Help me plan my move to HE & Questions

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I have finally purchased a HE Hub (C7) as they can finally be purchased from a company in the UK, I then started to read the forums and see multiple people saying they have more than one Hub due to slowdowns etc

So I’m looking for the best plan of attack to move or part move to HE
The main reason for moving is I need more control of my Z-Wave network as most of my devices use custom device handlers and mainly my Yale locks take forever to respond or miss events, the other reason is ST still not haven’t local support for groups and scenes for Philips Hue.
My original plan was to move Z-Wave devices and Philips Hue to HE straight away and add them back to SmartThings using HubConnect, then slowly move other devices and learn Rule Machine or use other HE apps to do the automation
How would/did you move over? Would you do anything differently?
How many devices do you have? Are you running more than one hub & Why?

I have the following Z-Wave devices (33 Total)

2 – Aeotec Range Extenders 6
2 - Aeotec Micro Smart Switch (2nd Edition) DSC18103-ZWEU
7 - Aeotec Smart Switch Gen5
2 - Yale Conexis L1
1 - Yale Keyless Connected YD-01
1 – Fibaro Door Sensor FGK-101
2 - Fibaro Single Switch 2 FGS-213
3 - Eurotronic Spirit TRV
2 - Aeotec Siren Gen5
10 - Aeotec Multisensor 6
1 – Aeotec Key Fob

I have the following Zigbee (63 Total)

4 - Samsung Arrival Sensors
5 - Samsung (Gen2?) Plugs (CentraLite 3200-SGB)
2 - Samsung Buttons
1 - Samsung Moisture Sensor (Samjin Water)
2 - Samsung Moisture Sensors (CentraLite 3315-SEU)
7 - Samsung Moisture Sensors (SmartThings Motionv4)
4 - Samsung Moisture Sensors (CentraLite 3325-S)
9 - Samsung Door Sensors (CentraLite 3321-S)
15 - Xiaomi Aqara Door Sensors (LUMI sensor_magnet.aq2)
4 - Xiaomi Buttons
6 - Xiaomi Door Sensors
2 - Samsung (Gen3?) Plugs (LDS ZB-ONOFFPlug-D0005)
2 - IKEA TRÅDFRI Plugs

Cloud Based Devices (Total 116 Devices of which 41 are Philips Hue)

27 – Virtual Switches
1 – Weather Device
20 – Simulated Motion Devices
3 – Settable Temperature Devices
3 – Settable Lux Devices
3 – Ring Devices (Doorbell, 2 Spotlight Cams)
3 – Nest Devices (Thermostat, 2 Protects)
3 – Logitech Harmony Hubs (17 Total Harmony Activities over the 3 hubs)
2 – Life 360 Devices
2 – Hue Bridges (5 Colour Bulbs, 4 Colour Groups, 5 White Bulbs, 10 Non-Colour Groups & 17 Scenes over the 2 Hue Bridges its split upstairs, downstairs)
1 - Fully Kiosk Browser Controller Device
9 – Echo Speaks Devices

I use ActionTiles, Alexa, Google Home, IFTTT & WebCoRE

WebCoRE I have 6 instances (Security (13), Home Enterainment (9), Lights (3), WhatsApp (11), Notifications (33) and other (30)) giving me a total of 99 Pistons that control everything my house does

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I'm gonna mess around using a couple of devices I'll move out of SmartThings, and when I am happy I know roughly how HE works, I'll start from scratch in Hubitat. Assuming I get happy with it. I've not really had problems with ST, I just like learning new tricks :smiley:

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Welcome to HE. I'm sure you wont miss ST at all once you get into HE.

I originally only had a C3 hub but bought a C5 as a backup in case one fails.
I then started to load share on both.
Devices on one, rules on the other and use hubConnect to tie the two together.

I don't have some of the z-wave devices you have but I'm sure you will find the built in drivers will work for most of your devices and if not I'm sure someone has already written a custom driver for it.

I don't have any smart locks but people have had issues with some types of locks. Not sure if Yale are a problem though.

I was on ST as well and gradually moved devices over and wrote rules to control them as I moved them to my HE hub.

I don't think so. Maybe take a bit more time instead of blitzing it with moving devices over. Just to give things time to settle. Also this way if things fail it's easier to work out what device/rule could be causing your issue.

Around 200 including virtual devices.
I also have things like contact and motion sensors in their own group device. This way if I change a device I only have to change the group device and do not have to go into all the rules/pistons that contain that device and change them.

