Could A Hub Like Polisys or Hubitat Completely Replace Homeseer?

upstatemike · Oct 15, 2019

Over on the Homeseer forum I notice a lot of folks who are unhappy with some aspect of that product (usually the UI) making statements like "Homeseer better get their act together or they will be displaced by newer systems like Hubitat or Polisys." This has got me wondering if that is in any way actually possible so I thought I would put the question out there.

Some of the things that don't seem like they would transfer include:

Local TTS with different voice options. While I would love to have the option to do TTS through my Alexa devices for non-critical stuff I feel like local TTS is going to be important. Hubitat makes a big deal about keeping most stuff local without a cloud dependency yet they did not include an audio output jack and as far as I know do not offer local TTS to a LAN based voice client. I suppose either Hubitat or UDI (Polisys) could support local speach to Squeezbox clients or even Homeseer Voice clients but as far as I know they do not. There may be some support for using aonos Amp or Connect to feed a bunch of speakers but I'm not sure what that solution would involve or how reliable it would be.

Caller ID announce. First you have to resolve the local TTS question to have a place to announce caller ID to but then there is the question of what hardware interface would you use? I don't think either Hubitat or UDI are offering any options right now.

Distributed Z-Wave. Even though Z-Wave is billed a mesh network it seems like a lot of key features related to device associations only work when the devices involved are talking directly to the hub and not relaying through another device. In a large house ( or medium sized house really) you are never going to have all devices in range to talk to a central hub. Homeseer gets around this by offering a networked Z-Wave controller so you can set up multiple Z-Wave networks where everything talks directly to one hub or another. I don't see anything about how Hubitat or Polisys would tackle this.

Non-Protocol integrations. Homeseer has the ability to integrate a lot of things through serial ports or USB ports so you can get into RFXcom, serial control of AV equipment, talk to old Panasonic telephone systems, etc. The newer hubs seem to assume everything will either talk IP, Zigbee, or Z-Wave and when they talk about a wide variety of devices they really just mean variety of products supported within these limited few protocols.

These are just a few things off the top of my head but would like to hear if there s a way to address them with the newer hubs that I am just not seeing. Maybe I can be convinced that these could eventually replace Homeseer as my core automation platform but I'm not there yet.

ano · Oct 15, 2019

I use Smarthings, so can't talk about others, but yes, TTS through Amazon Alexa's is possible and not that hard to do. On this hub you can run programs that use device status to trigger them. I will say, I have 5 or 6 Echos in different rooms, and they do not speak exactly in-sync. So are slightly delayed a second or two. But overall, I'm happy with it. The voice is very good. Also be aware, when its talking, the Echo doesn't speak and can't listen. We speak all the exterior door and window openings, so if you are telling your Echo something, it will ignore it if it has to speak in the middle.

Homeseer and a hub are not as different as you think. They both have to have support to interface to hardware devices. That is the big problem with Homeseer. Each plugin has to be written and that is fine, but years go by, the hardware changes, and the plugin author might be long gone. Where does that leave you? With a hub you have something similar, but hardware manufacturers are more motivated to make sure their hardware is supported so they can sell more hardware. But, the hub maker can close it down, so nothing is guaranteed.

But overall, I think people get overly fixated on finding a home automation solution that will work "forever." Nothing is forever. Buy what will work for you for what you need for the next 5 years. After that, the world might have changed, and maybe the solutions changed as well.

Way back in the Homeseer days, which I call Home Automation v1.0, I spent a great deal on hardware, and voice recognition and TTS was quite limited. With a hub, and Echos, etc. well call it Home Automation v2.0, I can do SO much more with voice, and with SO MUCH less hardware. Like try telling HomeSeer to turn your TV to "The Big Bang Theory." But Alexa can do it on any TV in any room with1000% better recognition.

upstatemike · Oct 15, 2019

Can Smartthings include variable values in announcements? For example: Whenever my well pump kicks off I get a voice announcement telling me how many times it has run today so I can decide if things are running as expected (has helped me detect a running toilet more than once.) Also you use Ooma but I need caller ID announcements for a land line. Can you do that with Smartthings and Alexa?

