Wink hub down again. 01/25/2021

And in a surprising to nobody situation, Wink has been down for a couple days now. And they are still billing people for service! Be expecting a new surge of Wink refugees.

Be happy for everyone who escaped that horrible hub, me included.

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Most likely situation - didn't pay their AWS bill again.

Awww - be fair - they're giving people discounts :joy:

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As soon as I saw the wink down notice, I thought the same thing, "here comes another 2.5k Hubitat users"

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:wink::grin:

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I'm SUPER happy with Hubitat and have gotten a bunch of people onboard with it, but as someone who did come from Wink, it's still really sad to see what has happened to them.

Their UX was very user friendly and while they got a ton wrong, they also did a bunch right.
So sad, and it makes me so grateful for Hubitat.

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I have to say, I did like Wink. It was simple and easy to use. It was more of a control/dashboard platform for me than an automation platform. I had some time based automations, but no sensors, so it was limited.

They had great phone and e-mail support until they didn’t... At that point, I found Hubitat and boy am I ever glad I did! There is so much more possibility!!!

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Agreed. Their best days were right after Quirky had to spin Wink Labs into an independent company that was given to Flextronics (now Flex) in lieu of moneys owed to Flex for goods provided. Being sold to i.am+, who have yet to launch anything successfully, was very sad and outlined their eventual death.

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Yeah, another dumpster fire in the works. Frankly, the fact that they've hung on this long is a shocker--I thought they were done over a year ago.

I came from Wink and at the time (2016) Wink and SmartThings were the two viable options. Wink was a great starter platform--it was reliable and easy to use. By the time Hubitat hit the scene I had run into Wink's limitations decided to move on. Still, it's sad to see how badly WILL.I.AM ran it into the ground. Wink had a great market presence and could have been so much more.

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No. Wink was simply a starter device. The only reason I jumped on originally is that I purchased three kidde combo smoke/co detectors and I was obviously to what else was out there. It was useless without Stringify to handle basic automation.

Of course now my kidde units are not smart because only wink had the right hooks.

Ok, I’m done.

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I got three of those Kidde units too. Still have ~4-5 years of life left in them. I "smartened" them using an Ecolink FireFighter positioned next to one of them. Since they're interconnected (even without Wink), when any one triggers, they all do. This alerts the Ecolink FF, permitting Hubitat-based automations .....

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Yes I have have about that long with mine as well.

I have even had the ecolink firefighter in my cart at aartech.ca and have not pulled the trigger yet. I understand it can tell the difference between a smoke alarm and a CO alarm. But no zone info (meaning what alarm detected the smoke and no monitoring of course.

I have also looked at going with standard wired units and the hardwired relay that I could monitor with the konnected interface, but again no zone info.

The first alert zcombo is now approved and available in Canada. I think I am leaning towards this but I understand they do not talk to each other. Next year they are supposed to come out with a zwave hardwired powered version which will solve them all going off together.

As you can see I can not decide.

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@aaiyar I’ve had it with these guys too. I was going to switch initially when they said they were going to charge. I waited three months and subscribed as I hadn’t purchased and alternative and wanted my shortcuts and alerts.

They charged me last Wednesday too. Of course with wink website down you can’t cancel. Luckily I have it go to my Apple Card. I disputed last night. Took Goldman Sachs all of 5m to verify and approve.

Time to decide on the alternative :wink:

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Welcome! I came from Wink (by way of a 2 week stint with SmartThings), too, when the Chamberlain/LiftMaster functionality ended.

If you decide to go Hubitat, you will find that it is a better platform, and the community support is excellent.

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@672southmain thanks!

I considered smart things. Lots of guys at office had them. We were wink for years. I forgot our battery ran out on Schlage lock and we never got alert due to no subscription. That’s why I finally caved.

We have a load of Lutron Casetta, newer Schlage 563 I think, nest and chamberlain whisper drive or whatever it’s called. Want to get into ring or nest cameras.

Glad there’s a community. I looked around a few months ago. Winks initial updates always sucked years ago, too DevOpsy with little testing. Thing was always going offline. Then when stable they never added more features. Blew my mind.

So I take y’all are happy with hubitat?

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Extremely happy. So glad I left Wink when I did. I do miss Wink some days, it was so clean and simple, but Hubitat blows it out of the water for power of actually making a home smart, and not just a remote control toy.

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Thanks. You using an app to access community. I didn’t even think to check that.

Very happy. There was some teething pain when the C-7 was first introduced because of the new Z-Wave 700 chipset it uses. There were many bugs that the Hubitat staff had to work around, and it’s much better now. Including some Z-Wave devices can be difficult on occasion, but all the tips for success are in this forum.

For a smooth experience, I would urge you to check out the list of Compatible Devices. There are many, many devices not on the Compatible Devices list, for which members of the community have written or ported drivers. Just search this forum, or ask.

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You will need a Lutron Bridge Pro2 to connect with the Hubitat if you don't already have one.. and looks like there is some sort of deal going on..

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Thanks I’ll check out the list again to see where we would stand.

Bummer. Having only one hub was my favorite part about wink. Never used the Schlage hub with old lock to wink. I’ll have to see if I have a Lutron hub. Pretty sure I don’t.