Your worst home automation purchase?

Oh, I have one more to add! The damn orbit/iris smart sprinkler valve, the Orbit 27087-03

I had 3 of these and spent about 8hrs getting them to work the way I wanted. They were a pita to pair and then once you had them joined they didn't really work right. You could turn them on by blasting commands at them and they'd eventually come on, but then they shutoff automatically after 10 minutes. I even wrote a little app to turn them on n times in a row to get the watering duration I wanted.

I got everything all setup and they worked great for 1 summer. At the end of the season I put them away in the basement, but even then when I went to use them again the next year they all sprang leaks because the plumbing side is cheap plastic, and the leaks killed the electronics.

Thats every Orbit sprinkler timer imho, "smart" or not. Selling the same product to the same people year after year. What a business model.

It’s that weird bulb that can be controlled from a conventional dimmer or via Zigbee. I respect them for trying something different, but for me anyway, several of those bulbs were failures. I bought a classic bulb kit with a bridge. Arriving tomorrow. I’ll see if I can update their firmware if there’s an update available. If not, the kit goes back and the bulbs go to the curb.

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I had no idea such a thing existed. I assume that once you dim it via the conventional dimmer that you can't get it brighter via zigbee, right? I mean, what would be the use of that?

I think the idea was a transition bulb, or a way to use it in a fixture that could not have it's dimmer control removed, so any adjustment would damage a regular smart bulb. It's a heavy bulb too. Seems that however they did that, it needs a big heat sink.

I had a Lutron Maestro fan/dimmer module in there before. Old 1926 house, so without rewiring, could just pop in the canopy module and I had instant controllable light and fan separated at the wall. Great product. Too bad they never connected it to Caséta.

So those lights made sense at the time, but my wife hated having to wait for the Lutron dimmer to slowly turn off, and that wasn't programmable in the device. Only after it was fully off, could she manually turn them back on after they were turned off by the Zigbee radio. A Caséta fan controller and a Pico have helped, but now with the Hue bulbs, she's finally satisfied with that fixture.

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I thought I was the only one to do that. I had to do it everytime I visited my in-laws house.

YF

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I agree I wish the plumbing where metal instead of plastic!

The default driver for the Orbit Hose Timer now has a field where you can set the default time to water so you can change it from the default 10 minutes to just over what you want to use in your schedule and there is a very good Simple Irrigation app which has been working great for me this year (a couple of times the app has had to send a command twice to get the unit to start or stop but it tries up to 5 times and I set the default watering time of the device to one minute more than the schedule so if it did fail to turn off by the commands hopefully the device would automatically shutoff one minute late.

I have had this timer for about 3 years (originally on Iris) and each fall I set it to manual, drain it well, take the batteries out and put it in the basement to keep it from freezing in case there is any water left in it.

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Haha YES! That, too. This method travels well. :slight_smile:

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OMG I think about this WEEKLY. I have one of those, too, and it's SO nice a smooth and slick and works so perfectly...and WHY won't they make a Caseta version of it? GRRRR...

To be clear, before anyone says there is a Caseta ceiling fan controller now: This has separate dimming for light as well as fan speed, and has a really nice remote. It's everything good about the KOF/Hampton Bay thing we all use and everything nice about Lutron stuff, combined into one. --But it's IR only.

I actually have mine set up on my system using a pretty complex Node red flow, sending IR commands through my Harmony Hub. I'm using a virtual fan controller and a virtual fan dimmer connector to give it meaningful controls in Hubitat and to allow Google Home voice commands to control it. But because of the limited commands the thing takes, the node red flow has tons of commands. Oh, to just have one device driver that drove that thing...

There’s a non-IR version. That’s what I have. Still using one in my son’s room.

However, if you have a Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge Pro, you can just add the Fan controller and a Pico.

The Pico on the right in this photo is just attached to the wall with one of their special holders for gang plates. The actual electrical box is a single gang that the fan controller is installed in.

