I know the main thrust of this post was more to do with the technical features of the app, but I do like to touch on some of the "soft" stuff as well... I also get too wordy with responses to these things....
To be short... Not everyone can or will automate their entire home / life.... Some do want or need manual interaction with their smart home, whether it be in the early stages of establishing their Hubitat system, or just through personal preference. I think the case for making the initial onboarding for new users a more enjoyable one should be a compelling one to lift the standard of the mobile app offering. Not everyone has the technical know-how or otherwise to assess the pros and cons of the various systems on offer, and so "the small stuff" can matter, if only from a commercial / financial perspective. Comments from friends / family or online about the interface can have flow on effects for those browsing for their new HA platform.
But I do have to agree, the app is largely functional for what I need... my comments are largely from the perspective of how it may impact new users experience and affect Hubitat's bottom-line...
@sburke781 thank you for the replies. However, unless I'm misinterpreting them, you seem to be entirely addressing the use case of two hubs in the same home?
The hubitat documentation refers to hub mesh as for two hubs on the sand local network, can it be used across the Internet?
As my original post said, my hubs are in different locations. 130 miles apart in fact. House and vacation house. So sharing presence detection, I don't believe helps me.
As for the dashboards, yes I understand I CAN just bookmark two websites. I just don't want to :-). They have an app... I'd like to be able to use it.
Again on push notifications. Unless hub mesh can work across networks, I would like to be able to have my device registered on two hubs so I can get pushed a notification if some emergency occurs in either home.
I know a guy who owns and manages 20 rental properties that would love these features as well.
Anyway... Let me know if I misinterpreted, I just don't see any replies that help this use case yet, other than using a web browser for the dashboards (i.e just not using the app).
As an aside.. Same problem exists in the Alexa integration. My devices is both houses are on the same Amazon account, do I can only integrate with one of the hubs. So it seems universal in the apps, the assumption you only care about one connection.
Bingo.... Mostly my fault..... While it would make the commentary easier for people like me if that was make clearer, it is not for you to know that was such a critical element of your setup, nor that I would neglect to to read your quite clear explanation
I don't have any answer for you in terms of notifications or dashboards, based on your responses and situation.... Particularly given my lack of experience with multi-location setup.... like you have. Not sure whether someone like @kahn-hubitat or @Madcodger could offer any suggestions....?
Eh? I've been summoned on a cold, snowy, Friday morning?! Oh, it's Simon. Well, then, that's fine. Anything for Simon @sburke781 , as he wrote 2/3 of everything running on my hubs! Anyway, where were we? Oh, the question (I think - still sipping first cup of coffee)...
For notifications/alerts, I just set up a single Pushover account, and push notifications to that from four different hubs (three at one property, another a couple of miles away). I've tried getting notifications through the Hubitat app and found it to be basically unworkable for me. Pushover works like a charm for this purpose. Just give the same account credentials to each hub. This worked when we lived 500 miles away from these properties, it works when I'm at the property, and if my wife forces me to start traveling again, it'll work basically anywhere there's a data connection. I don't think there's a limit to the number of hubs you can have on a Pushover account.
As for a single dashboard that accesses all hubs for viewing and control, I've never done it that way. I don't even want to do that, as multiple dashboards (usually one main one for each hub/building) allow me to see each hub (building) separately, which works fine and ensures I don't accidentally adjust the wrong building (things look alike when you're in a hurry). I just set up a shortcut to the cloud (remote) dashboard for each hub, on my phone screen. I group those icons together by just dragging them together on my phone screen. So, I can click that group icon, then each hub's icon, and off I go. Works great, and I use that cloud dashboard even when I'm standing inside the building itself.
I second the recommendation to use an external notification service that can be called from either hub. I use a self-hosted notifications server, Gotify (which is Android-only), but there are a lot of options. One of the simplest, which I also use as a backup in case my Gotify server is down, is to use the email-to-SMS interface for my cell provider to send myself text messages from the hub. This takes care of notifications with no additional apps or services needed on your phone. I use this app to send the emails: Sendmail - Send email and text notifications, (notification device) no local server needed
You mentioned Android and iPhone presence... I don't have a solution for iPhone, but multi-location geopresence should be easy to do using Google Home. You can set up routines for 'when I arrive at a location' and 'when I leave a location'. Have those routines activate a 'virtual presence with switch' device in either home.
