interesting tidbit here.
Today marks an exciting new chapter for Wink and we wanted you to be the first to hear about it.
Wink has been acquired by lifestyle technology company i.am+.
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Thanks for posting this, was going to but forgot.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
Yes it will. I’ve only got one thing going through wink now, I am just about going to see if I can get it moved over now…
Hope it doesn’t turn out like all of his other projects…
The only thing I have left on there are my Garage doors I think, and I remove the wink integration from HA. So I’m free!!!
@turboc I would love to know your process for switching away from Wink. As the HA developer for Wink I am sad to see people move away from it, but I understand why. I my self will move if this recent announcement causes problems, I am hopeful that it will speed Wink up and they will get more device support but who knows.
Anyway, it might be cool to get a thread started on Migrating from Wink to HA zigbee/zwave and the gotchas?
I think it’s waaaaaay too early in the game to count out Wink. Let’s see what the hiring of new devs brings first.
But you may want to look at this post:
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Oh I agree, I just know some people are going to start migrating they always do I have even considered it prior to this announcement so helping people out along their way can’t hurt.
My move started the week before the HA release came out that changed the zwave naming structure. I say that because that meant I had to go change all my device names twice. As they say, timing is everything. 
But to your point. I decided to migrate away at the previous wink update. It seemed to break multiple devices I had working and was really just bad news for my house. So at that point I decided to jump into HA all the way and move all my zwave devices over to HA. I basically took a weekend and excluded all of my devices from wink and then added them into HA walking around using the zwave stick.
I originally went to wink because I felt it was a more stable platform for my devices than HA was, but over time, HA got better, and wink didn’t keep up with newer devices.
I hope wink does get back in the game. They provide a good middle ground between the vendor specific hubs, and HA as far as automation abilities vs complexity goes. Also through your efforts, they also provide a nice transition to HA for those automations that need a little more power than wink itself can give.
I bought an Aeotec stick when I first got into HA and didnt like the zwave panel/setup so I returned it and stuck with the Wink. Even doubled down and got the Wink2 hub to try and reduce the latency. I don’t really have too many issues and like the ease of setting up devices so I currently just use the hub as a radio / setup platform and dont do any automations with it.
At this point I dont know if I should move to Smartthings, try the Aeotec stick again, root the wink and go local, or do nothing.
Have all my lights/sensors on Zwave
Sounds like you have the exact same setup I did. I liked the way that wink brought all my thermostats, garage doors, lights, etc together in one place. And like you said, it was simpler to add devices there. But that was last year :). Wink didn’t keep up with the newer GE switches, and there were some temperature/humidity/motion switches that wink just didn’t recognize at all.
With the new enhancements that HA has made, setting up zwave is much easier. Give it a try with one light switch or something relatively unimportant that you can play with for a while. The Aeotec stick is really easy to pair things with. The process I use is,
- stop Zwave in HA from the panel.
- Unplug zwave stick
- Go to the light I want to pair with HA
- Unpair the light/switch using the z-stick
- Pair the light/switch using the z-stick
- (rinse and repeat 4 and 5 as necessary)
- plug zwave stick back into HA
- turn zwave back on in HA
- wait for zwave to self heal (at least that’s what I think it’s doing) takes a while if you have a lot of devices.
- your zwave devices are there. you can rename them, etc, but that requires a restart of HA (for now… hopeing for a future release).
It sounds like a lot of steps, until you consider one step is “rinse and repeat”, and two other steps are basically walking.
With all that said, I feel like I need to make sure I say this.
I moved off of Wink for my own reasons. It is still a very good platform, and I still recommend it as a stable hub that insulates your devices for some of the instabilities of HA inherent with any open source development package that is moving as fast as HA.
It really comes down to personal choice of which tool to use as your hub.
I will say thought that I think HA has the superior automation tool.
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No doubt the Wink robots are pretty weak.
I also forgot to mention I have like 8 GE link bulbs and 3 osram multi color lights which i think are all zigbee, so probabbly wont switch to Aeonstick for now
HA ties in with the lightify hub very nicely. I have 2 osrma color lights, 3 of their white lights, and one of the color flex strips under the cabinet in the kitchen. But you are right, the zstick won’t help you there. Althought I’ve seen a few posts about a similar function zigbee stick.
Ya I don’t have the lightify hub. One of the reasons I liked Wink is it had the most radios so I (wrongly) assumed they would have the largest number of supported devices.
I have a Kidde smoke/carbon monox detector linked to Wink that’s about half the price of a nest protect. Not sure they really promoted that product very well. I would have bought more of them but the house I moved into all of the smoke detectors are wired.
I do like the Lightify bulbs but by the time I get a Lightify hub, zstick, etc I might start getting cranky.
HA does native zigbee as well. Not sure if it supports all ZigBee devices, but I have been looking into getting one of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GJ826F8/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_6EqFzbS0R5EY3
Which has both radios, ZigBee and zwave.
The good thing about it is you don’t have to do any of it at all, or you can do it a little at a time. And the really great thing is you don’t lose your investment in switches, outlets, and lights either way you go. We are definitely talking about matters of personal preference here. Both solutions work well, and if you run into something wink doesn’t support, you can try HA, and vice versa.
Oooooh and I just had to go and buy that new chainsaw today. Some limbs fell down in the last storm to pass through and the wife wants me to cut them up. So much for my automation budget for the next month or so. Tell ya what, get one, figure out how to get it to work as good as the zsticks and I’ll be ready to help you beta test it in a few months.
A new contender emerges!
The stick is already supported by HA, haven’t done any research beyond it being listed on the ZigBee page