Interesting contrast to 4 years ago.

Funny I shared this article on Facebook 4 years ago when feeling depressed at the phone and cloud centric home automation then. Interesting to read again in light of the voice and cloud centric home automation we see now. Though SmartThings has been moving away from the cloud most have not and the voice interfaces are being marketed as "home automation" even though they are basically just remote controls.  Four years ago was also before I scrapped my Veras and upgraded to Homeseer which pretty much ticks all the boxes. The only real missing bit for Homeseer is Zigbee support. Though between Hue and SmartThings hubs that can be linked into Homeseer as well. Plus there are very few Zigbee devices that are not available in Z-wave and or WiFi versions these days.

New Amazon Echo Skills!!!

I went into the Alexa app to link to my Harmony since the Harmony / Homeseer link has been a bit iffy lately and OMG the stuff that has been added since I last looked! 23 PAGES of just smart home / automation type skills alone. Wireless Tag even has a skill now.  I hear Vera is planning to have a skill soon. They look to be one of the few that does not have a skill already so they better get moving.  I only have my Harmony, Nest, SmartThings (as backup Hue channel) and Homeseer devices linked up. The Wireless Tag skill is only useful for changing settings and how often do you need that? That gives me 109 devices connected to my Echo now. Note if you want to trigger Homeseer events you still need to use the IFTTT skill. One complaint though Amazon still does not seem to realize their success yet. When you go into a group to assign devices for instance, they appear to have no order to them which makes grouping a few of 109 devices a bit more of an adventure than it ought to be. I did get a group created to turn on every connected light in the house and shop so I can turn them all off or on. I already have an event setup to turn on all exterior lighting which brings the up in groups. Can't wait till dark to see what the lag time is and if they all come up at once. I also created a group called fan since it could not seem to deal with Mbed_fan as a name. Having to rethink names of some of the Harmony linked devices too so I can avoid confusion.

FB October 18, 2016

just posted this response elsewhere and thought I should post it here so it is easy to find when asked again later.

A LOT of depends on what hub is right for you. So far I've BOUGHT and installed, in order, SmartThings, Vera Control, Ltd., Iris by Lowe's, Hue, 3 more Veras, Amazon Echo and HomeSeer Home Automation to replace my X10 based system first installed in the 1990s. Vera can be easier to do simple stuff like turn on a fan when it is warm cause everything is an app in SmartThings. If there is one already that does what you want, great, if not you need to write one. Vera mainly uses a wizard of if this or that happens do this. You only write code for "complex" stuff like this AND this happens do this. Both Vera and SmartThings seem to be having a lot of stability issues lately. So much so I looked into Homeseer. Homeseer can do if this and/or that happens do this which is a bit simpler than Vera but the interface is aimed at installers not end users. They assume you will create an end user interface if needed with an optional designer tool. I'm a long time developer so the basic Homeseer interface is fine for me. It is way more expensive than than SmartThings or Vera though. That said, I now have moved all my day to day stuff onto Homeseer, shutdown my all my Veras and am just using SmartThings as a backup channel to my Hue lights. Homeseer also allows you to have and control multiple z-wave networks from one hub over Ethernet. For instance I can control my house and shop from in one screen now and do things like turn off or on all the lights in both places with one command. No matter what you go with I'd suggest you try and stay with devices that work with most hubs. One of the things I really like about Hue lighting is they will connect to multiple hubs at the same time. I would avoid anything that wants a monthly fee like Lowes Iris. (Iris has a bunch of other issues too. AVOID.) Read reviews! I would try and minimize having to go to the net for stuff too. For example another selling point for Homeseer to me is local login and actions. Other than IFTTT interactions of course. (Note Vera has no IFTTT or Echo support. Homeseer and SmartThings do.) SmartThings is mostly in the cloud and even Vera wants you to log on via their web site. You also might want to think about install base. Google some of the things you want to control and see how others have done it on the hubs you are thinking about. In the end you will probably end up having to write at least some code once you get into things deep enough so you should look at those interfaces and see which make sense to you. Oh one last thing, think about how the hub / interface will handle a hundred or more devices even if you only plan to do a few things. Most of the interfaces seem to be made for a dozen or two devices at most without getting slow and/or clumsy to use beyond that. You will be amazed how many things you end up adding after you get started. My current Homeseer is monitoring and / or controlling 678 things including monitoring 17 UPSs. And I'm not close to done yet! (Note a single device like an Aeon 4in1 sensor counts as 4 to 5 things depending on the interface.)

HomeSeer Home Automation Nice write up and comparison chart! A couple comments... our systems are compatible with the Mimo product from FortrezZ and there are 2 plug-ins available for Insteon and X10 too. I would recommend replacing the "Z-Stick S2" with a SmartStick+ or Z-Wave.me UZB for performance comparable to the Z-NET. Anyway, well done! 

 Round Mountain Rescue Ranch Yeah I did hook up the FortrezZ to my Homeseer but the reaction time seems so poor no matter what hub it is on I've abandoned it for a Raspberry Pi / PiFace solution I'm trying to work the bugs out of. Fortunately that is an option with Homeseer! 

FB August 21, 2016 excerpt

....

Home controllers are even more messed up now than when I started the weekend. I think the Z-Wave stick on the Homeseer is bad. Ordered an upscale replacement but only have 8 days left on the Homeseer eval.

Moved UPS box sensor to the Vera Edge to try get that back online but it (and may be 1 or 2 others that replaced the Timecommander) just seem to have stopped seeing changes in the lines that are monitoring while otherwise responding fine. Yet the lines appear fine as well. Ordered a diff pro 8 input sensor block Homeseer supports but again only 8 days left to try.

Had a bunch of devices moved to the Homeseer before the device info got corrupted the first time that are still in limbo needing relinked.

So the next week is going to be REALLY jammed trying to sort if I should buy Homeseer or return a bunch of stuff and move everything back to a Vera.Tempted to just fall back to the Vera Edge (the Vera Plus still needs a reinstall) but so far the Homeseer appears to have some awesome features no other hubs have yet and other people don't seem to be seeing the issues I am so I'm hoping it is just bad hardware.

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FB August 12, 2016

Looks like my HomeSeer Home Automation config got corrupted yesterday which makes me a bit dubious about buying after the trial period. On the other hand I REALLY like the options it has that the others do not. Like voice alerts when the UPS box is opened. Plus it could be too much was lost taking the "easy route" cloning the Z-wave network from the Vera Control, Ltd. hub. Looks like it is fire or flood outside this weekend anyway so I guess I'll be inside relinking most of my devices. Already had to do some and that was what I was probably going to need to do to sort the Vera hub anyway.