Not trying to be contrary but rather am literally trying to picture how a migration would work.

ano · Oct 15, 2019

upstatemike said:
Can Smartthings include variable values in announcements? For example: Whenever my well pump kicks off I get a voice announcement telling me how many times it has run today so I can decide if things are running as expected (has helped me detect a running toilet more than once.) Also you use Ooma but I need caller ID announcements for a land line. Can you do that with Smartthings and Alexa?

Not trying to be contrary but rather am literally trying to picture how a migration would work.

That depends. Its probably like HomeSeer in that respect. If you ask can you do something, then I will ask, is there a plugin for that? If you then the answer is yes, but of course, you can write your own plugins also, its just they take more time and more work. For Smarthings (and others) there are free software "bundles" out there that do things, but within there scope. For example I have one that "speaks" when door and windows I assign are open, or the alarm changes state. So I basically just install these, configure a few things and your done.

You can also write your own "smartapp" and basically do anything. https://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/getting-started/first-smartapp.html

Smartapps are written in a language called "Groovy" which they say is easy to learn, similar to Python, Ruby, Perl, and Smalltalk, they say.

So I would say its not different from HomeSeer, or CQC, or most others. If you are a programming person, you can do just about anything. If you are not, there are many "SmartApps" for you to use. Smarthings even has a way to take them directly off Github, so they are really easy to install. And, of course, there is an app store. I believe they all are free.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205380504-SmartApps-in-the-SmartThings-Classic-app

On Caller ID with a landline, the problem becomes actually getting the Caller ID and feeding it into a hub. There is probably hardware for that, but you need to find someone that has built a SmartApp that supports it. VoIP has the advantage of better access to things like this over the Internet.

upstatemike · Oct 15, 2019

The caller ID has to be analog because that is the common currency for phones. I can convert Cellular, VOIP, Alexa, etc. all to analog and then use the same CallerID process on them. Can also feed them all into a standard PBX so system phones can access any technology just by selecting the appropriate line button.

vc1234 · Oct 15, 2019

upstatemike said:
Distributed Z-Wave. Even though Z-Wave is billed a mesh network it seems like a lot of key features related to device associations only work when the devices involved are talking directly to the hub and not relaying through another device. In a large house ( or medium sized house really) you are never going to have all devices in range to talk to a central hub. Homeseer gets around this by offering a networked Z-Wave controller so you can set up multiple Z-Wave networks where everything talks directly to one hub or another. I don't see anything about how Hubitat or Polisys would tackle this.

That is not correct. Association packets are routed fine through intermediary nodes. One of my zwave locks located at about 50' from the controller consistently communicates via a thermostat as a relay node sending its status (alarm, battery status).

Having said that, I do not see any decent zwave controllers on the market including homeseer right now. All of the ones I tested exhibit a degree of unreliability due to the zwave protocol design itself. E.g. I observed one of my thermostats persistently using a bad route to notify about a temperature change, failing to receive an ack from the controller and giving up after three attempts. It never attempted to communicated via an alternative route which was available in its routing table. It seems that only the controller can choose a new route, not end devices. Not sure if that changed in zwave plus, though.

upstatemike · Oct 15, 2019

Could be my terminology is wrong. By association I am referring to switches being associated with each other in multi-way configurations. They are connected virtually but act as if they are physically wired together. When going over the instructions on how to do this with Homeseer switches I'm pretty sure it said it only works if the switches involved are all talking directly to the Z-Wave hub and not through another device acting as a relay.

vc1234 · Oct 15, 2019

upstatemike said:
Could be my terminology is wrong. By association I am referring to switches being associated with each other in multi-way configurations. They are connected virtually but act as if they are physically wired together. When going over the instructions on how to do this with Homeseer switches I'm pretty sure it said it only works if the switches involved are all talking directly to the Z-Wave hub and not through another device acting as a relay.

zwave supports two kinds of associations: to the controller(s) or direct, e.g. a motion sensor to a switch or one (auxiliary) switch to a real switch. The former is rather widespread and the latter is barely ever used. If you mean that software in a controller can bridge two switches (have not used this one), then there should be no problem with using intermediary relay nodes as both switches would communicate via a controller in the usual way, e.g. one switch notifies the controller about a state change and the controller decides what to do with this notification, perhaps switch on another switch. I do not see why that scenario would prevent relaying packets as usual.

