They did it purely for convenience of the end user. Many users just want to plug it in and have it work, like a Google Home or Amazon Alexa. At the same time ST added WiFi to their v3 hub, they also cut the CPU and RAM in half as compared to the v2 hub, and eliminated the built-in battery backup feature.
I am sure ST was actually able to reduce the cost of making the v3 hub in the process.
Will you please explain why a WiFi connection to your home LAN is so important in your situation? Is it to centrally locate the hub? Or some other reason?
My Hubitat hub is in my room over the garage, along with my Lutron SmartBridge Pro (no WiFi), Philips Hue bridge (no WiFi), a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (hardwired), etc... I have no connectivity issues with my Zigbee mesh network as I have placed repeaters around the house to build a strong mesh.
If WiFi connectivity to your LAN is a requirement, then you may need to look at alternatives like SmartThings v3, Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, etc... However, even those systems behave much better on a hardwired Ethernet connection.
As I mentioned previously, I have never heard any Hubitat employee mention that adding WiFi connectivity as a feature is a high priority that they are working on. Could it happen? Sure. But as a very early adopter of the platform back in Feb of 2018, I would not bet on it happening any time soon.
Good business practice. Make a product easy to use and cut down on the costs of bits that aren't that popular/used. Battery backup for a controller when most everything else is also powered probably may only be useful for logging/history. I heard that the implementation sucked anyway. One would probably need a UPS anyway to keep the minimal going beyond the hub. Any idea what real-world impacts that the CPU and memory cuts made?
Context on WiFi that came up in this thread is covered in my prior postings. Please take it at face value; there can be users where WiFi works best in their environment without
having to add another router for ports due to not having any left,
placement from where internet has been installed to where it is needed for extending the mesh range,
cost to retrofit Ethernet in the home or add a repeater, etc.
Can new customers sort out a workaround? Sure, for additional complexity/costs.
Yes, the real world impact is that none of the original promised local processing (aside from Smart Lighting) will ever come to fruition. I find it really odd that none of the ST New App's 'Automations' are eligible to run locally either. Doesn't seem like a priority to SmartThings whatsoever, even though a huge portion of their customer based bought the ST v2 hub on the promise of local processing. Doesn't sound like a good business practice to me, eh? Or how about the debacle that is two broken ST mobile apps? Doesn't seem very customer friendly to me. Lots of confused users! Or what about forced hub firmware updates, with no option to defer for any length of time? Again, many customers have asked for that feature and it has never come. And how about the promised hub migration tool? Never happened, even though their customers begged them for it. And what about backup and restore functionality? It's not going to happen either. The new ST Alexa Skill forces every one of your devices into the Alexa ecosystem, whether you want it or not. This means devices you've already added to Alexa via Philips Hue, Lutron Caseta, Ecobee thermostats, etc... will all be duplicated when you use the new ST Alexa Skill. And there is no way to revert back to the original Alexa skill.
But, it does have a WiFi connection. I'll give you that!
Hubitat was built by former ST users who had enough of the broken promises and an unstable cloud platform.
Hubitat Elevation
user installed firmware - your choice if and when to upgrade
backup and restore - automatic and manual
local processing of all Hubitat and User written code
local LAN Integration with Lutron Caseta and PICO REMOTES!
TCP, UDP, and Telnet connectivity options for LAN integrations
data privacy - Hubitat doesn't have access to your data, and therefore will never try to sell it
Just pointing out that you might be inferring a derisive tone when there wasnât one intended.
I suspect if you asked many ST users why they need WiFi for their hub, there wouldnât be a specific answer why. Not saying there arenât valid use cases, just that many non-technically inclined people seem to expect thatâs how everything connects to their LAN these days.
But itâs a stationary device, and as already pointed out, interference issues between WiFi and zigbee can create new problems when those two radios are moved into the same small enclosure.
I have no personal familiarity with this industry. But I would imagine creating and manufacturing a new version of the hub with a new radio in it is not a minor task for a company thatâs small like hubitat.
Yes, ignorant does not mean the same thing as stupid but they are commonly thought to be synonyms and insulting. Ignorant is lack of knowledge and Stupid is lack of brainpower. One of those can be corrected. Most of us came to HE ignorant.
You donât need a new router to add Ethernet ports, a cheap network switch will work to add additional ports. I have 10 or so switches throughout my home adding additional Ethernet ports where I may have a single hard wired run and I need say 3 for AVR, TV, etc. I am a huge fan of hard wiring everything you can because there is too much wifi congestion in most urban neighborhoods these days. This is because most people donât know how to set these up and disable things like printers or the crap supplied ISP routers that we all have to use from broadcasting. I live at the end of a cul-de-sac with half acre lots and when I was scanning for Wi-Fi congestion, I picked up 25 broadcasting networks which surprised me because I donât have that many nearby neighbors. Obviously it would be much worse in a more densely populated area.
To add to @ogiewonâs list of HE benefits is the fact that you can change the Zigbee channel on HE. SmartThings doesnât allow this and it is automatically chosen at initial setup. This means you can set your Wi-Fi channel to say 1 and your HE to 20 to minimize impact. If you run into issues you can change it again at your own discretion. My HE hubs are less than a foot from my router and I have had zero issues.
I have a relatively small house and I have a 16 port, three 8 port and a few 4 port switches. If it has a Ethernet port it gets wired including tvâs. I have a netgear R8500 so itâs not a throughput issue, it just makes sense. I just wish alexa had Ethernet
Backup brought me to Hubitat from Wink more than a year ago. I use it more often than I should when my Rule's adventures defeat me. A "Go Back Machine" is pretty awesome.
@steve.maddigan - small house here also (upstairs/downstairs townhouse). 16-port switch upstairs and 8-port switch downstairs. One HE upstairs and one downstairs. Neither is "centrally" located, but I have strong z-wave and zigbee mesh networks.
I am the same plus basement. I do have a second hub now in the basement with radios off.
My main hub is at the front of my house at the top of the coat closet and yes I too have enough zwave devices that I donât have any mesh issues. Zigbee is new for me and I only went there because of the Hampton bay fan controllers. I now have 7 other zigbee plugged in devices to build that mesh out and it seems enough for now.
Actually still need to install the second fan controller before the WAF takes a plung.
Earlier this week:
Wife: whatâs that over in the corner
Me: thatâs the second ceiling fan controller that I bought
Wife: is it going to stay there
Me: no I am going to install it in the ceiling fan this weekend.
Yes, this was the same problem with Wink. One could remove the duplicates off the Amazon Alexa platform, but they would eventually come back. Right now, the way Wink users adapted to this situation was to leverage the "disable" option where the duplicate would remain, but it would be ignored by the AI when searching for a match from a voice command. However these duplicates still show up when attempting to set up groups within Alexa to figure out which one to pick, which is a hassle. It is nice that HE has micro-grained control of what is published.
My thoughts exactly. If I could be sure it is a long-term solution it's probably worth more $. But without that, paying over twice the price of SmartThings, which is backed by a global mega corporation, makes me hesitant. If they were within 15% of each other on price I'd take the chance on Hubitat for sure due to the better ability to be offline.
The only risk is in whether it will work for your devices or not. Once things are up and running they should continue to do so as long as the hardware holds out. Company size is not a determining factor for HE as far as I can see..
Most of us came to HE ignorant.
