Makes sense. First impressions is key to my wife. If they don’t like it at first it will take me 3x the amount of work to get her to even consider it the 2nd time.
One thing, it sounds like you don’t have the icons set up to auto fit on your dashboard. That is a setting in the options. It would avoid any right scrolling.
I have a special dashboard set up for my wife that has just the stuff she would need. The rest is usually automated or she controls via voice. I slowly introduced things over time and it amazes me how she actually uses them now through Alexa.
Not trying to light a fire, but NONE of us are qualified to say that. None of us work for their company and decisions change all the time. Just because HE said "this is our direction" doesn't mean they won't ever change their minds. They could change their strategy tomorrow if they want to, none of us can say that they "will not be." What we can say is, right now, dashboards are the chosen solution. A company that says "this is the way we're doing it, we will not change, regardless of whether the market demands we change" is a company that fails... it's a company that is still trying to sell horse and buggys instead of realizing cars were the way of the future.
True. However, it has consistently been stated that changes to the current status quo are not on the list of priorities, and that "prettiness" changes are planned but are very low on the list of priorities.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the current ecosystem will continue to be the one that we have to work within, barring bug fixes and modest improvements.
Yet... Here we are at post 184... and the conversation is beginning to be repetative...
Ok I understand what is in HE's gameplan which is why in an earlier post, I said then I more then likely would have to move on, and what was told to me was in essence good riddance. and what I am saying is I run a business myself and those kinds of attitudes will have you without customers period i'm not trying to be a smart ass but that's the case.
While this whole thred has been going on I contacted one of my old instructors at the college i attended to get my degree in business, And he said to me "remember what I taught everyone in my courses 9 times out of 10 if you want your business to be successful you must remember you have to please your customer and they are right. I run my company in that manner which is why I am still in business, And am still able to be in business by listening to my customer base.
You should absolutely listen to your customers but one customer does not an entire business strategy make. There may be good business reasons to not do something and you may invariably end up upsetting some of your customers no matter what you do anyway... right or wrong. Not sure what plans Hubitat Inc has but it is their risk and decision to make - just like it is with Wink.
My decision as a customer is to figure out if their product provides what I am looking for in a home automation system and if it is worth the price. Coming from SmartThings a few years ago the answer was and is most definitely yes.. and things have only gotten better over that time. Not worried in the slightest about HE going away - my current setup will continue to function as long as the hardware does..
I recently went to certification training for the Pragmatic Institute for Product Managers, they had a quote in their material, "your opinion, though interesting, is irrelevant." I thought that was a great way to say it. Remember, it's generally just the really unhappy people who complain. Most people keep quiet. You want to make sure you don't listen to the "loud minority" and ignore the "silent majority".
What about the posts that were trying to genuinely help you work towards a solution that might better meet your family’s needs without having to dump hubitat?
This community is incredibly helpful, and that’s one of the things I would miss most about moving on to another home automation platform.
And I appreciate all the help that has been offered, But if someone (meaning my wife) is not happy with the way something is or isn't working i have to respect that. think of it like this Marktheknife your wife drives an automatic transmission it's easy for her you drive a manual transmission someone totals her car and you say to her well your just going to have to learn how to drive a manual transmission but she continuously says this isn't working for me, if your a good husband you'll say ok dear I understand we have to come to a compromise. that's the only reason I keep asking about the development of a true app not a webpage link or something that she needs to have done to work on the backend.
And Erktrek if you go through these threads i'm not the only user complaining about the lack of a true app it's just that when a user brings it up or asks for it they are swiftly shouted down and told to deal with things the way they are.
A lot of people who have comment believe i'm trying to be difficult i'm not all of you in this thread loves this platform I can see that but if you want this platform to survive it just can't cater to one segment of user and as it stands it caters to the medium to vastly experienced techie. to give you my case point I was with Smartthings I was upset with the lack of local control so I moved to Homeseer it was way better I had local control they aslo had a dashboard like system and it worked but i felt the plugins were just way over priced so I switched to HE my wife was really upset that I made the move she found Homeseer somewhat easier to navigate. low and behold Smarthings are inching there way to more local control (still a horrible platform because it's majority cloud control) but they listend to the voices that wanted more local control, But Homeseer has really listened most of the needed plugins are now going to be built in and they have developed a true app. they had they same problem novice users complained about the lack of an app and they listened so in the newest version upcoming you can use the old dashboards or the app every user wins no one is left behind. But if you leave users they will feel the need to switch and it doesn't matter how much I may love HE if it's not working for my family and they are stead fast that the platform is going to be for the experienced user alone then i have to move on there shouldn't be any hard feeling in that. there making a business decision fine they don't want my business so I have to go somewhere that wants my business no hard feelings.
