I have the following hardware:
2 x Echo Show 10 (with integrated Zigbee radios)
2 x HUE Bridges (North & South)
8 x HUE bulbs (across 2 HUE bridges)
4 x Generic RGBW Zigbee Bulbs (Linked to Echo Show)
4 x HomeSeer HS200+ Dimmer
4 x Zooz Dimmers
2 x HomeSeer HS100 Switch
3 x IKEA Tradfri LED drivers (mostly cabinet lighting)
1 x Zooz RGBW LED driver
1 x HomeSeer Hometroller Pi (not really used)
With the mix of hardware and software (HUE, Alexa, Hubitat and HomeSeer, Zooz) - I'm finding that maintaining stuff is a pain in the ■■■... room definitions across devices and software configurations, importing "scenes", etc.
And now Alexa is starting to either forget that certain lights are in certain rooms, or just keeps reporting that "device is not responding" when it's perfectly responsive from some other software controller.
I'm considering removing the Echo Show 10's and HUE bridges, and moving entirely to Hubitat as a control hub for everything... is that advisable?
How easy is it to "unbind" a HUE device from a bridge and re-attach to Hubitat?
Is there a difference in the Zigbee bonding process that makes it harder for Hubitat hardware than others (e.g. I simply could not get the IKEA Tradfri LED drivers to link with Hubitat, but it worked first time with Echo).?
Any other hints/tips on how to make this easier.
(My wife pointed out that, if I die tomorrow - she's totally f**ked if she wants to turn the lights on... I'm literally having to write an operators manual for the house!)
I would like to suggest keeping the Hue bridge and keeping all Zigbee lights on the Hue Bridge, they are known to be very bad repeaters and that is what I experienced in my home. HE has a Hue Bridge connect app that will expose all those lights to HE so that all automations are on the HE hub and the Hue Bridge acts more like an isolator between two zigbee meshes in your home.
Having one single conductor for the automations is usually better than having 2 or more especially when they stop talking to each other or if two conductors try to make the same player do different things!
I had Hue, and had a similar thought...getting rid of it to simplify the infrastructure. But I discovered other mentions that Hue bulbs are sketchy when paired directly to Hubitat. I sold all my bulbs on Ebay and installed smart swtiches and dumb bulbs. This is very cost effective but also means no color bulbs...if you want that you can find other Zigbee bulbs such as Sengled.
Unbinding the bulbs on Hue was easy, just remove them using the Hue app. Then they are ready to be paired on another system. If you don't do this, factory resetting requires you to have a very specific Hue switch, hold it up next to the bulb, and hold down 2 buttons for 10 seconds.
Also if you get rid of Alexa you lose voice control. A big loss if its something you use and enjoy.
I too like the hybrid approach mentiond by @nclark. All things considered, there are few complaints about the Hue/Hubitat integration, and there are a couple of alternate integrations available, such as CoCoHue that work excellently, and offer different features than the native integration.
I have a significant number of Hue bulbs around my house, and find that with CoCoHue and Hubitat RM, I have few to no problems with my integrations. Keeping the bulbs on the Hue hub is beneficial for me, although I've heard others express that they prefer the direct connect method, as they get faster state change responses when direct connected.
Not to mention, having the Hue hub as a backup control mechanism for your bulbs is quite nice.
