Working in IT Iām used to see āuser storiesā to create value streams etc. So, I thought I write my own āuser storyā about migration from Smartthings to Hubitat.
Iām writing this hoping it will find itās way to someone at the developing team of Hubitat and for anyone else who might be interested to read about the switch from SmartThings (ST) Hubitat (HE).
Iāve been using ST for about 5 years and had about 130 devices (mix of Z-wave, Zigbee and some WiFi). I started with internal ST app to setup automations but soon found that it did not have the complexity I was looking for, so I moved to Webcore and have been using it ever since.
I have not been very active in forums or looking at news for the last years as everything was running smoothly so you can imagine my surprise when I received the mail from ST saying, āwe will destroy everything you build in ST starting 15th of Octoberā (at least they gave me a month heads-up!).
Once I stopped running around with my arms stretched over my head and the panic stopped, I ordered Z-wave and Zigbee dongles for my Raspberry PI 4 (RPi) and said to my self āwell itās time to move to Home Assistant (HA)ā. Once I setup the RPi with HA and did my first simple automation. I soon realized I was not smart enough to do complex automations in HA (the fall was high, and landing was hard) as Iām not a developer or at least it would take A LOT of time to learn. With tears in my eyes googled the internet and found Hubitat, I had heard about this product but as my ST setup was running fine, I never explored it before.
As I was sitting at home clapping my hands like a child on Christmas wating for my HE to arrive and reading up on how to migrate from ST to HE, thinking to myself āthis will be even better then STā but unfortunately here is where it takes a turn for the worse.
Starting with the setup of HE, easy enough following the next, next finish all good so far. I then decided to move the HE from my DHCP range to a fixed IP. I changed the IP setting in HE and my router. After two days of troubleshooting and a couple software resets on HE I decided to let it have the initial IP and make that static (in the middle of my DHCP range), and said to my self āI will fix that laterā donāt get me wrong, I have been working as an IT technician since 1995 so I know my way around IT stuff (hence my interest in smart home appliance) but I moved on.
Letās migrate my devices, it will be fun they said! (or?), I hade no problems with Zigbee but Z-wave is a different story. I was used to ST where I could from anywhere in the house add/remove Z-wave devices. This is not the case with HE as I learned after a couple of hours of trying, but with a 10-meter TP-cable and some swearing I mange to get some Z-wave devices migrated, however some devices (mostly Fibaro) would not migrate. Tested to put them back in to ST and sure enough without any hassle it was back in ST. So, I bought a coupe of new Qubino devices to replace the ābad onceā, but with them I hade to work an average of about 30 minutes each to get them installed. Still I was in a pretty good mood as this is a one time job (I thought) as I have NEVER lost a Z-wave device in ST, some times I had to reconnect Zigbee devices but never Z-waveā¦..until now. However, itās been stable now for a couple of days āso cross my fingersā.
Ok so I got all my devices in to HE except Ring.com devices and a couple of other devices like some Ikea devices that I read a BS article about that it was not possible because bla bla blaā¦..but they worked flawless in ST (I wonder how that could be???) any how after spending a small fortune to replace ānot workingā devices it was time for Webcore migration.
Yet another article saying āhey is so easy and fun, just duplicate your pistons from ST to HE ā (made the name up as I donāt want to point any fingers) easy enough right! After duplicating almost all pistons HE became unresponsive, could not even get a ārestore backupā on it. Again āSoftware resetā and restore!? Or notā¦. Now the database was corrupt. To make a long story short I ended up at āStarting with the setupā (see above) meaning I was back at square one minus IP problem as I skip that part this time.
One week later!
Now, I was considering that the HE was broken (still do) but I needed to narrow down the problem. I found that Webcore was the villain. It looks as you canāt just duplicate pistons with complexity to HE at least not what I experience. So, I had to rewrite everything in Webcore, at least I could use old automations as blueprints.
Finally, everything was in place and my life could go back to normalā¦.mmmā¦noā¦not realy!!!
This is where phase 2 starts. I call it āSometimesā
Sometimes aka random. This happens when I run automations in Webcore, sometimes it runs ok. Sometimes it runs ok and still dose not do what itās told to do, even though it reports to have done it.
For example: I have a simple automation that turns on/off lights outside at different times. Turns on the lights in the afternoon 30 min to sunset, off at 01:30, on at 06:00 if not after sunrise and of again 30 past sunrises. Some days it runs flawlessly and sometimes it skips one or two triggers, but it doesnāt really skip the triggers it actuality skips the action of the trigger as I can see in the automation that it has triggered. It just thought it was not important to do the action this time around. Even the logs in HE says it has turned on/off lights and sometimes the device is āstatusā on or off even through is the opposite. This can be explained in some cases as it sometimes turns on lights with light level 0% without any reason but in this case it a switch without ālevel settingā. Should also mention that these are controlled by native device handlers (DH) from HE. I thought this could be a Webcore problem, so I then created rules in āBasic rulesā same problem there! WTā¦!?
A workaround that Iām testing now is to crate automations with a setting ārepeat loopā until condition is met, but this is something you donāt want to use unless you must as it can cause other problems.
Conclusion:
Anyone who feels offended don't! You donāt have to stand up for HE, as most people probably did not experience any of these problems, these are MY conclusions. Iām not mad or angry at Hubitat it wasnāt they who put me in this situation it was Smartthings, but I wonāt write what I think about themā¦. I still have a lot to learn about the Hubitat but as Iām stuck in āSometimesā phase troubleshooting I donāt get around to the discovery phase.
Smartthings pros and cons
Hubitat pros and cons
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Itās unreliable
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Could not find any support except forums and HW support
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Difficult to add Z-wave devices
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Can āsometimesā take seconds for lights to turn on
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No indication if a device is offline (or hub)
If I could have a which list to Hubitat it would be:
Have a native app to check devises on/offline status. This is crucial as many have heating systems and burglar alarms connected (me include) that canāt be offline. Yes I know there are apps that dose this but not to 100% and this should be native.
Native support for big brands like Nest, Ring, Arlo, etc.
A XXL optional Hubitat hardware with 10x radio signal and better....everything!