Ahhhhh I read that completely different. When you said "Re-using the ST hubs for HE is going to be brilliant as I think the hardware and features (battery back up, for example) are really great." I thought you were somehow going to load the HE software onto ST hardware. I thought you had some magic trick that the rest of us hadn't figured out yet lol
I'm obviously months behind here, so excuse the late reply. The one thing I do like about solutions like HomeBridge, HomeAssistant, and others like them are the deployment options.
If I want to run it in a container, on an ARM-based PI, a Mac, or a PC, HomeAssistant gives us that flexibility. If I want to throw an old 12-core MacPro with 64GB of RAM as a dedicated HA, Node Red, MQTT & HomeKit, I can do that.
Can't do that with HE.
If I wanted to be sure that all my actions were local, I'd use HE for it all. However, some of the HA integrations are also locally processed, so it'll come down to personal preference.
The HA App on iOS provides me with a much better UX.
The fact that I can use Siri for all my voice interactions with Zwave and Zigbee devices using HE is magic!
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FWIW, I'm doing that with Home Assistant as well. The HomeKit integration can make anything managed by Home Assistant to appear as a HomeKit accessory (whereupon it can be controlled via commands to Siri). For example my thermostat can be controlled via Siri yet it has no native support for HomeKit. In fact, it doesn't even support any wireless communications protocol (only hard-wired via RS-232).
I do agree with your point about hardware flexibility. I'm running Home Assistant on a ten year-old laptop I got for free. I can upgrade/expand/replace it at will. Nevertheless, I do understand the appeal of a purpose-built hardware platform like Hubitat Elevation.
I'm running Node-RED and Homebridge and I have no Apple stuff at all. I'm using it for my Nest and Ring integrations.. has been working great so far but haven't really done anything too crazy yet.
I like Node-RED because if I decide to include HA or other systems including multiple HE's it's easily done.
I also completely agree with you about having more control over the environment with these "companion" servers - it's great being able to add resources as needed. Another benefit is it can reduce load on the HE itself.
So my ultimate answer to the posted question thanks to Node-RED is..
Yes, my old laptop has reduced the load so much that ... I don't even require HE.
/s
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So it works!!! 
I prefer to keep my options as open as possible. HE is a nice little self contained unit that is preconfigured for handling the most common use-cases but also has the flexibility to be customized to a great degree. On the downside it's proprietary and not hw expandable and the ui is still a little lacking. The constant improvements are impressive and bugs are usually dealt with a lot quicker than other hubs in this space.
HA has a great interface and is about as open as can be but can send you down the rabbit hole with configuration issues (Go YAML!) and breaking updates etc. You need to have some technical experience moreso than HE I think. It has a ton of upside though and is constantly improving.
For my residential clients there is no contest - HE is a much more complete solution. For a personal home solution though I am much more likely to play around with HA and others in addition to HE.
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I agree because, if no other reason, Home Assistant's setup is a more involved process.
Whereas Hubitat Elevation is a purpose-built combination of hardware and software that you simply plug-in and configure, Home Assistant is software that runs on a variety of hardware so your first step is to choose the hardware. That not only includes the obvious (the computer itself) but also any wireless radios you intend to use (namely z-wave and ZigBee). This requires a bit of research because there are several options. This is a level of flexibility, and complexity, that may not appeal to those who want a ready-built 'black box' that hides the complexity of the magic within.
FWIW, one of my relatives automated his home with SmartThings Hub and recently crossed his 'patience threshold' with all the recent SmartThings changes/deprecations/cloud issues/etc. Although I could've easily helped him convert to Home Assistant, I supported his interest in Hubitat.
Although he is technically savvy, I believe he will have an easier time making the transition to Hubitat. He recently ordered a C7 hub and plans to make a gradual transition to it. I imagine he will eventually join this forum as well.
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HE is great for a hub, and you can connect it to HA using integrations to make HA your rule machine if you wanted
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Yes, I'm aware of the following custom integration:
FWIW, I run two home automation systems:
- Premise handles my remaining legacy devices. I've been using it for about thirteen years.