What the homeseer obscure description might have meant, and I am speculating here, is that a switch is not really capable of associating with the controller, or to put it simply to send an unsolicited packet to the controller that would be routed in a normal way. The majority of the old switches and surprisingly some new ones do not implement this kind of functionality, the old ones for fear of violating the insane Lutron patent and the new ones ... who knows.

So, for the switches incapable of sending its status to the controller, there is a workaround that's used by many zwave controller vendors, not only by homeseer. They use non-routable NIF (network inclusion/information frames) packets whose purpose is to provide information to include/exclude a zwave node. The packets are always generated when one operates a button on a switch. Since NIF packets are non-routable they can be used to emulate real status notification but only when the node distance allows communicating directly with the controller (the controller upon a NIF frame reception interrogates a node to obtain its status -- pretty ugly).

Perhaps, a reasonable decision would be to go with zwave plus and make sure all switches are capable of sending unsolicited status packets. Then, one would not need to worry about the proximity to the controller.

ano · Oct 15, 2019

upstatemike said:
The caller ID has to be analog because that is the common currency for phones. I can convert Cellular, VOIP, Alexa, etc. all to analog and then use the same CallerID process on them. Can also feed them all into a standard PBX so system phones can access any technology just by selecting the appropriate line button.

I am actually the engineer who designed the caller ID hardware for GTE telephone switches. Yes, its analog over a twisted phone line, but that has nothing to do with how a hub needs it today, which is some digital form over the Internet.

upstatemike · Oct 16, 2019

My point is that with a mixture of VOIP, Cellular and POTS lines it is easy to convert to everything to analog using cheap consumer adapters so they can all be processed on the same analog CID hardware. I don't know of a way to turn Cellular and POTS lines into the same data format used by VOIP so a CID solution that only works with VOIP data is useless. Maybe you could use a VOIP phone system that has cards to accept analog POTS lines and then use a Cellular to POTS adapter to get everything on IP but I don't know if CID info would be preserved doing that.

In any case I am not opposed to doing things differently if a solution works, but I can't currently picture a path where my existing CID setup in Homeseer could be migrated to Hubitat or Polisys which suggests they are not viable replacements for Homeseer. No matter what I might do with VOIP I don't see my land lines going away any time soon. I might consider ditching my Cell service though since I really don't use it enough to justify the cost.

ano · Oct 16, 2019

Doesn't Homeseer use a Way-2-Call modem for callerID? Just need a box that converts it to IP instead. I'm sure they exist.

pete_c · Oct 16, 2019

Over the last few months here have shut down the Smart Things hub and the Hubitat hub.

I rewired my telephones analog style removing old copper and combining voip and one cell line for failover (SIM card goes to a combo router, WAP, switch phone device - used for failover voice and network these days).

I am using two Way 2 call boxes and they announce the calls via Microsoft SAPI to the distributed audio.

Recently built a low powered (10 watt) Intel box that runs Homeseer and Home Assistant in Ubuntu. Side mounted is a very light Windows embedded instance which takes care of Microsoft SAPI voices. Home Assistant is mostly talking MQTT. HA picks up automagically the on network Squeezeplayers. The tabletop touchscreens are modified to either run with an EFI boot bios for Linux or Seabios for Windows. The Windows embedded touchscreens run Homeseer touch and have their own SAPI voices.

Lately tinking with the Amazon Show. I do have one Amazon Dot audio output (microphone off) sitting on the "server rack" plugged in to the same audio source as the Homeseer server. Much like Homeseer I direct Alexa TTS to the whole house audio. The Alexa TTS HA plugin has been working well over the last few months with no changes to it.

Base in wall switches here are UPB. Online and tinkering still are X10, ZWave and Zigbee and recently customized with Tasmota / Espurna firmware WiFi switches.

Using the OmniPro 2 panel here for hardwared sensors and the Homeseer Omni plugin / MQTT / Smartthings OmniLinkbridge which work fine together.

Speed testing the OmniPro 2 analog connections (using speech) and comparing these connections to Wireless MQTT Hybrid connections. IE: the combo GDO and sensor MQTT wifi device to the OP2 button and zone sensors configuration. Just as fast. Still do not know if I trust it.

