Need help deciding between ST and Hubitat

It's a purposeful distraction, but may also mean that it doesn't work with their lights, their technical details:

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I was thinking of getting a few of these. They sound like they will repeat z wave. Iā€™m wondering if these will be sufficient? I see they are officially supported.

Z-Wave Plug Outlet Dual On/Off Switch Outlet, Built in Repeater, Work with SmartThings, Wink, Z-Wave hub Require, White(MP20Z) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TF6YN43/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_DG8K3PTEJ92AFBBQAGFG?psc=1

i have both but actually found that some outlets or switches depending on wall and box construction dont work as well as plug in repeaters to do the interference of the structures.

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That makes sense. Iā€™ll probably buy both. How far away are you typically installing repeaters. 15ft 30ft? How do you explain to the wife when she unplugs them not to do that?

i pretty much have either a switch and or repeater in each room.. and a couple of the ring on each floor as they can work een with power outages as the hub is on an ups.

avg. space is about 30 feet from each. i make sure i leave at least one of each plug empty if i plug in a repeater. and if need more put a four outlet plug in strip in the plug

Don't rely on just switches and outlets to repeat. Get the Ring (probably currently best) or the Aeotecs. Maybe two per 2000 SF or so.

Do you know what voltage the hub is Iā€™m wondering if I can power it with a lithium battery back up and just keep it dc

From https://hubitat.com/products:

All power supplies are USB 5 Volts @ 1 Amp, 100V to 240V.

I switched from ST to Hubitat 3 months ago for the same reasons you want to. I have about 75 devices. I did my research and HE seemed to have everything I wanted and that ST didnā€™t have, particularly local connection. The migration was painful because of the amount of devices but I did it right and slowly.

At first all was good. However, I have not yet had a single day without some sort of issue; triggers not working, delays longer than cloud based platforms, the dashboard sucks, one light that simply wonā€™t work in a scene or rule but will work when you turn it on via dashboard, etc., etc.

Iā€™ve given up and am going back to ST. The app is better (and my wife knows it) plus thereā€™s much more hardware available that works on it.

Since ST is no longer making the hardware I had to order a hub from Aeotec but since they are, so far, only selling it in Europe and the U.S. (I live in Canada) I had to have it shipped to a fiend in the U.s.

Iā€™ll have to deal with the whole migration thing again but I cannot live with what I have right now.

Thatā€™s odd. I just recently finished migrating over to hubitat and my experience has been pretty decent. I havenā€™t gotten the hang of hsm yet, but I havenā€™t really tried. All the things that stopped working are working wonderfully with hubitat and a lot faster. Now I probably only have half those devices and I donā€™t run too many complicated routines but what I have has been super reliable. Way more than SmartThings. I found that even some noob questions have been answered and without the snobbery when asked to the community. I did build a homebridge with a raspberry pi so the wife could use Home. I did make a mistake and put the HomePod in the bathroom so I could sing in the shower. One day I was super frustrated because I couldnā€™t get the Home app to see any devices any longer. And I immediately blamed hubitat and homebridge. I was pissed when I got home. Turns out the wife unplugged it to plug in her curling iron. Itā€™s now in the living room. I jumped to blame hubitat because SmartThings was so spotty for me. Turns out I was wrong. I did have a monoprice relay that wouldnā€™t hook back up but it was cheap and I can live with that. Sorry your experience wasnā€™t the same as mine.

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Likewise. I migrated from ST to Hubitat starting January this year. Most of my stuff works better and faster than it did on ST. Lights come on quicker, my frontdoor lock unlocks at blazing speed and more importantly, is always available. The only 'serious' problems I had are:

  • My CT100 thermostat didnt work well within Hubitat and not at all in Google Home. A new driver suggested by Support and possibly some Hubita updates and both these problems have disappeared.
  • An Osram LED bulb kept "falling off" the network. It was a pain in ST as well so I havent bothered looking for a possible solution.
  • iPhone Presence has not worked well (if at all) in Hubitat. Better, but not by much, within ST. I use HA to track my iPhone.
  • Google Home integration not great. All my temperature sensors do not work at all within the Hubitat/Google Home integration. Again, I ended up using HA for these (and other unsupported Hubitat) devices.

