[vreihen16]

Since the topic came up in another thread and others thought that it warranted its own thread, here it is.

Back in the stone ages, I was an early adopter of Wink. I later chained HomeBridge to it as a gateway for Apple stuff to control things. Worked fine for years, until Will.i.am ran out of money and Wink (corporation) imploded.

When I saw the handwriting on the wall for Wink, I beat the mass exodus and picked up an emergency Hubitat hub after only minimal investigation. It did more than Wink could, and has a great user community providing third-party integrations. With HOOBS (virtual HomeBridge appliance) chained in front of it as an Apple HomeKit gateway, it was a painless conversion that added even more integration possibilities.

Hubitat has been adding features to their hub at a fast pace, and I would argue too fast as an IT professional. Every recent update seems to have more bugs, and their pre-release QA testing seems to be lacking. This drives me crazy enough where I started searching for an alternative.

Back during the holiday break from work, I downloaded/installed the open-source Home Assistant package. It has a learning curve, and is written from a programmer's perspective and not a homeowner's perspective. It comes with its own HomeKit bridge built in for Apple stuff, so no need to also run a separate HomeBridge or HOOBS instance. It has a stronger online user community than Hubitat, and many more integrations available. The most interesting feature to me is that you can write REST web and shell script (command line) interactions with no programming required. I had mentioned developing an integration for OCD psycho dog's electronic pet door in another thread. It only took a few hours with a Q&D shell script.

One of the surprise features in Home Assistant is that it includes native support for BMW Connected Drive. I can read the battery status, range, mileage, warning messages, and even pre-condition my BMW i3 directly from Home Assistant! Unlike the BMW iPhone app, the Home Assistant integration seems to have an almost 100% success rate when sending commands to the car. Makes me sad that AT&T is shutting down the 3G cellular network this month, because BMW Connected Drive is finally useful to me just in time to discontinue the service.

Anyway, I'm about 90% completed migrating from Hubitat to Home Assistant, and happy so far with what I've seen.....

[M_Six]

Our petsitter used to leave lights on or turn off the ones we wanted on, so I wanted a way to control the lights from anywhere. I bought a home automation router (Z-wave based), the name of which I can't remember now. I also bought a wifi dimmer switch and second switch for a 2-switch ceiling light we have in the basement. The wiring for the ceiling light is nothing like any diagram I've ever seen and it was important to get the main power wire correct. Since I couldn't be sure which was which, I gave up and figured I'd get an electrician to do it the next time we had one in the house for other work. Well, getting an electrician here is a long process and then Covid hit, so all that got put off. Now technology has advanced greatly to where HomeKit and HomeKit capable devices make it much easier to set up. So that's where I'm at. Still waiting for my Apple HomePod Mini and Apple TV 4k to arrive. Should be here tomorrow. Then the fun begins.

[cmyx6go]

Stopping in to just say I have nothing to contribute to this thread. I won't even have Alexa in my house.

Carry on

[DETRoadster]

I dipped my toe in the home automation waters a couple years back with a wifi enabled set of garage door openers. I'm the guy that leaves for a trip and immediately has to drive around the block to go past my house one more time to convince myself that yes, I did close the garage doors. I liked being able to see a simple Open/Closed status on my smart phone and could also open the door from my phone when I pulled up on my motorcycle. Because we live on a busy urban street I've never wanted to install a garage door keypad on the outside. So all in all it seemed like a great solution and it was, for about a year. Then it started to fail. The false "your garage door just opened" text alerts started showing up. Mostly in the morning and the early evening. Tons of them. Like even 7 minutes. Took me a couple weeks to spot the pattern. Every time a city bus drive by, up popped the alert. Then one evening I'm sitting on the sofa and I hear the garage door open. "Ah, the wife is home". Strangely it doesnt close and she doesnt come upstairs. I wander down to the garage and nope, she's not home. Worst of all the stupid system that's pinging me every 7 minutes with false alerts, never sent an alert. The final straw was coming home from work and finding one of the garage doors wide open. I ripped that shit out and tossed it in the trash.

I want to see all this stuff move a bit further along in the development cycle before I trust it again.

[unluky]

I too was an early adapter, but my first rule was - no Fing hubs. I just knew the hubs would limit me in the future and cause compatibility problems. I tried the SmartThings early on and after about a day of it being hit and miss on what it would control - I dumped it and made that rule. I have ceiling fans, thermostats, bed heaters, outside flood, indoor lights and dimmers, cameras, security system, etc all tied to them. I use Alexa and Google.

