It's my 1st post on the hubitat Community. I have been on Smartthings for quite long. I have built a complex setup with hubs in different locations under 1 account and I have finally got a hubitat and considering the move to a centralised Hubitat configuration as smartthings doesn't allow anymore mixing EU and NA locations under 1 account. I need to have all my locations under 1 account as i have rules that span the different locations.
I'm looking for advice on how should I best setup. Before I start, let me say that I'm starting to play around with hubitat and I'm loving everything except one thing. Why cannot we access configuration control remotely! why do we need VPN or so for that. This is a basic control requirement of every smarthome, if you don't live in same location !!
Anyway, here you go with my setup
I have locations with NA zwave currently all on smartthings
1 location with EU zwave on smartthings
I'm planning to start migrating my main NA location and follow that slowly with the others leveraging hubconnect in the meantime. Any suggestions? can I keep relying on this setup for long or do u recommend moving to hubitat in all locations.
I have some managed properties that I have been moving slowly to Hubitat. I have to VPN in to do the work remotely which I like because it makes the platform very secure. In addition I have the family hubs, my house, my mom and mother in-law, etc.
The cloud dashboard URL allows me to "control" the remote location and that is really the only remote access I need when the systems are complete and stable and doesn't require a VPN to use and works very well. Look at the dashboard app, create a dashboard there and you will find two links on it's configuration page, one for local one for internet access.
What I have found it's best to let the owner have the account and register their own hubs and the I add my account to their portal account so I can do the maintenance.
For my family hubs I still have to VPN into the remote locations but all 3 are under one account.
I love that Hubitat gets this right. All the other Hub's I've used got it wrong by mixing User and Admin. If you're going to give your family access to a Dashboard, why (in SmartThings case) ALSO allow the 7 yr old to Admin the hub?
Segregating Admin is one of the top 3 features of Hubitat in my opinion. VPN is just TOO easy to implement these days. Our homes are made up of 60+ always-on devices that together combine into a "System" and I can't get my mind around the idea that one more always-on device makes it BAD somehow.
You can rely on HubConnect between multiple Hubitat Hubs for a long time. However, running HubConnect on SmartThings may become problematic once Samsung shuts down their Legacy Groovy IDE. Since HubConnect is currently Groovy code, it will cease to run on ST once the Groovy IDE is shut down in 2021 (per Smansung's announcement in the ST Community.) If the author(s) of HubConnect decide to re-implement the ST portion of HubConnect using the "New ST API", then it is possible that it could continue to function. I am not aware of whether or not @srwhite plans on continuing to support HubConnect on the "new" SmartThings.
I'm not convinced that @srwhite even knows about SmartThing's plan to shut. It's 'gotten real" only after he went camping in April.
It must also be said that I've asked ST twice to give greater detail on the ideas they've outlined. Silence. I'm sure they're busy and probably are waiting to speak to @srwhite directly.
You might say that Steve has two hobbies.. Home Automation, which is Hubitat centric these days, and Camping. He allocates 6 months to each, on an exclusive basis. We get the November - April slice
Yep that was the major negative of SmartThings, Install the app they can change the configuration. In those cases I gave the client ActionTiles for device control and they were able to keep the SmartThings app on their device and understood that they never had to use it but it did provide the notifications of events.
I started with Staples Connect, at the time, the big news was not SmartThings, but Revolve. I looked at Wink (bought a Wink 1) when it was time to give up on Staples. All of them had gotten it wrong. They went App centric, Hubitat didn't. Maybe that's the clue?
Thx all for the replies ! Another positive for hubitat. A great community!! Thx all
On Admin access, the thing is that you might want to add a rule or remove a rule that you don't like any more from a remote location as behaviours change with time, or you might just want to set things up to add new device handlers or apps in preparation before you arrive there for adding new devices to save setup time when you are at the location. All that requires that you vpn. The challenge with vpn is that its not always that these locations have routers with vpn and the vpn is anyway an additional point of failure to your ability to manage remotely. Or you might not have access to routers in certain location when the router is owned by the ISP or telco.
Simply, lack of remote Admin access is going to be a challenge. Hubitat could have provided remote admin access with special login requirements, to avoid regular dashboard users or app users from messing things up if that is the concern ....
