Ah man, that stinks! Part of it is that it's a first-generation product...stuff never works right with 1st-gen stuff
Update on my Trippers: the battery in one completely died and it stopped reporting. I replaced it with a new battery and it seems to work fine.
NOW, however, my second Tripper is reporting a low battery. I will replace it but if these batteries are dead within a month or so, I'm done with them.
I hope that happens, as it sounds like a great step forward. Agree 100% on Wink -- I didn't invest much in it and it seems I will be able to reuse my GE bulbs, but I am shocked at how they operate their business. I knew going in it may not work out, so I'm not mad and I am glad I didn't buy a ton of stuff yet.
As commentary, I’m pretty uncomfortable with Wink amassing a database of wifi passwords and locations where they can be used. When you setup the hub, you need to enter your wifi password. And the Wink app gets your phone’s GPS signal (it’s one of the permissions) to do geofencing. OpenHAB can do most of these types of automation tasks, but gives you more control over sensitive data.
Smartthings v2 will supposedly have offline support and an ethernet port and is somewhere on the horizon.
I feel like I got what I paid for ($0) with the Wink Hub. Which is all fine and well, but I'm definitely jumping ship once there is a viable option (like a theoretical smartthings v2). The instabilities, lack of an official online forum for feedback, and lack of documentation may well doom what is otherwise a nice looking line of products at a good price point. A new hub *might* fix the first issue, but I've seen no effort with the other two.
I'm reluctant to post its all thumbs up like "IndyColtsFan" did and then have issues, but I wanted to show that there are positive results out there also. My setup
1 Hub
2 Trippers
1 GE Link
I have one of the tripper to monitor a door and send me an alert when it opens, and one tripper to turn the GE Link on and off when another opens or close.
I have robots set up to turn it off at 5 AM.
Sometimes there is a 2 to 3 seconds lag but I think it is my network, I've been meaning to update it for some time now.
I am going to Home Depot today and pick me up another GE Link maybe 2, and a in wall dimmer.
I hope that with the backing of GE and Home Depot Wink can get its act together and everything goes smoothly.
Same...mine was a buck, so I'm not overly put out that it occasionally has issues. It's a lot better than it was in the past, but I still feel that ANY downtime is unacceptable when it comes to controlling my house, especially when I spend $15 or $20 on a GE Link Light & have to leave the lightswitch in the "on" position all the time, and then their servers go down so I have to manually flip the switch, then remember to flip it back on when the service comes back online. To me, that's a joke. Fix it, Wink! The hackers already have local functionality working. A simple firmware update would solve this problem entirely!
Did you try one of the Caseta switches with no success? I wrote support weeks ago about supporting these and never got any type of response. I was hoping to use them for our exterior lights as dimmers will not work with them and I have no neutral wires of course!
Daniel
Question for those with a Tripper in use -- do you normally see updates to the time stamps even when the garage doors aren't going up or down? For example, I have not opened a garage door in a couple of hours but the Wink app is showing the "Doors Closed" was last updated 10 minutes ago. Is that normal or should it only be updating when the Tripper opens/closes? Note that the activity logs do NOT indicate a door opening 10 minutes ago. It is almost like the hub is polling the Trippers periodically.
I reported this to them a couple of weeks ago. Both by phone and email. I have absolutely no faith in Quirky that this will be fixed anytime soon.
Yeah, same. I have a couple hundred bucks invested, but it's all stuff that can be used standalone (LED bulb, lightswitch, smoke alarm, etc.) so it's not a huge loss if I drop Wink. I'd prefer not to, because I like the idea, but I'm struggling to understand why my house has to stop working 6 months into ownership when their servers have a hiccup.
I was really hoping the GE/Home Depot backing would pan out, but I really think they're going to need a 2nd generation of software & equipment to come out before the kinks really get worked out. By that time, they may have lost their lead in the marketplace...they already have a pretty bad reputation online: (would you buy other products with this low of a rating?!)
3 out of 5 stars from 356 reviews on Amazon
2.5 out of 5 stars from 142 reviews on Home Depot
Again, it's not like they can't just fix it...as far as I can tell, it's ALL software-related issues that are causing the bad reviews. Apparently Wink still hasn't implementing Zwave polling yet either, which is supposedly coming in a future update:
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=73233446&postcount=349
The funny thing is, people have already hacked the Wink for local control using stuff like OpenHAB, so it's entirely possible, but they simply choose not to do it. That feature alone would fix 90% of their problems, I'd bet:
https://electronichamsters.wordpres...k-hub-to-work-with-openhab-for-local-control/
Also one note of concern:
While I have been frustrated with some / most of the setup, it has worked well for the couple of schedules / robots that I have implemented. Yes, there have been a couple of times that the servers are down for maintenance or some other reason.
Wife bought hub and a GE bulb for me for Christmas so I didn't get any of the $1 deals. I added the Kidde alarms(2) and a Caseta plug-in switch and Pico remote. Trying to add the second Pico for a week and I find today that there's a step missing in the iPhone app to add the remote.
In the third screen, when hub is ready and the remote starts blinking, press the lower button to synch'. It never starts blinking.
On a lutron board, I find that when the hub is ready, press the lower button FOR 6 SECONDS and it starts blinking and synchs immediately!
The same omission seems to appear in all the Lutron devices.
I'm disappointed that the remote can only control a Lutron switch but I'm hoping that will be corrected in software.
Speaking of software, how about turn off at sunset / on at sunrise?
And a sensor that has contact terminals instead of magnet.
And I'd certainly like to see local control w/o cloud necessary. I can live with going through the cloud when out of home.
By that time, they may have lost their lead in the marketplace...they already have a pretty bad reputation online: (would you buy other products with this low of a rating?!)
3 out of 5 stars from 356 reviews on Amazon
Yeah, I saw your posts about the time stamps earlier. Are you seeing your Tripper battery life going down the tube as well? The activity logs do reflect the correct time of when the door is used, but this other time almost makes it seem that the hub is polling the device and I wonder if that is killing battery life.
Question for you about the pico remote...
Does it pair directly with the lutron switch?
Or is it just a device in wink that you can use to trigger robots, shortcuts, etc.?
Wondering if I can use it to turn z-wave switches on and off...
Thanks!
Battery life has been fine for me but I don't have ANY activity log for the sensors. Are you seeing activity log data for your trippers? Maybe we have different versions. I'm using 2.3.021 IOS app.
Interesting -- do you have a link to the hacked Wink firmware page(s)?
That's a great example of how clueless Quirky is. I don't have an activity log for trippers on iOS and you have a basically worthless activity log. It should say opened or closed obviously. Ridiculous.
No. Unfortunately, you cannot.
You pair the Pico remote to the Wink hub, and then within the Wink App you specify which Lutron switch(es) you want it to control. It only lets you select one (or more) of the the Lutron switches that are already paired to the hub. It does not allow you associate the remote with Z-wave switches. Here's what it looks like in the (iOS) app:
(these are all Lutron switches in my setup, I do have another Z-wave switch and it does not appear here)
That said, one set up, the Pico remotes do not depend on the hub (or internet connectivity) to function. It seems that the remotes talk directly to the switches, even though you use the Wink app initially to link the remote to the switches.
** NOTE: You can pair the remote directly to the switch, without Wink or any other hub (i.e. for users without hubs). But I assume that's not what you're asking about here.
With a more powerful Hub that can stay connected during power or Internet outages
...I recently read that Philips had the same kind of agreement with Wink so that you couldn't do extended control over groups of lights in different ways. Just silly!