I live out in the country and I have mine geo fenced so when I am coming up my drive, my living room and kitchen lights come on, my door lights, and my porch floods. Nice to come home to a lit up yard and illuminated house when it is dark outside.

I also have a lot of groups like "Illuminate the yard" which turns on all my outside flood lights all around the house so I can light up the yard 360 degrees around the house from anywhere in the house.

I have a lot of older pre-assistant remote controlled switches. Instead of replacing them all, I tied them to my Harmony Hub (my AV controller with ir control) and use that to control them until I need to replace them for some other reason - then I switch them to stand along wifi switches. I'm down to just 2 left.

I have 2 places, so being able to pop in and look in on either and control lighting when I am anywhere is a nice feature.

[DETRoadster]

Originally Posted by cmyx6go

Stopping in to just say I have nothing to contribute to this thread. I won't even have Alexa in my house.

Carry on

[Topcarbon]

I use EUFY to control lights
The nest controls the temperature.

Its pretty low tech
I find this necessary as i am not at this house all the time and its easier to use than bugging my property manager

[unluky]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

I dipped my toe in the home automation waters a couple years back with a wifi enabled set of garage door openers. I'm the guy that leaves for a trip and immediately has to drive around the block to go past my house one more time to convince myself that yes, I did close the garage doors. I liked being able to see a simple Open/Closed status on my smart phone and could also open the door from my phone when I pulled up on my motorcycle. Because we live on a busy urban street I've never wanted to install a garage door keypad on the outside. So all in all it seemed like a great solution and it was, for about a year. Then it started to fail. The false 'your garage door just opened" text alerts started showing up. Mostly in the morning and the early evening. Tons of them. Like even 7 minutes. Took me a couple weeks to spot the pattern. Every time a city bus drive by, up popped the alert. Then one evening I'm sitting on the sofa and I heat the garage door open. "Ah, the wife is home". Strangely it doesnt close and she doesnt come upstairs. I wander down to the garage and nope, she's not home. Worst of all the stupid system that's pinging me every 7 minutes with false alerts, never sent an alert. The final straw was coming home from work and finding one of the garage doors wide open. I ripped that shit out and tossed it in the trash.

I want to see all this stuff move a bit further along in the development cycle before I trust it again.

Assuming your wif reaches your garage - you can buy a $30 Wyze camera off Amazon and use their free app. Put it INSIDE your garage (can't be tampered with) and you can always take a quick peek to see the doors are closed. Peace of mind and cheap without handing over control of your garage door.

And also - I had this same thing happen to me when I lived in town with nothing installed. I assume a neighbor had the same code and every now and then they would trigger it and it would be open. I figured out how to change my frequency/code and it never happened again. Not a great feeling.

[ryan stewart]

I have Smartthings now but am probably eventually going to Homeseer for local processing. Ill still need to be online because I do use my google homes and geofencing to run automations, but I also have rooms and zones setup that, in theory, would execute faster using a local controller. That and not being as dependent on a service would be nice.

Honestly my main obstacle from doing it now is the community for smartthings is HUGE and tons of people have made a lot of custom automations and device handlers. For example someone created a custom handler to override the limitations of garage door openers in smartthings and google home to basically give full functionality and voice control.

I will eventually upgrade my camera system too. Right now using a DLink system with local recording and will probably go to a more modern version of that. I like my nest doorbell but they are getting too restrictive and expensive for their recording options and I dont need the AI crap, just a decent res looped recording of the perimeter just in case something happens and an app I can remotely check in on things just for piece of mind.

[DETRoadster]

Originally Posted by unluky

Assuming your wif reaches your garage - you can buy a $30 Wyze camera off Amazon and use their free app. Put it INSIDE your garage (can't be tampered with) and you can always take a quick peek to see the doors are closed. Peace of mind and cheap without handing over control of your garage door.

And also - I had this same thing happen to me when I lived in town with nothing installed. I assume a neighbor had the same code and every now and then they would trigger it and it would be open. I figured out how to change my frequency/code and it never happened again. Not a great feeling.

Ha! I actually did that. We have a Nest cam that I used to keep an eye on the dogs while at work. I stuck it down in the garage for a couple weeks to try to catch the ghost door opening. That was after the first incident where I thought my wife was home. I never caught anything so I gave up after a couple weeks. A few weeks after I pulled the cam out was when it opened again on me. When we leave for trips now I unplug both openers. I've now worked from home full time for 14 months and those doors have never once opened on their own so I'm pretty confident it was that garbage system I pulled out.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by unluky

Assuming your wif reaches your garage - you can buy a $30 Wyze camera off Amazon and use their free app. Put it INSIDE your garage (can't be tampered with) and you can always take a quick peek to see the doors are closed. Peace of mind and cheap without handing over control of your garage door.

