The Wink home automation thread

[dgruhin]

Honestly Dave:
The Gizmodo review was pretty much spot on with my experience. I'm willing to say that here, and not linking to my own blog to generate traffic.

Sorry you have run in to issues similar to the Gizmodo review. Perhaps I got lucky as I was not such an early adopter.

In regard to directing people elsewhere, as I stated previously it is my belief that this thread has become difficult to use to find information. I built a forum dedicate to this product line.

Use it, don't use it. The choice is yours.

 

[bigverm24]

Sorry you have run in to issues similar to the Gizmodo review. Perhaps I got lucky as I was not such an early adopter.

In regard to directing people elsewhere, as I stated previously it is my belief that this thread has become difficult to use to find information. I built a forum dedicate to this product line.

Use it, don't use it. The choice is yours.

Dave, I appreciate your review and your new forum. For whatever reason, I am not able to apply on your new forum so asking you here instead (for now). What is your experience with the Lutron Caseta in combo with the GE Link bulb? I have a 3 way switch so unfortunately I assume that means if I go with the Lutron switch, I have to buy 2 ($110 to control 1 light!)...but still interested in the functionality and robot control (if any)

 

[dgruhin]

Dave, I appreciate your review and your new forum. For whatever reason, I am not able to apply on your new forum so asking you here instead (for now). What is your experience with the Lutron Caseta in combo with the GE Link bulb? I have a 3 way switch so unfortunately I assume that means if I go with the Lutron switch, I have to buy 2 ($110 to control 1 light!)...but still interested in the functionality and robot control (if any)

With a 3-way the simplest thing is to buy 1 Caseta with a pico remote, and then order another pico remote.

You can replace one of the switches with the Caseta "master" and then remove the physical switches making up the rest of the 3 way and replace with Pico remotes and this wall plate adapter http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Caseta-Wireless-Pico-Wallplate-Bracket-PICO-WBX-ADAPT/205071775

There is no real reason to combine the Caseta with a GE Link bulb unless you want to be able to make sure no one turns off power completely to a bank of lights and then have control to turn individual bulbs on and off as well.

Send me a PM here and I will see why you can't register.

Update: SMTP issue resolved, anyone who signed up that did not receive confirmation emails, have now been manually activated on winkworkshop.com

 

[Kaido]

Why is my smart home so F-ing dumb (over at Gizmodo) ??

Excellent article. I think this sums up the Wink experience:

These aren't bad products. It just doesn't feel like they're ready at all.

That's exactly how I feel about my system. Individually, all of the pieces work great. When you throw the Wink Hub in there, you get...glitches. The unfortunate part is, like the author said, they could kill the glitches in a single update & it would become a really phenomenal system, but they've been on the market for 8 months now, are still having glitches, and subsequently have terrible reviews. It should have been perfect out of the box. I don't trust Wink enough to buy any of their branded products at this point; I prefer stuff that has a separate API or control system that I can access for backup.

I feel bad for the employees, too...they're obviously getting hammered with tech support, having pressure to update the system to make it perfect in a competitive marketplace, prepping new products to get out the door, and their marketing department is still pushing the "everything is simple" approach...but sometimes it's too simple, like getting setup out of the box with the Hub, or wiring in the Relay (as the article above pointed out).

Bottom line, I do not rely on my Wink system. It adds a nice set of extra features, but it lets you down enough to get frustrating.

 

[Kaido]

There appears to be another new Hub out, the "Wink Connected Home Hub":

www.amazon.com/Wink-PWHUB-WH15-Conne...dp/B00PV6GAI4/

This model includes new Wink HUB firmware with additional features:

Zigbee and Z-wave sensor support, improved Z-wave lighting support, additional Wi-Fi network configurations (WEP and non-broadcasting)

It appears to be the same hardware model, but it's finally being shipped with an updated firmware (0.48 according to one reviewer).

