Hello, I bought Hubitat as I wanted to manage all of my devices in one place but I have trouble connecting my wi-fi devices, so would really appreciate some help on that topic. I go through the already open similar topics and from what I saw I understand that in theory you could connect every wi-fi device to the hub but you need drivers to make them work, but as I am new to that topic I am not sure where to look for such. I am listing a few of the devices that I would like to connect to my hub and would appreciate any advice that you might have:
LED light strip controller
IR controller & RF controller (by Tuya)
I wanted to give you link to the products but it didn`t allow me
These are the ones that I am trying to connect but I also have some others that I am looking to buy as well - How I could make sure that they would be able to work with Hubitat before buying them? I could only find a list of supported Zigbee and Z wave devices, but no info on the wi-fi devices, and sometimes there is just no alternative to the wi-fi devices.
For wifi enabled devices, I personally do not connect them to Hubitat. I only connect zigbee and zwave devices directly to Hubitat. That said, i do have a few wifi devices that i can see in Hubitat, that i've linked/connected through an Alexa Application to show their visability to Hubitat. Note that this creates a dependency on cloud/internet with Hubitat to run those devices.
I know others have ways to connect wifi devices directly to Hubitat, but it's a bit of a workaround which is very dependent on the device and drivers available.
To be blunt, integrating wifi devices isn't something Hubitat was designed to do - Hubitat is all about integrating zigbee and z-wave devices locally (i.e. without any cloud-based dependencies).
As others have said, there are possibly some integrations that can work for some wifi devices but they're pretty hack-y and inelegant... That's not at all intended to throw shade at the devs who built those integrations, it's just the nature of the beast trying to connect wifi stuff to Hubitat.
You're certainly welcome to search the community here for possible community-developed solutions that may work for you, and I hope you'll find success! But I'd recommend keeping your wifi stuff separate form your Hubitat stuff - it's likely to be less of a headache that way.
I had some wifi things when I first started in home automation, but I quickly replaced them with zigbee/z-wave stuff after experiencing cloud outages. Local control is sweet!
All this is just one dude's opinion, of course. There are lots of smart folks around here to help you in whatever direction you choose to go - good luck!
Not all of them. E.g. Shelly is controlled directly with no need of cloud or any internet access. My experience with almost 15 Shelly modules is very positive. Instant reactions (faster then zwave) no issues at all so far and possibility to controll them from any hub or feom more hubs at the same time, or directly without the need of unpairing etc. This way I do have them in HE and Home assistent connected at the same time.
This isn't correct. WiFi devices are simply IP connected devices and Hubitat can handle that just fine if the driver is written well. It's more a matter that it wasn't in the scope from the beginning. The only officially compatible WiFi devices are certain Yeelights and Shelly devices. That's not a limitation of the system, just the availability of built-in drivers for WiFi.
There are many community integrations of WiFi (e.g. IP connected) devices, some very good. I wouldn't call them hacky personally.
But to the OP, you will definitely do better with non-Wifi devices in many instances, but perhaps you can make use of what you already own. I would recommend providing the exact make and model of the devices, since no one will be able to offer a recommendation of how to deal with "LED light strip controller" for example. And Tuya makes a ton of stuff. Need specifics to help.
I may very possibly be wrong, but my impression from OP's original post was that they were under the impression that Hubitat could integrate wifi stuff at the same level & ease as zigbee/z-wave.
I myself wouldn't consider that a reasonable portrayal, but I acknowledge that one person's concept of what's easy & possible can be very different from someone else's.
Agree. There was a similar post about a month ago. I suspect some who see 3rd-party reviews or follow other SH forums might see mention of -say- TPlink ports and think all wifi devices work.
But these are primarily misconceptions. There are compatible devices, and currently incompatible devices is my point. Bluetooth devices cannot be joined to HE, that’s a hard fact. They are, for the most part, incompatible with HE (bridging is the only means of using them). WiFi, IP, Zigbee and Z-Wave have varying levels of compatibility on HE and for that matter every single hub on the planet has varying levels of compatibility.
Far too often I have heard reviewers erroneously say things like “Hubitat doesn’t support WiFi and that leaves out WiFi device compatibility". That was never true, other than to say that previously you couldn't connect the hub itself directly to your WiFi network. But you could always join certain WiFi devices when the capability was made available either directly through the platform (Yeelight was made available very early on) or via a community driver.
