Other Home Automation Websites/Blogs/Forums/Resources?

[WhitW]

I've been playing with Hassio for a little over a month. I actually considered it when I was switching from SmartThings before settling on HS3. At the time, I just couldn't get over the steep learning curve in dealing with yaml. Its come a long way in the 14-15 months since I last looked at it.

I would like to leverage it as my "front end". The UI is superior (in my opinion) and would make a great choice for setting up control tablets in house. HS3 is far superior in utilizing Z-wave, so I've thought of using HS3 to provide Zwave (and scene controls for my HS switches). I've just got to find the time to work with mcsMQTT to make it happen...

[jlrichar]

Homeseer has two main things that the “competitors” mentioned above by and large do not. 1. Homeseer has been established for a long time (20 years)
2. Homeseer has ( for its entire run thus far) broad device integration

While some in the lists above have one or the other I would argue none have both. Furthermore HS being able to integrate those hubs is a huge feature. But only as long as HS provides the best automation capabilities.

I’m not sure because I have not used either but I think historically control 4, and Creston are two competitors that meet the above criteria. Of course they do not compete on price.

The real future competitors are:

1. Google
2. Amazon
3. Hue
4. Maybe Logitech-though they might be on start of downward spiral
5. Apple ( though it seems like an afterthought for them)

By market share those in the list above have already dominated. But they are young, and also both way more advanced and simultaneously much less capable (from an automation standpoint) than Homeseer. But they all are continually iterating on automation. Actually in that list I would argue Apple is the most beneficial for HSt to integrate with since they are the least aggressive at encroaching on HSt turf while also having arguably the best user base to sell expensive things to (please don’t turn this into a tired Apple v Android discussion-I own both and am not biased against either-they are just tools. -not your family).

So in summary, I don’t think the newer hubs, or open source solutions are HS’s worrisome competitors, nor the two that somewhat look like more expensive clones. The real competitors are the big tech cos much like they are for just about everything else. If i was HSt I’d lose sleep over google or Amazon adding an event engine to assistant or Alexa that rivals Homeseer.

Unfortunately for HSt I think the best path forward is a complicated one—to integrate with everybody and become the non-cloud IFTTT. They are pretty close already and integrate with every single entity listed in posts above-albeit much via plugins or in the case of Apple via other software. One of the most frustrating things for just about everyone from novice to veteran is integrating devices from different ecosystems.


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[Pete]

Here am using Home Assistant in Docker and HS3 on the same computer. (also Smartthings and Hubitat is up but not much tinkering with it).

Using MQTT these days to have them talk to each other.

I prefer software automation (Homeseer) over embedded hub automation (like Smartthings) because of the flexibility and quick mechanisms to connect to a variety of hardware.

Also running a bit of Windows Homeseer automation stuff on Oracle Virtual Box Windows 7 embedded. Works great. Mostly use it for my collection of Microsoft SAPI voice fonts which now mix in with Amazon Alexa stuff. I am mixing the audio output of one Amazon Dot to the audio output of Homeseer which goes to a zoned audio system.

Been testing the speed of status reporting via Alexa / MQTT and hard wired alarm sensors. It is fast and I do not notice much of a difference between HS3 reading alarm panel hard wired sensors and reading them via MQTT and using the Alexa voice.

[kriz83]

1. Homeseer has been established for a long time (20 years)
2. Homeseer has ( for its entire run thus far) broad device integration

1. That is exists for 20 years doesn't really say anything. Nokia also exists for a long time, and look at where they are now compared to 15 years ago.
2. I tend to disagree on this. Zwave support is (far) superior on HS, but it is definitely behind in number of integrations wrt HA (just look in the components database). Lots of (sometimes missing) functionality is added by paid plugins, though for the price of HS3 + those plugins, I can provide quite some support for my customers.

I really like HS, been using it for 5+ years. But the lack of a decent scalable UI (like HA) is really the experience a bit.

[jlrichar]

1. That is exists for 20 years doesn't really say anything. Nokia also exists for a long time, and look at where they are now compared to 15 years ago.

I think it is important because it takes a lot of time and effort to setup automation. Look at the gone but not forgotten thread and think about people that invested in those systems that closed up shop. There are a few systems out there now that could just disappear in the blink of an eye. Either because they are funded by a corporate budget and need to match corporate roi, or because they are bootstraped startups burning through money trying to get into the black prior to running out of cash. The open source projects have staying power, but rarely compete in ease of setup since they are made by and for coding power users.

Staying power is probably one of the most important features. Take google, which has one of the fastest growing competitive products to homeseer. I’ve been burned by quite a few google projects getting cancelled just because—in fact they are in the process of removing works with nest right now and replacing it with something that is far less functional to me. As near as I can tell homeseer is a family run private business with a physical store front that answers to no one but themselves.

I just hope homeseer has a good succession plan.



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