Hi,
I purchased my Hubitat Elevation (aka HE) ~2 weeks ago and have in that time moved all my Z-Wave devices moved to HE (with the exception of a Fibaro RGBW dimmer). I have no Zigbee devices to move because I initially had trouble with Zigbee on my VeraPlus so just stayed with Z-Wave.
So far I am much happier with HE for a number of reasons; some of which are:
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Not linked to the internet. On my Vera I found post purchase that all timed functions are tied to the internet because there is no internal clock at all
With HE, I could if I wished completely disconnect from the internet and still write apps and drivers, download to my PC the hub configuration.
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I see many more features and greater flexibility in the HE. For instance, the dashboard which at first seemed a little spartan turns out be extremely useful. Currently I have one for lighting status and another with only a few key devices that has attained a high WAF! I simply created a home page icon on her smartphone and she can control the main devices with ease. NO 3rd party apps required.
My lighting status page is one screen with all switch and dimmer current status and the ability to control each device. No wasted screen space!
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I realize firmware updates have the potential of negative results but with Vera I had experienced complete scrambling the configuration on two updates, is too much. So far HE has had stable updates albeit not many yet.
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HE internal resources are much greater than Vera, I believe this will be a deciding factor as HE gains capability.
The only (hopefully temporary for me) con for HE is that groovy is flakey For those of us that grew up with simpler languages (basic, C and even VBA) the mind set is taking some time. However I am getting the hang of it.
Just to complete my story; many of the folks in the forum had come from ST so they had a head start with HE (which is largely based on the ST system). They have been extremely helpful an allowed me to pickup the basics pretty quickly.
This is my unsolicited personal opinion, I'm writing this for those folks who are right now considering HE for a home automation platform, the same place I was 3 weeks ago. I hope it proves helpful.
John
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We have slowed the rate at which we make releases just a little bit, to allow for more testing before release. However, we've made 11 releases in the 5 months since Hubitat Elevation was first released. We are sensitive to backwards compatibility concerns, which sometimes are actually difficult to handle. We don't want to blow anyone's system out of the water with a new release.
All of us live with Hubitat Elevation installed in our homes, and our spouses are as sensitive as anyone's to the home not becoming a flaky HA mess.
Thanks for your review of your experience! We appreciate it.
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Thank you for this post. I'm currently running a Vera Plus (mostly trouble-free at the moment) but am toying with migrating to HE. I've been reading these forums trying to educate myself as much as possible (looking into how things work, checking for supported devices etc.) in order to make an informed decision. Hopefully more people will add their similar experiences.
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Thanks for sharing your take on things! Really love to hear from our customers, especially the good stuff
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I agree with this. Except for some occasional hiccups, such as pairing can be a pain at times. Hubitat is awesome! I just need more devices to play around with, lol!
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I officially retired my Vera Plus today. I received my HE on Monday, and moved over the last of my 24 devices (a stubborn Telguard GDC1) today. I have most of my "scenes" replicated as rules, albeit occasionally using sometimes very different logic. I've much more to look into and learn in that area.
So far, so good...
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I am currently running a Vera Plus as well and back in the day was on Smarthings and it was my first dive into HA. If it wasn't for bravenel's Rule Machine back then I don't think I would have continued with HA. I have just ordered my HE today and can't wait to dive in. Not looking forward to moving all the devices over again but I'm going to try the "Controller Shift" method and attempt to avoid all the exclude/include's.
On a side note this forum software is leaps and bounds better that the old school one Vera is using.
I'll update on my experience as soon as I have moved some stuff over from the Vera.
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I hope you enjoy your HE as much as I do. I know the HE is behind VeraPlus in the number of built in drivers. However new ones are coming out regularly and if you are willing to work with groovy you can write your own apps and drivers.
Good luck
Don't waste too much time on this! If it doesn't work right off, you can burn through time in a hurry, which could be spent actually re-pairing the devices.
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Thanks for the tip. My thoughts as well. I thought maybe I could still keep the Vera as a secondary controller while I transitioned all my automation over and made sure all my devices worked on the HE.
Thank you JohnRob. Hopefully we can pull over some more great users from the Vera forum as well.
I 2nd Bruce. Don't spend too much time... I did, so you won't have to !!
I did it back when Hubitat didn't yet have HubLink and 90% of the Driver migration hadn't been attempted yet. Search for your devices here in the community and you'll find a large number of them have been made available, either embedded in hubitat (native) or as available code to paste in.
There's been a real slowdown in the number of posts about "what about this device?" Not gone by any means, just very much lower than a 3-4 months ago.
Unfortunately there's no Vera equivalent of the Smartthings App for Hub Link. That is currently the best way, and had it been available when my Hubitat arrived, I would probably not have done the Controller Shift method.
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