I am a long time SmartThings user and recently made a move to Hubitat. In my infrastructure, I have a Hue Hub, Lutron Pro, and SmartThings Hub, which is integrated within my Samsung Wireless Mesh deployment. I have migrated the bulk of my physical inventory of approximately 100+ devices over to Hubitat with minimal issues that I could solve through the great Hubitat Documentation and user support community threads.
The crux of my issue is I am wondering what is the best path to move forward. I would still like to use my SmartThings hub as it integrates well with my Samsung Fridge and multiple Samsung TVs, which allow me to do quick status checks and device viewing, cameras, all that fun stuff, and I do like to use it for manual device control on the aforementioned devices. As I understand things from my current limited research, Hubconnect can sync virtual devices back (Hubitat <--> SmartThings) and work bi-directional if I understand things correctly.
At this juncture, I have not integrated my Hue, Lutron, or Alexa devices into Hubitat and have currently removed their integrations with SmartThings, so they are all running standalone. Should I finish these various Hub integrations into Hubitat and then create this connection back to SmartThings hub, or will this not work as I have hoped it would? Can and would I be better off still maintaining my Lutron and Hue device integrations in the SmartThings world in addition to connecting them directly to the Hubitat ecosystem and port the needed devices over virtually through Hubconnect?
I have no concerns about the latency or reliability on the SmartThings side of the equation, as this will be more of just a convenience and visual appearance situation. I will be doing all the heavy lifting and automation on the Hubitat side as I get more comfortable and do further research.
Thanks in advance for any advice and opinions rendered to my benefit.
The way I have mine setup, I have all my compatible devices and integrations paired to Hubitat. Anything that isn't compatible or works better on SmartThings I left on that platform and have them synced through HubConnect. I have the majority of my automations on Hubitat with just a handful on SmartThings that I can't do on Hubitat. The main example of this is my Sylvania LED strips that I have linked to a virtual switch for turning the color cycle mode on and off. Finally, I have multiple virtual switches on Hubitat that I have synced back to SmartThings so I can use it's interface and widget for controlling various scenes and automations.
As far has connecting your Hue bridge to both platforms, this is possible but might lead to congestion issues on the bridge. Might not be an issue, but I only have mine integrated with Hubitat to be safe. Alexa can be integrated with both platforms as well, but try to avoid adding Hubitat devices that are also on SmartThings or you will end up with duplicates since SmartThings doesn't allow you to select specific devices anymore. I have no experience with Lutron so I won't comment on that.
I'm going to go ahead and tag @srwhite and @csteele to see if they have anything to add.
As @Derakkon has suggested, there's not a lot of technical reasons to prevent joining services to multiple other services. I certainly do that myself with Lutron, with each of my hubs having an Integration. It means I CAN have one button push do something on each/any hub.
The 'problem' is the human confusion that causes. I have 7 Hubitat Hubs now, along with the rest of the collection: ST, Node-Red, Homebridge. Beyond that are all the Cloud services, such as weather, Alexa and Google Home, which have a connection to a single hub and everything is selected there to send to the cloud services.
BUT... there isn't one correct way. (Only 4 of my 7 Hubitat Hubs are joined as Production.) The more time elapses between my hub visits, the less I remember where any one device calls home. In general, I have an Upstairs hub and a Downstairs, thus making it reasonably logical. But in the past 90 days I introduced a C-7 into the mix and started moving devices that are in an Area I think of as "Front". I'm so confused now. On the plus side, the 4 hubs are 'melting into a System" and I'm much more free to cris-cross hubs with a Sensor on one hub and it's target switch/dimmer/outlet on another hub.
Clearly we are a community of people that lean strongly towards "Local" and believe in it without being absurd about it. "Alexa/Google/Siri is (are) great as long as you remind yourself how to do without periodically, as would occur with any Internet outage.
On the plus side, the 4 hubs are 'melting into a System" and I'm much more free to cris-cross hubs with a Sensor on one hub and it's target switch/dimmer/outlet on another hub.
