Hi all,
My previous HS3 installation ran our house well - I had 3000+devices, 100+ events, a load of scripts and plugins with many different integrations. Over time it started acting peculiarly and needed recovering from backups several times. After each recover, it'd run for a month or so and then the problem would be back. The problem I have now is that all my backups start failing when restored. A backup taken a day before HS3 fails causes HS3 to fail after a day when restored.
As my HS3 system was many many years old, the easiest thing, I thought, was to start from scratch - I've learned a lot, things have changed and I'd probably end up with a more optimal system if I start from bare metal again.
I bought the HS4 upgrade a long time ago, but never used it until yesterday when I took the plunge (prompted by yet another HS3 crash and burn).
I know that every time something changes, one's mind needs adjustment and there is often frustration when things are done differently. After around 16 hours working on it, I think I've given HS4 a fair crack of the whip and as far as I'm concerned, it's a huge step backwards - to the point it is completely unusable for me. In no particular order, my problems with the latest version downloaded yesterday morning are:
Which gives me an interesting choice - do I go back to HS3 or do I continue with HS4 and then slowly migrate to HomeAssistant or something similar? Actually, looking at the HomeSeer website, it doesn't seem i can download HS3 any more, so I guess that's my decision made.
Unless, that is, somebody can tell me I'm being a complete idiot (and please do, I'm quite happy to be wrong and learn something new - what's the point in having a mind if you can't change it!!) and that all of the above problems are easily circumventable.
Nicholas.
My previous HS3 installation ran our house well - I had 3000+devices, 100+ events, a load of scripts and plugins with many different integrations. Over time it started acting peculiarly and needed recovering from backups several times. After each recover, it'd run for a month or so and then the problem would be back. The problem I have now is that all my backups start failing when restored. A backup taken a day before HS3 fails causes HS3 to fail after a day when restored.
As my HS3 system was many many years old, the easiest thing, I thought, was to start from scratch - I've learned a lot, things have changed and I'd probably end up with a more optimal system if I start from bare metal again.
I bought the HS4 upgrade a long time ago, but never used it until yesterday when I took the plunge (prompted by yet another HS3 crash and burn).
I know that every time something changes, one's mind needs adjustment and there is often frustration when things are done differently. After around 16 hours working on it, I think I've given HS4 a fair crack of the whip and as far as I'm concerned, it's a huge step backwards - to the point it is completely unusable for me. In no particular order, my problems with the latest version downloaded yesterday morning are:
- Most of the time (but not all), devices don't update on screen in real time - the web page has to be refreshed to show the new device values.
- The web page is completely unusable on a 1366x768 laptop when more than a few filters are applied because the top filter bar doesn't scroll up with the rest of the page.
- Some menus are completely unusable when the browser window is too small - you have to scroll right to the top of the page before you can see all the menu options.
- Each device takes up a ludicrously large amount of screen real estate when compared to HS3 - very approximately, the deviceutility page on my 3000+ device HS3 installation was about the same size as the 200 or so device HS4 installation I've set up so far. Having to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to find what I want is more than a little annoying.
- Every device I create creates a completely unnecessary root device and there doesn't seem to be a way of adding a new device under an existing root device. This means that each device line is around three to four times the size of the same line in HS3's deviceutility.
- It's not clear when edits/changes take effect - the method is completely inconsistent - sometimes you just press return, sometimes you have to save and sometimes you have to do nothing else.
- Adding virtual devices needs two to three times the number of mouse clicks than it did on HS3 - it doesn't help that sometimes, but not all the time, you have to save the device on each tab because you can't move to the next tab without losing changes. Then, when you do save it, you go back to a screen you have to then click 'home' on to go back to the main device page, then you have to find the deivce in the huge list again, edit it again, change the second tap and then do all the same again for the third tab.
- Just way more clicking and scrolling.
- No date/time and sunrise/sunset times on the device page - this was incredibly useful when debugging. Now there's no easy way to see what time the HS4 system thinks it is (I'm running Win 10 under Proxmox and sometimes the times do get a bit out of sync due to the way Windows manages internet time).
Which gives me an interesting choice - do I go back to HS3 or do I continue with HS4 and then slowly migrate to HomeAssistant or something similar? Actually, looking at the HomeSeer website, it doesn't seem i can download HS3 any more, so I guess that's my decision made.
Unless, that is, somebody can tell me I'm being a complete idiot (and please do, I'm quite happy to be wrong and learn something new - what's the point in having a mind if you can't change it!!) and that all of the above problems are easily circumventable.
Nicholas.
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