And also - I had this same thing happen to me when I lived in town with nothing installed. I assume a neighbor had the same code and every now and then they would trigger it and it would be open. I figured out how to change my frequency/code and it never happened again. Not a great feeling.

That's what I do. Simple pet cam and phone app so I can check my garage door. I also have a bad habit of wondering if I closed the door just as I'm going out of sight of the garage, so a quick check on the phone shows me the door from the inside.

[DETRoadster]

Originally Posted by unluky

I too was an early adapter, but my first rule was - no Fing hubs. I just knew the hubs would limit me in the future and cause compatibility problems. I tried the SmartThings early on and after about a day of it being hit and miss on what it would control - I dumped it and made that rule. I have ceiling fans, thermostats, bed heaters, outside flood, indoor lights and dimmers, cameras, security system, etc all tied to them. I use Alexa and Google.

I live out in the country and I have mine geo fenced so when I am coming up my drive, my living room and kitchen lights come on, my door lights, and my porch floods. Nice to come home to a lit up yard and illuminated house when it is dark outside.

I also have a lot of groups like "Illuminate the yard" which turns on all my outside flood lights all around the house so I can light up the yard 360 degrees around the house from anywhere in the house.

I have a lot of older pre-assistant remote controlled switches. Instead of replacing them all, I tied them to my Harmony Hub (my AV controller with ir control) and use that to control them until I need to replace them for some other reason - then I switch them to stand along wifi switches. I'm down to just 2 left.

I have 2 places, so being able to pop in and look in on either and control lighting when I am anywhere is a nice feature.

So I really like this geofencing idea and having lighting control when I drive up. I'm 100% interested in smart lighting control but that's it. Nothing more. Sounds like you and others are using Google for that. Is there a way to do that level of automation without dropping a Google or Alexa system into your house that's listening to you all the time?

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

So I really like this geofencing idea and having lighting control when I drive up. I'm 100% interested in smart lighting control but that's it. Nothing more. Sounds like you and others are using Google for that. Is there a way to do that level of automation without dropping a Google or Alexa system into your house that's listening to you all the time?

Apple's HomeKit can use the latest gen apple 4k TV as a Thread router for Apple Home. The Apple TV remote has Siri and a mic, but you can just tape over the mic opening and/or turn off Siri. Same with using a HomePod mini. Of course if you're not into the Apple environment, that isn't much of an option.

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

I dipped my toe in the home automation waters a couple years back with a wifi enabled set of garage door openers. I'm the guy that leaves for a trip and immediately has to drive around the block to go past my house one more time to convince myself that yes, I did close the garage doors. I liked being able to see a simple Open/Closed status on my smart phone and could also open the door from my phone when I pulled up on my motorcycle. Because we live on a busy urban street I've never wanted to install a garage door keypad on the outside. So all in all it seemed like a great solution and it was, for about a year. Then it started to fail. The false "your garage door just opened" text alerts started showing up. Mostly in the morning and the early evening. Tons of them. Like even 7 minutes. Took me a couple weeks to spot the pattern. Every time a city bus drive by, up popped the alert. Then one evening I'm sitting on the sofa and I hear the garage door open. "Ah, the wife is home". Strangely it doesnt close and she doesnt come upstairs. I wander down to the garage and nope, she's not home. Worst of all the stupid system that's pinging me every 7 minutes with false alerts, never sent an alert. The final straw was coming home from work and finding one of the garage doors wide open. I ripped that shit out and tossed it in the trash.

I want to see all this stuff move a bit further along in the development cycle before I trust it again.

Get away from wifi and move to zwave+. More secure and reliable. Its a dedicated mesh system (so plugged in devices work as relays). Ive been using it forever and my openers have been reliable for years using the linear/gocontrol controllers. Also no crosstalk issues, the more devices you add the better the network gets.

[ryan stewart]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

So I really like this geofencing idea and having lighting control when I drive up. I'm 100% interested in smart lighting control but that's it. Nothing more. Sounds like you and others are using Google for that. Is there a way to do that level of automation without dropping a Google or Alexa system into your house that's listening to you all the time?

Geofencing can be done within smartthings without google home/alexa/etc.

Two options, one is to have the app on your phone and use location control. My understanding it works better on android and ios since IOS is more restrictive on background services.

