Home Control Assistant Newsletter for October 23 2022
Have you read the Important Announcement posted on August 1, 2021? If you haven't you need to.
The latest version of HCA is 17.0.47 with new features!
Read about how you can download it.
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Controlling the uncontrollable?
A long-time HCA user wrote to me a short while ago about a new automation device he brought into his home. He has a device with an on/off manual button that he wanted to control. It wasn’t like the old days when you could just turn the switch on and control it using a module to turn on and off the power. There is a button to press, so that makes remote control, schedules and responding to events impossible, right?
Maybe not! He found a device called the “SwitchBot”.
https://us.switch-bot.com/pages/switchbot-bot
Even if this doesn’t seem interesting to you, follow the above link and just look at the short videos showing it in action. It’s a bit unusual. Some might call it a hack, but I call it clever.
Now I don’t know how much use you will find for this, but perhaps it is something that can work for you in a special situation. The HCA user wrote an excellent technical note describing all the details in getting it working with Hubitat and so with HCA. It’s technical note #705 on the HCA support site.
I was putting this together and happened upon this:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/21/23416099/switchbot-blind-tilt-smart-blinds-price-release-date
So it looks like the SwitchBot people have plans for other things too.
Brief and to the point today. Cheers!
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Office “Garage” sale
Periodically I try and clean out my office of some of the testing hardware that I have accumulated. Most are items that I purchased a while back. Most are "used" but they were never installed so didn’t get day-to-day usage. Some were for projects that never happened so never got used at all.
I do not want to spend a lot of time on this, but rather then just dumping it all into electronic waste I’m offering it up at very nominal prices to those who may want something. There is a lot of Insteon stuff so that may help some of you looking for replacements.
I do not want to spend the time to list it all on ebay. I took some quick pictures and have a simple pricing plan. You can see it all in the PDF link.
www.homecontrolassistant.com/download/Hardware/Sale.pdf
There is important info at the top of the PDF and lots of pictures – most links – that you can zoom in to look closely.
If you want something or have a question, send me an email. First person who asks for something gets it. This isn’t an auction.
I’ll be honest, there is some good stuff and other stuff useful as spares of things you already have. But then again, your wants and needs may be different than mine.
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If you are using a version of HCA prior to version 17, you may have questions about the wisdom of upgrading to version 17 given the future of HCA. Here is something to consider:
The support policy for older HCA versions has been changed as I can no longer devote time to past version users. Support will only be available for HCA 17 users.
If you are on version 16 or earlier and want to continue using the cloud features and want to be assured that if you have a question that it gets answered, it is indeed time to upgrade.
HCA is fully operational for several more years so the update cost, spread out over that time, is very little. Knowing support is available when you need it is worth it.
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Anyone who is using Hubitat with HCA – not SmartThings – please drop me a note as I would like to add you to a discussion list for those users. I have some Hubitat ideas that I would like to “kick around” and it would help to have a group of users who have experience with Hubitat. Please just send a note to the regular support address saying you would like to be added to that discussion list.
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