Need help deciding between ST and Hubitat

So SmartThings are retiring my version one hub. I don’t understand why but I’m sick of half baked SmartThings anyway. The cloud sucks. I am thinking of switching over to hubitat, but I want honest opinions if it will be the best move. I have a Honeywell 9000 thermostat, a Schlage z wave deadbolt. A go control z wave garage door opener. And various other sensors some door window water motion etc. all are signed or Z wave. I have Reolink cameras and some Wyze also. I don’t need camera integration but want to lay it all out. I would like to use homebridge for presence detection. Can I do this fairly easily on Hubitat without always having to play around trying to get crap to work reliably?

That's a lot of searching you are asking us to do for you!

What is meant by "signed"?

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if you have too many non zwave plus switches you will want to convert them to zwave plus.. the honeywell works with the community driver but as in smarthings you really should not refresh more than once every 1/2 hour or you may get locked out of their website.
Go control also works fine, but if i were you again would replace with latest zwave plus version. ie

https://www.amazon.com/GoControl-GD00Z-8-GC-Z-Wave-Security-Black/dp/B085LKPHK6/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=gd00z-8&qid=1614712480&sr=8-2

wyze cams will not work as they dont offer api or a vay to get a url viewing.. actually they do with alternate firmware but you loose lots of features.

also you need to make sure you have repeaters or zwave switches very 30 or so feet and in each room in order to get a good zwave mesh.. It seems it was a little harder than on st but once in place very stable.

At a minimum, you will need a beaming repeater (I suggest the Ring Alarm Extender Gen 2, or the Aeotec Range Extender 7 - I have 6 Ring and 2 Aeotec RE7) to place near the Schlage lock. The Hubitat’s antenna seems to have less gain than the SmartThings hub does.

EDIT: An advantage of the Ring is that it has internal battery backup and can send power fail notifications when it switches from mains to battery, provided it has a route back to the hub when power has been lost. You will need to put your hub on a UPS, too.

Also, if you have the non-plus Z-Wave Schlage deadbolt (BE469NX rather than BE469ZP), battery life won’t be great because it pairs with S0 security, which has 3X packet traffic. You can swap out the electronics module (3 screws, the long black oblong module you see when you take the inside mechanism off the door) with a Z-Wave Plus one from a Schlage lock on eBay - all the modules are interchangeable across the models. You can often find used BE469ZP locks with broken keypads, or with the inside mechanism sold “for parts”. I converted my two when I came from Wink, then briefly, SmartThings, to Hubitat last summer, the batteries are still at 98%, so I expect well over a year before replacing. If you don’t buy a complete lock, make sure you get the plate that attaches the mechanism to the door, or at least a photograph of the sticker on that door, which has the DSK you will need to pair S2. I got one of my plus modules for about $39, the other for about $49. Make sure you don’t get early firmware versions- I have 0.10.9 and 0.11.0, and they work fine.

The BE469NX will work fine with Hubitat (my two did before I converted them to BE469ZP) if you have a good beaming repeater near the lock, but battery life will only be a few months or so.

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It auto corrected zigbee. I also have Z wave plus fire alarms. Some stuff is z wave plus some are just z wave. I’m not to worried about range I should have enough z wave plus to be fine. It’s funny how much stuff a guy forgets he has I also have a rachio and ring doorbell. I don’t have either tied to SmartThings. I wouldn’t mind the rachio but I really hate the ring doorbell and know I will be replacing it soon. So I will research from there. I just really need presence detection. I have old iPads and a raspberry pi 3 not doing anything right now. I also have thought about getting a couple apple HomePod minis.

Got it. I wondered if it was an autocorrection issue.
What are your lighting controls? I don't think I saw that mentioned.

I have hue but most the bulbs have burnt out. I really only use it with hue Halloween. I have a couple of monoprice z wave relays and a few zigbee bulbs like the old osaram. We really don’t do much lighting. If I do it’s like outside door opens. Outside garage light comes on for 5 minutes but only from sunset to sunrise. Presence detection turns on garage outside light for 5 minutes etc. I am adding individual addressable led lights permanently to the eaves those won’t be controlled through hubitat though. The outside back deck lights might correspond to the back door sensor. But I’ll jump those hurdles when I get there.

I also hate the Honeywell it works about 1/3rd the time because of their cloud crap. Was thinking of switching to an eccobee. It’s single stage hearing and cooling but I do have humidifier.