So really here look and tinker at new stuff and continue to run the old (that always works) stuff. Ideally I would like to see (and I have suggested this before) a combo hardware hub with one connection to Homeseer that does ZWave and Zigbee. I am at a point here where I can add a Zigbee interface to the currently running POE connected RPI with ZWave. This device would be using two serial to ethernet interfaces which is easy to do now a days.

Relating to the Homeseer 3 GUI I am used to it and do not compare it to other intefaces at this time and see today that Homeseer 4 will be offering a new GUI interface.

I am thrilled here that Homeseer 3 runs in Linux. I still combine the Windows Homeseer 3 pieces to get me what I want and they do work fine together.

Relating to the smart phone here only utilize VPN and it works great BUT I am not tethered to my phone and used to check on the automation in the house in the early 2000's and today do not.

upstatemike · Oct 16, 2019

ano said:
Doesn't Homeseer use a Way-2-Call modem for callerID? Just need a box that converts it to IP instead. I'm sure they exist.

I am open to that idea but I have never seen anything like that. If anybody knows of a box like that I would be interested in a link.

upstatemike · Oct 16, 2019

pete_c said:
Over the last few months here have shut down the Smart Things hub and the Hubitat hub.

I rewired my telephones analog style removing old copper and combining voip and one cell line for failover (SIM card goes to a combo router, WAP, switch phone device - used for failover voice and network these days).

I am using two Way 2 call boxes and they announce the calls via Microsoft SAPI to the distributed audio.

Recently built a low powered (10 watt) Intel box that runs Homeseer and Home Assistant in Ubuntu. Side mounted is a very light Windows embedded instance which takes care of Microsoft SAPI voices. Home Assistant is mostly talking MQTT. HA picks up automagically the on network Squeezeplayers. The tabletop touchscreens are modified to either run with an EFI boot bios for Linux or Seabios for Windows. The Windows embedded touchscreens run Homeseer touch and have their own SAPI voices.

Lately tinking with the Amazon Show. I do have one Amazon Dot audio output (microphone off) sitting on the "server rack" plugged in to the same audio source as the Homeseer server. Much like Homeseer I direct Alexa TTS to the whole house audio. The Alexa TTS HA plugin has been working well over the last few months with no changes to it.

Base in wall switches here are UPB. Online and tinkering still are X10, ZWave and Zigbee and recently customized with Tasmota / Espurna firmware WiFi switches.

Using the OmniPro 2 panel here for hardwared sensors and the Homeseer Omni plugin / MQTT / Smartthings OmniLinkbridge which work fine together.

Speed testing the OmniPro 2 analog connections (using speech) and comparing these connections to Wireless MQTT Hybrid connections. IE: the combo GDO and sensor MQTT wifi device to the OP2 button and zone sensors configuration. Just as fast. Still do not know if I trust it.

So really here look and tinker at new stuff and continue to run the old (that always works) stuff. Ideally I would like to see (and I have suggested this before) a combo hardware hub with one connection to Homeseer that does ZWave and Zigbee. I am at a point here where I can add a Zigbee interface to the currently running POE connected RPI with ZWave. This device would be using two serial to ethernet interfaces which is easy to do now a days.

Relating to the Homeseer 3 GUI I am used to it and do not compare it to other intefaces at this time and see today that Homeseer 4 will be offering a new GUI interface.

I am thrilled here that Homeseer 3 runs in Linux. I still combine the Windows Homeseer 3 pieces to get me what I want and they do work fine together.

Relating to the smart phone here only utilize VPN and it works great BUT I am not tethered to my phone and used to check on the automation in the house in the early 2000's and today do not.

Curious why you shut down the Hubitat hub? Even if you don't want to use it as a controller it seems like it could be the Z-Wave/Zigbee interface you are looking for. I am planning to use mine as my Zigbee interface for Homeseer.

Unfortunately I don't have the programming skills to imitate most (any) of the cool things you are doing. I am fine with hardware and logic (preferably menu driven) but have no interest in spending time with coding/syntax/OS and drivers, et al. I guess I am a consumer level person who just wants to connect a bunch of prefab building blocks to create the solutions I need. Products like Stargate, Elk M1, Homeseer, and ISY are perfect for my limited skill set because they let me do fun things without much of a learning curve.

