Could you share your technique?
I’m just wondering how you early adopters of this product are getting on.
Is it proving reliable for the devices you have connected?
Are there devices you cannot connect yet?
Are you finding the ‘Rule Machine’ adequate for your needs?
Just how things are going in general.
I’m in the UK where it hasn’t been released yet but the idea of local processing really appeals to me.
I’m the earliest of early adopters – Ha! Been running Hubitat in my own home for over a year. 200+ devices, 150+ apps, including 55 rules. Now, obviously I’m partial to it, but I can honestly tell you that my wife’s whole attitude went from negative to positive when I moved the house to Hubitat.
Our UK release will happen during the first week of March. Stay tuned!
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Thanks for the reply.
Here is a question for you.
I currently use some Lightwave Rf devices integrated into ST.
This is done with a Smartapp that sends commands through my ST hub over my LAN to a Raspberry Pi which then forwards the commands over the same LAN to the LightwaveRF hub.
In principle do you think this could be achieved with Hubitat?
In principle, yes. One of our early users ( @ogiewon) quickly got something similar working using Arduino, and he’s the sort to help out with this sort of thing. His Arduino stuff also came from ST.
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OK. Thanks. This is looking more and more appealing.
I have moved all 70+ devices over. They are a combination of lights, fan controllers, door sensors, temp sensors and a thermostat. They are also a variety of Lutron, Zigbee and Z-wave. Everything works great and fast. I still use WebCore for a couple of complex expression comparisons and some HTTPS calls to outside vendors (e.g. my alarm company and my mattress which drives virtual switches. With the latest release I can now see those ST virtual switches (4 in all) in the Hubitat environment and use them in a few of my rules. The calls will migrate in as I figure out how to create the device drivers.
This is easily one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
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- functioning is about same like elsewhere
- no platform outages
- Configuration in web browser is just so much easier
- Local processing eliminates internet dependence.
- Looks like most early adopters here have 50+ devices
because with that many devices you cant handle manual control,
you need automation for everything. A side effect of that is:
a) more devices with fewer users = devices testing and adding go much faster
b) more experienced users = better bug reporting - Backup possibility
a) if hardware fails you can just upload backup and running without downtime
b) On another hub is eminent migration to different platform, in beta testing transfer didn’t go so well,
fixing more than 100 devices and many more automation rules after borked migration without backup
choice will be time intensive and wife will kill you in process
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Like the other answers given, I have 74 devices in Hubitat. However, I did my migration 100% in the opposite way. I joined my Hubitat to my existing Zwave network. All 74 of my devices are controllable from either/both SmartThings and Hubitat at the same time. The key word is ‘control’ - if I want to tell a switch to turn on or off, or automate those switches, either/both can do it. In fact that led to an amusing “failure” (amusing as in slap your forehead “OMG was I really that lost?”) in that I left a WebCore function running in ST while also coding a Rule on Hubitat in RM. I chose “a better” delay value in RM and was very frustrated when it kept shutting off “early.” Well, you already know the end to this story… halted the piston and it started working “as expected.”
For the down side to this method, all my “status only” devices, door/window sensors, motion, etc… devices that just sit there and have one job, to tell the controller something happened, they don’t tell Hubitat. How could they? When they got added to the ST ZWave network, the Hubitat wasn’t there. I had to go to each and then on Hubitat, start the Discover Devices process and then ‘kick’ the sensors into re-joining the network. Their ID number does not change in this process, it’s NOT an exclude/include cycle. They are still visible on ST. But now they send their status to Hubitat.
Let me give a more specific example… Aeon MultiSensor 6. I have a dozen of these that are used for motion and temperature. On ST there’s a DH that exposes the config registers of the Multisensor. I can set, for example, that the PIR resets after X seconds. Default is 4 mins, but for most of what I do, I want it in the 30 second range. That feature of being able to set the PIR Reset value does not (yet) exist in Hubitat’s DH. Therefore, if I want to set that value, I must use ST, but once that feature is added on Hubitat, I could set it from either. The motion and 5 other sensor values never show in Hubitat. Until I put Hubitat into Discover (Include mode) and click the button on the back of the MultiSensor (sometimes more than once to get it to go.) Almost right away, certainly within 2 mins, the status shows up in Hubitat. And most also send status to ST.
Now I can create Rules in RM that make use of the sensor values, and as mentioned, Pistons still work. My process is not better or worse than the Exclude/Include cycles everyone else is doing, it’s a lot of the same hassle… climb up, get the MultiSensor down, clicky stuff, climb up, put it back. The difference for me is that I have 4 Controllers, not one SmartThings. I have a Z-Stick and a Wink and a StaplesConnect all operating together to give me the home automation I think I need. Another example… my StaplesConnect was my first but it’s been “demoted” to being a Lutron Hub. About the only task it still does is receive Lutron Pico button pushes and via it’s rules, turn on and off stuff. I won’t give up my Pico’s!! 
(I have a Lutron Hub Pro on it’s way.) My self imposed difficulty is that I have all those Controllers and Exclude/Include 4 times WOULD be worse. I have 4 of them to overcome the local/cloud issue and to support Automation that wasn’t possible any other way (on that day.) My Z-Stick is 100% local, always has been. My StaplesConnect has always been local. So for those things that are really really annoying via the cloud, I’ve already had a means to get it local.
