Home Assistant is a software system - you have to install their distro on a computer or VM as far as I know.
I did this on an Rpi 3 and used a z-wave/zigbee stick from an older model Hubitat (C-4) to set up pairings for a few devices as a test. Worked fined - also there are a ton of plugins you can use. It should be mentioned that there is a community app that allows connectivity between the Hubitat and Home Assistant. There are folks here using that with good success as well. I just have it talking to my Node-RED instance right now.
Everything is a app that runs overtop of hardware. If hubitat would allow their software to be distributed independent of the hub it would just be software.
It seems like you want a turnkey solution and just pay someone to do it. Unfortunately as most people here have discovered there is no such thing. Different solutions will provide different Pro's and Cons. I started the moved from ST about 9 months ago. For the most part it has been painless. As someone suggested earlier here I was even able to port some of my apps from ST to HE to help streamline some functions.
I think the big questions are what are the limitations of each platform and how tolerant of of the pros and cons are you.
Can HE be your only hub? It certainly can depending on the gear you have and what you want it to do. In my case the only tasks that are handled outside of HE are Arlo Cameras since HE doesn't have Arlo integration. This is what Node-Red actually processes for me. Node-Red with the Samsung Automation Studio pallet allows me to pull ST data into HE. I am going to continue to use ST in a hubless manor for integrations that don't exist in HE but do in ST.
Nothing against HA, but it has a history of being very complex and kind of a time sink. Perhaps that will be good for you since you want to code in VS. It is a very powerful software solution. If you want to use HA all you need to do get a Raspberry Pi and follow the directions on HA's website to do the install. There really is no reason to ask someone to install it for you, and since it is community driven there are not turnkey options for it. Keep in mind with HA it doesn't natively setup Zigbee/Zwave radios or connectivity.
Back to HE, one thing to consider if you are going to write apps in VS, you could write VS code for HTTP endpoints and interface them with Maker API on HE.
Node-Red could be used instead of VS as it basically is a man in the middle to use pallets to translate between home automation tools.
My apologies! was under the assumption you wanted to be able to write code and be able to control system level stuff so that's what I was recommending.
If you want a complete system without messing with anything then that's cool too - if you are in the US then check out Control4 or Savant. Those platforms are very pricey but their certified consultants will take care of everything for you.
The other option is going all Lutron - Ra2 or HomeWorks (Caseta might not have the range of devices depending upon what you are looking for). HE can interface with these with the appropriate bridge.. note: I have only played around with Caseta but others can chime in..
Let me try to explain on the small concrete example.
in every room, I have main and supplementary lights. The main light is quite straightforward and can be implemented in every rule system.
But I am trying to make supplementary smart,
motion sensors (in a home mode)
at this moment it has 3 levels of brightness depending on the time of the day
it matches (on/off, color temp) to the main light when the main light is on
so at this moment, I have 5 rules for every room in my ST. I like the current setup, but
supplementary light turns off when there is little motion, even when the main light on
vacuum cleaner triggers lights randomly. so motion feature should be turned off in the room where the vacuum is operating (I need UDP support to tell where is the cleaner)
it would be nice to match the brightness to the average brightness of the light sensors, not only 3 levels for different time periods.
I want the wall switch to turn off the supplementary light if it was on more than 3 seconds without the main light. In the current config, I have to click twice on the button: first to turn on the main light, then to turn off both.
It is not possible to conduct these experiments fast and keep rules consistent.
The no-code rule machine already became unmaintainable for my configuration, but my home is not only lights, but also thermostats, heaters, TVs and media, locks.
I want to quickly experiment at the application level, relying on the system doing the low-level chores with device drivers, connectivity, security, and so on.
It is not a PI in any way. There is a custom circuit board with Zigbee, Zwave, and other chips, and I don't see any passing resemblance to a PI. I believe it might run Linux under the hood, but even that seems to be a customized form of it, not something you could just download and run on any hardware.
