From SmartThings v2 hub to Hubitat C8: Two weeks in - Happy and Impressed

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I see a lot of posts with issues and just wanted to share my positive experience on the process to setup Hubitat C8 as an average customer who cannot code, but can copy-paste from detailed how-to guides :wink: Granted I spent a week reading the posts here in preparation, and my setup is fairly simple. Almost all of my devices are from ST, Zooz, Monoprice so everything was supported, and troubleshooted already.

Having used SmartThings for 8+ years it was a big change. I had bunch of custom drivers and apps from the community as well. Over the years, I had accumulated almost 100 zigbee/zwave devices so the task of resetting everything and pairing again was daunting to say the least. Moving the handful of Hue and Kasa devices each was piece of cake (Love the LAN processing of Kasa devices!). I did not integrate Ecobee Thermostat and Rachio Sprinker, I just let them run their calendar based schedules from their app, and override from HomeKit.

Started on Z-wave from powered devices (In-wall switches) closest to hub, and built from there on. Having the ability to exclude from Hubitat Hub was awesome, rather than trying to exclude all from ST and then add here. Had to reset the zigbee devices, tried to add battery powered sensor first and had trouble, gave up, added a powered outlet, and everything went smoothly thereafter. Followed the same zigbee channel settings from ST, to spread Hue/Hubitat/Wifi as far as possible. Smoothest pairing was with the Zooz outdoor motion sensors; and the trickiest was the Monoprice 4-in-1 sensor that would always show up as a Zipato bulb.

I came across a post that said the devices page does not immediately update, that was the light bulb moment. For battery powered devices, until the device reaches back to hub or something like that, any change I made on devices settings was not updated. Once I changed the driver from Zipato bulb to Zooz 4-in-1, and triggered motion, then it started showing motion! Same with ghost devices, took couple of days to see the remove option, and then couple of tries to get rid of ghost devices.

ST was very simplistic and novice user friendly. Hubitat is super configurable and seems a bit intimidating at first, but with exploration, and reading some guides and posts, it helped. Loving the Rule Machine, as well as the dedicated apps for button controller, light control, etc. I did not use WebCore as I did not want to code, and will probably stay away here as well. Most of the logic in my automations is simplistic, so far.

Some of things I am still troubleshooting:

  1. Zooz Zen72 dimmers get 100% signal from Homekit somehow. I have the 700 chip Zen27 that work fine with Homekit signal. Looks like I am not alone
  2. Looking for Hubitat version of Simple Event Logger. Currently installed the Google Sheets Logging app, but longer term I prefer the format from earlier.
  3. I noticed a LOT of folks shared that they are running >1 hubs, with one hub dedicated for cloud processing stuff and other for managing devices. I have to figure out hub cpu/memory usage to ensure I am not overloading it.

I have yet to add Sylvania bulbs, and few other contact sensors, but should not be an issue I think. So far so good! I should have taken the jump to Hubitat earlier! Local processing is awesome, and quick!!

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If you haven't already, you will likely want to install Hubitat Package Manager for installing Community Apps and drivers, along with Hub Information driver to give you easy access to hub stats on memory and cpu.

And thanks for sharing your positive experience.

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Awesome! Thank you!!
Yes, I saw HPM, haven't gotten around to install yet.
Will do now. HPM and Hub Info.

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IIRC, I've heard scary things about these, may cause problems... Have you searched the forum for info on them. Or maybe I'm misremembering...

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Just read your post. I don't really have anything technical to add. But i thought it was a nice and thoughtful post. Hope you enjoy your hubitat and the community.

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You know that you’re not misremembering. The answer is “it’s complicated”, due to Sylvania using the same model numbers for the terrible Osram bulbs as the seemingly benign Ledvance version. If things start falling apart after adding them, it should be fairly obvious since they seem to have been pretty methodical at setting things up so far.
I am also thinking that the bulbs might be less likely to be chosen as repeaters on the C-8 due to the more accurate signal strength reporting. I know that the bulbs always had very weak RSSI numbers with respect to their distance from the hub on my C-5, but would still have a high lqi. I doubt that is the case on the C-8, but I don’t have any of my Sylvania lights on my C-8 (all remain on a C-5, and will until I get another C-8).

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Automations do not need to be complicated to be effective. The goal is to control some device in the manner that you need. KISS is a good a criteria to use. If your automations work then you have achieved your goal. I have found that a number of simple rules works better for me than one long complicated rule.

You can continue to monitor this forum for ideas to use in your setup. Welcome to the community!

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Agree 100%.

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Wonderful post. Well thought out.

As far as your logging. I would suggest you look at InfluxDB Logger. It received updates earlier this year that among other things enabled it to work with a free Cloud InfluxDB Account and has had significant performance improvements as well. The Cloud InfluxDB account has the ability to setup dashboards if you wish to. There are limits so if you outgrow it then you could migrate it to something local like a raspberry pi and such.

I think the thing with multiple hubs was largely grew from users that had older hubs that were not as capable as the C5, C7, or C8 gear. Earlier hubs really struggled with certain aspects of larger setups. They were also used when certain hardware compability issue started to show up. The idea being something like keep problem devices isolated so they didn't break better behaving devices. I personally have 2 but I just use one for dev activity. My Main hub controls my entire house with 120+ devices.

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Simplicity comes from experience, that is the reality. New users overcomplicate their rules before narrowing down the algorithm. To avoid this, planning automation ahead, can save a lot of grief in the long run.

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Another point to understand is that the Hubitat Hub is event driven. When designing Rules (or writing Apps and Drivers), strive to focus on events rather than polling. Polling is not good, and can quickly overload your hub.

