Home Assistant or Hubitat or both?

And don't forget Room Lighting! IMO Hubitat is the easiest place for non-programmers to build complex automations. No YAML with hundreds-thousands of entities for me!

4 Likes

:point_up: Truth

It just called Automations in the settings menu. There's a visual editor that is similar in function to RM, but has a code based editor that would be more akin to writing an app/driver in HE.

One very powerful thing about automations in HA is the ability to create/import Blueprints. Think of it as exporting an RM rule, but your device selections are all variables. When you create a new automation, you get the option to select a Blueprint that's been imported....most of which have a few dropdowns to select devices and what-not with all the logic being pre-built in the background. It's pretty neat.

Back to the OP...everything has it's pro/con list and part of that list is your capabilities and how much time you're willing to invest. HE is much simpler than HA to setup/use, but that does come at a cost. HA is much more powerful as a "do it all" platform, but that also comes at a cost.

Either platform could be an all-in-one solution, but that depends on a large number of factors. I ran everything on HE for years without issue. As my needs/desires grew more complex, I started having to find compromises between what I wanted to do and what the platform could handle. This eventually led to me moving to HA earlier this year. I started with a VMware instance on a Windows machine and now have it running as a standalone VM in Proxmox. I'm using a Sonoff zigbee dongle (P variant) with Z2M and the Zooz ZST10 z-wave stick with Z-Wave JS UI. Aside from a one-off issue in one z-wave js update, I haven't had any problems on that front. There have been some other one-off issues. For example, I have the integration setup to use FordPass. This broke pretty severely, by no fault of the code author, but because Ford made some changes to the UI and the integration is built on reverse engineering the API that the FordPass app uses.

I think the biggest hurdle to HA is that it's just A LOT to sift through at first. Devices vs entities; integrations vs add-ons; ZHA vs Z2M; z-wave JS vs z-wave JS UI; the list goes on and on and that's just the software side. Add in talking about one ZIgbee stick over the over, different z-wave sticks, what platform to run HA on in the first place and it's rather cumbersome at first. Then, there's ESPhome which is an animal of itself. The upshot is that HA opened a lot more possibilities that fit my use-cases. There's an integration for Proxmox, one for my 3D printers, I have Frigate running and am using it with a bunch of Amazon tablets to supplement my regular cameras, FordPass, ESPhome (which really opened a whole new can of worms), Z-Wave multicast (really a game changer), and more granular control over my Zigbee network.

HE is much more straight forward. The radios are just there and ready to go out the box. Add your devices and start building automations. The problems are that you're limited on options. Want the best experience, then you'll have to stick to using the official list of devices with the built in device drivers that often limit functionality. You can opt to leverage custom drivers for non-official devices, but these often become a red herring if you start having issues. You're pretty limited on integrating cloud based services (the FordPass integration mentioned above isn't even an option) and support for LAN devices is there, but often has to be limited to not overwhelm the hub (these are typically a pull design so the hub has to request current status from the device vice the devices pushing an update out).

All this to say, there's no right answer here. It really depends on what your goals are and what you're capable and willing to setup.

8 Likes

I didn't say less than 5 :wink:

Summary

Hubitat
Home Assistant
Node RED
EventGhost
Tasker
Google Home
Philips Hue
Bond
SensorPush
EcoWitt
Aqara
InfluxDB
Grafana
SteelSeries Engine and Logitech GHub

2 Likes

Thank you for that hint, but I already tried that driver and the problem was the same. I don't think that it is a driver issue. It seems to have to do with the way the platform handles commands. Spirits worked well years ago with my eedomus system too.

I agree that TRVs are not used in the US and that's exactly what I wrote in my post about the missing support from HE for Europeans. I don't know if Nabu Casa support's TRVs but there is a mass of integrations available and there is a massive European community that develops and supports European devices. In other words, devices that fit European needs and are available and even built in Germany or so like Bosch, AEG, Miele, ...

You can install Node Red over the community store. The main rule engine is built in and has 4 tabs


Automations is similar to Rule Machine,
Scenes is similar to Room Lighting but easier and more powerful
Scripts are basically automations to be reused in other automations.
Blueprints are a mass of prebuild automations. They are like templates to import with an easy way to integrate your own devices.

Me too. And even if the price is shocking, I considered Homey Pro 2023 as an alternative. I had a Homey 2019 before coming to HE. It was a nice hub, but radios were catastrophic (not stable on a contact 3 meters away) and devices worked more on a random base. The 2023 version seems to be a very good and stable solution on youtube but nearly all of these videos are sponsored. Digging deeper I found 3 videos that were not sponsored and they all three state that the problems from 2019 persist on the new device :frowning:

1 Like

I never tried the integrated backup solution for HA. I installed a solution that does every night a backup on my local NAS and on a Google Drive. Since a week, it works like a charm. The good thing about these backups is that they are platform-agnostic. If I want I can restore them tomorrow on an Intel NUC based HA system.

