did not say the Dashboards are not useful. Of course they are a must have.
And sure, I do use Dashboard but mainly for quick status check.
For the prediction, I have a lot of MS placed in all strategic places. Together with
light sensors and time frames all my lights and shades are 100% automated.
However this doesn't mean you cannot control them manually.
I would like to see Rooms (more features), Zones and Sites. A way where I can put my devices into Rooms, my Rooms into Zones (Basement, Main Floor, Upstairs, Outdoors) and zones into Sites (All Home).
Concept would be I can make a rule where I can say if a switch or bulb turns on anywhere in my home (Site), I want that device to set it's dimmer level to match a Dimmer variable level. I can do this now, but I have to build out a rule that contains each device one by one. I would love to have more global control of my devices based on their attributes if that makes sense. Like do this automation on any device in the Basement if it has this specific attribute in the device driver.
A modern GUI UI and app.
This would use validity-checking, get rid of "whatever you do, don't click the back button" syndrome. Feels like DOS in a GUI age.
Related to #1: An app for designing dashboards; resizable tiles (like resizing a photo), dump the grid - get with the GUI revolution.
Geo-presence that works.
MOST IMPORTANT: ZWave ghost removal. We should be able to click REMOVE, click a verification message, and have a device get removed from the hub. Period.
I was really hoping that this would have been fixed with the release of the C-8, since it requires a kernel patch. I can understand the reluctance to apply a kernel patch as part of a platform update for the fear of bricking the hub. But installing it at the factory with the release of a new hub would have been a good time to do it.
So many things that I run in JVMs have horrible memory leaks. The Hubitat platform is one of the better behaved vis-a-vis memory leaks. The absolute worst is a scientific image processing/analysis package called ImageJ2. The version I use is called Fiji. Really powerful, but I cannot process more than 15 or 20 large 12-bit images before it dies .....
Last time I checked supercapacitors didn't exist that could hold the Hub up long enough for the Hub to shutdown.
Remember a super capacitor that starts at 5V starts to drop immediately on loss of main power.
External is much better, more energy, more flexibility. i.e. I only want the UPS to hold for maybe 30 minutes or so, long enough to weather the short outages we normally experience in my area.
Sure, it's better for some but not for everyone. We just want enough power to have a proper shutdown. Maybe the next hub won't take as long as the C8. I have enough backup power to last months but an accidental power bump on my hubs still give me chill so either internal removable battery or super capacitor still what I want to see on the next hub.
These units are only USB 5V 1 Amp. You can use a decent battery pack used to charge mobile devices as a battery backup. I personally use this one from Amazon with my C-7 and it works fine. The battery pack is plugged into both the C-7 to power it and into the wall to charge the battery without issues.
Funny, we clearly have something of a "dashboard divide." Both most and least desired investment. Different strokes for different folks, and no one is wrong, everyone has a different HA El Dorado.. I've spent time on them, but in the end the only reason I use my dasboards is to facilitate troubleshooting - I can look at a bunch of sensors and switches at once to quickly identify if there is an issue, and what it is. Other than that never look at 'em.
Automation is my holy grail, things happening w/me doing as close to nothing as possible.
However... my wife wants manual control over everything. So physical smart buttons abound, a few key things are not automated, and we both get to (mostly) live the HA lives we want...the best partners know how to compromise. Sometimes our lifestyles collide, but overall it works well enough for us, and we both agree that dashboards aren't for us.
What I want in the future from HE:
Some additional work on Rooms (and potential additions as discussed like Categories)
Troubleshooting support: Some built-in views to replace having to build dashboards (graphic/color status of all of my motion sensors, or all my contact sensors, or show me the status of all the devices (motion, contact, switch, moisture, etc.) used in a particular automation. Doesn't have to look cool, just very simple graphics w/ability to show on/off/dim, open/close, wet/dry, active/inactive, etc.).
Improve the Zigbee mapping...at least for me my map just disappears while still being built up almost all of the time so it. Allow extracting the repeater>repeating info to a text file (Repeater X has devices 1, 2, 5, Repeater Y has devices 14, 32, and 47).
Built-in sorting and organization options for viewing automations in HE similar to the excellent app that @joshlobe is building.
My dog needs her evening snack, so that's all for now. She is small, but mighty in her control of me.