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When I started out with HE, I had some really complex rules because I wanted "everything in one place." I had one RM rule that was so complicated that the UI struggled to open it. Then someone said "rules are free" and I realized that was so. I split things up — a lot — and simplified, and everything works so much better and is so much easier to debug.

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Welcome to the forum, ex smartthings myself. Wife hated it.

Since my c7 - it's ace, just works, wife loves it.

Nuff said.

I'm a one hub guy. Don't see any need for additional, and I absolutely batter it (smart heating, lighting, motion, Garage door, cctv, contact sensors, humidity, power monitoring...). Mostly webcore based.

This product is amazing.

And.... Good post. Thanks for sharing.

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If these are zll 1.2 I would install these on either a hue bridge or another hubitat and make sure nothing else but bulbs are on that mesh. They make bad repeaters and don't play nice with ZHA..

If you haven't read it, take a look at this post...

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Hi, I'm also a new c8 user this week that just finished migrating 60+ devices from ST v2 after 8 years. After last week's ST debacle, where all my devices and hub were deleted by Samsung accidentally, I took the opportunity to switch platforms, since I had to start over anyways.

I have 8 Sylvania ZigBee bulbs and I actually started with those first in hubitat since they were in our bedrooms and I needed to be able to control them somehow. Just chiming in to say the Sylvania ZigBee bulbs paired mostly painlessly to my c8 hub. The only issue I had was that 3 of the bulbs kept randomly turning on for no reason at all. Every time I turned them off, after 5 mins - 30 mins, they would be on again. What ended up fixing them was to reset them and re-pair them. And then they were fine.

I also have 3 Monoprice/Zooz 4in1 devices, same issues as OP. 1 picked the correct driver on it's own. The other 2 I manually switched from the bulb. Oddly, the one that picked the correct driver I had to re-pair the next day because it stopped responding, but it's been fine since.

Other than that, all my devices are supported by hubitat and as far as I can tell they all work at least the same if not better than in ST. My only complaint is that Smartthings "looked" and felt more polished. As a novice user, I only use my smartphone and alexa for control, so at least on my phone the ST App was good enough for me. But the Hubitat app, sadly isn't polished enough. For some reason the lighting tab doesn't report the states correctly or fast enough. I have to close the app and re-open to get it to update. The Dashboard seems ok, but with my limited css skills, my preliminary attempt at a dashboard is kind of ugly. At least it's functional though. Currently trying Hubivue as an alternative, but I wish i didn't need a 2nd app.

The only other thing I miss is lock code management remotely. I have set up a dashboard for lock code management in the hubitat app, it's clunky but at least it works. From what I read it seems the only other option is a vpn, which I'm not sure I want to set up. Glancing through the forums I saw a lot of warnings with the BE469 zwave locks, so they were the last things I paired and I was happy it went smoothly and that I didn't have to move them closer to the hub to pair them.

Overall I'm happy I switched over. After what happened with ST, a method to do a backup was a requirement for the new platform. I basically have to rebuild all my automation/routines that I slowly tweaked over the past 8 years from scratch, with nothing to go on.

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Just a note. If they are the 500 series chip version, you really want these paired with no security. The default is s0 and they're implantation is poor and it will spam the mesh on a 700/800 series chip hub slowing down things or crashing the mesh...

If these are zll 1.2 and not 3.0 bulbs, you really want to put them on a hue bridge or another hubitat as they make terrible repeaters and can cause a lot of issues in a mesh with ZHA zigbee devices (sensors and what not)

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If you're interested in keeping your old ST hub in service, look into using the Maker API (hubitat side) and the Mira Edge driver on the ST side.
It lets you share your Hubitat devices to ST within your own network (no cloud usage).

Then you can control your Hubitat devices with the ST app.

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Two things:

  1. Once you have a VPN you'll wonder how you lived w/out it. :slight_smile: But the difficulty varies depending on the router. One relatively simple option is the TailScale VPN which they refer to as a "zero configuration" VPN. Pretty close to that, fast, reliable, and based on industry leader WireGuard VPN.

  2. Hubitat offers a "remote admin" package for a very nice annual price that allows you to access your hub remotely. Excellent option if you want to skip VPN. Click on the Subscriptions button on your hub UI for more info:
    image

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i'm not really sure which series chips are in my 4-in-1s, but they are pretty old and use AAA batteries, so i'm guessing the 500 series chip. I never had any mesh issues though when I was on ST with them over the years. Same with the Sylvania Zigbee bulbs, they are pretty old and never had issues before...so hopefully they continue to be fine. But i'll keep these 2 in mind if I do run into issues. Thanks.

It actually looks like all my devices besides one, connect directly to the C8. Oddly, the one that doesn't directly connect is one of the 3 Easton/Cooper Zwave light switches directly in front of the hub, like 8 feet away. The 2 other switches (one on the left and one on the right) directly connect. But the one in the middle, takes 2 in between hops, starting on the floor above at the other end of the house, then coming closer. I have no idea why, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal. I tried Zwave repair a couple times, but it didn't change anything so i left it.

As far as remote access, i'm hoping to stay with a free option, so i'll see if I can live without VPN for now and maybe go that route if necessary.

I wish I knew about the Mira Edge driver before. That actually may have been a good solution. Sadly, i was so done with ST, i already deleted my account yesterday and gave the ST hub to a friend that has no smart home devices that was interested in starting to play around with them.

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I think in the long run you'll find the hubs features and functions, the HE community here, and the resulting capabilities much more to your liking over time. I moved from ST a few years ago, and I never really had many problems on ST, must have been on a shard that was less troublesome, but I'm so glad I came over to HE. Just a superior solution w/more options and opportunities across the board for me. I hope you like it as well.

If not, come here and yell at @rlithgow1 - anything that you don't like is his fault. :wink:

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