Basic questions

I believe I misunderstood what I was getting myself into with Hubitat which is unfortunate. I have built up a smart home solely based off a variety of Wifi devices that work with Alexa. I was interested in Hubitat for its local connection, rule machine, and dashboard. I did not realize that it doesn't really support Wifi connected devices(which is all I have) very well.

What would be a basic game plan for me to transfer my Wifi enabled devices to Hubitat? There is a wide variety of light bulbs, switches, plugs, cameras, etc. I'd like to make it work but it seems rather daunting atm.

It is daunting.

IF it was easy, there'd be Community drivers for your devices.

The Problem is.. every WiFi vendor thinks that they need to have an 'ecosystem' because Apple's doing so well at that. :slight_smile:

Marketing Departments are like that, right? Companies are producing products and dedicating their own staff to creating drivers for... Amazon (Alexa) and Google and occasionally Apple (Siri). The API's are either not documented or are proprietary and have hidden documentation. Either way, people like You and I can't write a Hubitat driver without reverse engineering a device.

That's the ONLY reason... we'd all love at least ONE of the WiFi devices out there to work on our own systems. There's always a 'cooler than what I have' device available.

But it's a ton of work, with no expectation that it will work more than a week or two before the Vendor changes (aka 'improves') the API, and obsoletes the work.

This Community is very inclusive as far as I can determine... we'd love to welcome Alexa refugees with a Library full of WiFi drivers. :smiley:

Is there a way for me to search for all wifi devices that have community drivers?

Also as far as vendor update, wouldn't that only apply to firmware updates of the devices to no longer work?

If I am reading this right, you are basically saying that using wifi devices with Hubitat is not worth it.

Maybe it's just me but I have never wanted any of my HA stuff on my wifi. Just seems like unneeded conflicts

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If you're willing to go a step further, take a look at Node-Red on a Raspberry Pi w/case (~$70 plus an SD card), there are integrations for Alexa and Hubitat and you can use Node Red as a bridge. I have a few RGBW LED controllers that I can only access with Alexa and I was able to setup virtual devices in Hubitat to let me control them from both places, Alexa and Hubitat.

On a side note, Node Red also has integrations for other network components as well, For example I was able to use Node Red to connect to my Home theater system and by creating virtual devices in hubitat I can control the Home Theater from Alexa, Hubitat, and Node Red.

There's a little learning curve but it is quite powerful. I've only barely scratched the surface and I was able to get a few cool things working.

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Nope.. I'm not saying that... I am saying it hasn't been worth it for people that write drivers for the Community to invest the effort. It's a lot of work for a small number of users and is fraught with support nightmares when/if the API changes.

You can do it the other way.. for devices you have, search for them and see if you get results that (typically) have [Release] in the title.

I'd say Hubitat is primarily a Z-Wave and Zigbee hub (or "controller" and "coordinator" to use the protocols' respective terms for this function). There are many Wi-Fi and LAN devices (either local or cloud) that are supported, but the problem is the one mentioned above: most of these vendors think their system is the center of the universe, want you to use their app to control it, and the only external control they provide is usually a cloud service like IFTTT or Alexa. For that matter, their entire system is often cloud-based, which isn't theoretically incompatible with Hubitat but is generally less desirable than something that works locally. So the only other option to get these things into Hubitat (besides some sort of official partnership that most vendors would be unwilling to do) is to reverse-engineer their communication. This is generally not something most people find worth it, though in rare cases some people have made this work (e.g., the unofficial Ring cloud integrations) and the vendor doesn't seem to have changed anything to break it, as they could do at any time with such workarounds.

If you have a specific device in mind you're curious about, searching the Community forum (here) with that device name or model number would usually turn something up. If you want to get things that should work off the bat, sticking to the official compatibility list would be good, but there's no need to do that if you're willing to try a community driver or risk that something is likely to work with one of the "generic" drivers (Z-Wave and Zigbee are both standardized to some extent for home automation purposes; Wi-Fi isn't really beyond the fact that the protocol itself is, which doesn't really help when trying to functionally communicate with the device).

Unfortunately, if you already have a lot of unsupported devices, replacing them is probably no small expense. Some of these may have workarounds to get into Hubitat to at least some extent (e.g., IFTTT). But the reality is that a lot of those vendors don't seem to really care about other types of integrations besides things that look cool on the box, like "works with Alexa!".

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I don't mind if some stuff is connected via Alexa and other protocols via Hubitat. I just wanted the power of rule machine to be used on ALL of the devices regardless of which one it is hooked up to. I'm mind blown this isn't a thing. Not to blame hubitat in any way. My ignorance is not their fault.

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For wifi devices check out Tasmota and hopefully some/most of your devices will be candidates for flashing.

P.S. Welcome to our community!

So does the Hubitat community generally not have wifi devices? If I started over, I'd definitely try to stick to protocols that are standardized. I'd imagine replacing everything may be just south of $1000. I'd rather not do that..

HE has lot of integrations (you'll need to talk each device type at a time) and then there is IFTTT (as mentioned by @bertabcd1234). Me I like to stick with all 'internally support devices' but as you see, you'll get plenty of help in this community either way. If I was were you, I would integrate now and slowly migrate to a all zwave/zigbee network as $ allows.

This is one of the most difficult hurdles between the 'invisible hub' vendors (Google, Amazon, Apple) and the next step in the normal growth of people into Home Automation.

I was lucky.. there was no "Works with Alexa" back when I started so I wasn't able to be seduced by the Wifi.

I'd look at leaving what you have alone, it works, presumably, and build out the next project you have been dreaming of using Z-devices. With success, the choice to replace sooner vs later will arise, I predict. :slight_smile:

"Invisible Hub" because those vendors have the Hub, what they really mean when they print "No Hub Required" on the box is... "No one else's hub is required but ours."

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I'm guessing I can't just find a driver for the portion highlighted in yellow, it has to be that EXACT device? My hope is that at least a lot of the cheap smart light bulbs use the same basic wifi chip. Most of my lights are very basic.

I'm not an expert but I think if your device will work with the Smart Life app, then it's very likely to work with Tasmota.
And if it works with the Magic Home app there's a Community integration available for it.

Just to be clear, alot of WiFi devices are one way so just because they are in Alexa doesn't mean they then appear in Hubitat. The Idea of Hubitat is to be the "HUB" so you connect the devices to it and though that you can connect it to Alexa and Google home. When it's controlled outside it can't be added to rules and stuff.
Note: there is a few exceptions to this but the above still applies issue to it. IE hue bridge. That would let you bring your lamps over too HE to be used and controlled. You could still control them through the hue app but you shouldn't as HE ends up out of sync.

This.

Alternatively..."No hub required, except your WiFi Access Point (hub), AND whatever cloud instance we're running our walled garden in, AND Amazon AWS for Alexa, oh and an Echo, or Dot or Alexa enabled device..." but yeah, no hub required, really.

Lol. I'm a home automation Luddite, in that I don't use voice control. And I think zwave and zigbee are a better choice for automation than WiFi.

But, I certainly feel @illskill6's pain, he's invested a lot, and can see the magic of RM so tantalizingly close...but WiFi. Arrrggghhh!

S

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