On the hubconnect with ST, it seems unfortunately I also can't rely on it for long. which means at some point I have to manually remove and add all devices to new hubitat hubs .... a nightmare process for 100s of devices .... Fingers crossed that @srwhite continues his support to tge new ST APIs !
The VPN I use to manage my 6 Hubitat hubs is OpenVPN App installed on my Phone, Tablet, and Laptop. There's an OpenVPN App installed on an always-on computer in my home. The two Ends build a VPN between them. I go to a restaurant, I pull out my phone, click the OpenVPN app, I click Enable, and 2-3 seconds later it says it's connected. That's it. To get ANY easier, you'll need to hire someone to carry your phone too.
So.. after taking that 3-5 second 'detour', I open my Browser and I'm Admin'ng my Hubitat. The grand total has to be less than 10 seconds. The ONLY reason it's faster inside my house is because I usually leave the Browser up on my desktop.
But I must confess to almost never doing it any longer. Mostly because my Hubitat journey is over 2 years old and it's pretty much the way I want it. I do open a VPN virtually every time I go to a restaurant, because otherwise I'm the only person not looking at their fingers. And after I open it I open the app to look at my Cameras. Those are more interesting anyway.
One VPN, 3 seconds, I'm in my house remotely, countless apps...
A lot of people use a Raspberry Pi as the always-on endpoint inside the home, and another bunch use an always on NAS. I use an always on Mac Mini, that is a Media Server primarily. All of them are functionally indistinguishable.
thx @csteele . My concern is not using the vpn as much as setting it up at first I probably have to do my homework of researching a bit on VPN servers. the thing is that many locations don't even have a fixed or public ip address. I'm not sure on the impact this means on the vpn. Anyway, I believe this us now getting off topic and I admit I have to do my homework research on vpn servers. I was just thinking Hubitat could have saved me this if they had something similar to ST's IDE ...
I installed TeamViewer to remotely admin my hub on rare occasions I need. It's easy to install and free but does require it running on a machine on network with hub.
thanks for all the replies and tips on the VPN front. I will be looking into if ensbling the VPN server on my Orbi router or getting a raspberry pi will be better for that.
Couple more questions on Hubconnect:
would hubconnect continue to work with smartthings after the sunset of the classic app, even if I dont do the migration to the new smartthings app ?
would hubconnect work with 2 remote smartthings hubs , each under a different smartthings account ?
Assuming the smartapp shows up in the new apps smartapp section, and all the devices work as intended in the new app, then it should work. Make sure that child devices are not components, as you can’t automate components. You can automate separate devices, so make sure in the DTH, in the initializing of the child device code, to change isComponent: from true to false.
Maybe. Try it! However, their is no documentation that says this is possible. Maybe @srwhite, the developer or HubConnect, will know.
HubConnect works with the new App, so the sunset of the classic shouldn't alter that. It's the sunset of Groovy and the IDE that will affect HubConnect. The existing version won't survive that, obviously, but we all have to wait til November for @srwhite to decide the direction.
Thx @csteele !
I have now installed the server and the 1st client on ST. Its working great and I'm being able to control devices on ST !!
that said, as I moved on to my 2nd location on new Smartthings app. im unable to connect. I noticed though that im on hubconnect 1.64 . I installed it as notes say its the latest production version. Do I need version 2 to support new Smartthings app ? And is 2 now stable?
Thx @csteele
I'm currently on it installing v2.0 RC2
There is only 1 groovy file that is RC2 specific with no instructions of where to install
its the hubconnect-remote-hub-Smartthings
where should I install this one ?
I have installed the remote client smartapp in smartthings and the remote-hub driver in hubitat drivers. There are no instructions mentioning the file above, or did I miss something?
And after I open it I open the app to look at my Cameras. Those are more interesting anyway.
I probably have to do my homework of researching a bit on VPN servers. the thing is that many locations don't even have a fixed or public ip address. I'm not sure on the impact this means on the vpn. Anyway, I believe this us now getting off topic and I admit I have to do my homework research on vpn servers. I was just thinking Hubitat could have saved me this if they had something similar to ST's IDE ...