- Home Assistant handles all new integrations, UI, and automations. I've been using it for about two years.
The two systems communicate via MQTT. I also employ several Node-Red flows for various purposes.
Quick question. What are you running on each of the three Hubitat hubs?
Apologies for jumping in.. but saw your post and thought I'd contribute.
I too am running 3 hubs - 2 C-5's and a C-7. My setup is by device "type"/function - I have a C-7 for Z-Wave, C-5 for Zigbee and a C-5 for Network/Cloud services (Alexa, Homebridge) and devices (Lutron). I use Node-Red as the master controller for rules and such. For a client of mine - I have 2 hubs set up by location. One in the "Main" house and one in the detached garage. Did this due to experiencing issues trying to get signal to the garage - did have a wired connection there fortunately.
Either multi-hub strategy - by type or location has proven to work very well in my experience. Is it really necessary? According to HE and a lot of community members - not at all. For my home setup maybe not as well but I do like the isolation it provides. For my client? absolutely - was having too many signal issues before and now things are working great.
Just my 2 cents... 
@erktrek. Thanks for jumping in. I have often been curious as to the delineation of responsibilities for multiple hubs. I live on a ranch. We have a horse barn of which part is my workshop. I have questioned whether to put a separate HE hub out there and leave the current C7 as the house hub. Your clients situation has helped me to decide to do just that.
One big item is how to handle the security cameras on the hub in the barn and bring them back to the dashboard in the house hub. Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Glenn
I chose "location" as my criteria, but only for ZWave. I've never had much in the way of Zigbee... not from any issue/problem with Zigbee, it's mostly historical... my early days of Home Automation, all the devices I wanted were ZWave. I've used multiple "hubs" approach since my early days because no single vendor supported everything I needed.
Gruesome Details
I moved to Hubitat over the course of about 3 months. It took me a while to swallow the bitter pill of buying a Lutron SmartBridge PRO to get back my Pico support. It was built in to my StaplesConnect hub. Eventually I found out that Hubitat had tried to License it, but that Lutron was the one to say no. But in the end I had 65 or so devices on a single Hubitat hub... as advertised 
But I felt that the responsiveness was too variable. The automations (RM) would sometimes be very good, 0.6 seconds and sometimes quite bad at 17 seconds. I got lots of advice from Hubitat but I still had variability I didn't like. I got a 2nd Hubitat Hub and moved all of my Upstairs devices over. At the time I used HubLink and Link2Hub to interconnect the hubs. It worked but has never offered full attribute support. It wanted to see everything as a switch or dimmer... resulting in a lot of virtual devices to get attributes and commands back and forth. This resulted in me working with the Developer of what became HubConnect. That lead me to two changes, 1) adding a third hub as 'coordinator' (aka HubConnect Server) and dedicating it to being the hub for everything that wasn't Zwave or Zigbee. 2) adding some Zigbee devices, a lot of those Iris v2 and v3 Motion sensors for their really quick responses.
All of the Zigbee devices are on a single hub, the one that was dedicated to "Upstairs", which was initially because the first Zigbee devices were located upstairs Today, I have Zigbee devices all over the house, driven mostly by my desire to have controllable ceiling fans. I held off using those Hampton Bay Fan Controllers because they were Zigbee and I wanted ZWave. Finally I could wait no longer and I got 5 of the Fan Controllers and because they demanded a Zigbee repeater in the same room, I got a fist full of the Iris Power socket (Wall Wart). Over time I've replaced most of them with in-wall Zigbee to improve the "look' and reduce the occasions when the family decided they needed to plug something in directly and pulled the wall wart.
Late last year I purchased a C-7 and started moving a few devices over. My idea was to continue the "location" plan and started calling it "Front" -- more than a third of my devices are located towards the front of my home, both upstairs and down. The C-7 is in my garage, high enough to be considered "between floors" and I've now moved about 31 ZWave devices from the other two and in total, it has 41 devices, zero Zigbee.
