Home Assistant or Hubitat or both?

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Hi to all,

Starting from this post Will Hubitat support Matter? [Spoiler: YES] - #368 by pascal.nohl I just wanted to share some of my decisions, but rather in the lounge than cluttering the original post.

I was not buying a C8 to participate in the beta tester program as recommended by some users. I did not profit from the Black Friday to get the C8 cheaper. Instead, I bought a Home Assistant Green for $99 and a bundle of 2 Sonoff Zigbee Dongles for $30. I flashed one to a firmware for Thread. So I have now a system able to connect to devices over Wifi, Zigbee and Thread. A Z-Wave dongle will follow next month.

No system is perfect and as I'm new to Home Assistant I still struggle with some understandings and ways to do things. The interface is overwhelming but nice and modern.

I was absolutely bluffed by the number of devices and even better the number of 'attributes' called entities in HA that it found out of the box. I can now use the Shelly TRV, connect to my printer and see a dozen of states and even my car and it's Hi-fi system. Zigbee devices seem to connect easily.

The number of 'implementations' is huge and the HACS (HA community store) is very impressive. Also the community is much bigger than the one for Hubitat.

The dashboard is out of the box very pleasant and configurable. For more advanced styling you need to modify a YAML file (text). I'm still struggling with that, but got first impressive results. It seems much easier than the not documented CSS way of Hubitat.

One point that is really important for me is that HA is open source and I can restore my system easily on a Raspberry Pi, NAS, Windows PC, Mac, Linux PC, other micro computers and nearly on any 64 bit PC as native HA OS in case I need more (MORE) power.

The downside is that until someone convinces me, Rule Machine is more powerful that HA Automations. Maybe it's just a question of time and knowledge.

I also love the stability of Hubitat and warranty and cloud model. HA seems extremely stable but some posts show how easy it is to brick the system with third party installs or wrong YAML code. For now, every error I wrote in YAML was shown with a message saying that HA can't restart due to an error in the config file, so that I had to correct it before being able to restart the system.

How do I see my future ?

Actually, I dont know. I have now 4 options :

  1. Go with Home Assistant and migrate all over to it
  2. Go with Hubitat and abandon Home Assistant
  3. Go with Hubitat for my main system and connect to HA for not supported devices (bridge)
  4. Go with Home Assistant and bridge to Hubitat for antennas and may be one or the other rule.

Personally, I prefer a one system solution, but may be that is an illusion.
I would be happy to hear from you.

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One point I missed in the first post :
The only TRV officially supported by Hubitat (Spirit) was a pain for me. I wrote a rule with a repeating loop for every TRV. Inside the loop I've set the temperature, waited for 5 seconds, and checked the setting. If OK I got out of the loop, else do everything again. This worked but sometimes it took up to 2 minutes before the temperature was reliably set.

In Home Assistant, the TRV set's his temperature correctly in a fraction of a second. So the problem is not the TRV but Hubitat's implementation. The lack of support for TRV is the main reason for my decision.

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Your 4 options are common.. I know individuals that have taken each of those paths. I don't believe one path is better than the others. I've had a Home Assistant VM running for a year or more and perhaps because I just don't have any devices that Hubitat doesn't support, I can't find any compelling reason to pick Home Assistant as part of my Total Home Automation System.

I've 'bridged' Home Assistant to Hubitat and like so many before me, found that it works well. But all I have connected to Home Assistant is spare devices that already work fine on Hubitat.

I would try to disabuse you of "Personally, I prefer a one system solution" because I don't believe that any one product is able to encapsulate all the others. I have 4 Hubitat Hubs, a Lutron SmartBridge, and then a fist full of NodeJS products that intertwine it all, especially Node-Red. I've spent more than 5 years getting this Total Home Automation System constructed and i really believe I couldn't do it with one... one of any.

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@pascal.nohl you can try this driver, if your TRV is the Eurotronic Z-wave model.

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Pascal, follow this Amazon .com (USA) search link. You can see how many US customers reviews are there for TRVs ( I found zero!).

TRVs are not used in the US, Nabu Casa also provides zero support for Home Assistant TRVs. You must look for community created drivers for TRV devices.

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Without reading the OP, I'd say both HE and HA. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy to bang HE's drum ahead of HA's, but not to the point I will become tribal, and I'm simply being pragmatic in doing this, no disrespect to either group in choosing this position.

I'd also add that I would encourage others to choose an alternative home automation platform that fits into their "life", whether that be their tech choices, other devices already in place, etc. This could be Homekit, NodeRED / RPI / etc. Have an alternative to turn to if you need to. Again, no disrepect to anyone, just a pragmatic approach in a commercial realm.

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I run both and also ST and a few Aqara/Xiaomi hubs. There is no one system fits all. I find running HE and HD+ on a tablet has a high WAF.

Some of the things that wont run on HE I run on HA. I like some of the automations on ST so run a few sensors there.

Aqara/Xiaomi hubs are for some Xiaomi locks that need the hubs for remote access.

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Sorry I have used HA for testing some dashboard stuff but not any automations, what is the default automations tool? I know you can install Node-Red as an addon which should be able to do everything that Rule Machine can do. Might need a few extra "pallets" but those are easy to add. I personally like the "code" style of rule that RM uses vs the drag and drop flow style like Node-Red. For a non-programmer the flow style is probably easier to understand, many people use exclusively NR for automations, even HE users.

I am finally to the point where my HE system pretty much runs itself and I hardly even have to log in anymore. Before it was constant tinkering to setup and tweak things. I feel like HA might need constant tinkering to keep it running, especially if there are breaking changes in updates (or just dont update it).

