As much as you may like to revel in your positive feedback bubble, threads like this - and users who express their frustration with the rough corners of HA - are an integral and important part of any open or closed source project. Being able to take criticism and turn the rant of a frustrated user into a productive discussion about things that can be improved is what makes a good and welcoming community.
HA clearly has a lot of usability issues still and these probably turn off many new users who try HA for the first time and stumble over something like the OP did. Most of these users will not post here and just move on. We need feedback from users like this in order to improve HA’s user experience. If we only concentrate on positive feedback from people who ‘already know’, dismissing any type of negative feedback as ‘oh God, not another one of these threads’, then all we will create is an elitist and unwelcoming community for people for whom the HA experience just isn’t as smooth as it should.
Where in my reply was I defensive? I summarized your commentary and wished you well with your decision to do something different.
I believe all of that was made clear in your first post.
The fact is that you felt free to express your frustration publicly and now the public is free to respond to your frustration. There are over 100 thousand members so there will be a variety of replies ranging from agreement and sympathy to indifference and derision (and more).
Once again I sincerely wish you the best of luck with whatever other path you choose.
I think it would be more profitable to ask a question: why HA Ikea integration is not reliable while integration available in NR is, at the same time in the same env.
Euh…as in RPI?? I ran it for a week and ditched it for a VM on w10 with hyper-v.
Depending on the underlaying hardware, a vm is many times more powerful than a RPI, and i had the w10 running already anyway for other services. But i guess that is a personal preference…and shouldn’t make that much difference.
and for the ikea hub…ditched that one for a cc2531…was around €15,- and well worth it😉
Even managed to sell the ikea hub for €15,- so no loss there
That’s a valid point but doesn’t seem to be the OP’s goal in this topic. In fact, the original post doesn’t contain any questions only disappointment with their experiences with Home Assistant.
If you check the OP’s posting history, they requested assistance for the Ikea integration in another topic back in April of this year. Everyone is free to investigate and reply to it but, unfortunately, no one did.
So Gazzah may have a valid point that the integration’s user-base is “tiny” and so it’s understandable that the inability to get support can become a source of frustration. Perhaps the best recourse, for Gazzah, is to try something different.
I am a semi-retired developer. I have been writing code since before PDP8s where considered state of the art.
I have been in and led teams that have worked on things as diverse as writing the Bluetooth stack for a micro controller, guidance systems for LEO satellites, ATC and even a stock control system for a soft drinks factory. I have also spent several years in hardware, designing, building and repairing circuit boards for all sorts of applications.
A part of my time has been spent in tech support for both Joe Public and technical teams.
Several years back a number of my team became interested in home automation and had a look around. There were only 2 options that were not system/manufacturer locked; HA and OpenHab.
First thing we did was to go onto the forum for each and ask a few stupid questions to gauge the response. OpenHab immediately blew up with “Dont be so stupid, another damn idiot” type replies. HA was much friendlier pointing us to the relevant bits of the docs and giving advice on how to proceed.
So we all installed HA, and have been basically happy apart from a few issues which we would either work around or find fixes for. All was well until sometime around the 1.0 release and a new software update from Ikea happening about the same time. Then HA started dropping the light control and we all had and continue to have this issue.
Now most of the team have dispersed to different parts of the world and some are using hardware not available here so have got round the issue in a drastic way.
I do NOT want to uninstall the hub as it is a decent fall back. If HA fails I can use NR, if that fails I can use the Ikea app.
Now to my main point - this forum, and by extension every one of you on it are the public face of HA, like it or not you signed up for it. If a user comes on expressing frustration with HA and your first reaction is to reply along the lines of “Oh feck here we go again, another whinger …” you probably dont have the skill set or temperament to be front line support, and should possibly hold back until the talk moves into an area you can help with. Treat the issue as if you are having a face to face conversation with the person, ask questions, suggest things to try.
In my case I really do want to like and use HA, it is a wonderful project, just fails in my use case. So I will keep it installed and up to date to monitor any changes, but it will not be my main control system.
Thanks you all who have tried to help me in any of my guises on this forum, and HA team continue the great work.
To be clear, this community forum isn’t ‘front line support’ so can’t be held to the standards of true front line support. From the FAQ:
This forum is not a helpdesk
The people here don’t work for Home Assistant, that’s an open source project. We are volunteering our free time to help others. Not all topics may get an answer, never mind one that helps you solve your problem.
As a consequence, responses are likely to be a mixed bag of opinions, some more helpful than others. Or no response at all.
In this topic, you expressed your frustration and others expressed their frustration with the nature of these “I am frustrated” posts. Equal time for everyone.
As for who does or doesn’t have the temperament to provide front line support, all I can say is that those skills aren’t even universally present in the software developers who respond on GitHub. Some have it, some don’t. For better or worse, it’s the status quo. We can all try to improve but changing one’s ways is a slow process.
…until it escalates to the extent that some mod (usually one of involved into discussion) decides to step in to shoot the OP down.
You are right that the forum is not a helpdesk. But otherwise there is no other place a user can get help or inform about general problems with the project.
