I have been wanting to start a smart home for quite some time. Now that prices and equipment are accessible I decided to give it a try. I have tried to keep it short, but I did run on many issues.
Living room lighting
For some unknown reason my living room has a ceiling lighting fixture, but no switch anywhere to control it in the house. So if I plug in a light bulb it will always stay on. Previous owners may have had a ceiling fan with remote control, but because now the AC is installed about 2 meters away, it make no sense to re-install a ceiling fan. So I thought the ceiling light would make the perfect candidate.Choosing devices
Today there are two main standards competing: Z-Wave and Zigbee. Personally I favor Z-Wave for its improved interporability, meaning components may communicate with each others, this is where Zigbee has issues. On the other hand Zigbee is said to consume less power.So until this war is over, like Blue Ray and HD DVD, you probably want a device that support both technologies.
Home Depot had a special on Wink product that support both of these standards as well as wif-fi and bluetooth. So I acquired one Wink Hub and two GE Link connected led bulbs to get started.
It looked to be easy, by the length of the article, you may figure out it was not THAT easy.
Setting it up
I struggled several hours. Normally it's easy as installing the app on your smart phone (or tablet), plugging in your hub, add it to the app, then add any devices you want.
One of the main default the Hub has is its single multicolor led. The documentation does not tell you what the colors mean, it only describes what it should do when everything works normaly, if it doesn't, your have to guess. The app gives a few messages, mine kept telling me it had to update the Hub software, which always failed and prevents you from using the hub. I tried to see if the Hub had a web interface for advanced administration, and although it would be capable of (it has a default page with a single message), this is not something they added to the hub. Because update was very long it took me 2 hours to try it several times until I gave up.
Support help
So I called support. I had to wait, but once you can talk to support, you'll see the guys are very nice, patient and ready to help in their best capacity. We've spend almost 90 minutes over the phone trying to solve the issue. At the end it seems the device had some errors on some sectors, which meant the device had to be returned. The guy was surprised I had bought this device in Canada, he had to call me back to see how to deal with device exchange. Because my Home Depot had sold me the last of Wink Hub, I wasn't sure I would be able to do an exchanged so I asked for mail exchanged. I was supposed to receive a box with a return slip for my device. It never got to me !
After a week or more my Home Depot had received a new hubs, so I went to exchange the device.
Setting it up again
This time the Hub was working well. By then I had learned what the colors meant, so I knew when it was looking for an IP or installing an update or had failures. It went through a software update twice then it worked well. I pluged in the two light bulbs, paired them and added them on my smart phone.
To set it up, you first create a cloud account -- although not everyone may likes this -- I hoped it would make it easy to access devices configurations across multiple smart phones or the web. Unfortunately it is not that smart. Although my wife could see the light bulbs on her smart phone, I had to set up again the groups and shortcuts for every single device. Ok I only have two light bulbs now, but honestly, this is far from what I expect of a smart home when you'll get 50 to a hundred lights, switches, thermostats,etc... for your home.
Anyways, after this I could turn on and off or dim my light from various smart phones. Hooray ! If your kids don't have a smart phone or you receive guest then they won't be able to use your lights unless you have a phone or tablet for home usage. :(
Other issues
After a week we had an electric outage, something that happens often in Quebec, especially in the winter. My ceiling lights had turned on when the electricity came back, and I could not turn them off anymore. They appeared on my Hub, but whatever I did had no effect on the lights, and the app was no help in telling me what was happening.
I called the support again, always nice and friendly, the guy explained that the lights needed to be reset. To do so I had to turn them on and off manually several times ! Ha ! What a joke, the whole reason I got those lights was because I have no switch ! So got a chair, opened the ceiling light, remove the lights bulbs. Careful the light bulbs are extremely hot -- which is strange because they are leds and zigbee is supposed to consume less power. Then pluged them in a light I could turn on and off.
You have to turn them on, wait 3 whole seconds, then turn them off and wait another whole 3 seconds, and do this around 10 times, the light will start blinking it means it has been reset.
You have to turn them on, wait 3 whole seconds, then turn them off and wait another whole 3 seconds, and do this around 10 times, the light will start blinking it means it has been reset.
Finally I was able to pair them again and use them.
Like I said, in Québec, power outage is common, so I found myself doing this almost every other month.
Some much for smart and easy home :(
More issues
The hub frequently turned orange then after a while it turned back blue. Orange means it did not acquire an IP address or something went wrong. Every now on then (about every half hour) it when through a blue/orange cycle. So quite often I could not use my lights !
In the past month it seems to have stabilized.
If you have these types of issues, know that the Hub cannot be next to a wi-fi router, it seems it has issues with it. Mine is close to my Chromecast, which can play the role a wi-fi access point, so may be this is the problem, but I have not other place I can place the hub.
Security issue
This week end Wink deactivated all of their Hubs. Cannot use mine anymore. I got a kind message from wink telling me that the Hub had security issues they cannot correct remotely, so I have to send back my Hub.
To excuse themselves they offer a 50$ coupons to use on their site.
I went on their site to fill in a exchange request for my Hub as asked. But I am afraid that again I will not receive it by mail. And the coupon does not work :(
Conclusion so far
Unless you're a geek willing to play with new tech, I would not recommend the hub. It is far too unstable, but their phone support is great.
Regarding the GE lights bulbs, for my case I hate they loose their pairing so easily. This is not what they say on their website. Light resets should not depend on how your electricity turns on and off (if you have kids, then you'll also get some resets when they play with the lights) A simple reset button on the light itself should have been enough. I still have to understand why light bulbs are so hot when turned off, it seems like it's draining regular power even when turned off.
I hope to get my hub replaced, on the contrary I will look into other solutions. On ebay there are a lot of option regarding z-wave like Aeotec, Open Source Automation (OSA). This solutions, from forums seems more mature, or at least give me more control to hack around.
Links :
Wink: http://www.wink.com/
GE Link light: http://gelinkbulbs.com/
Aeotec: http://aeotec.com/
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