I tried scenes in HA and it's much better and easier to set up. A new scene is basically an empty list of devices. You can add devices or groups and click on them to go to their control panel to set values. The devices act as you change values. You will see every scene in action while you create them and with a click on the safe button a scene simply remembers the states for the next call. After saving, all devices return to their initial state before you were working on the scene. The best is that scenes are not limited to lights and you can integrate nearly every device you want. So the TV scene can set lights, lower the fan speed and close the curtain if you want.

I agree. The learning curve is higher as you can do much more with HA, but theoretically (have to check in practice) I could do all the things I was not able to do with HE.
I think that every system has it's community and reason to be. Apple HomeKit can be a good stand alone solution for people wanting a clean and easy interface, simple automations and two dozen of devices. Hubitat is a good standalone solution for advanced users that want true programming and mid-level of skills. Home Assistant can be used easily with basic requirements but with a steep learning curve you can probably do nearly everything (to be confirmed).

Thank you for all your replies that I was not able to comment all individually.

Radios of the C8 are often mentioned. I don't believe that they are so much better than for HA. Fact is that HA has no radios and that you have to buy some dongles. The quality and stability of the radios depends mainly on your choice. With a USB cable you can place your antennas away from your system if required.

I’ve never tried Home Assistant restore from backup either. Want to be sure I’m not being misquoted here. I have considerable faith in Hubitat backup and restore. That I have used many times and it works very well.

I haven't seen a zigbee trv that doesn't work with Hubitat. Most of the TRV's available work fine for EU users.,

I use Room Lighting mostly to automate my lights. RL automation is beyond the scope of the simple GUI of HA scripts. To do something similar I'd need to write script YAML code, or rely on a pre-existing blueprint. Which is totally possible. But I have no interest in coding. As I said, IMO Hubitat is the easiest place to build complex automations without programming.

As far as Scenes go, I find HA Scene UI to be bizarre and much less easy to use than Hubitat's.

First, HA scenes don't have a state. And the developers refuse to add one. (I believe there is a newer 3rd party scene integration with state.)

This is the bizarre aspect of HA's scenes. I don't want to see my devices change state as I build or edit a scene. Ever. Imagine a scene with media players, locks, or garage doors. It doesn't matter they go back to where they were when you exit.

There's no place to see the configuration of each device within the scene similar to the RL table. Clicking on the scene to adjust/check the setting activates it. Make it stop!

Room Lighting has a 'Re-Capture' button to set a scene to current values.

I agree that HA has more flexibility in this area. You can work around the issue in Hubitat with virtual devices and rules.

1 Like

The HA backups work well too. I did a restore migrating from Hyper-V to VMware and again from VMware to Proxmox, and again after having to rebuild Proxmox (did something I shouldn't have). This included restoring the Z radios.

1 Like

I use both platforms. I started with Hubitat C7, and I’m very impressed with the reliability and the ease of writing automations. The Hubitat community is awesome! I added HomeAssistant in order to take advantage of some device integrations that I didn’t find for Hubitat. (Sense Home Energy monitor was the primary reason). I got excellent support from this community for installation of the HA Home Bridge, which is fantastic.

For me, HomeAssistant involved a steeper learning curve than Hubitat. It’s getting a bit easier over time, but configurations are often still in YAML. Some integrations were too difficult for me to implement. But I’m generally happy with HomeAssisant, and I prefer the dashboards. I’ve also added Node-Red, which I found useful for a complex automation. But even Node Red was a learning curve for me (messaging and JavaScript).

Once in awhile I’ll experience some internet issue that takes down some of my HomeAssistant integrations, but my Hubitat keeps chugging along running fully local automations. I like that.

So, even though I could migrate everything to HA, I’m keeping Hubitat. “It just works.”

3 Likes

I have 2 doorlocks a D100 and 小米人脸识别智能门锁 X both are the Chinese versions and are bluetooth and requre a bluetooth hub to get remote info. You can load the Xiaomi integration to get the info into HA but need the hub to do that.

1 Like

Tested Aqara E1, Sonoff, Ketotek, Brennenstuhl, Moes, Shelly and none of them was really working. All were able to be integrated but not all features were working or reported.

Wait for a couple more days, I am testing the new fully featured driver for Moes BRT-100, Aqara E1 and Sonoff TRVZB. I will ping you in a new thread.

Tests

1 Like