Considering Hubitat - Functionality questions (+ my journey through HA, Homey etc)

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Hi everyone,

Considering buying a Hubitat for my smart home, and have tried to find answers to whether it would suit our needs. First I will explain my journey through home automation - feel free to scroll through that if you only wish to answer questions :slight_smile:

-Story-

My smart home journey started with the trusty HomeKit and Hue years ago, and things were simple back then.

I then started using Home Assistant, and feel like I have wasted way too much of my life on it. I felt that everything was way too complicated, and I spent so much time that I would rather spend on my family on doing meaningless things like fixing breaking changes.

Using a system that was free and open-source was never a priority or makes it quality for me. Actually I would much rather pay a decent amount for a system where someone else has done the hard work for me. This is in line with everything else I buy, own and use. I mean, as a comparison, most people probably prefer a good reliable car, that is fully featured and easy to use as well, instead of one where they need to fix stuff daily and watch a YouTube video every time they need to do something. So what I wanted was a good consumer product, and I have never been interested in having home automation as a hobby and spend much time on it.

To try and get out of the DIY home automation loophole that I never wanted to get into, I started looking into consumer systems. It seemed that my options were primarily SmartThings, Vera, Homey and Hubitat. I did, what I was was enough, research and concluded that Homey was the strongest system out there for my needs.

Now I must admit, changing to Homey was at first extremely pleasing. What took my years in Home Assistant was quite literally done in a couple of days in Homey, and I felt confident this was the place to be. The only thing I initially saw it lacked was a dashboard, so I used Home Assistant to present the things I needed through MQTT along with a Dakboard to show calendar, weather etc. on a wall mounted tablet. At the same time, I started buying more and more tech to try and cover all our wishes around the house. Quickly I started to really feel the shortcomings of Homey, and eventually decided that it was going on sale. There were actual dealbreakers that forced me to look elsewhere, and there were minor annoyances that just did not align with my needs. Some of the things that made me change, are going to be obvious from my questions. Furthermore, it is just more complex than I expected. For example, creating flows is simple enough, given what you want to do is extremely simple, but as soon as it gets just a little bit complex, it is really tedious. I suggested a flow community where people could share “common flows”, rate them and reuse them, so people don’t have to invent the same things over and over - but I never heard back from Athom or anyone.

Finally, I decided to migrate all my ZigBee devices back to deconz on a conbee stick, as that has evolved greatly while I have been gone. I pretty much decided to go full on HomeKit, so I just went all the way back to that, and used HomeBridge with deconz for the zigbee devices.

So this is where I am now. My Z-wave devices are still in Homey and it is not working great. Everything else is pretty much just in HomeKit. So in the search for a Z-wave solution, it gave thought to whether I should consider Hubitat - either only to connect Z-wave devices and run them to HomeKit - or to give it a full try like Homey. Either way. The possibilities would always be there if I bought one.

-Questions-

  1. Does Hubitat support ZigBee scenes?

By that I mean, can I predefine lighting scenes in terms of color/temperature/brightness that can then be called directly on bulbs. On Homey, this is not possible, so a bulb must always turn on at its previous setting and then change. This makes awkward results.

  1. Are the Hubitat Z-Wave and ZigBee antennas alright?

The ones on Homey are extremely lacking, and I quite literally had to pull a Fibaro dimmer out of the wall and lay it on top of Homey to pair it. Adored Z-Stick pairs it 30+ meters away through 4 brick walls.

  1. Are there any integrated tasks or must all automation be defined completely from the ground up?

On Homey, creating flows for something as simple as using motion sensors for lights is extremely tedious and there seems to be no perfect solution. In deconz, this is easy as the functionality is built it. Dimming lights by holding switches is the same - close to impossible to do good in Homey.

  1. Does Sonoff devices work well?

This is very specific, but I could not really figure out how that integration was made. On Homey it does work great, and connects devices over MQTT to Tasmota. Therefore I need my Tasmota Sonoff devices over.

  1. Is Shelly(or other brands) detached mode supported?

Specific as well. Relays like the Shelly 1 support detached mode, where the switch is completely detached from the relay function. This is great for installing in light switches to be able to soft-toggle them, while keeping the relay to be software toggled to change bulbs etc.

  1. Are integrations on Hubitat mostly reliant on 3rd party developers or Hubitat?

A thing I quickly realized with Homey, were that all the good integrations, that everyone use, are made by 3rd party developers. This means I cannot expect other updates than what the developer personally needs, and often the developer left the platform or integration and it is therefore pretty much dead.

