It's late, I probably should be in bed.... i.e. the time I typically post broad questions such as these...
It would be interesting to understand who runs other home automation systems alongside their HE setup, such as Home Assistant, Smartthings, Node RED, etc, and why you have chosen to do this. Let's keep this constructive rather than destructive, focusing on what we want to see added to or improved in HE.
What have other people chosen to automate elsewhere?
For my own contribution....
I previously used a Conbee2 stick with the DeConz software and Community driver to provide integration of my IKEA on/off switches for control of my blinds via my Bond bridge integrated with HE. The DeConz software in particular (not the Community driver), for me, was not reliable when the rpi needed to be rebooted. I have recently switched to using Zigbee2MQTT and Node RED to provide these automations. While I have not used Node RED extensively, this experience re-affirmed my appreciation for many aspects of the HE interface, as much as we may criticise it at times, there are some fundamentals that I realised I took for granted.
I get that the IKEA stuff is not going to get added, so am going to let that horse enjoy it's time in greener pastures.... but happy to welcome it back if ever it get's another look in.... The best I can offer in terms of positivity would be that a continued focus on ease of use and the ability for less technically minded users to get a foot in, that is where the real value is, that is what people are likely to ultimately pay for, albeit after spending money elsewhere on the more commercialised alternatives..... function will ultimately win.
I run Home Assistant so I can get control of the Eufy cameras. Most of my interaction with Hubitat is via the Apple Home app, so I also have Homebridge for that. Hubitat does any complex rules. Pretty simple, and easy to maintain.
Ecovacs integration on an older dumb Ecovac unit that allows me to use Google Voice to kick it off via HTTP to clean. Not often used, but, well, the mountain was there so I climbed it!
-- https://github.com/bdwilson/ecovacs-api ; from @brianwilson
WeeWX weather integration connected to my Ecowitt gateway/weather station. I really don't need this 99% of the time, but it was a distracting/fun activity to set up, and I like being able to look at all the details it reports even though I don't need it .
Home Assistant w/Conbee2 stick to integrate six Aqara contact sensors that kept falling off HE. Wanted the Aqara for placement in very tight space that is a PITA to get to, and they are about the smallest and have great battery life so fewer changes. This has been 100% reliable so very pleased w/it. Probably my most important RPI integration.
NUT for UPS monitor/report of power loss - 2nd most important.
NodeRed, but for me the visual UI wasn't something I adapted to well so haven't used much
Hue Bridge (forgot about this and had to add it!) for just a few Hue bulbs that I've been too lazy to replace, as they work and don't cause me any problems
Lutron for Picos only - my wife's favorite part of home automation are Picos. A must.
Logitech Harmony Hub/Remote
I pity my wife and kids when I leave this mortal coil and they are trying to figure out how this all works together, even w/gallons of documentation I've put in shared OneNote pages they are still going to be baffled.
I run Hubitat basically as the zigbee and z-Wave controller. All my logic is in Node-RED. I also use Homebridge and Apple Home.
The primary reason for using Node-RED in the beginning was to abstract the automation logic from any specific platform. I was originally (over 2 years ago) with Wink, hence the reluctance to be tied to a platform. Then I discovered the native Node-RED dashboard and started using that to display all the data that I was collecting. It was pretty easy to tie in my Tesla Powerwalls in with Node-RED as well.
I use Apple Home primarily for the UI and be able to manually manage devices. Via Homebridge, I have tied in my Ring doorbell.
On the Hubitat side, I use a couple of community apps (Google Calendar) and drivers (Hub Information, Ecowitt Wifi Gateway) to fill in specific needs.
actually just realized i need to ammend this..
i am still running the alexa tts manager and have a docker image with nodejs running on a qnap nas (alexa-cookie) to automatically refresh the cookie and the the app on hubitat uses a http request to the qnap nas to get it periodically.
not sure if this counts as a separate system however.
I'll still let you claim it.... we all have something.... Was probably singing your praises more than I should if you included a Hue bridge. Definitely puts you in my group as someone who also makes use of a system that just works as intended....
Hubitat C-7 - All Zigbee and Zwave devices. Integrations with Misc. hubs.
-- Lutron Pro Bridge
-- Hue Bridge (using CoCoHue)
Hubitat C-5 - All apps, both built-in and all of my custom apps. Also recently turned on the Zigbee radio to connect the new Aqara FP1 Radar Sensors. Zwave radio is still off. Integrations with Misc. hubs
-- Ecowitt Bridge (Ecowitt Wifi Gateway)
-- Camect (using Camect Connect)
-- Tempest Weather Station (WeatherFlow Lite)
Hubitat C-3 - Yup, still going. Designated to the Garage/Inlaw apt.
My home automation started with Home Assistant, and I'm running it on a Synology NAS in a closet at one corner of my place. I'd been able to manage what I wanted to do using HomeKit products that used WiFi (HA can connect to those natively), and then I found the perfect Z-Wave device to control my blinds. I didn't want to try and get a USB stick working on the Synology, and didn't want to move everything to a separate device, and that's when I found the Hubitat and an integration for Home Assistant. So Hubitat is now my Z-Wave/Zigbee bridge(I later added some Ikea blinds), and I continue using Home Assistant as the logic and display engine.
One of the nice things about this is that I had an open ethernet jack almost smack in the middle of my place, so I put the Hubitat there. At 1200 square feet, the place is small enough that the Hubitat can communicate with all my devices without needing any repeaters.
My smart home environment started with Smartthings. Just after i started experimenting with HE samsung deciced to completely kill the Smartthings hardware i was running. So i jumped fully into HE.
Well before I had HE I was running a personal home server. That server migrated from WHS2011 to Unraid a few years ago. That server does a few things with HE, but for the this converstion that centers around Node-Red, Nginx proxy, influxDB, Geafana all in a docker.
At this point I still keep Smartthings involved through Node-Red in a hubless setup simply to act as a cloud aggregator. That has worked pretty well so far.
I do have a second HE simply for development. But pretty much all the heavy lifting is really done on my main C7 hub.
I'm 99% HE. I have Home Assistant setup just for the integration with FordPass to make sure the car doors are locked as part of my bedtime routine.
I am looking to move my Tuya devices over to HA that run through the cloud. I'm up to just shy of 40 of them. While they work fine through HE, I realize having that many cloud devices isn't really what it's designed to handle. My home network took a blip the other day and that one integration completely pegged out the CPU on the HE.
I do have Splunk setup on a PC for log ingestion/dashboards/historical searches, but I'd hardly consider it a crucial part of the overall setup.
I have a lot of devices but the only thing I have running outside of HE is a docker container for network presence detection. Then I have homebridge running in a docker, and a bunch of other bridges setup to connect devices to HE.
Once I learned how to write my own apps and drivers in groovy I realized how powerful HE is and it opened up a lot of possibilities for integrations.
