Migrating from SmartThings to Hubitat

Kudos to @JHoke for taking the time to share his hands on experience of migrating his Home Automation system to an "ecosystem that does not rely on connectivity to the internet for functionality".

With our newly created category, we hope others will share their experience of "Migrating to Hubitat" from other platforms.

You can read John's blog here:

....as an added bonus, you may want to check out his other article about WebCore as a local solution running on Hubitat.

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Thanks!

That post about WebCoRE is really just distilling a bunch of bits on this and the webcore forums - so I dont forget anything later when I blow things up and have to fix it (as I tend to do on a regular basis....)

Its me who should be thanking you all at Hubitat (and all the folks here who have helped me) for giving me an option that maintains my WAF levels - all while improving the security and availability of my ecosystem

Cheers!

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Great summary. I'm just starting my migration from ST to Hubitat for the same reasons (local, secure, stability, etc...). I am in the process of building out my light automation and will seriously consider the Caseta Pro hub. I understand it plays nice with Hubitat and it was easy for you to switch your existing Lutron hardware to the Caseta Pro. Would you recommend the Lutron/Caseta Pro implementation for someone not tied to the Lutron ecosystem (i.e. would you have used another solution if you didn't already have all the Lutron/Pico switches installed?). The Philips Hue hub looks like another option. My preference would be to pick one local hub to connect to all 3rd party hardware.

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Depends on where you want to go. Hue Bridge is limited to only zigbee light link (ZLL) bulbs and a few motion sensors and remotes.

Lutron can support dimmers, switches, pico remotes, shades and more. The pro hub is limited to 50 devices, but Hubitat does support more than one pro hub.

Other options are bulbs, dimmers and switches directly to hubitat as well.

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Light Automation is certainly a broad and varied subject. Of the 70 devices in my home, only 3 are bulbs. They are the least flexible of my options, in my opinion. They need to go into fixtures where the manual switch can be disabled. There's just no way around the fact that if you turn off power to the bulb, automation can never turn it back on.

I put 2 of my bulbs into Lamps and then removed the little knob for the embedded switch. The third went outdoors above the BBQ and the manual switch is high enough off the ground that no 'accidental' power off occurs.

In every other circumstance where I want to control lights, I replace the manual switch/socket/receptacle with a ZWave device. This means that the manual (physical) changes are never stepping on the automation capability. (Read other discussions here about the Status Reporting of certain devices and in 2018 why you might want to avoid investing in those.)

In the space occupied when we have guests over, especially the Kitchen, I replaced all the switches and sockets with really good looking Legrand Adorne line just weeks before I decided to go all in on Home Automation. Therefore I put the amazingly tiny ZWave modules behind the switches. Now those Adorne switches are connected only to the ZWave module and the module does the real work of turning on/off lights. (I started by using the Aeon MicroSwitches but have since moved over to the Qubino, although I have an Aeon Nano here in my 'spare parts pile.')

The Lutron Caseta line is well rated and deservedly so. Hue is very popular but both are SYSTEMS and are limited to only what THEY want to have within their system. You're already getting a "system" via Hubitat and why hide one system behind another?

What you do NEED ( in my not so humble opinion ) is a Lutron Smart Hub PRO. There's only one thing I will ever use mine for and that's Pico remotes. There's nothing on the market that comes close to the value of a Pico when looking at the intersection of Humans and Home Automation. You can stick a Pico in so many places - especially the places where the Builder made a big mistake and did NOT put a light switch where humans normally expect to find them... or gang up 3 or 4 wide, even if the light controlled is on the other side of the house. I have a Pico on the headboard of all the beds in the house (using 3m Command strips) and naturally they turn on/off lights and fans in the room. For me, the press-and-hold feature is used to 'reach outside of' the room and turn lights on/off that fit into the Sure-would-be-nice-To category. Maybe make sure the front door got locked.

Picos talk to the Lutron hub, which talks to the Hubitat, which talks to the ZWave devices, yet the result is amazingly fast. (I have intentionally avoided Zigbee, so I say "ZWave" but in most cases it could be either.) The first time I tried a Pico and the light came on as if I had flipped the wall switch, I was so amazed I was only able to stop after 20 or so pushes.

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