I agree your opinion is valid and the platform should evolve, and that HE is not perfect. But a product definitely can survive in just one market segment. Control4 has been in business for almost 20 years and mostly caters to people with 7 figure incomes... they're doing just fine. There are times where a product is better off catering to a segment than trying to meet the needs of all segments. That whole "jack of all trades, master of none" kinda thing.
To be clear, I didn't think you were being difficult. It just took a while before I understood what you were asking for. Now I get it, and no, HE doesn't have that. Whether it will in the future? Guess we'll see!
I have read most of this thread...so pardon me if I someone already suggested this to you...
I understand that your wife likes the SmartThings mobile phone app, while you like the power and flexibility of the Hubitat platform.
You can have your cake and eat it too. Just use HubConnect to link Hubitat and SmartThings together. You can have devices on one or both platforms, and have the data replicated as virtual devices to the other one. This way your wife can enjoy the ST Mobile App as if nothing has ever changed. She'll still need to endure a cloud dependency like all ST users, but no retraining would be required.
Thoughts?
Another thing to consider is that long-term she will probably not need to use any Mobile Phone App to control devices remotely, once you fully automate the house. My wife and son don't use the Hubitat Mobile App whatsoever, nor do we use Dashboards regularly. The house just takes care of things itself. We rarely touch a light switch in the house. Exhaust fans are automatically controlled. The house makes sure it locks itself up at night when we issue a "Alexa, Goodnight" command on the way to bed. Once you have everything dialed in and working, you actually forget about it. It just works. We actually find it annoying to walk into someone else's bathroom and now have to reach for a light switch. (Note: It has been 8+ weeks since we've been at someone else's home! )
I must truly be an idiot. The one thing that I absolutely hated about Wink was that I could not set things up using a PC. I would much rather set up/maintain my smart home using a 34" ultra-wide display and full-sized keyboard and mouse than to be forced to use a 6" phone and a keyboard with keys the size of a popcorn fart.
One of the compelling reasons I avoid smart bulbs and stick mostly to physical z-wave or Lutron controls and Pico stuff. I might lose automations or very few smart bulbs, but we can still turn lights on and off if needed.
Or even better in my opinion use the Google home app. That is essentially the same, it's all in a list but grouped in rooms (better).
If you want local then use the dashboards but give it a "Smartly" upgrade that way it will respond to your phone page but if for what ever reason your wife wants to debug? (My wife has no interest in that or fixing things it should just work and it does) then you can leave the option to see the device history in the tile.
This is where I see a issue. What do you mean by manage? Why is she having to manage it? Is you hub on a back up?
Is it that the power outage caused a database corruption?
I've now been a (mostly) content owner of HE for 9 months and I think it's perfectly fine to critique HE as not having a very user-friendly app experience. It requires a lot of tinkering and why users are required (as opposed to are ABLE) to customize the font and location of every tile is a little mind-boggling, and it's also a valid critique to say the user interface is rather ugly and not up to present design standards.
The short answer I can give is to enable Google Home integration. If you don't mind having commands flow through the cloud, Google Home provides a very nice interface to customize all individual controls and whatever you add in HE magically show up there. You can organize devices by room/location and voice control each individual one and it works great. Just do your work and code the back end, and let the wife and kiddos talk to Google.
Though, I do agree with most of the folks here that you have to know what you signed up for. Hubitat is not known for having the Frank Gehry of user interfaces. You have to get your hands dirty and code a lot of it yourself and it will sometimes confuse and confound you. But for the price, the degree of customization, and the speed at which updates are rolled out, i.e. what you can make of it, is really second to none.
For the folks arguing about an extra $30, it would have been a 6-month subscription on Wink which is barely enough time for you to migrate. I would gladly pay $100 more to have a working, supported platform for 5 years.
And Erktrek if you go through these threads i'm not the only user complaining about the lack of a true app it's just that when a user brings it up or asks for it they are swiftly shouted down and told to deal with things the way they are.
Yep! but I believe the point was that it is for Hubitat Inc to decide what's important and what is or is not a good business strategy. Apologies if I came off as unsympathetic.
The community is not Hubitat so as always your mileage may vary. I think you have every right to bring this up here and other threads just as others have the right to respond with their opinions as well - all within forum guidelines of course. Pointless to get bothered by posters who may have strong feelings on the matter but who ultimately have no control over what happens other than by voting with their wallet of course..
For me - started out interested in remote control and ended up more on the automated home side of things so a more sophisticated app is nice but not necessary right now - again that's just my use-case.
I've read this whole thread and my head spins every time I see the words "a true app". The HE apps for Android and IOS are true apps. Are they full-featured like Wink, SmartThings, or the venerable Homeseer that you seem to like so very much? No, but they are indeed true apps.
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