re: Official WINK HUB Home Automation thread

on hold with WINK support to ask some basic questions.

so far they answered with 'we will record this call..but not in a creepy way'

now the hold music is the rug rats theme.

this is a little bizarre.

eta just came on and said 'man, this is taking a long time. we're sorry and appreciate your patience' in Linus from Charlie Brown's voice.



what have i talked everyone into buying???

ok good news. VERY cool tech support. dude answered all my questions..mainly around 2 things; one of which is disappointing.

1. i can't create user profiles in the app yet because i don't have the hub setup in it. once the hub is there, i can create users (email based) and give my kids only access to the deadbolt & garage door openers, and my wife access to the thermostats...maybe

2. 'geo fencing' is one of the cool things you can use with 'robots' to make things happen like the lights come on when you get close to your house.

unfortunately for security reasons, i can't add either the 'open front door lock' or 'open garage door' based on this trigger. i will have to create shortcuts for those things.

a bit of a bummer but i get it..if you're outside playing baseball with the kids and chasing the ball down you could have the garage door going up & down like crazy as you get in and out of the 'zone'

nothing negative to report about wink so far.

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I thought you made a statement the other day about having the garage door open when you are a block from your house?

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i think i said thats what i was planning to use it for..i didnt actually install the myQ until last night.

you can still add the garage door object to your ROBOTS, just not a robot built around the geo-fencing sensor.

make sense?

i just created a robot to send my android watch a notification if the garage door closes for instance.

Fear not help is on the way. There are a few 'quirks' pardon the pun..to getting this working so I don't want to post the guide until I've successfully done at least 2 hubs.

It's worth the wait.

Eta I'm rooted but there's a little trick to the update you need to do that requires a couple more steps.

Got my hub in today. Super easy setup. So far I've got 5 bulbs and my nest. Ordering the Schlage and 4 Phillips hue lights. This is just keeping my plan of becoming George Jetson in play!!!!

Did you root yours yet? Mine came in yesterday, just wondering if I should set up with or without rooting

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Wait for CAD to post his guide for root.

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sorry guys; newborn kept me up all night and i'm tired as frick. its really cutting into my 'wink' time

the gist of the wink root world is the following:

- the apple root guide is slightly wrong; you should not add the 'wink-api' domain to your hosts file or else it wont connect to WINK so you can use the phone app. there are also a couple of things you need to do to manually update the firmware and retain ROOT which is important if you want to run the latest firmware on the hub or.....

- you need to grab an older version of phone app (which i have) to setup your devices because wink updated their main app to look at the firmware of the hub and not allow device setup if youre running the older firmware once you've added your devices, you can update the app again but adding more devices later on will require you to 'downgrade' the APK again temporarily. kind of a PITA at the moment.

- there is another exploit -- using clever SQL statements to possibly gain root which means rooting it now may not be necessary if you can still get root access after the update..but this isn't confirmed.

- better tools are in the works to make rooting this easier and i want to incorporate them into my guide because that will save everyone some headaches..particularly if you're not used to SSH-ing into a remote web address and using the 'curl' command tools.

- yes, i'm doing it on windows, there are a couple things you need to install but like i said above, there may be some better tools coming soon.

any other questions at this time?

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Other than pork the Root, does the update improve anything?

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supposedly the update makes pairing the GE bulbs a little easier.

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ETA: I just got my 2 in last night. Working fairly well so far.

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i'm seeing the same thing on the forums; looks like the current software is working well for everyone.

Thanks!

Keeping us busy.

Things are moving fast in wink land!

2 new developments:

1. Ability to manually update to latest firmware and keep root so that will keep you updated as the hub gets new builds.

2. The android app that guy built to control the hub without using the wink cloud is getting an update which will automatically run the root script first! He's going to make it so you can either use his app or connect to wink like normal.

In other words.. Install and run his apk and it will also root you wink no ssh or curl tools needed! Bonus is you can also still use the wink as designed.

I'm pretty much planning to sacrifice one of my hubs to help this guy get that working if necessary.

Good times ahead

Is there an IR blaster option for this thing? I am going to start getting z-wave products, but I would like to also control my entertainment center. Also did I miss the link to the root apk?

Sorry about all the questions, I thought I was okay at stuff like this... this thing has my mind blown