  1. Does Hubitat evolve quickly currently, and does the developers listen to the community?

It also quickly became obvious that development on Homey is really stale and extremely slow. Updates coming out are not in line what the community asks for, and there is no road map on what to expect.

  1. What’s the progress on MQTT - is it your feeling it is going to be good on Hubitat?

While everything was there and did indeed work on Homey, it just crashed A LOT. Also I only figured out when something was not working anymore and had to reboot the MQTT apps.

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@bendixs welcome to Hubitat!

this actually as i found isn't anything to do with the Hubs but is todo with the firmware of the lamp and it seem that in america the firmware does this correctly whereas in europe not so much. @mike.maxwell made a work around driver for me to fix this and it works great, I thinks he's was planning on doing some other work with the lamps and will roll the fix at that time?

personally i have never had a issue but as its a mesh network the more powered devices the better and in my case about 98% of my devices are powered. So if you don't have repeaters you may hit issues but just the same as you would anywhere else.

Nothing here sound like it would be a issue with the built in apps. If you need crazy things on top then Rule machine is your guy.

don't have any of these but i have seen community discussions so let someone else come in here.

never heard of it.

No, it's a great community of apps but just as good built in ones especially Rule machine.

Although Hubitat have their own road map, by just looking through the community your see that this is not the case here. The staff are active and as they also use the hubs themselves when good ideas come up they seem to get put in at a crazy speed. Updates about every 2 weeks on average with massive leaps forward each time, honestly don't know how they are doing it.

Not somthing i use and i think it's in alpha currently?

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We haven't seen any motion towards this as the intent is that the hub run 100% local. That is much easier with Telnet or direct zigbee/zwave support rather than the use of an MQTT broker and Client which require setup on your network or the cloud.

VERY actively involved with the community because every member of the staff is not only a staff member, they are also users. If you look at the history of the company on the website or talk with the founder of the company (who is EXTREMELY active on the forum) their dedication to the product is unquestionable. Several members of the forum, myself included, might not agree with every decision they've made but you cannot question their passion or dedication

I would say that most are native supplemented with a couple of 3rd party. Most of my 3rd party drivers are for virtual and DIY devices.

That's a device question, not a platform question. The Shelly device is not supported natively, so it's not really a valid question. Do you have an example device from the supported devices list that has a "detached mode"?

With a community driver and custom firmware, yes. But not out of the box.

I'm not sure what you mean by this question. There are simplified app (Motion Lighting & Simple Lighting) which are more basic and then there's Rule Machine which lets you do anything (just about). But neither has to be build by coding. They are all "built" via drop-down menus which guide you through. The only thing that changes is the complexity of the menus. But you don't have to type code unless you want to create your own driver or app.

You don't have to have scenes to get lights to work that way, that is a function of the device, not of the controller. Bulbs will always turn on first to their previous level and then fade/brighten to the level you command. But dimmers will not do that. Most will just ramp to the level commanded. That is dependent on the device, not the controller.

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Not true, all lamps I have used will turn on to the level you tell them too. But if you set a different colour or temperature that is when it can act odd on some lamps. In the built in driver there is the ability to enable colour pre staging which should allow the lamp to record the colour you want it to turn on too then do it. But the lamps over here flat out refuse to do this but with the driver @mike.maxwell created it now works (basically it handles the commands and turns the lamp on 1st then sends the next bit)

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ZLL bulbs have additional required commands that are optional for ZHA.
Using the ZHA minimum commands every zigbee bulb I have tested will transition from the previous level to the new level when the setLevel command is used to turn the bulb on.
The amount of time this takes is dictated by the device.

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Dimmer yes, bulbs no.

color is a different issue. You're mixing up dimmer level and color settings.

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nope that's why i split the too bits.

A lamp is what you call a "bulb" (they go in the ground :wink:). A dimmer controls light fittings, we are talking about smart zigbee lamps.
Also mine do and everyone else do as well, see Mikes comment.

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The only person who even used the word lamp was you.

Exactly....a dimmer.

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I know I was pointing out that you had misunderstood what I had said, so was making myself clear.

? like I said not talking about them the OP was talking about smart zigbee lamps and the fact that the homey hub doesn't allow the value or colour to be called when the lamp is off. I pointed out along with mike that this is todo with the firmware and the profile. I also said that the ON value is not a issue because this does work with Hubitat (using setLevel command) but that the colors should work using pre staging but in the UK/ europe it doesnt due to differences.
To get around this Mike created a new driver for me that does work. Now as before the light still comes straight ON at whatever level you call, but then changes colour so you see the previous colour before the new. But it's so quick that its not a issue.