Best home automation controller for wifi and IoT

Hey folks,

I am coming back with a new situation. I am looking some advice around this issue.

I have a veraplus controller able to manage: zwave/zigbee/wifi and bluetooth.
Unfortunately vera does not appear to fully support upnp and IoT devices without using various plugins to achieve 2way reliable feedback connectivity.

I would like to know what others are using to connect various wifi/IoT devices that in turn will connect to veraplus like controller.

I want to keep everything out of the cloud.

Have you looked at Hubitat or the Universal Devices Polisys? These both have a local focus with cloud features as an option rather than a requirement.

upstatemike said:

Have you looked at Hubitat or the Universal Devices Polisys? These both have a local focus with cloud features as an option rather than a requirement.

Click to expand...

I am not familar with either of these items. I have heard of hubitat, but have not really looked at the interface and what all it can do. the other device appear to be very expensive and i have no idea what it can do at all.

The other obvious choice for a local non-cloud solution is Homeseer. There are folks here using all three platforms (Polisys does not come out until next month but many people use the Polyglot platform it is based on running on other hardware.) Do you need anything beyond Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth? Maybe a better description of what you are doing with Vera will help steer you towards the right alternative.

upstatemike said:

The other obvious choice for a local non-cloud solution is Homeseer. There are folks here using all three platforms (Polisys does not come out until next month but many people use the Polyglot platform it is based on running on other hardware.) Do you need anything beyond Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth? Maybe a better description of what you are doing with Vera will help steer you towards the right alternative.

Click to expand...

So at the moment I basically want to control some zwave sensors, switches, sonos ,home media devices (TV/AVR/Video Streamers and a few security cameras) I want to run a few scenes based on sunrise and sunset/ day or date/ expected rain and exterior temp status/ security status of doors, windows, locks or camera triggers. current hopes
Future thoughts
 
full integration with home security panel such as HAI or ELK M1 ( door/window/ locks/ Camera/ perimeter sensors/network/voice)
Lighting control using zwave, UPB or Radio RA
Whole House Audio - it may just be a sonos system or other brands
Irrigation-
Pool
shade
thermostat
appliances
full house status
interactive voice assistant
 
 hey Mike thanks for taking a look at this. it forcing me to think it out.

mistert said:

So at the moment I basically want to control some zwave sensors, switches, sonos ,home media devices (TV/AVR/Video Streamers and a few security cameras) I want to run a few scenes based on sunrise and sunset/ day or date/ expected rain and exterior temp status/ security status of doors, windows, locks or camera triggers. current hopes
Future thoughts
 
full integration with home security panel such as HAI or ELK M1 ( door/window/ locks/ Camera/ perimeter sensors/network/voice)
Lighting control using zwave, UPB or Radio RA
Whole House Audio - it may just be a sonos system or other brands
Irrigation-
Pool
shade
thermostat
appliances
full house status
interactive voice assistant
 
 hey Mike thanks for taking a look at this. it forcing me to think it out.

Click to expand...

 
As Mike says, we work with all this stuff. Our automation engine runs locally. We're also integration partners with Google, Amazon & IFTTT. We have a free OAuth2-accessible remote access service (MyHS) but you can also configure the system for direct access with port forwarding and (if you like) a VPN. Supported products and technologies are here: https://homeseer.com/works-with-homeseer/

There is no matching automation hub to automation software running Homeseer.  This is an absolute (apples to oranges).
 
I have recently built a "solid state - no moving parts" TV Box Homeseer Automation Computer - Tiny - uses maybe 5 watts - OS in in eMMC - Gb interface - WLAN interface - Blue Tooth running Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows.
 
I have tinkered with the Almond Plus, SmartThings hub, Hubitat hub, Vera (old) hub.    These are OK to use but no comparison to software.

Hey Pete, nice to hear from you. So what I am gathering is that any hub out there will fall short , the best option is to use software such as homeseer/ homeassistant/OpenHab and add the radio needed for my devices.
 
Is that a fair and accurate summary?

I am partial to Homeseer as I have run it since version 1.x.
 
There are plugins / scripts for all of your listed options above with Homeseer.
 
Tinkering have run OpenHab and I liked it and currently running Home Assistant using MQTT and have been doing text to speech to my Alexa devices.
 
Still doing Microsoft SAPI text to speech from Homeseer to Russound zoned audio system.  Well now mixing audio from one Amazon Dot and Homeseer.
 