I would suggest check your door, window, water, and motion sensors against the compatible devices list. For the most part, if they worked with SmartThings they probably work with Hubitat.

Some of the Schlage locks are cranky on Hubitat. Adding a beaming repeater nearby often helps. I moved an old FE-599 over no problem and it's worked well. 672 has some good tips on the Schlage.

You might want to search for the Rachio - I thought I remembered seeing something on that.

Don't know about the Honeywell. I have a Carrier system that is not very open to integration. I don't find the need to adjust it very much anyway.

Compatible devices list:
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=List_of_Compatible_Devices

I'd like to stress something important.
Although it looks on the surface that Hubitat and SmartThings are very similar, there are some places where they are not that similar.
A key difference is that Hubitat really relies on local processing and SmartThings relies on the cloud. Where this may come to bite you is in the emphasis on the mesh in Hubitat. You must have a strong mesh in Hubitat for your Home Automation to work. Don't assume that just because it worked in ST, it will work in HE. In ST they compensate for a crappy mesh with additional cloud resources. That doesn't happen with HE. You must have a good solid mesh for everything to work -it's the basis of everything. That's why other people here have mentioned repeaters. Especially in regards to door locks they can be invaluable.
Personally, I have a Zwave Plus door lock (actually two of them), with either a repeater nearby, or a "beaming" zwave plus switch. It's essential.
I strongly suggest that you read the following documentation before you switch - it will save you some heartache later.
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Z-Wave_Mesh

Welcome aboard - I'm sure that you will find the switch worth it.

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When you say repeaters are zwave plus devices considered repeaters or should I invest in some good mains powered repeaters? Here is the thing. I hate the cloud. I want as much of it local as possible. I also want it rock solid and am prepared to spend to make it that way. I’m not an Alexa google home person. I don’t want to be the dang remote. I want to use automation to manage tasks without having to tell something to do something. I also don’t want to constantly chase technology. I want this hub to work and not be retired after 5 years. Or better yet retire it and give me a way to migrate to the new hub without having to exclude everything and reset up all my automations. I’m hoping it’s hubitat. But some products might not fit.

Line powered devices are almost always repeaters. Battery powered devices are almost never. The power demands of repeating messages for the other devices would burn through batteries. There are some exceptions (as with any rule).

i have made a modification to my port of the honeywell ap thaat automatically retries 5 minutes after a auth. failure.. this has made it much more reliable.

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I really only have problems with their cloud side going down. Not updating etc. so much so I think I really would like a better thermostat. Something that runs local off of presence. If that’s possible.

i doubt it is honeywell.. maybe once every few months it goes down temporarily.. more likely the smarthiings cloud itself that links it goes down.

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Yeah I’m not for sure. All I know is I want rock solid and SmartThings isn’t it. So if I have to exclude everything and set up a new hub I’ll just switch.

As previously stated, "almost all mains devices are repeaters". However, for a zwave door lock, you should have one that's close to the door lock (with 1-3) feet.
P.S. By the way, I have a Kwikset zwave (not plus) lock, with the nearest device being a Aeotec Repeater that's 6 feet away. So, that works, but the closer the better.
P.P.S. If you haven't already purchased your Hubitat, make sure that you get the C7 - the newest version (better for zwave, in my humble opinion).

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I migrated from a v1 to a HE C7 a few months ago. It took a couple of weeks before things settled down for me. I had old zwave devices from the Kickstarter days of ST like GE switches that behave differently on HE when it comes to status reporting. I did experience some of the z-wave pairing pains that end up with ghost nodes. There are instructions on how to deal with them here in the forum, you'll definitely want them out first before going on with the rest of the pairing to save your sanity :slight_smile:

Good point. With the new hub, I go back and check the Z-Wave page every time I pair a Z-Wave device to make sure it paired correctly (and NOT S 0) and that I didn't create any zombies. Fix any zombies before proceeding.

To touch on this, since I've already seen good advice for probably everything else above, I'd say this is about as easy on Hubitat as it is on SmartThings. Neither has built-in support for HomeKit, so you need to use a workaround like HomeBridge. This requires setting something up and following directions to get it to work correctly. I'm not sure if that counts as "playing around" for you, but I'm assuming you were able to make this work before, and if so, it should be do-able, here too. :slight_smile: Like on ST, there is a community integration--actually multiple ones now--that work well, in my experience. But also like ST--and with HomeBridge in general--nothing is "official."