Another option is a FOB. I had a zigbee fob and a plugged in zigbee lamp controller plugged in my most front room and I could see the lights come on as I drove up my street. I eventually ditched it for a different setup but that isnt dependent on 3rd party cloud services.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

So I really like this geofencing idea and having lighting control when I drive up. I'm 100% interested in smart lighting control but that's it. Nothing more. Sounds like you and others are using Google for that. Is there a way to do that level of automation without dropping a Google or Alexa system into your house that's listening to you all the time?

No Google in my house! Alexa, well that b*tch was here for a few days before she was sent packing as well. (I was evaluating the software development environment for a side gig project, and gave up on it quickly when it wouldn't let me watch Star Trek without starting a self-destruct countdown.)

I'm doing all of my presence detection in Apple HomeKit automations. If everyone in your household has an iPhone, HomeKit's built-in "when anyone arrives home" and "when the last person leaves" automations can do just about anything...except unlock a door. (Simple workaround for that, though.) My DW and I both also have Apple Watches, and frequently use them via pushbutton Siri to flip inside lights and stuff on/off. Siri is *not* set to work with "hey, Siri" on any of our devices, only by button push. If you want to know why, picture a burglar sticking a megaphone up against a window and saying "Hey, Siri/Alexa/Google, unlock the front door" while everyone is out.

Because of huge marketing campaigns, everyone equates Alexa or Google Home (or Nest) as being "home automation." If you have to tell Google/Alexa to do something or have to pull your phone out and open an app to do it, that's not AUTOMATION! Really, it's quicker to get up off the couch and hit the light switch than it is to pick up your phone and open an app to do it. We have no Google/Alexa or other speakers in our house, and the Apple TV (needed for HomeKit access when away) doesn't even have Siri enabled at all.

About 98% of my home automation processing is done completely in-house, with only a few "mistakes" that I bought before I realized the above still needing cloud access to work (Ecobee and Tado thermostats being the main offenders). The importance of local-only processing and my dislike of HomeKit-only devices will be the subject of a future post.....

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by ryan stewart

Another option is a FOB. I had a zigbee fob and a plugged in zigbee lamp controller plugged in my most front room and I could see the lights come on as I drove up my street.

A few people with garages and door openers have done a really neat thing. They have a Z-Wave or Zigbee transmitter hard-wired to the switched ignition power in their car. When they turn on the ignition to start their car, the transmitter powers up, and garage door automatically opens. If they accidentally push the remote start button or try to kill themselves from carbon monoxide poisoning, the door opening keeps everyone safe! As soon as the ignition is turned off or the car leaves the short Zigbee/Z-Wave radio range, the door closes itself. Another example of home AUTOMATION.

We don't park in our current detached garage, but you can take it to the bank that I would have something like this set up...like yesterday...if we did.....

[ryan stewart]

Im not that aggressive with it, I just like my welcome lights and have some routines setup like telling my Google home goodnight and it goes through and sets security: Makes sure and calls out that garage doors are closed and exterior doors are locked, arms security system in home mode, turns off any lights left on, turns off tvs that might be on, sets the stat to night temps and runs the downstairs vac based on schedule.

[DETRoadster]

Thanks for all the tips, gang. My wife and I are both deep into the Apple ecosystem so perhaps HomeKit is a viable solution here. I'll research it a bit and see if it looks like a good fit. Are all the end point devices like light bulbs, smart watering valves, power strips, etc. WiFi controlled when it comes to HomeKit?

[M_Six]

Another reason I want to try geofencing is so when I come home from a bike ride my garage door opens. That way I don't need to carry a house key. Small thing, but it'd be cool to have the door opening as I roll into the driveway.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

Thanks for all the tips, gang. My wife and I are both deep into the Apple ecosystem so perhaps HomeKit is a viable solution here. I'll research it a bit and see if it looks like a good fit. Are all the end point devices like light bulbs, smart watering valves, power strips, etc. WiFi controlled when it comes to HomeKit?

HomeKit uses the Thread protocol over your wifi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)

Some Thread products are just endpoints, like the Eve Weather device. Some extend your network, like smart sockets and such. And then there's the router that ties it all to your wifi and internet. That's where a new Apple TV 4k or a HomePod Mini comes in.

[TiMSport]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Another reason I want to try geofencing is so when I come home from a bike ride my garage door opens. That way I don't need to carry a house key. Small thing, but it'd be cool to have the door opening as I roll into the driveway.

Wouldn't you still need to carry your phone though? My garage has a keypad to enter the code number and I figured most people have that as well. Sure, it's not as cool as having the garage door open automatically upon arrival, but just curious.