I donāt mean to get off topic and Iām no home assistant fanboy, but what environment variable were you setting? I just double checked my running container and other than some custom stuff I do with docker networks and volume mounting for configs, itās a plain old deployed container that didnāt require anything special.
Itās been a while since I installed HACS but I donāt recall it being overly complicated. Seems like it should just be a one liner command after you exec into the container. Either way, like I said no skin in the game, I will always advocate for everyone to use the tools that work best for them and other than dashboarding and a couple of cloud integrations Iām still more of a Hubitat fanboy.
I have personally gotten to a pretty good point with my mobile dashboard. In case anyone wants inspiration. (Highly influenced by a YouTube tutorial i watched at some point)
Itās not hard to install, but the āentityā naming system is horrid to navigate, even for technical users. Their built in rule system requires a degree hostile computing systems to figure out, especially when you factor in the bizarre entity system.
The one saving grace for HA is their really nice dashboards.
Not sure what you mean by ānavigateā the naming system. Do you mean the entities menu? That is a bit strange to have front and centre in the UI.
If you look at the Devices menu, you can see a more organized list, with their entities categorized and named. Just tap the entity and then the gear to get its device ID when needed.
You misunderstand me, Iām not talking about dashboards in my previous comment, Iām talking about automating things in HA.
HA dashboards are really nice, I used to use one to view my home solar + battery system. I only got rid of my HA docker image after realising i didnāt do anything else with it and the Tesla app was good enough.
Let us not forget that they have about 5 years ahead of Hubitat (they just turned 10, right?) and a team of developers that is twice as bigger than Hubitat, with dedicated front-end developers. Who knows where Hubitat will be in 5 years from now, with a much larger team
Thanks @bobbyD Bobby! Our needs are elementary. All we want is instantaneous response, 100% compatibility with every iOT device manufactured, a beautiful, simple yet comprehensive UI that works on tiny screens and giant screens on every operating system ever created. And flying cars. That would be nice.
With respect I disagree with you. The company (Hubitat) has relied far too much on the community for development. I don't see the R&D going into the front end as many have said here.
Obviously not Home Assistant, which until recently was entirely community driven. Couldn't be SmartThings; community apps/drivers did play a major role in the usability of that platform. Vera - nope - Reactor was a community effort. Home Seer - could be, although they relied on monetizing their community development efforts.
So if you leave out the newer Chinese entrants into HA (Aqara/TuYa etc), we're left with Wink. @gtracy correctly pointed out that Hubitat relies way more on it's community relative to Wink.
We got some former Wink users here - perhaps they'd like to chime in on the relative merits of Hubitat and Wink.
Without this amazing community, and the contribution of so many bright developers, Hubitat wouldn't be where it is today, and certainly not where it will be tomorrow!
We are grateful for each and every one who has contributed and continues to do so however small. This community is what makes Hubitat the best smart home platform.
OK, so I have read most of the comments here.
A little background first. I have been doing home automation for over 30 years. My first automation was with BSR X10 hardware. Most of you probably have no idea what this was. I ran MisterHouse for many years as well. I tried HA but dumped it because it was such a pain.
I have a long IT background but I am an engineer not a developer. I am also a telecom architect so user functionality and delivery to the customers needs are important to me.
From what I have read it seems to be that VERY few of you have wives or children in the house. Wife acceptance factor is very important.
I have been using HE for a few years now. I have a home and a barn each with their own HE C7's. I have a lot of automation running plus several dashboards on Android tablets running fully kiosk scattered around the house. My security cameras are displayed on those tablets as well. I have 10 security cameras plus two doorbell cameras all from Reolink. If you would like to read my experiences with them you can search here for them. Our tablets with their dashboards get used multiple times a day.....
The other day my friend who is a serious developer with a ton of years of experience and also a HE user (it took me a while to convince him) were discussing the fact of where the development was being done for HE. His comment was that he was concerned where the company was going because they seem to rely too much on the community to do their development recently. (I have mixed thoughts on this).
OK, so now that I have given you some background let me comment here with my thoughts.
I totally agree about the habitat lack of evolution with the dashboard. It hasn't changed since I first bought my HE hubs years ago. It is clunky. It looks like a kid designed it. It is difficult and time consuming to get things to work correctly. Most importantly it has a very low WAF (wife acceptance factor).
But most important of all, this is not a consumer product. It is for ticker's, computer developers and engineers. It does not have a well designed and presented front end nor is it easily configured. Want proof, give a brand new device to your wife and ask her to set it up.......Nothing negative about your wife.
Now, case in point about ease of doing things. I wanted my tablets to be able to power up with my security dashboard displayed. It has literally taken me YEARS to find the solution described above. Check the forum and you will see my requests that went unanswered.
So in closing I for one agree that the dashboard has had no advance for years and HE is really not a consumer product. It is rock solid but only a play thing for developers and engineers.
FWIW.....
To be fair... And I both don't have a wife (or partner) and also land on the let's improve things side of this discussion... If you asked many non-technical user to "add a device" to many platforms you may have mixed results on the "add a device" step, including, I would hope, in adding a device to HE. The more important, and telling test will be making use of the device in automating the home. I'm not going to say HE had cracked this nut, more that this is a tough one to crack and not all platforms could claim to have solved it completely.
Despite my earlier contention, I would agree with that statement, for all my positivity towards the HE platform. And that's not all the fault of those developing or supporting the HE platform.... Much of it, imho is to do with people's experience with logic... There is only so much a UI can solve... just my 2c...
lol. Well this certainly woke the thread up again. I did misunderstand and I wasnāt talking about dashboards or automation either. I was just talking about what I personally think looks better and is slightly easier to use in regard to the devices list only.
Meh, theyāre ok. Iām not a dashboard guy. My earlier comment about āuse HomeKitā is where Iām at with them, and my wife likes it too. Easy to access from the iOS control center and easy on the eyes.
For automation my choice is Hubitat, and has been from the day I owned my first HE hub. Nothing Iām writing or posting is meant to disparage the Hubitat team or their efforts. They have an excellent product and a flashy UI is a nice to have feature, not a priority for me.
