In general, I try and keep up with the Home Automation market in general.
I have found that there is a group of "influencers" that tend to influence the general public on this complex, difficult subject. One of the more honest, and open minded influencer, is Reed from Smart Home Solver. He just recently did a year end comparison of Home Automation Hubs, here:
I was somewhat surprised that he's decided to move away from SmartThings to Home Assistant.
One of the interesting pieces of analysis on Hubitat is that he feels that not much work was done on the Hub in the past year. As we all know (those of us who are here, in the trenches), there has been a TREMENDOUS amount of development in the past year. Hub Mesh, C7, Copy/paste of rules, efficiency of processing, hundreds of new drivers, etc., are just a few of the big changes that we know happened this past year.
It does appear that there is a certain HA mindset out there. That mindset means that the "app" that controls and manages your Home Automation has to reside on your phone, and be easy to use and manipulate. In other words, a dashboard just won't cut it.
When I personally made the change over from SmartThings that "change in mindset", was perhaps the biggest obstacle I had to overcome. I'm glad that I made the switch, but I understand former Vera/SmartThings/etc. users who ask: "where's the app?"
Since this is the Lounge, do you think that Hubitat should make up an app?
What do you think of his review?
I have bought into the concept of automation. I understand the need for an appealing app for marketing purposes but I would sure rather see Hubitat put their energies into making the automation easier to implement.
My thoughts along those lines -
I think the different families of automation tools in Hubitat are very intimidating for newcomers - should I use Rule Machine? Or Simple Automation? Or Motion Lighting? How do I choose? Why do I need to choose?
I need to make a minor change to a Rule Machine rule. Why is that so difficult? [Honestly, one big problem for me is making changes so infrequently I forget all the "tricks"].
Adding new devices is still way more difficult (again, for a newbie) than it should be (IMO).
I am amazed and pleased at how well my house automatically does so many things. The exceptions I mostly handle with voice commands and I have a very simple set of dashboards that I can fall back on (but I rarely do).
As far as the review - I think he under emphasizes the impact of latency. When you switch on a light switch you expect it to go on immediately.
He trashed Hubitat for not having an "app", then turned around and praised Homekit which is virtually the same idea of local control with a dashboard!
There were some valid criticism about Hubitat, namely things looking dated. But in the end, you don't have to look at the interface constantly.
My takeaway is that Home Assistant has a very cult-like following, and even as bad or as tough as it is to use, people rate it "the best".
I was there too, Wink can only be manipulated via an app, there is no option to do desktop programming. It is very painful to do everything via an app. I prefer Hubitat the way it is. I can see where some people might want remote access to apps and drivers, but I personally have never had the need for it.
Nope. It is basically fine as is. Once you automate things, you rarely use the dashboard anyway. For times where you want control other than automation, there are buttons, physical switches, or voice control.
It was OK, but not great. He didn't share details of his rating scale, how he tested things, or many other factors. I would have rated some of these hubs much differently than he did.
I will certainly be interested to see how he fairs with HA. I wouldn’t be surprised based on what I have heard from he platform (I have no direct experience with HA) that he finds it takes up too much of his time and decides to chose another... (Maybe HE?). Time will tell!
I have to say that I disagree with one key point in his detailed evaluation: Long-term support & longevity: 3/5
It has a good community, but the company is small, and not a solid corporation like Samsung. Could they still be around 3 to 5 years from now? Sure. Could they get low on money and start charging for things like Wink? Who knows. It’s something to keep in mind though.
You might say, hey my Hubitat hub runs locally so I’ll be fine if the company went out of business. Yes, you could keep controlling your hub but there is still the app to maintain and that’s assuming the community would stick around to keep things alive.
...and... Long-term support & longevity: 4/5
This should probably a 5 out of 5, but you are at the mercy of the community.
What if community members switch to another platform or the passion for Home Assistant fizzles out? That might not happen, but open source projects don’t always live forever. Just something to think about.
In my humble opinion, it's ridiculous to assign a higher value on "Long-term support & longevity" to Home Assistant versus Hubitat.
I think it's fair to give an open source project with a huge community following a higher score for longevity (and probably support) than a proprietary one. So on that basis I understand his scoring on these parameters.
Not Automation hub and from the video it seems his priority is more about pulling out his phone to control his devices, rather than having his devices automated by his hub.
Maybe a slightly different perspective than most HE users...
Speed (app & controlling devices): 3/5
Since Hubitat works locally, you would think that this category would be much higher. I would like to give it a better score, but the app is too clunky.
Trying to quickly change a device that isn’t in the dashboard takes a while. Even changing the lights on the dashboard requires me to click on them first if they are a color bulb. Not ideal.
If Hubitat would re-design their app, this could easily be a 5 out of 5.
What is smart about having to pull your phone out, unlock it, open the app, find the control you are looking for, and toggling it while standing 3 feet from the switch on the wall that would control it?
