Over the past week or so, I've noticed a HUGE increase in stability of the Wink hub. I've only seen a brief disconnect last night and one slight delay on lights. I hope this keeps up!
That's good to hear! I'm excited about their new products, but since half of them appear to be Wink-specific, I will not be buying them. For example, the Norm thermostat:
http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-PNORM-W...dp/B00NA9V6Y2/
There's no screen or physical controls. There is an upcoming touch feature (tap once to turn temperature up, twice to turn it down), but does it still work if the Wink cloud or your Internet is down? Scary stuff. Same with the Tapt lightswitch:
http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-PTAPT-W.../dp/B00P7RUR9A
I'd imagine they're using either ZigBee or Zwave for pairing, but historically, the devices pair to the Wink Hub & then relays the control commands to other devices, so again - what happens if access to the cloud is unavailable? I'll stick with my Lutron Caseta gear for now, haha. I'm curious if they're going to use the Relay as an offline middleman to keep basic functionality going...
One user on Smart Things said that Quirky support said that the Tripper window/door sensors are ZigBee-based. For $40 for a 2-pack with an estimated 2-year battery life, I will definitely be picking some of those up (partially because it's a non-critical item like a lightswitch). There's some good pics of the new equipment here:
http://community.smartthings.com/t/...ti-sensor-norm-thermostat-outlink-outlet/6957
I don't see the battery in the tripper lasting long on a door or window that is opened/closed often. The Lowes Iris window sensor is supposedly Zigbee based also but includes a larger cr2 battery and is priced the same ($20 for 1). I'm going to buy one of those to test it out whenever wink pushes out the update to support window sensors.
On those Tripper sensors, I wonder what the range between the two pieces of the sensor can be at max. I'm thinking that might be a cheap way to monitor my garage doors but I am not sure I can get them super close together.
Thanks to technologies like micro-sleep, a lot of simple electronics are getting crazy battery life now. The Logitech Marathon mouse runs for 3 years on a pair of AA batteries:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/marathon-mouse-m705
All of the wireless keyboards & mice I've bought in the last couple of years (like the Logitech MK320 set) all easily get 6 months of battery life on regular alkalines, so it's definitely doable. Plus, even if the actual battery life is only half of what they advertise (one year instead of two), that is still awesome & means you only have to do annual battery maintenance instead of doing it every month (or having to hardwire in the switches).
Myq
...
Get Winkhub for free when buying it.
esquimau, additional lock features are being discussed on the beta boards. We all feel the same way. I'd also love to see battery life reported for the ones that do report it.
drbrock, Go MyQ man. Useable in the Wink App, but it's also it's own system. What I mean is, that like Nest, you'll get a MyQ account that Wink talks to. That means it's separate from Wink's servers (which sadly, is an important distinction right now), but still controllable from the Wink App. Not only that but MyQ seems to be trying to break out of being in a MyQ bubble. Craftsman is useless if they can't branch out and work with other systems, IMO.
I have a MyQ garage door and it works flawlessly.
Hopefully as this matures, we will see better communication and lower switch prices. $50 for a switch is almost as crazy as $7 for a light bulb.
Ditto on switch prices. I can't think of any other electronic device that commands such a premium. Waiting for the mass-market realization and concomitant pricing, which is why I have hope and patience for Wink.
It is same app, but it works on my 3 android tablets (10", 8", 7") just fine. Not specifically formated for them though.
Matt
I've always been surprised that nobody makes a lighting control cabinet for the home user. This would be a box that would go up in your attic that would get power fed to it and then have a bunch of branch sub feeds to the various lights in your house. You then would use wireless remotes for your switches (like a $15 Pico remote). You'd also not need any wiring down walls, which would be a huge plus for retrofits.
Is there support for dusk timers? Given its tied to a cloud system, one of the features that should be super-easy to implement would be calculation of local sunrise/sunset times. Related question: I see some references to IFTTT support- can that be used for dusk timing? Ideas?
So, I found the menu item for a new generic Z-Wave device under the hub menu. Once there, I clicked "include" and it responded that it understood and was waiting for the device; on the device, I installed the battery and they seemed to talk. The hub flashed blue then, green, then steady blue. That sequence is dissed to indicate successful pairing. But, then what? I kinda expected to see a new device added... but, no. Is there some place I look, or next step I perform to actually have the device in my Wink app? (P.S. It's a garage door indicator, so I think I'm looking for a Z-Wave binary switch.)I'm going crazy. I bought some non-wink-certified sensors. One PIR and one tilt garage door. I knew it would be hit-or-miss, but I thought I'd at least have a chance. I'm glad Wink is updating the app frequently, but I can't find in the "add a product" page how I add a generic Z-Wave device. I am only seeing wink certified product options. A pointer, please?