re: Official WINK HUB Home Automation thread

Damn, not bumped since last year.

Ok, here's a few updates from me:


- sonos/wink integration works well. pretty happy with this so far.

- bought a ring floodlight. it sucked until i got the free 'chime pro' wifi extender and now it functions, but its not great. i liked the idea of replacing the flood between my garage doors with a combo unit so i whored myself out & bought this

- mctiger turned me onto $7 ikea candelabra bulbs and they're the shite! i've gotten about 15 of these now and pairing them with HUE takes no time at all. you can even pair multiple ones at the same time.

- flair flair wherefore art thou. i had a very hard time keeping the humidity levels up in my house after a very cold winter so i never even bothered to unpack this. the forum kept complaining about problems with the software & app and i'm still not sure it actually integrates with any home automation hub so the puck & the vent cover are still in the box.

- movez zwave shade motors. still in kick-starter fantasy land

- tons more GE switches in my house now thanks to the walmart fire sale. i love zwave over zigbee so much..i still have zigbee lights that are shite and dont respond after they get moved around. the whole zigbee/mesh re-routing is a mess.

- HUE remains my champion even with the 2 day outage last month. other than the whole site fricking up completely for a day & 1/2, everything just works

- alexa meh, she still is still hard of hearing and cant understand some of the rooms/devices on my smart network. i realize i have tons of shite but come on. get the wax out of your virtual ears.

- sonos (kinda smart home related) has performed flawlessly. it definitely has limits but i've grown quite fond of how well this system works for me & my family.

- quirky shite needs to go. outside of the power strip, everything else quirky works like arse. i hate to get rid of the door sensors because they are very small & subtle but i have about 2 out of 10 that don't give me trouble where i'm constantly pulling the battery so whats the point?

- wink/ring integration..whats the point?

- lutron; i lost my damn pico. looked everywhere for the stupid thing. i want to use it in place of a second 3way light and i guess its sleeping with the fishes right now.

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 bought a ring floodlight. it sucked until i got the free 'chime pro' wifi extender and now it functions, but its not great. i liked the idea of replacing the flood between my garage doors with a combo unit so i whored myself out & bought this 

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You have crappy wifi. Dont hate Ring because of that.

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link

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LINK

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BTW i made a zwave controlled hose valve. only bad thin is you need power. I just ran a wire into my garage. I was going to do a DIY build here for it.

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very cool.

Why not add some access points or switch to Google wifi if you have dead zones?

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I was going to start a thread about two new items I've added to my list, but I'll piggyback here. I just got my garage doors hooked up and controlled through MyQ. I've also got the Ring Video Doorbell 2 unpackaged and ready for install. For the Ring, any advice on drilling into brick? Also, any last minute considerations before I install it?

As for the garage, what automation ideas do you guys suggest? I've got a Wink Hub 2, along with a variety of lights, plugs and motion sensors.

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SCREW MYQ. I am done with them after they fricked around with their API *AGAIN* and messed stuff up for all smart hubs, want to charge a monthly fee to use IFTTT and the final nail in the coffin is they refuse to support marantec openers which i bought for both of my garage doors and is a very high-quality product with tons of features that don't come with chamberlain.

CAD is getting IRIS/Linear units which integrate much better (you're tapping into the wiring of the opener) and i'd rather zwave anyway as I'm getting tired of API-based products that need the cloud, traditional WiFi and constant care and feeding.

anyone want to buy a perfectly good myQ unit and a chamberlain whisper opener (with myq built-in) someone whose name starts with an 'm' sold me?

for other garage automation, i just have a dot and a smart switch for the lights at the moment. this is probably where my next sonos speaker will end up.

aside from making my garage doors more usable and robust, does everyone know that Alexa will unlock your schlage locks now??

if you remember, this feature was disabled a year or so ago after fears someone could yell 'unlock door' from outside. the new improved alexa skills requires you to speak one of the codes you've set for your schlage lock and if you say the wrong code 3x in a row alexa disables voice-control entirely.

finally, if you do have a wink2, sonos and schlage locks you can have it announce to everyone in the house who is coming in the door. you'll need to pre-record what you want it to say and you'll have to have set individual pass-codes for various people but i can tell you this is fun!

you just need to setup a robot in wink that reacts with someone entering a particular code with a sonos speaker (or all of them!) playing whatever you want as the greeting.

Did you ever install it or its just been sitting in the box? Still gets good money on ebay if so

Eta: finally ditched my last 2 outlinks. Ended up getting 7 ge zwave outlets for $20 a piece since they work so much better than Quirky. Still have trippers but not actively using them.

*bump*

For those with tapts and outlinks a little light at the end of the tunnel.

After the latest android wink app update (which is muuuuuuch faster now) outlinks and tapts that have been offline for over a year are now back online and controllable!

not sure how or why but i gave up on them and have been treating them as regular device but i was pleasantly surprised to see them back online and working correctly through NO work on my end.

makes me wonder if the ge link bulbs (since they're also zigbee) are better supported now. always known they stay online better paired to hue hub but curious if wink fixed a major zigbee issue or what?

senator i have no recollection of that event

I hade a strange stat and replaced it with a regular plian jane kind.

You get wifi off your stat? Tell me more.