 

[bigverm24]

Excellent article. I think this sums up the Wink experience:



That's exactly how I feel about my system. Individually, all of the pieces work great. When you throw the Wink Hub in there, you get...glitches. The unfortunate part is, like the author said, they could kill the glitches in a single update & it would become a really phenomenal system, but they've been on the market for 8 months now, are still having glitches, and subsequently have terrible reviews. It should have been perfect out of the box. I don't trust Wink enough to buy any of their branded products at this point; I prefer stuff that has a separate API or control system that I can access for backup.

I feel bad for the employees, too...they're obviously getting hammered with tech support, having pressure to update the system to make it perfect in a competitive marketplace, prepping new products to get out the door, and their marketing department is still pushing the "everything is simple" approach...but sometimes it's too simple, like getting setup out of the box with the Hub, or wiring in the Relay (as the article above pointed out).

Bottom line, I do not rely on my Wink system. It adds a nice set of extra features, but it lets you down enough to get frustrating.

"It should have been perfect out of the box is a ridiculous statement". You won't find a product like this perfect out of the box ever. Not smart things not wink nor iPhone iOS. Everything that runs software has to start somewhere and grows based on updates. I hope you returned all of your product if its that bad.

 

[Kaido]

The cloud relay link can be frustratingly slow sometimes. It was like -2F last night & I unlocked the door from my phone (I was too far away in the parking lot to be on my Wifi, so it was on 3G) and it just spun & spun & spun. It finally got back to me what felt like 2 minutes later that it was unlocked. My wife doesn't even use the phone app, she just uses the keypad entry now & laughs when I sit there waiting for the door to unlock, haha.

I don't understand the reason for the delay. I can use Teamviewer to stream my computer to my phone, Netflix to stream video, Dropcam to stream a live video feed, and a host of other cloud-based services that operate every time in realtime. I'm not sure if their infrastructure (which appears to be based on Electric Imp) is the culprit or what. Based on the web apps that people have been pushing out for Wink, the signal relay system seems pretty speedy in practice, so I'm not sure what the holdup is. Too many people on it? Weak infrastructure? Bad coding?

With that said, it's still better than anything else out there at the consumer level. But, I also like to be very honest when I look at my equipment & see the actual pros and cons of it. It's fun, but it has warts right now. The Gizmodo article was pretty spot-on with the general experiences in this thread. So we'll see what the future holds, both for Wink & other vendors!

 

[Kaido]

"It should have been perfect out of the box is a ridiculous statement". You won't find a product like this perfect out of the box ever. Not smart things not wink nor iPhone iOS. Everything that runs software has to start somewhere and grows based on updates. I hope you returned all of your product if its that bad.

There's no reason it shouldn't be; plenty of other connected devices work fine out of the box. From a non-technical consumer point of view, if they sell it at Home Depot, it should "just work", whether it's a gas grill or a water heater or a home automation item like a smart bulb. If my water heater pulled this crap on me, it'd go back the very same day. However, I've been into smarthome stuff for a long time & no one (no one with a cheap offering, at least) has cracked the code yet, which is why I'm willing to both try it & be patient.

In addition...they advertise it that way. "Easy setup" is literally what they market on their webpage. Plus, if you really want to build a smarthome, see the advertising (keeping in mind that most people shopping at Home Depot aren't going to go join a forum & spend hours reading threads about functionality), and go down to Home Depot and spend $5,000 on a full suite of LED lights, smart locks, connected thermostat, wireless smoke alarms, and (expensive) motorized wind treatments, telling that person that (1) Wink's advertising is, in fact, misleading, and (2) Home Depot (who is known for selling pretty reliable products) is selling a product that doesn't live up to its advertisements - well, that is more of a ridiculous statement to me than saying that yes, it should work out of the box as advertised. They're selling it as such!

