The only issues I have had with the Innr bulbs was when I upgraded to the C8, they prevented my older Zgbee stuff fom pairng, which inturn prevented me from building out the mesh (what little mesh I have) in the propper manner. The Innr are the closest to the hub, but I had to pair them last after the older zigbee stuff (further away) was paired. the Innr re SUPPOSED to repeat, so it would have been ideal to have them as repeaers, but that didnt wrk out. now its just time to transition the last few zigbee devics away.
That is crazy. I have never had an issue with anything pairing but my stuff has been all newer devices. That could be the difference.
I have 2 Hubitats and HA. Here's how I have it set up at the moment-
Hubitat 1 is a C-8 Pro. It handles all my devices, for the most part. There are a few devices that and integrations that HA handles better, but more on that later. But the main idea is that this one hub handles all essential devices, like lighting, sensors, switches, locks, keypads, etc. Whether they are Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter, or network, this is the main connection point and controller for those devices. This Hubitat only does the critical things, like this button turns on that light, or handling lock codes. Basically if you interact with a physical device to control another physical device, this Hubitat handles all those basic operations.
Hubitat 2 is a C-5. This basically the "Automations Hub". This hub handles all the stuff that you DONT interact with.. all the stuff that happens automatically in the background. All my sensors and devices are shared with this Hubitat via Hub Mesh. This device controls presence sensing, mode management, and all automations. Automatic lighting on motion or door open, guest mode, housekeeper mode, arrival automations, mobile notifications, security alerts, etc. All the stuff that should happen without direct user input happens on this device.
Home Assistant is primarily for statistics and dashboards. I have a few tablets now around the house for various different purposes, but HA has amazing dashboard controls. For example, in my kitchen I have a 10" touchscreen dash card on the wall. When it's just residents in the house, it shows graphs with the temp and humidity history for the room over the past 12 hours, same for outside, some basic room lighting controls, an agenda calendar for the family's activities, and basic security information like lock and window open/closed status for the house. Additionally it will show notifications for open doors, filters needing replacement, stuff like that. However, if a guest is present and detected, sensitive information is automatically hidden, like the family agenda or presence information. If ONLY a guest is present, then a special dashboard with wifi QR code, basic room controls, and a virtual keypad with that guests with keypad codes can use to fix an issue manually if presence fails and the home security should accidentally arm.
There are also a few devices and integrations handles by HA directly. These mostly have to presence (BLE proxies and beacon management) and a few other devices (ESP Home for Rheem water heater control and BLE and local voice assistant, Nest Protect integration, thread, and my GE oven)
So I use Hub Mesh for all Hubitat <-> Hubitat communication.
I use HADB for all HA -> Hubitat traffic (for some of the presence control or devices linked to HA to share to Hubitat for automations)
I use the Hubitat integration on Home Assistant (available in the HACS add-on) along with the Maker API on Hubitat for the Hubitat -> HA traffic. Almost all devices from the main C-8 Pro are shared with HA in this way for dashboards, graphs, stats, trends, and history.
Hope that helps in some way.
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Thank you. Yes it does. It is good to hear how other people have done things. Something similar is what I am working on.
Do you think Home Assistant Green would be enough to run HA, Z2M for zigbee devices, and integrations inside HA? Not Portainer, Node Red, or anything like that. I was looking at this to maybe be entry level to see if I stick with HA.
I think so. I run HA on a Pi3B and it has plenty of CPU to spare. Green's hardware is roughly equivalent to a Pi4 (with SSD).
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What Integrations do you run? It has eMMC storage in the Green. Not sure really what the difference is. I am not knowledgeable about that stuff.
I still use the 3B with a MicroSD card. I have an SSD for it, but I've still not gotten around to installing it. I also have a Pi4 CM (with eMMC) but I found I don't need the extra processing power.
As I said, I primarily use HA for local integration of Ecobee devices and some Aqara FP2 sensors via the HomeKit emulation. Those I export back to HE via HADB. I also use the Hubitat integration to pull devices from HE into HA via the Hubitat integration (only to use in HA dashboards for some easy graphing).
I also have some other integrations on in HA, but they really aren't actively used.
(that is the cloud Ambient integration, because I have the local integration pushing to HE).
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Yes. Remember you'll still need to get a zigbee dongle for zigbee2mqtt.
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That is honestly probably way more than I would ever use.
Thank you. Yes I was looking at either the SMLGHT (USB With The TE Chip, don't remember the model) or the Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus. Is a 3ft USB extender long enough to get the coordinator a safe distance away from the computer/green?
That'll work.
FWIW, this is the dongle that I've used with z2m for 4+ years.
I use a couple Sonoff Dongle-P as routers.
This is my setup - everything is on a really old Intel Mac-mini, the USB cable for the dongle is hidden behind the curtain, and the dongle is mounted on top.
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That is the same chipset in the Dongle Plus I believe. Thank you for the info.
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Similar. I think Dongle-P uses a slightly newer chipset. Anyway, the secret to a stable zigbee mesh with any coordinator is having lots of robust zigbee routers. I like to have 1 device capable of routing for every 3-4 devices (routing/end combined).
My larger zigbee mesh currently has 71 total devices, of which 21 can work as routers/repeaters. So that's a ratio of 1:3.4. It has been extremely stable. The other advantage of multiple routers is that it really extended battery life. I have devices that are running on the same battery for 3 years .....
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That is how it is on my 90 some device mesh on Hubitat. I have several routers. The ratio is smaller but I have a couple of work horses that picked up like 12 devices even though there are others close by. Everything works so I don't worry about it.
I want to run Z2M for those few devices I just can't get in Hubitat any other way or are not stable. Then some day maybe get rid of the Aqara Hub so I get everything into HE via the HADB. Or everything that will come in which looks to be most devices.
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Steins are for drinking, not displaying. 
Wait, or is it both. I dunno - too many beers.
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How is that going to happen when you keep giving me the miss on your trips to NOLA?!!
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Thank you all very much for your help. I just placed my order for my equipment and will arrive next week. I may have to reach out to you guys for some pointers on setting everything up if you don't mind. Hubitat will always be #1 as I truly love the interface and rule development tools. Yes I actually really like Rule Machine 
. Just need an option for some stubborn things and integrations.
Me too. I have made a few simple rules on HA when I need them, but I use HADB to bring HA entities over to Hubitat where I can use Rule Machine to do my heavy lifting.
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That is my plan moving forward. Do most of your devices come over with HADB? I know there is a list of what comes over but it is pretty generic.
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