Weekend HomeSeer and Hubitat deals

[simplextech]

I just thought I'd pass along some info....

HomeSeer is giving away HomeSeer Pi version for free.  The raspberry pi version is limited to 5 plugins but for free and to play with...heck why not   Note the download link is broken but you will still get the license code in your email so you can download the pi image once they fix that!

https://shop.homeseer.com/products/hs3-pi3-free?_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJkZHJ5ZUBtYWMuY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAiTnFGVnlRIn0%3D

 

Hubitat is running a weekend sale for their hub as well...

https://hubitat.com/products

[tibbar]

Thanks for the links. 

Do you have any experience with hubitat?

[simplextech]

2 minutes ago, tibbar said:

Thanks for the links. 

Do you have any experience with hubitat?

I wrote the Polyglot nodeserver for Hubitat working on adding devices as I can.

Yes I have two Hubitat hub's that I use for development, testing and for running Zigbee devices from.  The Hubitat hub is a "clone" of SmartThings in many ways and has very good ZigBee support and a constantly growing device list. 

[larryllix]

I love the marketing of these companies. All I can find is that it is a 'platform'. Maybe for books or dishes?

Is this thing just software? What does it run on? Is it hardware? What hardware is included? What are the dimensions, power requirements? Runs on batteries?

[io_guy]

First I've heard of Hubitat but just did some trolling on their site.  I may have to order one of these for playing around.

With the pain I've had since using the Z-Wave Plus ISY board I need to make a change.  I'm looking at using Hubitat or a Homeseer Raspberry Pi 4 to handle my Z-Wave devices and write an app to pull in the nodes.

Was thinking Homeseer since its Z-Wave is rock solid and I already have a USB Z-Wave stick, but I'm loving how fast the OS development is moving with Hubitat.

[simplextech]

7 hours ago, io_guy said:

First I've heard of Hubitat but just did some trolling on their site.  I may have to order one of these for playing around.

With the pain I've had since using the Z-Wave Plus ISY board I need to make a change.  I'm looking at using Hubitat or a Homeseer Raspberry Pi 4 to handle my Z-Wave devices and write an app to pull in the nodes.

Was thinking Homeseer since its Z-Wave is rock solid and I already have a USB Z-Wave stick, but I'm loving how fast the OS development is moving with Hubitat.

With the Free HomeSeer Pi license there's nothing to lose there.  Get a free license to play with on a Pi.  The 5 plugin limit on the Pi version isn't too much of a concern as Z-Wave takes one spot then you can add the Hubitat plugin and access native Hubitat apps from there.  I've so far included a lot of the native apps that are of interest to many so far including Hue, LiFX, Lutron and I'm continuing to add support as I get devices.  Hubitat is a good device controller for Z-Wave and Zigbee.  The Zigbee is also a reason I'm developing the Nodeserver for ISY to access those devices directly from ISY.  It's a nice little platform for device control.

[rccoleman]

You may want to check out Home Assistant, too. Open source, lightning fast development cycle, super-customizable, all for free. I have no complaints about the Z-Wave support (OZW), but others say that it’s not as nice as some of the competitors’ more integrated solutions. It’s more stable than what I had with the ISY, and once devices are added, they just work.

Home Assistant can be a bit much for folks who are not familiar with OS/networking/development in some language, but that’s clearly not you. You can start small with a Pi & Hass.io and move up from there. Development is fast and furious right now as they get close to a 1.0 release.

It can also communicate with the ISY in case you have any Insteon devices that you want to continue to control. The ISY is better than the native HA Insteon PLM support for that, acting like a hub.

[simplextech]

@rccoleman yeah Home Assistant is also very good.  I've ran that for a long time.  The Z-wave support is still lacking though.  It wasn't until this year that they finally branched OZW to include barrier support.  The HASSIO integration through components is enormous though!

[rccoleman]

I think the gamechanger will be Zwave2MQTT, same concept as Zigbee2MQTT, which allows OZW to rev quickly without affecting or needing the cludgy Python wrapper.  Once autodiscovery is implemented in Hass, it’ll eliminate the complexity of building MQTT devices, too.  That’s when I’ll switch over.

Fishwaldo, the OZW author, is building a pretty nice web front end to OZW 1.6 that looks like a huge step up from the one integrated into HASS. Both are step up from the ISY interface, IMHO.

[io_guy]

No desire to use HASS.  OZW is behind.  I'm leaning to Homeseer strictly to handle Z-Wave based on it's device support, OTA firmware updates, and network topography abilities.  

[io_guy]

Well I just setup a VM with Homeseer on a USB stick.  I hate the Homeseer interface but the Z-Wave is rock solid.  Also took about 5 minutes to open an ASCII socket and control/status all the devices.  Right now I plan to use this approach to add Homeseer support to NodeLink and have Z-Wave as V5 Nodes in the ISY.  With Z-Flash, Z-Ser and Z-Tool Homeseer just makes Z-Wave too easy.

I also ordered a Hubitat to tryout.  Unless Homeseer likes to crash I'll likely stick with it.  Unless the Hubitat impresses, in which case I'll likely use it as the primary and have the ISY just to pass Insteon to it.