They've spent millions making products & then filming commercials about how easy it is, but just look at the Gizmodo article: that reflects most of our experiences here (i.e. intermittently buggy). It should have been perfect out of the gate. It's not like you're buying it from Best Buy as a geek toy to play with; this is literally running things like your front door lock & window opening sensors, which can have really bad results from a security perspective. Also, I bought the original iPhone when it came out & it was a pretty solid machine - it has had updates & bugs along the way, of course, but out of the box, it was a pretty great device at the time. They made sure things worked right before releasing it to the public. Wink did not. It's as simple as that.

That doesn't mean I'm going to over-react & return my Wink stuff; imo, it's still the best consumer-grade stuff you can buy, short of a more pricey Control4 system. Vera & the current SmartThings stuff don't stack up; you can get pretty good results with a computer-based controller, but that requires more work. INSTEON & X10 aren't bad when you fully tweak them out, but definitely aren't perfect. So I recognize that the field is riddled with inconsistencies, but I also see other connected things like the Nest (standalone), video streaming services, tablets & phones, and other things that are quality products out of the box. So I'm not so enamored with my system that I'm willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that it should have been better than it was out of the box, and that the system should run better than it does today. That's just the reality of where things are at right now.

 

[Kaido]

With a 3-way the simplest thing is to buy 1 Caseta with a pico remote, and then order another pico remote.

You can replace one of the switches with the Caseta "master" and then remove the physical switches making up the rest of the 3 way and replace with Pico remotes and this wall plate adapter http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Caseta-Wireless-Pico-Wallplate-Bracket-PICO-WBX-ADAPT/205071775

I'm interested in this as well - do you need to do anything special with the wiring behind the dummy replacement in the second switch?

 

[Kaido]

Just ran across this over on reddit. A developer has wrote an app for the pebble smart watch that can control wink. It currently only has a android version but says iOS is coming soon.

http://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/2vnnyd/control_wink_devices_in_your_house_from_your/

I think (1) wearables (like smartwatches), and (2) voice control (like the Amazon Echo) are going to be key players in making the smart home accessible, primarily for this reason:

My friends didn't need to walk ten feet to the light switch, when I could manage everything with a couple taps. My friends would be so impressed. I'd talked up my pet project plenty, and now they could watch the future unfold before their very eyes.

I unlocked my phone. I found the right home screen. I opened the Wink app. I navigated to the Lights section. I toggled over to the sets of light bulbs that I'd painstakingly grouped and labeled. I tapped "Living Room"—this was it—and the icon went from bright to dark. (Okay, so that was like six taps.)

It is sometimes literally more of a hassle to get at my phone than it is to hop up & flip the switch. And even better, if they could combine quality voice control with a wearable, that would be the bomb because you'd always be wearing it, having a microphone following you around wherever you go.

 

[Kaido]

I decided to take some old iPhones and turn them in to Psuedo relays.

You can read and see more at WinkWorkshop.com

LOL that's awesome! :thumbsup:

 

[Kaido]

Here's the status of my Wink experiment:

Wink connected products: 7 Link bulbs, 2 Trippers, 1 Radio Thermostat, 1 Kwikset Lock.
Wemo connected products: Switch for bedroom light, Switch for Bed Heater.
Computer Environment: HP i7 running Win8.1, Samsung Galaxy Note3 running Kitkat, Asus Zen Watch running AndroidWear Lolipop.
Additional Apps: Wink(of course), Tasker, WemoManager, AutoVoice(for voice control), AutoLocation(for Geolocation), AutoRemote(lock my PC), and AutoWear{Beta}(for watch control).

The following tasks are automated:
Wake up(removal from charger), turn one Link light(Living Room Right) on and turn up the temperture.
Leave Home(leaving Home Geofence), dim Link light to 10%, lock deadbolt, and turn down temperture.
Return Home(entering Home Geofence), turn Link light to 100%, unlock door, and turn up temperture.
Twenty minutes before sunset(I get the sunset time from my Wemo server), turn on Kitchen Link light at 10%.
At 6pm the Bedroom window trigger sends a notification if the window is open.
About 1 hour before bed(set time) turn on bedroom light(Wemo) and turn on bed heater(Wemo).
Go to Sleep, turn off all lights, turn off bed heater, lock PC, lock deadbolt.
Wife comes home(Wink geolocation robot) turn on light above her chair.