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In the end, RM's of all varieties will serve different purposes and suit various use cases and users. If you try one and find it suits your needs, then there's no harm if trying to use it some more. The choice of do you adopt one and only one is a different question, that can span beyond your choice of automation tool. Some prefer the simplicity of a single system to maintain and understand, which is a valid reason to stick to one system for automation, like HE, HA, NR or ST. etc. On the flip side, including some variety, like I have posted about previously. provides some level of agility if you want to implement something new or unsupported in one platform. I'm not suggesting to setup 5 different automation platforms to cover all eventualities, there is a balance to strike, but variety can bring some additional options that may be beneficial for some, each to their own.

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:thinking: this statement made me wonder just how many platforms I currently have running my home...

  • Hubitat
  • Apple HomeKit
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Home Assistant
  • Lutron Caseta
  • Philips Hue
  • Logitech Harmony
  • Ecobee
  • Ubiquiti UniFi Protect
  • HomeBridge
  • Scrypted
  • InfluxDB
  • Grafana
  • Node-RED
  • IoTaWatt

I might have a slight addiction to this 'hobby'....or has my hobby turned into an 'addiction' ??? :sunglasses: :man_shrugging: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :thinking:

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I currently have running my home...

  • Hubitat
  • Apple HomeKit
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Home Assistant
  • Lutron Caseta
  • HubConnect Proxy
  • Node-Red
  • HomeBridge
  • Honeywell Thermostat (cloud)
  • EtherRain (sprinkler system)

I'm addicted too I guess.

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This is what works for me.

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I just ordered an HA.Green to give HA a go, my son showing me his HA on Thanksgiving weekend is to blame [g].

I had a chuckle when I read one comment in HA chat that suggested HE is used with HA in part for its superior Zigbee radio. When taking up HE I had plans to eliminate my Hue hub, but lessons were learned. I'm not planning on replacing anything just yet, more so just scratching a curiosity itch.

...bob.t

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I am using Hubitat for critical systems (HVAC, motion). Use HA as integration point (Frigate mostly) and for nice interface - my wife hates Hubitat interface. Also run Scrypted and Homebridge (it publishes Danon AV to HomeKit).
Each system has its pluses and minuses but if the goal is to stay local (no cloud crap) - Hubitat and HA combo is a way to go.

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Similar story for me, using HE C7 for most things but Node Red for other things. I find rule machine much easier to use for complex if/then, 'wait for X', and 'repeat until Y' operations. Node Red brings in some extra capabilities (http PUT requests, SSH connections, and more) that make it a valuable tool in the toolbox.

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For me the answer was both PLUS node-red.

  • Hubitat's Z radios are better than using z2m and zwavejs (for me), but I don't prefer the rule engine interface/copy-paste ability, how LAN integrations affect hub performance, or the dashboards.
  • HA integrates with LAN devices and cloud services much better (for me) and has better dashboard capability, but I don't like their automation engine/rule writing, and found it tedious to manage z2m and zwavejs on top of it.
  • Node-RED has better (for me) logic flow and automation rule writing ability and keeps all of my logic and intellectual sweat equity preserved and independent of any single home automation platform (I can, and have, switched logic between multiple hubs/platforms with minimal effort). I can also put it on as fast/robust of hardware as I choose, which in my case is a VM in my VM cluster.

I expect everyone will have a different answer to this question though.

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:point_up_2: This. Especially cloud and WiFi integrations on HA. With HADB, I look at HA as just another dongle, but for WiFi.

Rule Machine and the C-8 radios are great strengths for HE.

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Why? What Aqara/Xiaomi devices do you have that HA alone cannot handle?

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:point_up: This. "Choice is good" says the man himself. Y'all know my feelings on this subject quite well by now. I know people like to try to do it all with a single system, but that's just not for me. I don't like instability (who does?), but that's just not my experience with what I've built. If you're new, there will be growing pains, but the fruit of being able to decide what you want to add, instead of constantly needing to ask "Can I add it?" is very sweet. Don't get me wrong, there are still limits to what I can add to my setup, but I don't have many.

Bruce has built one heck of a good automation application, and yeah it's damn powerful given how easy it is to use. I don't really believe that HA automations cannot be made to do everything that I can do with Rule Machine, but the YAML needed to get there is something I'll never touch. Their basic automations are fine, and have become pretty easy to setup in the most recent version of HA, but to me they make little sense (except in very specific situations) when HE Rule Machine and Basic Rules cover what I need with very little effort.

I am intrigued by Homey's Flows since they look so much like Stingify, which I really liked (except for the cloud-based part), and they're also local. Problem there is, that hub is just ridiculously overpriced for what they can integrate with today. They need to give their head a shake or they are just not going to survive. If a competetor was to create a similar graphical automation engine on a reasonablly priced hub, they'd be unable to compete at that price. And no, all you NodeRED fans, it's not directly compareable.

Getting back to Hubitat, I have considerable faith in their backups. They work, really well. This is another reason I trust all my automations on my Hubitat hub. Easy or not, it's not a trivial task to set all those automations up over time, so you better have a backup of them you can be certain is reliable. Yes, there's a backup in HA, and I can backup to google drive for free, but I haven't needed it yet, and I've never tried it. Only backup I have restored is the entire microSD in my RPi. That of course works, but it's more difficult and slow to do. Hubitat is fast and easy to do, and I have been saved by it several times (some by my fault, some not).

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I am using both HE and HA.
For rules, I have Rule Machine, Node red and HA automations. Mostly because I like tinkering.
HA automation isn't that bad these days there are thousands of blueprints (rule templates ) you can get from the community if you want.
I don't have much issue with HA and update. Just like HE, you can always restore the backup.
As for dashboard, well... There's no need to compare. Z2M is a beast on HA.

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