Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

Posted on
Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:09 am
Snuker offline
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Joined: Feb 12, 2019

Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

Hi,

I have a good friend who is an advocate of Indigo and encouraged me to try it out. His big thing was that it has powerful code based logic abilities, an active user forum and is local.

I am a developer so not scared of code, but wanted to keep things simple and ‘mainstream’ (ie off the shelf routines) so that I can take advantage of standard solutions rather than spending time coding (and testing!).

I started using Hue lights with SmartThings hub and although the basics were ‘ok’ and ‘Smart Lighting’ is local I soon found myself using WebCore (Cloud based).

For me the cost of Indigo is not a deciding factor nor the cost of a dedicated Mac. Now that I have coded complicated routine / rules I have the code so it should be easy to replicate ... so should I move to Indigo and why ?

My worry is that Indigo does not appear to have much presence, yes there are a lot of posts here but in the Home Automation community it seems to be all SmartThings, HomeKit and HomeAssistant.

Asking in an Indigo forum .... why should I use Indigo or is Indigo losing the race?

Posted on
Wed Feb 13, 2019 7:02 am
DaveL17 offline
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Posts: 6744
Joined: Aug 20, 2013
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

I would argue that local is always preferable over cloud based when it comes to home automation. I pass on any device that requires a trip to the cloud and back in order to work. That's not to say that I don't interact with my Indigo install remotely--I do that all the time. The key is that it's not required. Beyond that, I'd encourage you to not think of it as a race or a competition between solutions. Use whatever works best for your particular situation. I think the most important question isn't "What can it do?" but "Will it do what I want it to do?"

Here are the key things that I think makes Indigo the right choice for me (in no particular order):
  1. Stability. Indigo just works. That's not to say that's it's always perfect (show me something that is!) but the developers place the highest priority on stability and it shows.
  2. Extensibility. For things that Indigo doesn't do natively, there is a robust community of plugin developers that have added a huge amount of additional capability to the system.
  3. Flexibility. For devices that aren't supported natively, Indigo has the ability to work with raw Z-Wave packets such that just about any device can be added without too much effort (I don't do Insteon, so I can't speak to that.)
  4. Commitment. The forums here are extremely active and the developers and users are super helpful and friendly. In fact, the developers themselves are here all the time responding to questions (and likely doing a lot of that by direct email, too.)
It's not to say that Indigo is the perfect solution for everyone, but since coming here, I haven't once considered using something else.

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

[My Plugins] - [My Forums]

Posted on
Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:25 am
Dual offline
Posts: 255
Joined: Feb 05, 2019

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

I would second all that DaveL just said. I am new to Indigo ... only one week. Check out my post re Lowe’s Iris system shutting down. Didn’t expect that to happen. Just because they are big does not mean they are successful. I want a system that is under my control. I absolutely do not wanna system that fails when my Internet fails. I have that. Never again. This is how easy it was for a burglar to break into my house with my Iris system. Simply cut the cable TV line on the side of the house. That’s it. None of the alarm function and even work. At least not until the cable was repaired days later. If you want flexibility as I did then Indigo is the way to go. There are so many things I hate about a closed system that can do 70% of what you want or even 90% of what you want but that other 10% is what you really wish you had.


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Posted on
Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:36 am
johnpolasek offline
Posts: 911
Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Location: Aggieland, Texas

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

+ about 10 on Dave's #2... I went to Indigo a decade ago from a program called X10sion when I began using Insteon modules to replace X10s because of their feedback capabilities, and have never had a need to look at SmartThings; my question would be whether it handles anywhere near the number of oddball protocols that I've added just because it was so easy (RFX and Davis weather information, Z-wave locks and motion sensors, rPi window and door open switches and bluetooth beacon presence detectioncapabilities just to name a few)?

And I'd give a +1 to his NoCloud statement as well; We operated Indigo for 5 years at mom's rural house before she was able to get internet service, and I've never enabled the goprism on that server because there's no particular need for it and a definite (admittedly small) chance that hackers could exploit it somehow; a risk that CAN'T be avoided using any cloud based system (which is also why we're avoiding Alexa and Hey Siri).

Posted on
Sat Feb 16, 2019 1:35 pm
jltnol offline
Posts: 989
Joined: Oct 15, 2013

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

Yeah. EVERYTHING Dave said +100!!

Posted on
Sun Feb 17, 2019 1:00 pm
durosity offline
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Joined: May 10, 2012
Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne, Ye Ol' England.

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

Plus ∞. At the end of the day I’d argue the absolute most important aspect of Domotics is stability and I don’t think any other platform has anywhere near the level of dedication to that that the devs put into indigo. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love to see X, Y or Z feature on Indigo.. but when it comes to priorities they really do know where their efforts should lie.

Ok Jay you can give me my £50 for saying that now.


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Computer says no.

Posted on
Fri May 03, 2019 11:24 am
spiv offline
Posts: 190
Joined: Jul 15, 2014

Re: Benifits of Indigo over SmartThings

I have never met happy users of Smartthings if they are advanced/hobbyist/prosumer.

Many of the frustrated Smartthings users have moved over to the Hubitat hub/controller. Apparently the folks behind it spun it out of open source work they did on Smartthings.

I tried it, but was not impressed (no mobile apps, only a web UI, etc.) but can be an alternative automation engine to Smartthings.


Only caveat about Indigo is that it only supports Wi-Fi/LAN (of course), Insteon, and Z-Wave. They made a major pivot towards Z-Wave and keep adding a lot of devices, but if you want to use Zigbee, you are SOL, so no direct link to Zigbee lights, locks, etc.

If you are currently using any Zigbee devices directly with Smartthings, you should be aware of this.

Reasonable that they can't do everything, but the IoT market is split between Zigbee and Z-Wave as RF standards for devices other than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

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