There is other automation software mentioned on this forum these days like CQC (Charmed Quark) and new Allonis (old Cinemar).
 
Give Homeseer (and other software) a spin; see how you like the software.  It is all free to try.

I moved from Vera to Veraplus to Hubitat. Without a doubt, Hubitat rules supreme. Check it out. Now with full ELK support as well.

pete_c said:

I am partial to Homeseer as I have run it since version 1.x.
 
There are plugins / scripts for all of your listed options above with Homeseer.
 
Tinkering have run OpenHab and I liked it and currently running Home Assistant using MQTT and have been doing text to speech to my Alexa devices.
 
Still doing Microsoft SAPI text to speech from Homeseer to Russound zoned audio system.  Well now mixing audio from one Amazon Dot and Homeseer.
 
There is other automation software mentioned on this forum these days like CQC (Charmed Quark) and new Allonis (old Cinemar).
 
Give Homeseer (and other software) a spin; see how you like the software.  It is all free to try.

Click to expand...

Hey P
 You build a special machine for your homeseer setup correct? I was hoping to run the various software I mentioned on a synology nas. I know I can run openhan on the Nas ,but I have not looked to see if homeseer can run as well. Any thoughts?

bucko said:

Without a doubt, Hubitat rules supreme. 

Click to expand...

 
I checked out the docs for ELK M1 integration. Without a doubt, Hubitat rules supreme … in installation complexity; that's a lot of individual copy/paste steps to get full ELK M1 functionality. I think that aspect could use some streamlining. 
 
Where's the list of supported devices and technologies (including user contributions)?

bucko said:

I moved from Vera to Veraplus to Hubitat. Without a doubt, Hubitat rules supreme. Check it out. Now with full ELK support as well.

Click to expand...

Is Hubitat really that great? Why?  Have you tried any of the automation software?

the best option is to use software such as homeseer/ homeassistant/OpenHab and add the radio needed for my devices.
 
Is that a fair and accurate summary?
 
Yes.
 
You build a special machine for your homeseer setup correct? I was hoping to run the various software I mentioned on a synology nas. I know I can run Openhab on the Nas ,but I have not looked to see if homeseer can run as well. Any thoughts?
 
Homeseer will can run fine on a Linux container (or VM) on your NAS.
 
A few years ago built a custom multifunctional Homeseer NAS server
 
1 - Haswell i3 low powered CPU on a mITX board with 16 Gb of RAM
2 - LSi 8 port raid controller
3 - 120 (or larger - forgot) Gb SSD boot OS drive
4 - 8 X 4TB = 32TB drives
 
Main OS was Ubuntu 64 bit
Linux NAS software - LAMP server
Homeseer running on Linux
WeeWx running on Linux (Apache)
Oracle Windows 7 Pro virtual box
Multimedia (Plex server)
CCTV NVR
 
Here is a screen shot of my current NAS box which does Virtual box just fine and would run circles around the underpowered SOHO NAS boxes on the market today.  It is around 4 years old now.
 
[sharedmedia=gallery:images:1264]

 
You can also today utilize the Hubitat hub as a controller on steroids for Homeseer use. 

Today running Homeseer and Home Assistant on a tiny Intel Based TV Box. It came with Windows 10 and I replaced it with Ubuntu and Oracle VB. This TV Box is almost the same size as the Hubitat TV box (which it was).

1 - Hardware Intel Atom CPU, 4Gb of RAM and a 64Gb eMMC. (Gb NIC, WlAN (2 radio) and Bluetooth), USB 3.0
2 - OS - Linux 64 bit and one tiny Windows 7 embedded Virtual box.
3 - running latest version of Homeseer and latest version of Home Assistant.

Some random thoughts:
 
Hubitat is really cheap. You can purchase one and start playing with it without worrying about making a high priced commitment.
 
If Hubitat doesn't do everything you need there are good integrations into Homeseer and Polisys so you can migrate to one of those without throwing away your investment. Even if hubitat just ends up being an interface for another system the price is still reasonable.
 
Homeseer4 is due to be released before the end of the year and will likely be on sale for a very good price at initial release. It will also have a 30 day trial period where you can test it for free.
 
Polisys will be released next month and I expect there will be a lot of chatter on the UDI forum as folks begin to test it out. It might be worthwhile to start monitoring that forum as well as the Hubitat and Homeseer forums.
 
If you are looking at any other platforms be sure to list them so folks here can offer opinions and past experience with each.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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