Other Home Automation Websites/Blogs/Forums/Resources?

[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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[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.

[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.

[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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[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...

[simplextech]

kriz83 I like HASS and have been using it for different things for the last couple years. With that said it's not a competitor for a stable/reliable central control system. Although HASS has a 1000+ components most of them are cloud based which makes lots of people happy. I find it amusing how the premise of HASS is to be a local, private/secure system yet most of what it provides is cloud dependent. The local pieces of z-wave/zigbee are still not ready for prime time.

What I will say is that as it's not a stable project yet I don't view it as a competitor.... now... the day it goes stable and they stop pushing breaking changes every other update... then I will agree it's a competitor that HST should watch closely.

[kriz83]

I do think Hass is a competitor for HomeSeer. I think Hass deserves more than to be labeled as a .hobby project. They have far more integrations than HS. Maybe not all are working as well as they are supposed to be, but that can also be said about some of the plugins that are marketed for HS. Benefit of Hass is that it is opensource. If I find an issue that really bugs me, I'll fix it myself.

The things that fascinate me about Hass (being a 6 year HS user):

• really nice and configurable web interface, IMHO much better than HS mobile.
• high number of component integrations
• very well Node-Red support
• configuration in text format -> version control !!!!
• Very frequent updates
• Much chearper than HS (I've spent 1000$+ on HS + plugins)

Drawbacks:

• Requires a restart when adding devices
• Still in dev, so sometimes breaking changes are done.
• Support (though I haven't needed HS support)

[Fellhahn]

(HST needs to market more Mark)

Agree marketing might be lacking or at least not having the desired effect. The questions I see over and over on Reddit are:



How can I do home automation without using the cloud?

How to automate my ceiling fan?

What is a good smart switch?



IMO the HS-FC200/WD200 are the only correct answers to those last two but they aren't often the first reply.

[Fellhahn]

macromark Sorry if I'm breaking etiquette here but, does HST see HASS/OpenHAB as competition?

On the one hand, their existence obviously shrinks the market for people buying controller software.

But on the other, it gets more people using Z-Wave who might have never been willing to pay for the base platform. And more people using Z-Wave means more opportunity for HST hardware sales.

Do these two things cancel out? Is one a stronger factor that the other?


Back on the original topic, thanks for posting this thread Jingoro , I was thinking of asking the exact same question as I'm also increasingly hungry for HA content and news.

I check reddit.com/r/homeautomation occasionally but the community there seems to be largely full of utterly clueless individuals re-posting the same questions over and over, incapable of using the search function. A shame as Reddit is usually a beacon of enlightenment on many topics.

I found this guy's youtube channel (Dr Zzs) to be a useful compass when I was first starting. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7G...t6A9e3hJ-HO8ng

[simplextech]

John - Do a web search on "home automation software" or "home controller" or "smart home hub" or "z-wave dimmer". That's who our real competition is.. and yes, that includes some of the companies you've linked to above.

Those others may be in the headlines and news (HST needs to market more Mark) but in line of features/functions are you saying that a $100 "hub" is competition to HS where the limited Pi version is in the price range but full versions are 3X ++ the cost of the competitions "hub"? Generally I would view "competition" to be in the same price range and market category.

[macromark]

I would think HS primary competition would be around other "Controllers of Controllers" .... thoughts?

John - Do a web search on "home automation software" or "home controller" or "smart home hub" or "z-wave dimmer". That's who our real competition is.. and yes, that includes some of the companies you've linked to above.

[simplextech]

Really? What systems do you think we're competing against?

Well if you want to consider yourself a entry level consumer system...

Maybe some competition with Home Assistant because of the flexibility and with ISY for the power capabilities. However HASS is still a hobby project and ISY is primary Insteon and does not (yet) have the "plugins" nor interfaces/capability for interface of media options like HS. So it's of a different use case and category.

I would think HS primary competition would be around other "Controllers of Controllers" such as Allonis MyServer and Charmed Quark .... thoughts?

[macromark]

The mods can delete if they want to rjh, Rupp, macromark but I don't consider these as "competition".

Really? What systems do you think we're competing against?

[simplextech]

The mods can delete if they want to rjh, Rupp, macromark but I don't consider these as "competition". These systems are in a different category than HomeSeer however I also find good info on what people are looking for, what they are trying to do and I get ideas from them.

https://community.home-assistant.io/
https://forum.universal-devices.com/
https://community.hubitat.com/
https://community.smartthings.com/
https://community.getvera.com/

You may notice that there are plugins to integrate a few of those with HomeSeer for added device capabilities

[ScottRennie]

An old thread, but anyone got any updates to add that are useful to us all?