The only issue I encountered was that I needed constant power for the Zigbee bulbs, and a separate line from the fan to the Caséta fan controller. Adding this was as much work as it would be to install separate switches for light and fan if you didn’t have that already. No canopy module like the maestro has. However I can now control Both with Hubitat or Alexa or Google home. So it was worth it.

I have rules so that when it gets too warm, the fan turns on automatically, and as it gets hotter the speed increases automatically. And when it’s cool enough, it turns down or off entirely depending on the temp.

I also think this is effective when you’re trying to simulate being home, because if anybody’s actually casing your home, a fan that’s not when it’s blazing hot outside is a pretty good indicator that you’re not actually there. So that is now also part of my vacation schedule to make it look like we are here, even when we are not.

Not only are the Element Plus bulbs at their current firmware version (e.g. No improvements available), but the Sengled bridge has got to be one of the worst user experiences I have had in a while. You can't connect a bulb when its on WiFi !? What the heck were they thinking? A lot of these smart home companies really have a knack for doing stupid things that your average consumer either isn't going to tolerate, doesn't have a way around the issue, or has no clue how to circumvent the problem. These guys just seem to setup their own failure.

  • After a firmware update, it needed to be factory reset too, or the app could no longer find the bridge! They didn't tell you that though. Just figured it out by trying. How many mainstream consumers are going to do that? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

  • When pairing the bulb, they ask you to scan a QR code on the bulb to make it easy, ya know, so you don't have to read tiny numbers on the bulb. But then they pull up a list of tiny numbers for you to look at on the bulb (with a magnifying glass since they're so damn small) and match that up with one of the bulbs in a list :roll_eyes: Which is super easy to do with a blinding clear domed bulb you cannot control yet,
    shining right in your eyes!

Yep. Back to Amazon it goes, and the Element Plus bulbs get kicked to the curb!

Wink
Ge Bulbs
Quirky Propane weight sensor

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Oof, I was going to say Keen vents... but I forgot about Quirky products.

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I almost bought some of those but after a good bit of research and getting yelled at by my hvac guy, I decided against them

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I moved my Cree bulbs to my Hue hub and they seem much happier.

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People say we learn from our mistakes. My list of bad purchases is so long that I must be a slow learner.

  • Wink Hub 2 (with the crazy expectation it would be a better experience than the original :rofl:)
  • GE Link bulbs (still have several brand new sitting in boxes in my attic)
  • Quirky Spotters
  • Quirky Nimbuses
  • Quirky Refuel (@rlithgow1 - you want another one, I'll ship it for free :smiley:)
  • Schlage door-locks (6 years of misery that has blissfully ended)
  • Honeywell WiFi thermostat (would not stay connected no matter I tried)

My best purchase, without a doubt, was also one of my first - Caseta dimmers.

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I have not had any issues with my schlage locks at all... But hey if you wanna ship them to me...(grin) As long as they have version 7.8 or better firmware :stuck_out_tongue:

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Much older firmware. I shipped those wretched things away a long back ..,

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I went from Wink original to SmartThings... my expectations were only slightly more realistic than yours.

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I got lucky :slight_smile:
Screen Shot 2021-08-06 at 11.45.24 AM

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Sounds like we have similar experiences. Unfortunately, that still isn't the gold medal for me (though it was definitely worthless). It's hard to say, but I'm thinking Lockitron v2, which a couple times locked/jammed me out of my own home. (This was the crowdfunded model from 2012 or so that shipped over a year later.) It's similar in concept to something like Kevo Convert, except instead of replacing the interior portion, it sat on top of it--like a SwitchMate or maybe that ThirdReality product that does the same for light switches. To top that all off, it was a battery-powered Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth) device, so you can guess how long those batteries lasted (hint: not as long as they thought).

I'm guessing there's a good reason they scrapped most of these ideas for the v3. :slight_smile: (And now they're part of MyQ; I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to judge whether that is good or bad. Ha.)

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