LTek's Homeseer Review - posted

[Ltek]

I've posted an article Review of HS3

My intent is to inform potential new users and provide constructive criticizm.

I've include target market for different products while focusing on HS3.

I do recommend Homeseer to the proper user type (see article) and myself have no plans to leave Homeseer anytime soon. I think the competition will get very stiff for Homeseer in the coming few years and and hope HST takes the information as data they can use to improve to stay competitive.
... even the best sports cars in the world get reviews that often point out room for improvement - as they should. This is how products get better.

I've been involved in many product designs, feedback loops, market analysis, etc ... the type of info in the article is valuable to product improvement and market sustainability or growth.


Regards

[sachinsinbox]

I've posted publicly, a somewhat detailed Review of HS3

My intent is to inform potential new users... and maybe the HS dev team.

I'm happy to discuss the points I outlined in the review - in this thread.

Regards

Might help if you made the review public and not requiring people to sign in with their google account...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Ltek]

Fixed site ... should be view-able now

[jlrichar]

[S-F]

Take your whining about HomeSeer somewhere else.

[rmasonjr]

There are maybe 1 or 2 things that you listed that I agree with, but the vast majority of the "HUGE" issues you listed are not that big of a deal. There are also some things listed that are patently false as well.

Overall, I would give your review 1 star.

[Ltek]

Guys, the review highlights what I consider important feature/function gaps for the advanced / power users. I will note this in the review as I neglected to make this clear.

You may have work-arounds but the gaps are as I stated as far as I can tell after working with HS3 and asking tech support & forum questions.

If there is a point you'd like me to clarify I can as I suspect some of the items may not be obvious to people who haven't needed or know about the automation method I describe.

If a feature I called a gap is actually built-in, please let me know exactly where it is in HS3 and I will correct my review if it matches.

regards

[kideon]

I’m just going to focus on one disagreement since the folks here are all going to be chiming in, hopefully civilly.

I don’t see smart things as a contender for power users in its present form. Their cloud dependence and the lack of privacy would be a major concern. Just recently they had another large outage.

I see the concept of Homeseer as becoming even more popular if they could grow a product development team that focused on the customer experience rather than an idea of the customer experience.

I see the appliance model coming back full force for both consumers and prosumers. You buy it plug it in and it’s yours with full control.

Home assistant and openhab can do a lot thanks to such a large developer community and yes it’s free. But you have to get into the code and manual configuration without much GUI help.

I also agree the platform is aged and needs work. We have yet to see any sort of professional road map of what is to come.

Now to sum up why I have continues to use Homeseer - I am a telecom project manager and engineer and the community of folks here both using the platform and developing for the platform are top notch and so well versed on best practices. Yeah I’ve been burned on a couple of defunct plugins and that was my choice to use a newcomer’s software rather than someone who’s well vetted.

Generally I can get the software to so what I want and I don’t mind paying spud for easy trigger.

Another thing is I like that it can run on Windows or Linux and on low power hardware. My quantum Byte is strumming along. I also like the decentralized nature of the sdk with remote plugins.

I’ve shared all of this not as a rebuttal or a debate but to help encourage what I think the goal was here. Honest conversation.

[randy]

Overall, I would give your review 1 star.

You're being generous.

[Uncle Michael]

If a feature I called a gap is actually built-in, please let me know exactly where it is in HS3 and I will correct my review if it matches.

I was not going to comment on this because I agree with jlricher's assessment, but in response to the request above, I will comment on one excerpt from your post as an example:

. . .I did all of this with my Vera system also. Though, Vera got far too unstable for as much as I required of it.

Vera was just as capable functionally and somewhat more so in some ways with the $5 PLEG plugin that allowed some automation events to be more complex than anything Homeseer can do even with hundreds of dollars worth of plugins. The Homeseer event UI is easy to use but no more so than Vera's or most other systems. It does allow a little more native complexity that some of the main competitors but not likely to matter to the 'beginner' users.

I did all of this with my Vera system also. Though, Vera got far too unstable for as much as I required of it.

This is confusing. Are you describing actual functionality or virtual capability that doesn't exist in practice? Am I missing something? Which system do you actually use?

Vera was just as capable functionally and somewhat more so in some ways with the $5 PLEG plugin that allowed some automation events to be more complex than anything Homeseer can do even with hundreds of dollars worth of plugins.

This is misleading at best. I assume you mean to describe HS capability that is confined to using the HS event engine, but it appears to conflate compact construction with capability. It does take multiple linked events to accomplish if-then-else logic in HS, but it is not impossible nor difficult, just tedious to set up. Moreover, HS incorporates Visual Basic and adds many functions that facilitate interaction with the HS event engine. With VB, I feel confident that HS can accomplish tasks of any complexity I (or you) can imagine. That capability is included at no additional cost.

The Homeseer event UI is easy to use but no more so than Vera's or most other systems. It does allow a little more native complexity that some of the main competitors but not likely to matter to the 'beginner' users.

I agree that HS has a steep learning curve and that 'beginner' users are likely to find it daunting, but isn't this review aimed a 'power' users?

[ServiceXp]

I'm not a 'fan boy' for anyone, but I knew from personal experience with Vera and PLEG that there was a breakdown in the objectivity of the review once I got to this point in the review.

I may continue to read the rest of the review, but only If I have time to waste.

Vera was just as capable functionally and somewhat more so in some ways with the $5 PLEG plugin that allowed some automation events to be more complex than anything Homeseer can do even with hundreds of dollars worth of plugins. The Homeseer event UI is easy to use but no more so than Vera's or most other systems. It does allow a little more native complexity that some of the main competitors but not likely to matter to the 'beginner' users.

[integlikewhoa]

I just wasted more time then I would like to admit. I couldn't agree with the other posters more on this.

[Ltek]

I've updated the article - added more info on competing products, homeseer's position in market, etc.

I do recommend Homeseer to the proper user type (see article) and myself have no plans to leave Homeseer anytime soon. I think the competition will get very stiff for Homeseer in the coming few years and wanted to provide constructive criticism for HST.

It's clear many are very happy with exactly how HS3 functions and that is fine, of course. But that doesn't mean the information is not accurate or valuable. People review products, services, etc all the time... even the best sports cars in the world get reviews that often point out room for improvement - as they should. This is how products get better.

I've been involved in many product designs, feedback loops, market analysis, etc ... the type of info in the article is valuable to product improvement and market sustainability or growth.

[racerfern]

Luckily, I didn't read to the bottom. I did a quick search of posts here and found this:
https://forums.homeseer.com/showthre...17#post1330417 whereupon the "reviewer" already has a chip on their shoulder about HS3, along with a reply on the next page.

This isn't a review, it's an opinionated person venting their frustration. Imagine being a user and member of this forum since 2010 and now writing a review. Give me a break.

How can this benefit the HS forum, us the regular users? Not at all. I wonder what the reaction would be to this review on the Vera forum. Actually, I wonder why there isn't a comment section on the review site. Pity.

[Eman]

The inability to create functional events stems from throwing your events allover the place and thus being overwhelmed by the volume or bulk. But things can be simple if you think logically of groups. Groups don't only mean that they should have group conditions and or actions but a way of easily being able to view them in their category =====> Say you add a new light, add its events in the lights section and so on. Then if you have to create a complex event just add that event to be run in whichever way you do wish but not creating a new event for the same light! Please look at the simple examples I give for a bit more on this here : https://forums.homeseer.com/showthre...85#post1358085


EDIT : Throw in the MQTT Plugin =====> And I call my system infinity ====> links to other systems and makes HomeSeer a BEAST!

Eman.