All of these will work OK.
I would recommend using @markus's "Zigbee - Generic" drivers for the xiaomi devices as these drivers will automatically attempt to recover the devices if they fall off the network.

I have left my Hue strips on their own Hue bridge and used Hue connect to control them from HE.
I did move the Hue motion sensor onto HE though.

I have one doorbell and one floodlight cam. There is a app called "Unofficial Ring connect" that I use to get motion notifications from these devices.

webCoRE used to cause problems on HE but now it is extremely stable and, for me anyway, doesn't cause me any issues so you should just be able to import all you existing pistons which will make things extremely quick to change over.
You could then convert to RM at your leisure should you wish to.
I have 99 pistons as well and all are on one instance but there's no reason why you cannot have more than one.

The is also an app called Hubitat Package manager which is extremely useful. You can use it to install/update/delete device drivers and apps if the person who develpoed them subscribes to it. You can configure it to sent notifications if there is an update available.
You will also find this forum to be extremely helpful with people more than happy to help out with any issues/questions you may have.

And it's all done locally apart from your devices that require cloud access to work. Alexa, Google and Ring being just 3.

Have fun......................... :grinning:

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Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and give advice, you have made me more relaxed about only having one hub for the time being might be worth adding a second around Christmas if I notice slow downs.

I could reduce the amount of pistons I have quite easily, are you using cloud WebCoRE or Local hosted?

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I'm using the cloud to define/edit/delete pistons.
I used to host on an RPi but needed to use it something else so went back to cloud.
All the pistons run locally on your hub.

I forgot to mention above that hubConnect can connect to your ST hub.
So in theory you can leave all your devices on your ST hub if you wish and write your rules/pistons on your HE hub and control them locally that way.
That may be a way to start and then gradually move the devices to your HE hub.
I believe some people have left their locks on the ST hub as some are a bit flakey on HE I believe.

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Sounds a good idea

Main reason I'm moving is my Locks seem to suck on ST, it seems to miss events so thinks the door is unlocked when its not

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Not sure if this helps.

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You are going to want to look at using this if you want to use hue scenes as the built in integration does not support them.

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Not OP, but thanks for this thread and follow up answers. I'm about to make the jump from Smartthings to Hubitat. Tired of relying on cloud, internet, Samsung flakiness, as well as a unifi network with iot vlans setup seems to be causing more of a delay with added security.

I'm using mostly Zooz/inovelli devices here, and other things like Alexa, Google Home, Harmony, Ring (doorbell/alarm). Also have an actiontiles license I want to be sure if available.

Piggybacking on this post, are multiple hubitat controllers needed? I currently only have one Smartthings, and I thought the zigbee (or is it Z-Wave..) extends per their mesh.

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ActionTiles does not work on Hubitat, although there are more than a few alternatives.

No.

What's different in the Hubitiat universe is that it's possible. Hubitat seems to have always had the ability to send and receive events outside of itself.

The first use for those of us coming from ST is to connect to the ST system and begin a paced migration.

What can happen though is... when you're done migrating everything worthwhile off ST, there's that One Thing that is often cloud based anyway and thus is less attractive to bring over anyway... I'm thinking Ring in your context. And thus you join the Two Hub Club rather early and see advantages... moving to the Multi Hub Club isn't a big leap then. :smiley:

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Sounds like a solid plan. Move a few devices over, make sure it's working as intended with all the rules n such, then continue with the rest of your devices.

When I made the move from Wink to HE, I had like 30-something switches. I just went around and reset them all based on Join and Reset Instructions - Hubitat Documentation and then paired them one shot (I was logged into my HE on my phone walking around)

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Set up IFTTT or HA (HomeAssistant/HassIO) to control ring. I have a ring doorbell and that does not integrate with HE. For my purposes I was using it to trigger some lights during sundown based on the bell press, so I wasn't doing anything crazy with it.

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The easiest way to integrate a Ring Doorbell with Hubitat is via an Amazon Alexa Routine. Use the Ring Doorbell as the trigger for the Alexa Routine, and then have the Alexa Routine turn on a Hubitat virtual switch (with the auto off feature enabled.). You can then use the virtual switch in Hubitat to trigger whatever automation you’d like. I’ve been using this for 2+ years and it works great, is fast, and very reliable.

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Thats a great solution better than IFTTT as i always find it to lag most of the time

I will probably just leave Ring on ST as will need to keep ST for nest anyway and you never know the changes to ST in the future could be useful