I am baffled by people on a number of forums continually raising GUI as an issue. Who cares what the GUI looks like? As long as you can string together the logic to create the result you want what difference does it make what it looks like? The only time GUI becomes an issue in a Home Automation system is when programmers start introducing cell phone or Apple type interfaces with pinching and swiping, and dragging type actions that are just plain uncomfortable to perform. Much prefer simple drop down menus to fill in a template. Otherwise GUI does not even make the top 10 of things I am concerned about with regards to an automation system.

pete_c · Oct 16, 2019

I am open to that idea but I have never seen anything like that. If anybody knows of a box like that I would be interested in a link.
 
If you are interested only in Caller ID the pick up an old modem and run your analog phone line out to it.  I am thinking too you can search Ebay for a CID to serial device which you can connect to the network if want.
 
The Way2Call boxes here do much more than CID.  It'll pick up the line and drop the call and not ring through here.  You can also forward the call to oblivion if you want or return the call with a custom CID.
 
Curious why you shut down the Hubitat hub? Even if you don't want to use it as a controller it seems like it could be the Z-Wave/Zigbee interface you are looking for. I am planning to use mine as my Zigbee interface for Homeseer.
 
Just wanted to check it out.  I did configure it and let it run a few days.  I did much more with the Smart Things hub and did run it for a couple of years.
 
Ano has fully integrated his Smartthings hub now with his OmniPro 2 panel while not using Homeseer or HA or other software.
 
I did the same with the Securifi Almond Plus.  The Almond plus has a patented Touchscreen and GUI.  At one time had 3-4 of these devices on the network.
 
I am a consumer level person who just wants to connect a bunch of prefab building blocks to create the solutions I need.
 
Aren't you already doing this? 
 
You have all of the pieces already. 
 
The Hubitat is just a modded Arm based TV box with the OS running on the eMMC and added ZWave / Zigbee radios.  Literally all of the TV boxes are the same and have come with Android built in.  You can replace Android and install Linux on these boxes.  I have done that and install Home Assistant and Homeseer using Armbian Linux.
 
Here is a tiny 9 core ARM TV box with 3 Gb of RAM running Armbian Linux (and Home Assistant and Homeseer).  All you need to do with this box is plug in a USB ZWave stick and a USB Zigbee stick which are readily available.
 
 
<pre class="_prettyXprint">
[email protected]'s password:
 _______  _____    ____            
|_   _\ \/ / _ \  |  _ \ _ __ ___  
  | |  \  / (_) | | |_) | '__/ _ \
  | |  /  \\__, | |  __/| | | (_) |
  |_| /_/\_\ /_/  |_|   |_|  \___/
                                   
Welcome to Ubuntu Bionic with Armbian Linux 5.1.0-rc1-aml-s912
System load:   0.03 0.01 0.00      Up time:       22 days        
Memory usage:  19 % of 2840MB     IP:            192.168.244.149
CPU temp:      47°C               
Usage of /:    41% of 29G        

root@TX9_HS3Lite:~#
</pre>
 
<pre class="_prettyXprint">
root@TX9_HS3Lite:~# uname -a
Linux TX9_HS3Lite 5.1.0-rc1-aml-s912 #5.78 SMP PREEMPT Fri Apr 12 11:16:06 MSK 2019 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
root@TX9_HS3Lite:~#  lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:    bionic
root@TX9_HS3Lite:~#
</pre>
No moving parts here.  OS is on eMMC.  CPU / RAM are passively cooled and it is the same size as a Hubitat.  But probably faster CPU and more RAM than the Hubitat. 
 
 
 
 
Most recently relating to Zigbee using the custom Zigbee stick that Mike is selling which does Zigbee to MQTT.  Like the Espurna / Tasmota updated WiFi devices it is very easy to JTAG (serially connecting) the device and upload any of the posted firmwares for these devices or if you want customize the automation firmware.  It is not not difficult and only a $10 device and difficult to brick.

Could A Hub Like Polisys or Hubitat Completely Replace Homeseer?

upstatemike

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ano

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ano

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vc1234

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