I can see how this could be implemented using the setup I use, also probably in standard HE as well - although if you have coding experience the Rule Manager apps may not be to your liking at least initially. Of course there also might be some gotchas like loc tracking the smartvac or absolute color light syncing (level should be okay) if the bulbs are different but everything seems doable with some technical effort.
For the technically minded creating rules can be done via:
Custom Apps coded in Groovy.
Companion Server running Node-RED (and other stuff) linked back to HE via Maker API
WebCoRE
Using Home Assistant instead of Hubitat. Note - can also link to Hubitat as well..
Using some other external system connected by Maker API / Websockets, or some custom or community app (MQTT, etc).
Note: you might also not like the visual flow style of Node-RED there are some coders and other techies here who do not but I've found it to be extremely logical and very easy to maintain larger rule (sequence) sets.
I have 173 "devices" as of this morning. ("some are virtual devices") all running on my single HE7 with no other hubs or controllers.
The speed is fine. I do have about five each Zigbee and Z-Wave repeaters which I found to be necessary for reliability within each mesh. Some people use multiple Hubitat's in a supported mesh configuration but I think that is mostly users who upgraded to a newer Hubitat model and are just keeping the old hub in action for sentimental reasons. There may be a few users with large houses that benefit from two Hubitat hubs.
I have assorted Sonoff, Xiaomi, and Aqara devices including the cube and I have been able to get all of them to work within Hubitat but I believe Zigbee repeaters help. I just use Sonoff Zigbee plug in outlets as repeaters. Two for about $25 on Amazon.
wow, this is impressive. Projecting my usage it would be ~ 4 hundreds of rules. It's even hard to find the right app without a search.
How do you manage the routines\modes in your large setup?
Hubitat has a built-in Mode and Motion Lighting Control app that does everything you want. Here is the screen shot of most of my bathroom mode and motion control. It turns on the lights at 100% during the day with a five-minute turn-off delay and less bright in the evening and night with a one-minute turn-off delay.
I use the built-in Zone Motion Aggregation app to trigger the lights with motion sensors over my wife's sink, over my sink, above the shower, and above the potty.
I also keep all the lights on while my cleaning lady is in the house so she doesn't have to deal with the lights.
on the ST my calculation is for 2 light sources, a button, and a motion tracker I have
3 "turn on and set level" on motion rules
turn off when motion stops
lights sync rule
normal on\off on button click
turn off everything when I'm leaving home
want to add
turn off second light when button clicked
disable motion when the vacuum cleaner is operating
so 7 - 9 rules for 4 devices only for light.
Now I have 5 rooms (kitchen, bathroom + 2 rooms) with two light sources and a living room with 4 light sources and 6 switches and an Aqara cube.
Add smart thermostats, vacuum with per-room cleaning. 48 devices\ incl virtual total, and more than 60 rules at this moment.
I think you can do everything you listed in the bullet points in Motion Lighting, with only 1 rule. You might need some additional virtual switches, or additional modes for things like the vacuum, but essentially you don't need anything approaching 9 rules for this relatively straightforward automation.
That would be crazy if you needed that many rules in something like Hubitat. Maybe in a dumber system like Smartthings you might need 9 rules, but even then I think that is a lot.
I agree with @neonturbo. You can combine most of your rules down to just a few. Some devices may need a couple of rules based on some weird outlier that is difficult but that shouldn't be the norm.
Here's a rule that turns off everything, locks the door, and sets the alarm once my wife and I are both in bed. There are about 200ish devices in this rule.
Just moved two homes, two Smartthings Hubs, to 1x Hubitat Hub at one location and 2x Hubitat Hubs at the other.. The mesh feature to get multiple hubs to work together is amazing.. The backup features are awesome, and everyone can tell a difference of responsiveness over smartthings.
I have a TON of google hubs, etc. in the home and I love the community google home integration app because it gives me full control over how google home sees devices. Its an optional app you can install using the Hubitat Package Manager, also community made.
Overall it took me about two weeks to get fully converted over to hubitat, and it was worth every second of the work.
Also I decided to go with Webcore vs Rule Engine. I just really like whats been done with that and it works great on these hubitat hubs.