Bottom line, overall, Hubitat is quite good. It’s still early adopter phase to me, and therefore I will not complain about what it’s not. We’re all seeing both early bugs and far more important, fixes. Hubitat will, allow me to shut Wink, StaplesConnect and maybe my Z-Stick. I’ll end up just like “you” with two. SmartThings + Hubitat.
My Z-Stick is run via OpenRemote software that is quite a challenge to use, but once you’re over the hurdle, is really effective in the WAF arena. Via OpenRemote I’ve created fully custom IOS interface to my home. Should anyone in the house need it, they can whip out their Phone and have an interface in which everything is “up front.” Having already invested in making that, it’s going to be hard to train family to use the Hubitat interface, too many clicks, so the Z-Stick seems like it will stay. Still, 3 Controllers is better than the 4 I had, 5 now with Hubitat joining my home.
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Sounds like my setup… SmartThings, Hubitat, Home Assistant, Vera, Hue, Lutron, Xeoma (cameras). I don’t think there will ever be one whole/complete solution to meet everyone’s needs… Well not for less than $10K
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Agree. Plus I don’t even try to have “one ring to rule them all.” I have no need for my heating/AC to be tied to my sprinkler system. 
Both of those are 100% independent of my SmartThings/ZStick/Hubitat system.
When I’m rich and move into the mansion, perhaps I’ll need more control than a 7day programable thermostat. But this house is doing just fine in that arena. One less thing to migrate too. 
The sprinkler system is an EtherRain and it does all the work for me… cloud based too. I program what I need in a website, set a watering quantity per zone, then assign each month a %. Hot months need 100% of what I set, winter needs 40%. It does that calculation and subscribes to some local WeatherUnderground and if there’s a greater than N% chance of rain, it skips. Once per DAY the EtherRain node goes and fetches “tomorrow’s” schedule.
To me, that’s a great use of the cloud. Plus or minus 20 seconds of round trip time is going to have no effect.
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2 things really impressed me.
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The strobe/flash function. I used Webcore before and it’s a hit and miss due to cloud delay. I also used the strobe/flash DTH by @mike.maxwell for ST to start my Car remote and it was also 80 percent affective. It’s a 100% with Hubitat because of local processing.
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The ease of changing Zigbee channel to avoid interference.
Not so impressive yet are supported devices/drivers and GUI for none techies but giving how new this hub is. I am impressed.
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It’s all a matter of time. There are a couple primary things that I can see direction wise that will matter in the long run.
- User interest - if we use it, and push it
- Developer interest - we all need/want apps
- Hubitat team interest
If one of those falters the whole thing goes south just like SmartThings. ST has the first two but not the third. The third seems to be going in a direction outside of what the users and developers actually want. So if Hubitat and users can keep together and keep communications as open as they are now. I can see good things in the future. It’s a young product. I left it off the list, but someone needs to step over to the Home Assistant world and take some ideas from there. My other post on the whole MQTT integration would open up really big doors for Hubitat with 3rd party integrations.
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We are doing our best to be (a) totally responsive to bugs reported, (b) very responsive to feature requests, © listening with ears wide open to device driver needs and wants, (d) running as fast as we possibly can to flesh out the platform.
Please tell us what we should be doing better.
Update
I misread the post. @jeubanks was talking about ST for point 3. My point remains, please always tell us what we need to do better. We are listening, and will try our best to get this right for you.
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It’s early stages for this platform. We’re all early adopters. I get frustrated, even mad at points but then I come back to reality of the first two points knowing that I was jumping in on the first few platoon’s (although I’m jealous my hub wasn’t a numbered hub). The speed of the local processing and the ability to work without an Internet connection, ease of migrating many custom apps from the other platform are all very appealing points and likely why most of us are here. The creator’s/staff of Hubitat keep chiming in and helping. That in itself is worth a lot! We can all keep working together to make this a very good, appealing and usable platform.
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Haha, this coming from a guy who's first exposure was to throw 5000 lines of app code at it. Hit one snag, cleared, it ran as expected. Thanks for your support @rayzurbock! We are very determined to make this a totally solid and reliable platform.
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Hub arrived today. Actually, it arrived yesterday, but the post office gave it to the wrong guy! I’ve been anxiously waiting for this to arrive, which it did quickly considering the journey from Scottsdale to Toronto.
It’s packaged nicely for a first release product. Well done!
Going to take my time and get it right. Too exhausted tonight and too busy tomorrow, but looking forward to the journey.
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Welcome to the madness. 
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I just got my hub tonight and I had problems getting the portal to find the hub but after a few reboots it connected. When I clicked on the hub the first time it said the update failed so I just went back and tried again and it worked as expected. I also had challenges getting times set via the iOS Chrome browser, it worked much better from the Android Firefox browser.
It doesn’t seem like there is yet an easy way to connect remotely to check in on your house as your PC needs to be on the same LAN for the portal to connect you, I’m hopeing there is a plan to make remote management easier when a mobile app becomes available? Also I hope that app will have the ability to setup grouping of devices (and have a better device interface so you can quickly see the state of a light and interact with it withought having to go into the light device first) so you can more easily find a device and interact with it, I understand the main focus is automation however there are still times were the app would be handy.
Tomorrow I plan to move some of my lights and motion detectors over to get better response from those rules. I look forward to Nest and Sonos integrations too.
Thanks
