Hi All,
I’ve seen lots of people talking about it but never actually getting a straight answer. Is there anyway to ingrate these two into each other?
Apparently Hive is one of the biggest Smart Thermostats in the UK, so hopefully this is possible? (I know there are many more)
Kraeg
I’m not sure British Gas are that keen on opening up their platform. I had Hive in my previous house and ended up moving to Evohome as I just couldn’t get it to do the stuff I wanted it to. If they exposed IFTTT you could get some basic functionality, but i’m not even sure that is on their roadmap. I would say this is all on BG, not much ST can do (horse to water etc etc)…
I had a boiler check today and the guy was seeing if i wanted a Hive fitting today & if i had a carbon monoxide detector - after brieftly explaining Nest & Protect which are on the to do list he didnt really have much more he could say - especially when combined with IFTTT down the line [read: when fixed in the UK]
He did however help me figure out which wires i can use on the boiler and has saved me a ton of time when i come to fit Nest 
@adgwill Similar experience to you - I was looking at a solution which was extensible and that is where Hive falls short. I also looked at Nest, and whilst i really like the form factor, it was again limited to a all or nothing approach to heating (i.e. the whole house, not individual rooms unless you buy one per room) - and I don’t think it can do hot water if you have a tank. I ended up rooting with Evohome which can control each radiator totally independently as well as hot water, open via IFTTT and it’s own API (although that isn’t officially supported) and it allegedly going to have a very comprehensive integration to ST…
Hive is pretty awful - slow, slow app, makes me login again all the time and very limited in functionality. An example of a big company buying a startup and not bothering to develop the product… sounds familiar!
The Hive app has come on leaps and bounds recently - the forcing you to log back in all the time was a bug.
However, I’d still love to have it integrated with SmartThings, partially because I’d like to have functionality such as shutting the heating off when everyone leaves, but also because I’ve got SmartTiles loaded on a tablet which is being accepted by family for controlling lighting… would be nice to have some tiles on there for heating and hot water too.
I suspect I’ll have to still use the app to program the schedules, but temperature adjustment on a temporary basis would be nice - the app has a Boost function which can do this, or you can text “temp 22 auto” which adjusts the immediate temperature but doesn’t interfere with the upcoming schedules.
I wonder if there could be a bodge involving sending text commands to Hive?
Just released these Hive device types if you want to try them out
This is great, it works really well!
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but it would be great if you could add another slider to control the Boost length. Apart from that, you have everything you need for day-to-day control as timers only need to be altered occasionally.
Thanks for the great work!
Thanks for the feedback. That is a nice idea. I’ll look into the boost length adjustment.
Have implemented your idea into the latest version v1.12. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.
Just checked it out. It’s absolutely great!
Have BG documented their API then?
Not documented. But there is a forum that attempted to backwards engineer the API. http://britishgashive.freeforums.org/automated-json-feed-retrieval-t7-40.html
Whats the current thinking on these? Unsure whether to get this or go with a NEST? Can get it a full £100 cheaper than Nest (inc. installation: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hive-heating-2-plus-full-installation-149-99-instead-249-99-britsh-gas-2522632) but would rather spend the £100 if Nest is a superior product.
Oddly, some sites rate this higher than nest (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/digital-home/best-smart-thermostats-2016-3583499/) so just as I was about to pull the plug on a Nest installation, I’m completely unsure!
Personally, having worked for a company who install both Hive and Nest, I did a lot of looking into the pros and cons of each for my situation (pre-ST) and the Hive won. I didn’t need the learning of Nest, as there was nothing to learn - I don’t have a household routine which seems to be the thing Nest brings to the party, you don’t have to program it in the traditional sense as it learns from people coming home at 3pm, the house being empty from 9am etc.
If that routine based home describes you, then Nest may be better. But read on.
I then had a bit of regret when I got ST, as Nest seemed to be supported out of the box. Alex changed all that and the support for Hive seems to be perfect as far as I can see - I can do everything I need to via ST or my SmartTiles dashboard running on a state of the art Blackberry Playbook (!). It naturally integrates into my rules - originally though RulesMachine, but now CoRE.
So whilst Hive needs programming (don’t be fooled by the geolocation stuff, it’s pretty poor), it suddenly becomes 100 times smarter with ST, and the advantage (to me) of Nest is lost.
I rarely use the Hive app and I think that’s the best thing about it being supported, I don’t want to be using half a dozen apps. My Hue and Hive are both controlled via ST.
Has anyone fixed this?