On the other hand it’s almost guaranteed that the same user (especially after mentioned escalation) will get bashed. Which renders the situation quite not equalized.
Personally understand the quotation as an attempt to secure the fact the forum is not obliged to provide help; but otherwise it is the support forum, isn’t it?
The problem is that when it’s reached the point of so long and thanks for all the fish it’s too late.
It’s too late because the poster has apparently reached the point of having thrown in the towel.
It’s too late because the post is either written as a I hate you all, I’m done post, or a there’s no point in trying this any more. In neither case is it a request for help.
It’s too late because by the time somebody has read the title they’ve pre-judged the poster’s attitude.
Now, personally, if the question had been how can I make this work, given the desire not to make HA the heart of everything, I’d have said _have you considered Zigbee2MQTT? It’s not part of HA, Node Red can communicate with it, as can HA. It has a larger user base than the Tradfri integration, and supports far more than just the Tradfri devices.
But, no question was asked, so I wouldn’t be saying that.
or rather “some other users pre-judge the posters’s attitude”. Which is ok, but gives no right to be offensive to OP or insult him in any way.
Unfortunately if you look at such discussions, often response of other users is way more inappropriate than OP alone (not the issue of this forum only, actually it can be found in a lot of forums, not all though.)
IMO if attitude of OP is found incorrect, he should get no any response. At least it would give chance to other interested parties (ie devs); the frustration of OPs usually originates in some real issues. Which might be considered valuable input (unless not hidden by hatetrain)
This really is going to be my last post - to much life to do…
I had asked the questions a lot times in the past and got either no reply or one very similar to yours “dont use that hardware” As I have stated above I dont want to remove a fall back system - just part of my long history working on mission critical systems I guess. Just a stick in the mud old fart I guess.
The post was just venting a frustration, not meant in anyway as an insult to anyone. I have reached the point of moving on to other systems or hardware - Tuya is looking interesting so i will experiment there.
I do use Zigbee2MQTT for other devices like sensors, but do not want to move the lights over for the given reasons.
Also the rules may state one thing - but given no other options this forum becomes the de facto support line.
All this is way I really dont like online forums - a simple statement descends into shouting and finger pointing as the whole nuance of a “normal” conversation is lost. I think if we had been sitting in a pub talking over a pint this would all have gone very differently.
There’s also a Discord server, which is more like that
All parts of that, including the drinking, the incomprehensible statements, utter gibberish, and people arguing with each other while not realising they’re agreeing.
I don’t want to appear to quibble but this community forum isn’t the only place to get help. There’s also (to my knowledge) Discord, Reddit, and Facebook. I don’t participate in the other communities (occasionally browse Reddit posts) so I don’t know how they typically respond to “I am frustrated; goodbye” posts.
FWIW, these types of posts are unpopular because many appear to be a passive-aggressive way to draw attention (although perhaps not this one). Typically, there’s a list of grievances, an unflattering description of the state of things, and a declaration they are departing. There’s no explicit request for help, maybe only grumbling about not getting any help in the past.
Explicitly: “This sucks! I get no help from you! I’m leaving!”
Implicitly: “Do I have your attention now?”
Quite often, about a dozen or two posts later, the person appears to have had a change of heart and is now open to suggestions and trying “one more time” (again, not this topic). This pattern of behavior is tiresome, unproductive and unwelcome. That’s why I often encourage users to follow their dreams and move on. Home Assistant isn’t the only home automation solution and perhaps something else fits their needs better.
OK - so I have written my own link to the Ikea hub in c#. It has been running almost a week now with no disconnects. I have also written a simple android app to act as a UI; this needs a lot of work done. It also publishes to my MQTT status of all the devices, and subscribes to requests, but does nothing with them at the moment (simple to add). I plan to use the MQTT to build out a better WEB UI. So problem has been kicked into the long grass
Sorry if ruffled any feathers with the original post, but I do really like HA, and if I could get hold of better hardware easily I would do so. Just at the moment with my current set-up HA fails me numerous times a day.
I unsubscribed from this thread 2 months ago. The only way I am notified is if someone tags me or replies to one of my posts.
Today I was notified that Gazzah replied to me:
If Gazzah did not reply to one of my posts, then there’s something wrong with the forum software. One shouldn’t receive general notifications for an unsubscribed thread.
If Gazzah did reply to one of my posts then, no thank you Gary, I have no interest in whatever you’re doing. Feel free to use the general reply button to notify users who are subscribed to this topic.
After a lot of investigation it seems that my own solution was no better than the HA one The real reason everything now seems to be stable is an update pushed to the Ikea hub… HA connection is very stable now, I have one problematic switch, but that is, I think at the limit of the range. I have the lights to default to ON when powered up, and seems stable so I am at long last considering getting rid of the hub - the advice of the group is rarely wrong :). This should stop any further Ikea updates fecking with the whole thing again.
The real reason everything now seems to be stable is an update pushed to the Ikea hub… HA connection is very stable now, I have one problematic switch, but that is, I think at the limit of the range. I have the lights to default to ON when powered up, and seems stable so I am at long last considering getting rid of the hub - the advice of the group is rarely wrong :). This should stop any further Ikea updates fecking with the whole thing again.