The Google Home app has provisions for multiple homes, but I'm not sure if that means it can connect to two Hubitat hubs at the same time. However, you could still make this work with Rule Machine and Maker API even if you can only connect to one hub.
Assuming hubs 1 at home 1 and hub 2 at home 2, but Google Home only able to control devices at home 1, the sequence is:
Arrive at home 2
Google routine turns on a virtual presence switch on hub at home 1
Rule machine on hub 1 triggers based on that switch, calls Maker API cloud endpoint to turn on virtual presence switch on hub 2
The opposite happens when departing home 2. The routine turns off the switch on hub 1, which triggers Rule Machine to call the Maker API cloud endpoint to turn off the presence switch on the second hub.
Nope - All is well in my world! If I could figure out how to pull data from my Victron solar equipment (their Venus OS on a RPi 3) I'd be in hog heaven (Is that a phrase that even makes sense down under?). Anyway, thanks for all the stuff you've written. It works great!
Anything to keep our pig-fiends in good health.... Not sure how long they are likely to spend in heaven.... But that is likely a conversation for another topic...
I just posted this in another area, please forgive me for re-posting it here.
[I am not tooting my own horn here, but there are a lot of very smart people here, and "I stand on the shoulders of giants". Thank you all for sharing.]
I would like to describe an easy way to display ALL of your devices on an easy to use Dashboard, using the existing Dashboard app. This approach is great for quick and easy display (not control).
[Please note: this is not my work, and all credit should go to @krlaframboise ]
Hubitat is for however the end user prefers to use it and interact with their devices. There is no one "right" or "wrong" way to do this - some prefer manual control over automation.
@Madcodger Hadn't looked into third party notifications, thanks got the recommendation. As for multiple devices... Not looking to put devices from different hubs on the same dashboard. Much simpler, just trying to be able to get to dashboards from different hubs without going to settings, selecting the other hub, re-registering the mobile device... Just feels like a lot of unnecessary extras for what's a lot of hyperlinks under the hood.
Do tell now?? Seriously, that's the simple answer I was hoping for! Can you do that from a normal Google Play install? Manual APK install? Or need to hack it even more than that? Thanks!
Well... Guess they shouldn't advertise a mobile app then if it's only for paying customers that "aren't doing it right"... hahaha...seriously though, while I would love to have hours a day to spend on this, I've got a job and three young kids... For me it's mostly for remote access to things and a couple automation routines that are enough value added to be worth it. From my perspective, just because it can be automated doesn't mean it should be automated. Just the way it works for me.
It doesn't sound like you need to use the mobile app at all. Why not just put links to the dashboards on your phone? I know on Android you can save a URL from the browser as an icon on the phone. I assume iOS can do the same.
You can also use the "Link" tile on a dashboard to link to any URL, including the dashboard on your other hub. So you can quickly jump between dashboards on the two hubs by putting tiles on each that link to the other one.
The app has never been a huge priority. Even when it was introduced it was really just a basic effort to quiet the clamor for "an app", but in reality it's not much more than a web wrapper. I haven't used it in a couple years . The only thing I was using it for was Zwave Smart Start,but even that doesn't seem to work anymore. I recently tried to use it to add 6 devices. I ended up having to add them all the old way, as Smart start never did anything.
it is not only for "paying customers" it works in the same basic manner regardless. it just isn't a particularly useful app in general. The native dashboard really isn't much better. There are third party integrations that are much better and much more aesthetically pleasing. For Android I highly recommend you take a look at HD+ or Sharptools. You can even set sharptools to be the default dashboard in the Hubitat app. For notifications, your just a well off to pay the $5 for a Pushover licence and use that for your notifications.
