I am moving into a new house, which is over double the size what we are currently in. I plan to have about 90 homeseer switches, a bunch of hue smart bulbs, a bunch of contact and motion sensors, alarm system, about four smart locks, myq garage doors, smart thermostats, smart irrigation, harmony, sonos, alexa, and google home. Currently the smarthings app is a little unstable with the devices I have in my house now, I am sure it will be even worst with a good amount more. But between core and actiontiles I can really get everything I want done with no issue.
I started looking at the homeseer hubs, and the software there seems to be able to do everything, and might get less clogged up with all the devices. But it seems like I need to buy a plugin for almost everything. Myq, locks, harmony, etc…
Outside of smarthings being dependent on the cloud, and slow app performance with many devices, I am not seeing any more benefits from homeseer. That being said, I want to get the initial setup right I don’t want to set up and tweak all these devices then decide I should probably be on homeseer for stability.
Have any of you guys done the switch? Any tips or info you can provide?
Every system has pros and cons and different things work for different people.
SmartThings has much better zigbee integration than homeseer, for example, so if you like zigbee sensors homeseer may not be the best choice. And of course homeseer requires strong technical skills. But it does run a lot more stuff locally than smartthings does, and as you mentioned, that’s an advantage for stability.
I think low-cost home automation is definitely in the “grass is always greener” evolutionary phase, where no matter what system you get you will feel some regret that you didn’t get a different one. But again, different pluses and minuses with each, so you just need to research and see which one fits your needs best.
It seems like there is no zwave alternative to the multipurpose sensor. That is one I will miss, seems to be the smallest sensor that has both contact and vibration.
I ordered a homeseer controller to test out now before the move, they seem to have a good return policy.
As someone who spent years with Homeseer (V1 and V2), this system was never “wife approved”. Smartthings so far is the only system that allows the custom programming I enjoyed with Homeseer and the “Just Works” functionality that my wife and family need. Hopefully v3 of Homeseer has remedied their clunky interfaces.
Other than reliability, which I think is the original poster’s reason for trying homeseer, are there any other features/reasons someone might look into homeseer?
If my smartthings environment is stable, do I get anything by moving to homeseer?
I have been testing homeseer today, and I am not liking it. I thought setup would be a breeze since it is all done on the desktop, but it has been a pain. The plugins barely work, the event structure in my opinion is cumbersome, core is much better in that regard. My biggest gripe right now seems to be with some of these plugins like harmony. They are unstable and a pain to get to work.
Homeseer actions do seem to be much faster though, there is no delay in locking or unlocking the front door, no delay in turning on/off a switch. I really want to like it, but so far I just can’t. I will give it a few more days to make sure.
@js1 - I made the switch about 3 years ago and I’ve never look back!! the only thing I did between now and 3 years ago was switch HS3 devices. I purchased the HS3 Sel Pro home troller for $299 3 years ago and it came loaded with everything I needed except the plugins and the Z-Wave stick I purchased the homeseer Z-Wave stick and got everything running. I agree that the harmony plug-in never worked out of the box but everything else was Rock solid!
After about a year and not being able to get the Life360 plugin and Harmony plug into work I almost decided to switch back to SmartThings. My biggest concern though was that homeseer didn’t have a very life friendly mobile app. I also didn’t like that Life 360 and Harmony didn’t work well after googling and going on their forums I found and interestingconnection with the plugins that didn’t work and hs3 running on Linux. So what I did was download the hs3 software, the software for the homeseer z stick, and backed up all my devices and Z-Wave network using the awesome homeseer backup utility!!! Then I am stalled the hs3 software on my Windows 10 computer. After installing the software I installed the homeseer z-stick software and plugged in my z stick to my Windows 10 computer. Then I install the latest Z-Wave plug in and configured the z stick with the Z-Wave plug-in. After I did that I restored all my devices from the back up that I took previously on the Linux system and reinstalled all my plugins on the new Windows 10 workstation. After I did this my Harmony plugin worked, my Life 360 plug-in work, everything just worked!!! and the best part was homeseer just release their new mobile app and it’s very wife friendly and compares very closely to the SmartThings mobile app!
Anyway with all of that said, I am still keeping homeseer and I still believe it is far better than any other smart home!!! In my honest opinion it is a cheap man’s control4!!! I have never been happier with my homeseer as I am now since I migrated my devices to a Windows 10 computer!!! I have absolutely no issues with all my plugins, I got geofencing to work with HS buddy and my life 360 plugins. And most of all I am loving the new homeseer mobile app!!! As a matter of fact I can use for different mobile apps with homeseer:
New homeseer mobile app
The old hstouch mobile app (which I’ve actually got good at configuring my own mobile project and deployed a really cool application to my iPad which I now will be mounting on the walls throughout the house)
HSBuddy Mobile app (Requires a HSBuddy plug-in which is now free)
Imperial mobile app (requires imperihome plugin)
However overall, my wife and Kids use the new homeseer mobile app (as do I but I still use some of the others) and we love how the nest cameras work with the new mobile app. See screenshots:
I would not give up on homeseer if I were you and give it another shot but install it on your Windows 10 computer!! Let me know if you need any assistance!!
But again, different pluses and minuses with each, so you just need to research and see which one fits your needs best.
