Question

Ok what is / was Wink, and what happened to it?  

Answer 1

And we all bailed!  

Comments

@history85014 I bailed a few months ago due to all the other issues. Had I not I would definitely be jumping now!  

Answer 2

A hub similar to SmartThings. They announced last week that they were moving to subscription only and users have one week to decide or else they can't connect to their devices.  

Comments

@avner that explains the out of stock situation on Amazon

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@tenpenny absolutely! I'm helping a friend make the jump and his won't get here until next week. So he has to live with unpaired devices until then.  

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As soon as I got the email I ordered my st and had it the next day.  

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@avner I have gotten spoiled to 2 day from Amazon, went to order one for a client and I was shocked. Ended up ordering direct from Samsung.  

Answer 3

Jees what a way to loose face! Can't see that strategy working well for them

Comments

@synthetic5778 it's definitely a last ditch effort. Their employees haven't been paid some weeks either due to finances. It was most likely jump to this or shut down.  

Answer 4

Wink is/was a hub that is/was a sinking ship who’s passengers defended and still defend its inevitable demise. I belonged to their group for a while, and every time I said anything negative about the hub or recommended migrating to a new system to stave their frustration, I’d get my head chewed off. I LOVE that those fools are going to get a monthly charge for their stubbornness.  

Comments

I'mma let that one go. wait for him to drop over here and share his expertise or grace the homeassistant group with his mastery of all things smarthome

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@mountfort1339 might not realise it, but he absolutely played a roll in the demise of Wink through his Facebook group. He might not have been the main cause but he definitely played a part in their downfall and while he'll deflect and use smear tactics to avoid admitting he did, deep down, he's going to realise one day that his behavior is the problem, not everyone else's.  

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@hartzel - absolutely agree. I wholeheartedly agree that Paul’s infantile dictatorship in the Wink users group led to the purchase of far more SmartThings hubs than any other single entity. Further, if the owners and investors of Wink ever wanted to know who worked so diligently to drive folks away from Wink, they only need turn to @mountfort1339 and his legendary feats of antisocial behavior on their behalf.  

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@hartzel He probably won't ever realize it. In my experience people like that rare realize the consequences of their actions and true change is not something you just stumble into.  

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Hahaha bagdad @mountfort1339 hahahahaha. It's amazing to know he continued making enemies after all these years.  

Answer 5

The fact that you haven’t heard of Wink speaks volumes to what those of us who left years ago have been saying - it’s dead.  

Answer 6

If SmartThings could be compared to Android, Wink was the Apple equivalent. While SmartThings is "open source" for community development, for the most part Wink was a closed ecosystem of devices. They only supported devices if the companies paid Wink. Their software was well polished, though it still had a bunch of bugs. And their automation was pretty basic compared to what you can do with SmartThings. Wink is what got me into smart home tech - back in the early days they had a ton of cool hardware that they supported and it seemed like they were always coming out with new stuff, but then Quirky (who owned Wink) sold them off, then they got sold off again, etc. Frankly, the writing has on the wall for a LONG, LONG time. I think the first real sign was when Wink accidentally bricked all their hubs when they forgot to renew their SSL certificate. They were able to come up with a work-around to get your hubs back online but if you weren't techy enough to change your DNS servers your only option was to ship your hub to them for them to fix and they'd ship it back. I twas quite the disaster. I feel like they never really recovered from that.  

Comments

@vague bad analogy. more like comparing a modern day smartphone (Android or Apple) to a Nokia.  

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For it's time it was an accurate analogy lol

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@vague I poked fun at Ben Kauffman, but at least that guy had a vision and tried. Quirky did have some cool stuff. Flex didn’t care and was just trying to find a sucker and fortunately for them, Will. i. am was the one born that minute.  

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Well polished LMFAO

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@horseweed I'm still mentally scarred by that image of Ben giving a footrub.  

Answer 7

I looked at Wink when choosing my smart home ecosystem. Saw too many red flags even though it looked really cool. It seems I made the right choice.  

Answer 8

I will say -- the propane tank scale and the Nimbus were pretty cool. And for its time, the Wink Relay was really cool. They actually had a lot of cool products, but they just didn't have the right business case for longevitiy.  

Answer 9

I’m selling a Wink 2 hub

Answer 10

Class action lawsuit in the works cool cats and kittens

Answer 11

I liked my wink hub and the app was really nice but now they want me to pay $5 bucks a month to keep the same functionality. not happening.  

Comments

5. 99 per account. We had several accounts. You know, me the wife the kids. Adds up very fast.  

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@attentive59 oh, I didn’t realize that. What a joke.  

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I had everything in one account and just logged into it with the same info never had a problem. Still not willing to pay for something that only works 70% of the time

Answer 12

I’m not sure what happened to it but I’m glad I went down the smartthings route instead.  

Answer 13

My egg minder worked flawlessly. But I’ve been using both ST and Wink for years. Sad to see wink go but it wasn’t pushing out anything new.  

Comments

@mountfort1339 Giardino Egg Minder was awesome! I still use it just to hold the eggs

Answer 14

Wink started in the right path. IMO, if they weren’t so mismanaged as far as thinking they deserved royalties from supported vendors, holding their users hostage, I think they could have went somewhere. The Oxford English dictionary will soon correct their literature with the following addition in their next printing. wink: - noun - wiNGk -unadopted technologies that may never to be seen again with the exceptions of collectors, yard sales, and possibly in the future, E-Museums. - see Betamax - see LaserDisc - see HDDVD -also see Endogenous

Comments

Yup - when smarthomes were kind of unknown - wink did a great job simplifying it and introducing it to everyone. Unfortunately, as people got hungrier, they kept it locked down and limited and as a result, everyone found better things.  

Answer 15

Wink was HA system that came out about 5-6 years ago as part of Quirky. It got a huge influx of money through a partnership with Home Depot. Then was sold off during bankruptcy and has been nothing but trouble for years.  

Answer 16

I'd like to welcome all the Wink users to our community.  

Answer 17

If people didn't see the writing on the wall back in 2017 when Will. i. am (yes, the guy from the Black Eyed Peas) took ownership of Wink, then I guess they finally got the message with this last FU to the remaining loyal holdouts.  

Answer 18

Wink used to suck and now they suck but with a subscription.  

Comments

@idiomorphic I'd buy that for a dollar.  

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. Bet you would. Best see if wink is willing to participate.  

Answer 19

I thought "Wink" was a carbonated drink.  

Answer 20

Seeing such news, I am glad that I chose Smartthings over Wink few years ago, but quite frankly, local control (Hubitat etc. ) would've been much better. Slowness of the cloud control sometimes just a killer.  

Answer 21

Wink was great when it worked. I switched a few months back because it was inconsistent. What I really wish we had back is Stringify ☹️

Comments

@berlauda Why? WebCoRE is more powerful.  

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Because it was easier for me to setup and use. I set up a few things in webcore, I just don’t care for it. My automations are fairly simple, and stringify was perfect for that.  

Answer 22

For anyone who is switching from Wink to SmartThings -- know that your Quirky Trippers and most Wink devices work with SmartThings with the right device handler. My dozens of Quirky Trippers are still working perfectly fine in SmartThings environment.  

Answer 23

Brian, are your trippers reporting battery status? Mine aren't. Which DH are you using?  

Comments

Wierd - I changed my DH to yours, made the changes on lines 201 and 207, uninstalled, then re-paired the tripper. I now get battery and tamper condition but state says Open all the time and doesn't respond when contact opens, even though the light on the tripper blinks. Hmmmm

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Check that - Must have taken a bit of time on the server side to transition. All works as it should - Thanks for the help.