Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

July 13, 2022 by Kevin C. Tofel 3 Comments

Wink hubs lost connectivity and functionality since an outage began on July 1. As of today, July 13, it’s still a problem according to the official Wink Status page. Indeed, until yesterday, there wasn’t even a detailed status update from Wink. Now the company says it’s working to fix its connectivity issues. If you can’t wait for Wink or have decided that enough is enough for the $5 you pay monthly to Wink, you do have some options.

Regular readers may have a feeling of déjà vu since it was only last month that I wrote a similar post. That time it was due to Insteon quietly all but disappearing. So some of my approach will be similar. And the good thing here for current Wink users is that you do have options. Some are better than others in terms of re-using your existing connecting devices.

First and foremost to know is that even though Wink services are down, you still have local smart home control. That is if you don’t or haven’t restarted your Wink hub. I suspect many Wink users are already past that point of no return but if you haven’t restarted the hub, you still have some functionality.

For those that plan to migrate away from Wink, you’re in one of two very likely camps. You either use a Google Android or Apple iOS on your phone. I’ll start with the latter group because there are more choices available to you.

Obviously, you could switch over to Apple HomeKit although if you want a HomeKit hub, you’ll need to have or buy an Apple TV or an Apple HomePod. Technically, you can use an iPad as a HomeKit hub. However, once iOS 16 arrives this fall, you won’t gain the new functionality, which includes upcoming support for the Matter standard.

HomeKit relies on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for connected devices, along with QR codes and NFC as device pairing options. So if your Wink home is built primarily around Zigbee, Z-Wave, or some other RF standard, you’ll be replacing those connected devices on this path. Some Wink-supported devices also work with HomeKit thanks to a bridge: Think Philips Hue and Lutron, for example.

After trying just about every smart home platform on the market, I’ve ended up on HomeKit. Obviously, it helps that I use an iPhone. But the compelling reasons are because HomeKit works so well and has additional privacy features that I prefer.

A related alternative to replacing all of those non-HomeKit devices would be to consider HomeBridge. This is a free software platform that you can run on a PC, Mac, Linux machine, or Raspberry Pi. It has more than 2,000 plugins that bring non-HomeKit-supported devices to the HomeKit platform.

If you’d rather not mess around with the installation process, you can buy a pre-installed kit called HOOBS for $249. I’ve tested HOOBS and it works well. Personally, I’d simply spend the time to download the free HomeBridge software and install it myself. It’s not that difficult.

Another similar approach would be to consider either Home Assistant or Hubitat, both of which you can use with either Android or iOS.

Home Assistant is free software that you can install on a computer or a Raspberry Pi. And like HomeBridge, it has numerous plug-ins for connected device brands and types.

Home Assistant has continuously improved its functionality and interface over time. Frankly, it’s a powerful smart home platform that gives you a high level of device control. Just know that if you want remote access to your smart home, there is a subscription fee of $6.50 per month.

Hubitat is a physical hub, so it would replace Wink in your smart home. The hardware currently costs $99.95 and it is relatively easy to configure the software.

The good news is that some Wink users have recently made the switch to Hubitat and found the process to be relatively quick and painless. That’s because of the broad device support with Hubitat’s software and the combination of radios in the hardware. Inside you get Zigbee and Z-Wave support, with wired Ethernet connectivity for your home network. Hubitat is also well known for providing robust local control.

Either of these options supports the major voice assistants and platforms, so if you have Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or Samsung SmartThings devices in your home, you can reuse most, if not all of them.

This option may be best if you already have many Amazon or Google-supported devices connected to your Wink hub already. You can simply migrate all of your supported device right over to Amazon Alexa or Google Home directly. And you can do that without even purchasing a new smart display or speaker since these are cloud-centric solutions.

Ideally, you’d want to add some Amazon Alexa or Google Home hardware to this setup. Otherwise, you’ll be relying on your phone to manage and control all of your devices. A smart display or a speaker would allow for voice control when your phone is out of reach. Plus it’s a more family-friendly solution since anyone can state voice commands.

Of course, you don’t need to do any of this. You could simply wait and see if Wink’s service reappears. And it might. But if you’ve had enough of outages, particularly when you’re paying a subscription fee, you have plenty of good options. That includes some where you may be able to reuse your existing connected devices and repurpose your smart home investments.

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Filed Under: Featured, How-To Tagged With: amazon alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Home Assistant, HomeBridge, Hubitat, Samsung SmartThings, smart home, Wink

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Most Zigbee devices on a wink will work on an Ikea Tradfri gateway and bridge to Alexa and Google. You can even switch to a SmartThings hub, any company large enough won’t need to charge a ransom for smart home access. Avoid Insteon, Wink, Home Assistant, and anything else that wants to charge a ransom to turn on your lights.

I know Kevin knows this, but just for clarity:

If you have a Zigbee device, you need a hub with a zigbee radio to talk to it. It will not work directly with Homebridge (which isn’t a hub, it’s just a bridge between a number of different hubs and HomeKit). Some of your Zigbee devices might be able to talk to an echo model that has a Zigbee hub inside, but not all will, and not all echoes have this. Zigbee devices cannot connect directly to google home.

Some possibilities for Zigbee hubs that accept third-party devices are Hubitat

SmartThings/Aeotec “works as a SmartThings hub” IKEA Tradfri Some Homeseer models Some Vera/Ezlo models

Some Other Zigbee hubs will not accept third-party devices. That includes the Aqara hubs.

So as always, we come back to the first rule of home automation: “the model number matters.”

If you have a Z wave device, you will need a hub with a Z wave radio to talk to it. Again, homebridge cannot do this on its own, there has to be a Z-Wave hub involved. echo devices also cannot talk to Z wave devices directly. Alexa has to talk to a zwave hub instead.

Some possibilities for Z wave hubs that accept third-party devices

Hubitat SmartThings Homeseer Vera/Ezlo

At the present time, unfortunately the smartthings Zwave implementation has some notable gaps when compared to the others, so I would put it at the bottom of the candidate list for this purpose.

As of this writing, July 14, 2022, I think the best choice for most wink users Who have existing Zigbee or Z wave devices that they want to keep will be Hubitat if they are willing to do some technical setup. It handles both zwave and Zigbee devices well, and if you want to use homebridge with it to then bring everything into HomeKit, you can. It is available for both the EU and the US. If you use android devices You may also want to add the third-party SharpTools app which is more user-friendly than the native hubitat offerings.

If you want to start all over from the beginning with new devices and you already have iOS devices, HomeKit is definitely worth looking at. It’s easy to use and setup with a nice app.

If you want to start all over from the beginning with new devices and you have an android phone and you want something less technical than hubitat, you might consider IKEA with the understanding that when the new IKEA Dirigera hub is released in October you will probably want to switch to that because that’s what will give you matter compatibility.

Both HomeKit and IKEA are more plug and play than Hubitat. Hubitat may be a better match for power users with some technical background.

And I agree that for some people Alexa routines may be all they need as long as their devices have a direct Alexa integration available. That will be true for some Zigbee Devices. Unfortunately there is no direct Alexa/zwave integration, you would have to also get a new Z wave hub.

So as always, different things will work for different people.

We should also note that if you are using Lutron switches with a wink hub and you want to keep them, they work with pretty much everything I mentioned in my previous post except that do you need to get the standalone Lutron SmartBridge Device to make the integrations work. Wink was one of the only third-party hubs that included a Lutron radio, none of the others that I listed do. They all get integration through the Lutron SmartBridge Device.

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