Having been on Smartthings for about 18 months I came to find their lack of communication or commitment to customer service very disappointing. As some of you know they have been migrating to a new app\architecture for several years and it has become a morass of confusion.
On my phone I had 2 versions of SmartThings, Tuya, Honeywell TCC, Kasa, eWeLink, SharpTools, IFTTT, Alexa, Wyze, EyezOn and probably a few others I have forgotten about. I had been trying to whittle down the list but there were always stragglers and way to much cloud to cloud for my liking.
So I bought the HE largely based on some device compatibility with SmartThings (I had written a few drivers) and the local processing capability. I was sick of the unreliability of cloud to cloud so the local processing on HE was very attractive.
Week 1: My first impression when I started working with HE was that it clearly was not going to win any awards for beauty. But the Zigbee device migration was working well and I ported over one of my device drivers fairly easily and it just worked. I discovered how to add Apps and that was a bit of an eye opener. Rule Machine, although not very intuitive to use (at least for me) was very powerful and was destined to become the centerpiece of the action. Dashboard was a disappointment, but I still have a subscription to Sharptools and somewhere along the way someone told me about the Dashboard enhancement tool which helped a lot. Lock Code Manager, SharpTools, Groups and Scenes all got installed in short order and I felt I was making good progress out of the box.
Week 2: I started talking with @markus and when I tried out his Tasmota for HE solution I knew I was here to stay. I had about 20 Tasmota devices and it was a breeze to get them up and running. Trying to do the same thing on Smartthings is an exercise in frustration because there are unique drivers for all sorts of hardware, each with its own interface and quality. I even wrote my own drivers because they were basic.
Also in week 2 I was able to get my Envisalink (connection to Ademco alarm) working in a way that allowed me to dump a Raspberry Pi that was required for the SmartThings solutions. Thank you native Telnet interface and of course the authors of the driver.
In week 3 I got Echo Speaks installed and working well (which I also had on Smartthings with mixed results because the cookie kept expiring) and found a fun solution called Better Laundry Monitor which allowed me to finally implement some power monitoring plugs that I bought for exactly this purpose but never got around to implementing on SmartThings.
So overall I am very pleased with Hubitat, both the device and the community. Although it is not as pretty a solution, I really like the UI consistency, the local processing, the power of Rule Machine and the richness of the available solutions.
It has been fun for me to implement but I am a tinkerer and I think that is going to be the audience for this device as it currently stands. My low point was when I was looking for documentation which is a weak spot, but the forums got me over it (and I still use the SmartThings groovy guide).
I have two devices remaining on SmartThings, both Honeywell Thermostats. There is a driver but it does not work for me so that is my next project. But I have been able to get rid of about 6 HA apps and now I'm down to 5. The goal is to get down to Hubitat and Alexa and I think I can get there.
There have been a few downside issues.
- Dashboard is weak, especially the need to pre-format it for various device form factors. I'll use SharpTools for now but I hope to be able to eliminate that at some time.
- The performance of the hub is lacking when saving out large Groovy files. Other times the web UI will be sluggish loading a new page. It really needs to have an option under Settings to show CPU and RAM utilization as well as a list of tasks with their CPU percentage. From what I have seen my situation is not unusual. As an alternate approach perhaps Hubitat should consider having a Pro Hub with higher specs for those that are doing development on it.
- I've been rebooting my hub to try and clear slowness issues about every other day. It would be nice if I could just schedule a reboot of the device at whatever frequency I desire.
- Perhaps I am missing something but developing using Groovy in a web browser with log.debug() as my primary debugging tool is primitive and painful. I was using step debugger in 1988, 32 years later and we have gone backwards. Sheesh.
Still, all told I am quite happy with my purchase. A big thanks to @markus and his excellent T4HE which really sold me on HE because my devices were split roughly 50/50 between Zigbee and Tasmota. Take note Hubitat marketing department. Tasmota is a tinkerers paradise. Anyone who has successfully implemented Tasmota on a few devices is probably strong candidate for HE.
Keep up the good work team Hubitat.
just kidding
