I am only going to say this once and I am not trying to generate any problems here.
I’ve been with HomeGenie for a long time and using it primarily with X-10. I was pretty stoked when I found it and got it to work a bit.
I’ve contributed some to these forums and like to think I helped out a bit from time to time. I like HomeGenie in some ways but I wanted Home Automation- not another hobby.
I recently got clearance from my wife to make things work better so I tried Hubitat. I like it. I am also converting slowly to Zigbee. I still have a bunch of X-10 and I am still using HomeGenie in a bridge capacity to link the Hubitat to X-10 (using an HTTP GET virtual switch device in Hubitat).
I’ve gotten more things working in the last week than I have with HomeGenie in the last two years. There is still a learning curve but not so bad.
I am not dissing HG at all. It is a cool tool but for me… It just took too much expertise to make it usable to me- I came home far too many times with the wrong lights on or off. It was very frustrating.
You’ve probably nailed it here. It’s a case of “don’t tell me how, tell me when” in your situation. Just fire it up, set the timers and get on with other things.
HG is definitely not for the faint hearted. Just when you think you have it all in place something decides not to fire. It’s definitely a home automation hobby application that’s needs time and effort spent to achieve results.
There’s a lot of home automation hubs that have recently hit the market. Most have embedded firmware and are basic and intuitive to the extent that the user only has to drag and drop a few boxes and their system is set up and the hub is left in the corner undisturbed.
HG really is for the tinkerer and the enthusiasts. I think developers are starting to realise that users have no interest in coding these days and as a result are changing their approach to how they are designing their frontends.
If you have time take a look at Node Red. You may be a little surprised at the developers approach to home automation design.
If you haven’t tried the latest version of HG it’s worth a look. I suggested to Gene that he add support for the CM19 X10 controller which surprisingly he has done. All the details are on his GitHub.
Back since many years.
Still not able to code, no time to tinker.
I tried 3 commercial hubs and many software on my rpi.
Even node red is hard to get zwave working for someone lacking linux experience and coding skills.
Seems like there is no home automation without it being a hobby.
Dare I say it here but Home Assistant has that support and much more. No real need for coding either as it’s all available and will comfortably run on a Raspberry Pi. Worth checking out.
Hi @Petediscrete ! My, you are everywhere! We’ve connected over at HomeGenie before.
I pretty much now only use HomeGenie for a bridge from Hubitat to my X10 stuff. Are you using both too or do you just use everything ?!! Have a good day!
Nice to hear from you again. One of the original regular contributors.
No I’ve pretty much parked up HomeGenie for now.
Things are very quiet here and you can see the current level of activity on Genes GitHub. Many I’ve communicated with are of the belief that the HG code could do with a complete rewrite but again that opinion is subjective.
Home Assistant is so straightforward and feature packed I don’t have to request features, they are already available. The one aspect that swung that decision was the vast community input and the shared knowledge that’s available.
HomeGenie is still a good product but it’s impossible to carry on a community effort on the GitHub which Gene has chosen to do.
If Gene had some form of roadmap laid out as to where HG is heading it might give myself and others the opportunity to see if that roadmap suited our needs.
The fact that development was halted on HG a couple of years ago prompted me to search for alternatives and Home Assistant was that alternative for me and much more.
I hope your home automation endeavours are coming on nicely for you.
Interesting. I have only briefly looked at HA. I am actually fairly happy with Hubitat still. It seems to be meeting my needs which are not all that elaborate.
I’ve got a bunch of sunrise/sunset stuff and a couple motion detectors… and slowly moving off X-10 even though I have X-10 working fairly reliably for most things.
In fact, it seems that now that I am only using HomeGenie as a Hubitat to X10 bridge- HG has not gone down or required a PI reboot for months… prior- I was rebooting my PI every two days to maintain reliability.
So all that is nice.
Having said that I am not looking for a new hobby… I might just take a look at HA anyway… the stuff is kind of fun!
Yes HG is fine for the basics like X10 but I’ve outgrown it’s capabilities. The single developer setup and the minimal community input makes it difficult when trying to expand your home automation system.
Also not sure how long the current round of development will last for. Remember what happened the last time.
Good luck with your home automation and good to hear from you again
@Petediscrete
You say you have out grown HG but what is it that HG dose not do for you?
With out users saying what they want how can it be developed?
IanR
One important enhancement for me I requested was acknowledged but nothing came of it. Many more I considered requesting but everything that I needed I found in Home Assistant.
Unfortunately without community input project development is down to one individual. Even Gene had previously admitted that and cited it as one of the reasons for halting development two years ago.
We’ve connected over at HomeGenie before.