I have to disagree. The fact that many "think" voice or phone control is "smart" in and of itself, smart homes are ones that do not require much if any direct user interaction other than set up and tweaking. Either way, it's only smart if it is better in some way: More efficient, more convenient, more reliable, etc. I do not see how any app on a phone accomplishes this regardless of how polished it is.
Even he said that Nest Home Hub should not have the word "hub" in the description. A phone app is nothing more than a less efficient method than voice control.
I listen to what they say but don't take that group seriously. I find that they talk a lot on products but never get into them deep enough to really understand how they work. Then when you buy into their hype and get the product you figure out all the limitations that make it hopeless. To be fare though, there is a lot of information and details to have to constantly cover out there so its not easy.
I constantly see this. Its one of the issues with a community. I've seen it a number of times where an app dev decides to move on and the app is now dead and used by a few people with nobody willing to take it up. This is one of the reasons I got into writing my own apps. You never know when a dev in the community is just going to move on.
This exactly! When watching the video it just seems like he does too much for an automated house. Instead of flicking a switch in a dumb house he taps his phone on a tag. When leaving he has to remember to announce he's leaving or home. This just seems like too much work to have to remember and even worse to have to explain to other family members. I have all of this setup automatically. I press the physical switches when I need and if I'm lazy voice control can handle the rest. I don't want to have to rely on my phone to have to do things in my house.
As I stated previously, I made the "mental leap" from a phone app to automation rules a while back when I switched from SmartThings to Hubitat. I think (personally) it's a better approach.
However, I will go on the record with this. I see nothing wrong (and much to be gained), by putting the "first level control apps", (e.g. Smart Automation Rules, Motion Lighting, Notifier, etc.) on a phone, with an easy point and click interface. First of all, it would cement the parity between Hubitat and other competitors (who have such a thing). Secondly, it would put a "friendly user interface" on these "beginner" apps - which would be great marketing. Thirdly, it would put more control in the hands of the users - where it belongs. Fourth, (given my admittedly scant technical ability ), I don't think that these "first level apps" would be so difficult to put in an easy to use app (due to their "limited" capability.)
In my humble opinion.
This is the key with Hubitat's true core values it's all about automation! What is the point of having smarthome if you have to turn everything on/off with a app! I have a 24" touchscreen with dashboard on in the kitchen but it basically just sits there monitor everything hardly ever touch it lol.
A lot of people just don't get it.
PS. I would rather pay a higher price for a hub than be locked in to any subscription's.
I will say this from someone who JUST took the plunge in the home automation (maybe a month ago): Samsung's Smart Things missteps are a big opportunity for Hubitat. I did all the research I could, and I determined that Samsung's exit from the hardware business and unavailability of their products (or AEOTECH substitutes) was a deal breaker.
And Paul Hibbert's discussion regarding how hard HA was to get to work really turned me off from Home Assistant (I Tried Home Assistant AGAIN & It's STILL NOT WORTH IT! - YouTube). Even the commenters in that video that love HA were pretty funny but didn't disagree with his assessment. ("home assistant is a hobby not a product"; "using home assistant is a part-time job").
Note that Smart Home Solver, who posted the hub comparison, said in the comments about 5 months after he posted his hub comparison video, "I was trying to add my Broadlink Pro to Home Assistant this last week and couldn’t believe how difficult it was." Maybe he'll give Hubitat another look-see.
Though, as for time invested, my wife has started saying that I'm spending too much time with my "HUBby," referring to Hubitat. Anyway, I'm rooting for Hubitat to step in and take over the void left by ST!
Yes, but there is still something uninspiring about Samsung giving their product line to somebody else. Still, I heard Samsung has 63 million ST users, so that's a lot of momentum.
My guess is the vast majority of those users are Samsung Appliance owners, as that 'New' SmartThings mobile app used to be just for everything Samsung. I believe it was called Samsung Connect, or something like that. It took them about 3 years to get SmartThings users migrated to the new app, after they rebranded it the new SmartThings app. Also, SmartThings these days is 'hub-optional', so it is very unlikely that those 63 million ST users are actually true Home Automation users (i.e. using the SmartThings hub.) Most are just using cloud connections for everything. I will say that the recent developments for more local processing (e.g Edge device drivers) is a welcome addition to the SmartThings platform. But I fail to see a long-term viable strategy where Samsung still maintains the hub firmware, but 3rd party vendors make the hardware. It feels like an awkward arrangement to me. Oh, and the recent 200 device limit seems a bit restrictive to the hardcore home automation folks...
I'd guess the "63 million" stats include a fair amount of 'users' who simply have it pre installed. I have the app and can't get rid of it from my samsung s9.
In any effort, the actual number of real smarthome-style smartthings users will be vastly less. I see this area as a bit of a hobby, with serious users taking more of a DIY route in general.
Again and again I see people refer to a smart home when all they really mean is a remote control home. Pulling out a device to make something happen is remote control, not automation, and not really very smart. Once set up a smart home shouldn’t need an app at all. IMHO of course!