Ad Hoc control: Voice control via Zen watch and via a web page on my PC.

Pretty much everything works, with the exception of the geolocation robot(I've yet to see it turn the light on, but it does seem to turn it off). I've had a problem(really anoying) with the hub losing contact with the router right before my "go to sleep" tasks. I ended up moving the hub to the bathroom and about 8 feet further from the router and that seems to have helped. Sometimes I'll need to repeat commands to the watch and the watch has limited(about 15 feet) Bluetooth range.

Very nice! You know, I think as long as Wink is going to keep everything in the cloud, they should really have a web-based Dashboard to manage all this stuff - that's an awfully big list to handle all from a smartphone, you know? Plus you could swap profiles for like home, vacation, weekend, etc., easily using stuff like HTML5 drag & drop. Something like a lightweight version of Indigo would be awesome:

https://www.indigodomo.com/

It has a great workflow for adding new devices to your network, naming them, controlling what they do, how they interact, using plugins, etc.:

http://wiki.indigodomo.com/doku.php?id=indigo_6_documentation:overview#devices

Only catch is that it's primarily Z-wave, INSTEON, and X10, so the hardware support isn't nearly as broad as Wink's, and you have to (1) have a Mac, and (2) keep it running 24/7. And of course, there's the risk the computer crashing (rare on a Mac) & the software crashing (semi-rare), having to put it on a UPS to really be reliable, setting wake-on-AC if the power does go out for a longer period of time, managing updates, and all that jazz.

 

[MLieBennett]

Well time to leave my personal experience as of Feb 13, 2015.

Wink has started to become MUCH more reliable then when I first started using it in Nov. Response times are down to 1 sec or under compared to the initial 3-10 sec response lag. With the addition's of Craig Trunzo's Tasker Wink Hub integration Project, I can customize controls and sequences MUCH easier while it also SAVED my Alarm+Lights setup after TCP Connected idiotically disabled the local user interface. The Kiddie Smoke Alarm has worked as intended. Lastly, the Trippers are responsive most of the time (they occasionally hiccup about once every three weeks, something I'm still trying to figure out why) but not through a Robot (Using Tasker on my Home Tablet to read the Notification from Wink/Tripper, which then sends out commands to turn on/off lights.)

TCP Connected Lights seem to respond faster/better then the GE Link lights for me, just remember the TCP Connected lights need their own hub, but also do not need Wink Hub.

Further on controlling lights, 3 bulbs at once seems to be the current "reliable" limit on one command. I have one fixture with 4 TCP Bulbs, and everyone once in a while it will hiccup and leave one of the four on if I send too many commands back to back to it. Usually though 4 linked lights in a "Group" seem to work well enough. A Smart Switch would work better when controlling a multi-light fixture (and probably what the Gizmodo Review person SHOULD have done, rather then relying on trying to turn on multiple Smart LEDs on one trigger)

On Robots ... I currently on use Notifications, which Tasker then reads and activates lights. I need to test Robots again, but its not a priority for me.

On GE Link Bulbs, I've noticed that about once a month, I'll need to physically turn on and off the bulbs to get them to react to the Wink Hub again. And as mentioned, something similar happens to the Trippers where I'll need to pull the battery and put them back in to register open/close again.

My next expansion to the system will probably be Z-Wave Switches for the kitchen 3-way (instead of multiple smart bulbs again), maybe another set of Trippers, and maybe a v2 Spotter when its released. I am tempted by a Kwikset 912 as well ... so maybe that will show up in my system next.

