Starling Home Hub 4+

The best getting better

I’ve got a fairly complicated HomeKit setup and for reasons that anyone else maintaining a dual HomeKit/Nest environment understands, I’d be loath to try and replace my Nest devices with native HK gear, where even realistically possible, Google ownership notwithstanding. I’ve used HomeBridge, Home Assistant and numerous custom hacks over the years to tie everything together, with all the hair pulling that sometimes entails. My Starling hub is the one device which has literally *never* failed to work as advertised. In a changing world of HK improvements and slow Nest devolution (thx, Google), Starling firmware updates and feature improvements have been frequent and timely, so much so that I’ve literally bought several new Nest products long after committing to HomeKit. My only consistent ask would’ve been a native app for configuration. 🙂 Here it is and it seems to work perfectly. Bravo, Starling LLC. Way to stay on top of your game over the years!

DO NOT UPGRADE FIRMWARE if you have a Nest account

I have been a longtime loyal user of Starling Home Hubs. I have 6 of them. And never have I experienced a problem like today. When the app opened, it asked me to do an upgrade, and I thoughtlessly confirmed. AFTER the upgrade installed, the app told me that NEST ACCOUNTS were no longer supported!!! OUTRAGEOUS. I was able to turn off automatic updates on all but one of the other Starling Hubs. I am VERY VERY UPSET about this. Without informing me in advance, starling updated and turned a $100 dollar box into a brick. And the app gave me an option to send an email asking for a downgrade, which I did. I have had no response and it’s been an hour already. I am so upset!!!!! And there is one starling hub that is at a vacation home 1600 miles away from here and I am unable to turn off automatic updates, so that hub will probably go offline soon, and there is nothing that I can do to stop it. This is the WORST KIND OF PROGRAMMING — and a TERRIBLE UPDATE. SHAME ON STARLING!!!! Until today, I had a very high opinion of starling, but this is a fatal error on their part. Starling has no phone number to reach anyone to resolve the problem that they caused, and apparently no way to prevent the automatic updates at a house that is 1600 miles away — I suppose that starling will force me to travel to that location to resolve the problem. This is VERY upsetting!!!!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for reaching out. Hubs do not update automatically to the next-generation firmware so your other hubs will not go offline, so you do not need to worry about this happening.

We've now reverted your hub to the previous firmware so you'll be back online. We've also added a note on the firmware update page to say that the next-generation firmware does not support Nest accounts, so customers can choose not to update if they wish. We appreciate your feedback.

Best Purchase I’ve Made for My Home

Starling Home Hub has been a fantastic product that I’ve now used for over a year and never had an issue with. Even when I added a second Home to Nest for my parents, I was able to get it all working with a second Starling Hub at the parents house and properly segregate everything so they only have access in HomeKit to their home Nest cameras.

Hats off to the team for really putting a great product together and an app that allows for the proper customization for different scenarios.