With 4 Hubitat hubs joined via HubConnect and a Lutron SmartBridge Pro integrated with all 4 (what an Excellent integration Hubitat did with that) I've also added Homebridge and Node-Red. I've spent so many hours working on a Home Assistant solution, but even today, it's in mothballs. It's not a satisfying experience. It's very frustrating to use and when one does achieve a success, the satisfaction remains below the frustration.
I have 4 Hubitat Hubs, 2 of them exclusively ZWave, 1 mixed ZWave and Zigbee, and 1 with no Z-Radios enabled. The ZWave devices are split by Location, while Zigbee is whole house on one hub. Each of the Z-Device hubs have 40+ devices. The fourth Hub has almost all of the devices (160) in their virtual form via HubConnect.
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What security cameras are you using?
I use ReoLink. Really happy with them.
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I run HE, HA and HomeKit (via homebridge)
HA primarily for dashboards and remote control and HE for my automations and zwave /zigbee devices.
HA also fills a void for a few oddball integrations that I canāt easily achieve in HE and for some sensors Iāve built running ESPHome.
With the ability to push events from HE to HA and vice versa, I find the combination just plugs a few holes that HE alone wouldnāt do for me.
HA - definitely more of a learning curve and Iām always less confident about hitting the update button and expecting the update to take place without something breaking and the ensuing āfaff timeā in figuring out why. Whilst always room for bugs or issues, HE for the most part been issue free and the HE team have done a commendable job in retaining backwards compatibility as the product has evolved (eg new versions of RM).
Whilst I know many people run exclusively HA and have great success with that, for reliability between updates and the āno faff factorā, HE wins the race for me. I donāt think even the most hardcore HA fan would not dread the often long list of breaking changes in each release. I often find that features are released a little too early, take for example the new energy monitoring capability in HA - Iāve spent hours knee deep in yaml trying to get it to recognise my smart plugs ..
I think Iāll likely retain the combination of HA and HE for the foreseeable as I donāt think HE will ever have the sort of dashboard capability and interface customisation that HA has - I just donāt think this is their focus for this product and whilst there are various third party options available, none of these come close to the level of customisation that can be achieved with HA (not withstanding the huge faff factor that comes with that though!!).
What I do hope though is that there will be some attention to the UI/UX for rule machine because itās very easy to get lost when you head down the rabbit hole of complex rules and trying to navigate these from drop down selections alone
Homebridge - this is used solely for the deep iOS integration - itās very convenient to be able to control some devices this way without waiting for a HA or HE dashboard to load so will likely remain a convenience to be retained ..
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As long as your cameras have an IP address on your subnet then you don't need to use your workshop hub to handle the cameras you can still use your main hub right?
Additionally you could maybe do a wired backhaul with the Orbi using a set of powerline adapters and increase bandwidth. If your shop is on a different panel then powerline won't work I think.
I currently have two reolink cameras in the barn feeding back to the house over a wireless bridge system.
The plan is to replace the bridge with fiber. Then put the entire barn on its own subnet as I have other control and monitoring devices there.
Whether to just subnet it off the house or put a second hub there is currently my debate. I have zigbee devices to monitor fans, temperature, septic levels etc. hence my thought to separate the barn on its own hub.
Thanks.
Thanks dan-edge. Most helpful. I tried HassleIO/Home Assistant as well. I too got ran off by the continual breakage that came with every update. I was just way too frustrating for an "operational" home automation system. It did have cool dashboards.
My Hubitat is for control and monitoring so simple dashboards are my choice. 8 inch or 10 inch Amazon fires will fill the bill.
I have a Smartthings hub, a Hue hub, a Sylvania/Oshram hub, and a couple others on the shelf gathering dust.
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Okay I'm a bit confuses - you can have multiple HE hubs on the same subnet so certainly you could do that and still get the benefit of extended coverage. Ah I think I'm beginning to understand a bit - you want to isolate the security stuff?