Often I would hear reviewers compare Wink's ability to join their hub to a WiFi network, as an inherent capability to support WiFi devices in general. 100% false statement. They never joined any WiFi device directly to their hub, and don't support all WiFi connected devices. WiFi devices are usually joined to the router and communicate with a hub via direct IP or the cloud. Same as everyone else. It's a complete misunderstanding of what WiFi is. TCP/IP is how WiFi connected devices send and receive data to the cloud or directly to a hub. WiFi is merely a wireless connection layer instead of a physical Ethernet connection layer.
Fair enough, but when discussing Hubitat's wifi capabilities, I just think we need to be carefully cognizant of the audience at hand - most HA newbies don't have a very good understanding of wifi, let alone any of the other HA protocols.
To them, all wifi devices are equal - if they happen to have yeelight that's great, but that's one of a gazillion brands of wifi HA stuff you can buy on amazon. To that audience, all of those wifi things are the same & interchangeable -- they expect full plug-&-play compatibility simply because they don't know any better. These definitely aren't the people using Shelly.
Expecting those folks to jump right in with community drivers and navigate workarounds or to have the exactly right compatible wifi stuff simply isn't realistic, so I think it's a bit disingenuous to imply that wifi stuff is somehow easy or all fully baked into Hubitat by design (as compared to z-wave/zigbee).
Of course they can learn and be taught, but as we all know from personal experience, HA tends to have a steep (and often expensive!) learning curve.
It's not my intent to disparage the OP's knowledge or capabilities, but from my read of the original post, I got the impression he/she was expecting straightforward wifi integration with Hubitat.
Thanks to everyone that reply and give some advice. I understand that wi-fi may not be the best way to use the Hubitat and there are very limited wi-fi devices that have drivers to work with Hubitat but my issue is that I couldn`t find any IR or RF controller that works on zigbee or Z wave and I have more than 10 devices that I control through these IR/RF controllers and would like to be able to control them all in one place. When I select to buy them (these is for example the IR - Smart Universal IR Remote WiFi Tuya for Smart Home Control for TV DVD AUD AC Air Conditioner Works with Alexa Google Home|Remote Controls| - AliExpress) which is Tuya and as I have other Tuya devices like (Zigbee switch) which worked well with Hubitat so I was hoping that I would be able to connect this one as well.
If anyone knows about an option for such a controller that could work with Hubitat and would be more than happy to buy it and change the existing ones.
There's a few IR implementation around here. Broadlink was one. The Bond controller was another. No where near as inexpensive as that TUYA device, but that doesn't seem to be very widely integrated with hubs from what I can find. Often the Home Assistant community has integrated the Tuya stuff, but not that one.
You could also use a Harmony Hub. They are IR and RF, not just IR like that Tuya you linked to. But caveat emptor. It is still unconfirmed by Logitech, but the word on the street is retailers are being told they're discontinuing the entire Harmony line. Support, they're being told is to last for 5 years unless that division is sold off to someone else. So I would go that route only if you're willing to accept that you'll potentially need to find another solution in 5 years. That's probably fine for most people.
If you go the Harmony Hub route, then that has a local integration. I use it myself, and it's really good.
What kind of device are you trying to control with IR? Hubitat supports a z-wave/IR gateway by Remotec, but that is geared to function as a thermostat.
With the IR I am controlling TV, Set top box, Audio system, Air conditioning. With the RF - several different lights - spot lights, lasers, led controllers, etc.
Thank you for the detailed response. I was actually looking initially at the Harmony remotes but the price of 250-350$ for the remote made me look for other options and that is how I found the Tuya devices on AliExpress. But the Harmony Hub might be a good option. I will check out the other options that you mention.
I also started thinking about the option for workaround integration of the already bought Tuya devices through Google Assistant or IFTTT. I know that I would be reliant on the servers of these services but might be a good and cheaper option. Does anyone have experience with using them? If so I would appreciate any feedback.
I have lots of LAN ones, some are WiFi to the network, WeMo, MyQ but many do not even have any WiFi on. Yes, there are several WiFi device with no driver that can be integrated through Alexa or Google Home but you have to have those items too and then there is that damn cloud you mentioned. I wish the Ecobee integration was LAN not cloud !!!
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