 

[fletchb]

Man the Leviton are surely the most expensive of them all (sounds like for good reason?). So can you comment on the functionality of controlling the switches/dimmers and lights directly from the app? Does status poll correctly, even in the event of manual switching?

Actually they were about the same price as the lutrons . $49 + $11 per remote.
Home depot doesn't sell the remotes, but Amazon does.

Wink says they have polling fixed in the firmware, but not yet on the cloud side. But they say it is coming soon.

I think right now Wink is best for hobby folks like us. I don't get my expectations too high right now. I work in IT and know it takes time to get this stuff sorted. They should have just waited a bit longer but I am guessing they got scared with Samsung and all the other players jumping in. But just my guess.

I live in a fairly small town and just found out recently that one of the IRIS factories is just a couple of miles down the road from me. Everybody is jumping in.

 

[Tech_Greek]

Point in case. Every light in my house is turned off via the wink hub. Left and came back and that's what my Wink hub shows.

This is the definition of lazy programming. It's a broken product that only works sometimes as it's advertised and that's bad that we accept that and give them the well maybe they just need a little longer. What they've essentially done is made us pay them to beta test their products.

That's how it goes now in technology though. Just patch it later! Guess I'm just tired of it because I work with it 24/7 and see these same trends over and over and over again from home automation to video games.

 

[Tech_Greek]

...and after I just sat there and said that about the iOS widget (or maybe I just thought I did after reading the article) the friggin thing doesn't work tonight. Widget is locked up, yay

 

[ixtab]

This Facebook wink users group is growing. Some interesting people.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/WinkUsersGroup/

 

[smhawkes]

There appears to be another new Hub out, the "Wink Connected Home Hub":

www.amazon.com/Wink-PWHUB-WH15-Conne...dp/B00PV6GAI4/



It appears to be the same hardware model, but it's finally being shipped with an updated firmware (0.48 according to one reviewer).

Probably a new listing to try and hide all the bad reviews.

 

[mrose17]

sorry to bother the whole forum, but apparently i lack the karma to send a private message to the admin (-;

is there an RSS feed for this thread? if so, what's the URL? if not, could an RSS feed be enabled?

many thanks!

/mtr

 

[BillinGlendale]

I think (1) wearables (like smartwatches), and (2) voice control

I already have this, voice control via smart watch. I also have control automated via conditions(charge phone, time of day...).

 

[BillinGlendale]

web-based Dashboard

You know I've written a web page control.

https://plus.google.com/115743072068151821173/posts

 

[bigverm24]

Wish I could get this fing Leviton switch to work....had it powered up and it paired right up to Wink but the damn light itself wouldn't control the load. Finally ended blowing out the switch.

 

[Kaido]

You know I've written a web page control.

https://plus.google.com/115743072068151821173/posts

Yes (and great job btw!), I just meant a web-accessible native Dashboard (i.e. with product photos, manuals, control flows, etc.). Something like www.wink.com/users/kaido where I could login, setup controls, reference the manuals, etc. would be great (SmartThings has something similar in their product store, iirc).

 

[Kaido]

I already have this, voice control via smart watch. I also have control automated via conditions(charge phone, time of day...).

That's awesome! Honestly, aside from the fitness tracking features, home control is probably the only reason I would ever buy an iWatch. As minor as it is, it is a lot of steps to do simple things on your phone right now (#firstworldproblems) - pull it out of your pocket, unlock it, minimize the running app, find the page with the Wink app & open it, find the item you want to control, and press the button. A lot of the time I'll just hop up & physically flip the switch instead I think the watch approach is really smart, both from a quick-access touch interface & a keyword-controlled voice system, because it simplifies access to what you want to do.

How's it been working out for you in practice so far? Do you find yourself using it more than your phone for home control?

 

[Kaido]

Finally ended blowing out the switch.

Wow, that's weird, Leviton is usually a pretty reliable brand - which model did you get?