Hello! My current home automations are all done through homekit, but I am planning on expanding it out and was considering hubitat and homebridge to control it via homekit. Unfortunately, some of the sensors I have used in the past either aren’t available in Canada anymore (like smartthings/aeotec) or aren’t officially supported by hubitat (like Aqara). The few that I can find, I can’t find many reviews on for reliability, so I was wondering if anyone here could give some advice or has some experience with them? The main ones I came across are Dome, Sengled, Linkind, Monoprice, Ring, Sonoff and Zooz. I am also considering Zooz for my light switches.
Does anyone have experience with those sensors and light switches that can give me insight into their quality, and long term reliability? I am also very much open to other suggestions if people have them. I am looking at mostly door sensors and motion sensors.
I have a couple of Dome contact sensors. They are great - run forever on a battery. I also really like the Ring contact sensors. I have Sonoff motion and contact sensors and they generally work well. I’ve used some Monoprice sensors and it’s been touch and to. Some worked very well, others not as much.
For light switches, my favorite Z-Wave are Inovelli - unfortunately, they are out of stock right now. Lutron Casseta are rock solid but require the Lutron Pro 2 hub.
I am new to HE as well. Got a bunch of zooz switches for zwave and sonoff motion detectors and plugs off of aliexpress for zigbee and they work great. zooz has a sale going on right now in thesmartesthouse so recommend you pick it up soon.
Are you looking to move away from Homekit entirely or are still interested in Apple Home You can use the Hubitat and expose the devices using a server app called Homebridge. There are 2 community apps that can connect Hubitat to Homebridge. Both work well..
Lutron Caseta has been rock solid. Unfortunately learning you need the pro hub may mean hubitat is out of the question for me because I just can't get that hub where I live.
I plan on using homebridge. In fact, homebridge is the sole reason I am going with hubitat, my original plan was smartthings until I realized the homebridge plugin for smartthings is no longer maintained.
If you need help with HB/HE configuration etc the members here are really great and the staff and even certain vendors (Inovelli, Zooz) are very responsive. Kind of like the old ST forums but maybe a bit more friendly/approachable.
AARTech Canada sells a bunch of the former SmartThings sensors now done by Aeotec.
If you're close to the US border, and are thinking of doing a big order have a look at a do-it-yourself customs brokerage service. I'm in Victoria and use Seawings.ca
