It says it all in the title. Posts are now down to a trickle here so I was wondering if HG users had found an alternative.
There are many more home automation applications out there since HG made its first appearance. Most of them have a healthy community input which obviously attracts more users as a result.
I know that development of HG is very sporadic and as a result many of the newer technologies are not catered for.
I still use HG these days but not to the extent I used it previously. I migrated much of my setup to Home Assistant a while back but still enjoy using HG.
I moved over to Hubitat. I still have HG running on a pie but it is only a bridge between Hubitat and my remaining X10 devices (I have the Hubitat send a URL to HG to turn on or off a device).
Strangely I have had almost NO trouble with HG or the pie needing to be rebooted once I stopped using all the custom C# code I had written for HG… I deleted all my devices and code and just use it for an HTTP to X10 link now.
Hubitat was fantastic for about a year. It doesn’t natively support X10 and I was sick of the headache from that too so … after about 15 years of X10… I have gradually started moving to Zigbee on the Hubitat. I probably have 2/3 of all my devices moved over now from X10 to Zigbee.
It aint perfect either… as I started to say… Hubitat was great for the first year- and their support was fantastic and the community is great but I think they are having growing pains. Support not so good anymore (community still great and helpful) and they have admitted they have a memory leak they can’t find in the Hubitat core… Now I am back to having to reboot my hub every night (man I hate that sort of thing) or else by sunset -> sunrise stuff wont work.
I tell you… really 80% of what I need is sunrise to sunset and sunrise to 10:30 … it is amazing how much headache I have had getting that to work reliably on ANY platform!!!
I miss HG but it was getting to be too much for me… and as you know, when the forums changed… everything sort of tanked out.
I think Hubitat will be my long term solution although at times I still entertain the idea of something else… maybe home assistnat? I want reliability… not a hobby. At this point I am just hoping hubitat can figure out their issue and get it more reliable again.
I still find HG very useful. In my case I do have trouble from time to time but it almost always it is operator error.
One thing I do like about HG is that when I need some help I have always received it from HG users in this forum.
I have been running it for 5 years or so and still cannot find any other computer based program that is more useful.
Ironically you mentioned that you were still running HG on an RPI. Although HG is effectively a MS Windows application it’s development timeline is similar to that of the RPI.
I never used HG on the Windows platform so I can’t comment on its performance there but I do know Mono was in a maturing state in the early stages of HG which gave rise to difficulties running custom C# code you mention. Running the latest version of Mono seems to have resolved many of these issues.
I do agree that the closure of the original HG forum had a major effect on the HG community. I think the community effort made HG what it is now but with so many competitors like Home Assistant with vast community input I think we’ve lost a lot of the experienced contributors. Again these are just personal opinions.
Yes if your setup is static and stable HG is an ideal solution. Unfortunately fewer experienced users remain active on the forum but hopefully solutions will still be forthcoming when you require them
I like you moved my HG setup to Buster OS and I’ll confirm the custom C# Programs run better now.
I had looked at other HA software for my Pi however all those use an old X10 driver (mochad) that has not been updated or supported in some time or has none. And none was as easy to get running then HG!
My Setup is primarily X10 however I do have some Zwave, WeMo, Sonof and other Wi-Fi devices connected through HG
I’m relatively new to using HG but I realy don’t understand why a experienced contributor would move on. Github is full of code for different things creating a HG program from that code should be no major issue for an experienced contributor.
What does drive users away from support forums is negative comments from other users and many times it only takes one negative post from one user. This doesn’t mean they have moved away from HG it just means they don’t post.
I administrate several forums and have seen it on all of them. (Some times corrective action will keep a user other times not)
HG back - what is it now, 5-6 years ago? - never worked well on windows platform for me; why I spent a year searching for one that could do what AHP did for my X10 items. Finally bit the bullet and sorta learned raspberry pi and slowly moved from AHP to it. The last discovery that security codes could be sent just by changing the format made it complete for me. My pi has not required a reboot for almost a year so far, so it is stable and does all I need. Unfortunately I have not taken the time to duplicate it for across town business offices and still use an old laptop with AHP there. Day will come to move it to pi. I do watch this and Tuicemens X10 forum and reply if I can help someone. Plan to continue same way for forseeable future.
In my case HG is running pretty smoothly with CM15A controller. I use the scheduler and is working very well as long as I don’t introduce RF into the equation. Im referring to the use of the x10 ms16a motion sensor. When using motion sensor sometimes turns on more than it should so I no longer use it. Now HG scheduler works properly. I’m assuming that the community is not responding much for the same reason as I HG is good. Somrtimes no news is good news.
Yes you’re probably a little late to the game to see how active the old forum was. Unfortunately the HG author killed it off and as a result a lot of enthusiasm for HG. A lot of users invested a lot of time and energy into it but alas the decision was out of their hands. There was nothing but positive contribution on that forum.
Unfortunately the gdebi installer for HG no longer works in its current format so thankfully I was able to put together some simple copy/paste commands a while back that allowed users to move their setup to the Raspbian Buster OS. Again a simple contribution to the project.
Unfortunately without further core code development newer technologies will not be integrated into HG and third party solutions will need to be found which is not ideal.
Some of the newcomers to HG may think that HG is an X10 application. While it certainly supports X10 it is by no means an X10 application exclusively. I would really love to see other technologies discussed and debated here. X10 as most are aware is an older technology and while it’s solid enough in its current format I doubt we will be seeing any new innovation in that department. That’s why it’s vital development of HG needs to move along.
Yes the key here is you took the time to learn about the Raspberry Pi rather than have everything fed to you. It’s always tough starting out on something new but you got there in the end.
Yes I clearly saw that there could be no reason why the RF Send wouldn’t work on an X10 Security console so in order to confirm this I acquired one to test and resolved this issue. Again I don’t use that panel as security but at least someone got the benefit from it.
Last I chatted with Gene he did state he was very busy with work and had planned to get back at HG and the Plus program as soon as time allowed. The latest commit shows Nov 30th 2019 here, but that maybe due that I’m on the other side of the pond LOL
This does show HG hasn’t been abandoned as so many assumed.
Yes he’s had many chats with many of us over the intervening period There was no inference that HG was abandoned. Complete were his words. That was the whole point of the original discussion on the old forum.
I doubt any home automation application could claim to be complete but we await patiently for further news from the author
True, no home automation program is never complete for the masses.
However it may have been complete for him at the time. Many times I’ve though one of my creations was complete only to think of a new addition.
A slowdown of suggestions or issues being reported can lead a developer to possibly think that way.
There’s just too many alternatives out there that fit the bill these days. If one application doesn’t do it another will. Users just won’t wait for support. They move on.
Anyway hopefully a few more of the old crew will respond so I can get a better gauge of the current HG user base.
Yes and that is sad. I don’t program 24/7 and no one should expect anyone else to do that either. HG has stood the test of time and I expect most of the old contributors are still using HG. I suspect it is mostly the none contributors that moved on,
[quote=“Petediscrete, post:16, topic:566”] Anyway hopefully a few more of the old crew will respond
[/quote] ditto, though that will not stop me from using HG and moving on.
I think there was a couple of minor changes made to MQTT and a “clone program” option added. Not sure about the second change as I haven’t really looked at it.
The PayPal funding addition is interesting though. Maybe a Go Fund Me route would have made more sense. That route would provide more scope to raise funds.
There was no inference that HG was abandoned. Complete were his words. That was the whole point of the original discussion on the old forum.
Many times I’ve though one of my creations was complete only to think of a new addition.