More on Wink Hub and open source home automation software

I own two Wink hubs.  One, using their cloud service, the other I kept offline for rooting and testing.  The night Quirky pushed the bad firmware, my online hub got it.  At the time I had no idea what happened.  I spent hours trying to get it functioning again.

The next day the announcement about the bricked firmware came out.  Once the instructions were posted on how to fix the hub yourself I followed them.  Apparently it worked.  The hub flashed and then stopped on blue.  After that I could get the hub online for short periods (blue light) and then it would go back to flashing purple.  I spent a good while addressing this, but I never was able to get it working reliably.

I pulled out the other hub, went through the whole thing again, apparently updated to the fixed firmware, and then had exact same problem.  It would connect to the home network for a while and then eventually go back to flashing purple.

So I've given up on Wink hub.

I went out and got a Hue bridge and some bulbs.  Since I already had GE Link light bulbs I needed something that would work with them.  So these days I have a mix of Hue bulbs and GE Link lights all controlled by the Hue bridge.

Home Assistant works with the Hue bridge.  I am still using Home-Assistant as my home automation software.  It meets all of my needs.  The developer and members of the group are continuing to add functionality to the software.  More device support, added features, etc.

I also spent plenty of time testing various other open source offerings.  Nothing has yet to best Home-Assistant.

Although there is not a downloadable application for Home Assistant, it does work with mobile devices and renders nicely.

Home Assistant source code on GitHub