Yeah IPhone presence wasnā€™t good with hubitat that why I added homebridge. Thereā€™s a couple thing like temps not showing on a couple z wave contact sensors. But I donā€™t remember if they showed up on SmartThings. I got to a point with SmartThings that as batteries died on the sensors I stopped replacing them. It was just so spotty. The only automations I cared about was garage door and door locks locking. Then they just stopped working. I would go to the ā€œnewā€ app and fiddle around til they were working again and then days later the automation just disappeared. About a week later they said they were retiring my hub. They offered a discount on the Aeotec but I just remember thinking why would I ever give you any more money. I think Samsung wants out. They want to stop paying cloud bills. They realized the new apps a hot mess. They forced everyone to jump onto it. Half there own devices donā€™t work with it. They really let it go downhill.

Just to be clear - you aren't going "back" to SmartThings. You can't. As you pointed out, they obsoleted the hardware platform and now you have to buy a new one. You are moving to a new SmartThings. Good Luck.

Iā€™ll never go back. I have had nothing but terrible experiences with Samsung in general. There was a time when capacitors were counterfeited. Sometime in the 90ā€™s. They went bad all the time. Samsung decided it was cheaper to use those caps and deal with warranty claims than scrap them knowing they were faulty. I donā€™t know how many power board caps I desoldered and replaced on Samsung TVs and monitors. I know two of my own. Then we have a dryer through them replaced thermocoupler 5 times. Iā€™m about ready to grind an access door so I donā€™t have to tear it down each time. Then the SmartThings hub crap. Oh I have a brand new 2tb nvme drive that died. Called support and they told me they canā€™t warranty it because the sticker came off. It came off because of the heat pads. But nope that voids my warranty. They said they would have no way to tell when it was made. I said whatā€™s the warranty on a new one. He said 5 years. I said then mines in warranty because the 2 tb 960 didnā€™t exist 5 years ago. Nope nothing. Iā€™ll never buy Samsung. Ever.

Remember years ago when ST scheduler failed night after night. I installed Eventghost and "managed" my own scheduling. Then there was this issue with none-ST devices running on the cloud. I installed Home Assistant. Long story short, I ended up with so many apps/routines/system it was a nightmare to problem solve if things went wrong.

Since moving to Hubitat I have shut most of these other systems off.

ST still has all my remote temperature sensor (So does Hubitat but it doesn't play nice with Google) as well as my Home Energy Meter. HEM works fine within ST and I see little incentive to move it atm.

I use HA as a "connector" between ST and Google Home. HA presence routines are near perfect. I cant recall a time they failed.

I still use EventGhost but not for scheduling. I love this 12+year old software but it does add complexity to my overall system. i.e. "Who or what turned that light on?" I expect its days on my PCs are numbered, though.

If Hubitat should fail me in the future, I will not look at ST nor HA for an alternative. It would likely be something not yet available.

Yeah I wish that zigbee or z wave had actually became relevant. Seems like thereā€™s less and less devices for true automations. Makes me sad. I really donā€™t have any super complicated routines. But I really want some cool things. Just thought there would be better innovation. For instance Iā€™m running led strips under the deck stairs. I would love to buy a transformer and use a bunch of 12v relays and dimmer switches to automate outside zone lighting. Not many products to choose from.

I jave had a similar experience to a few others here. I started to move items over last November. It all qas going well as everything worked. SOME OF THE zwave devices were a pain to switch over but afterwards all was well. After the recent announcement by ST to brick the Smartthings ADT hub i completely jumped over for hub connected devices. I would say it is even better now that i have a few more repeater devices. I still have just a couple of cloud based things in ST now that don't have integrationwith Hubitat. I am working on a node red instance with the Hubitat pallet and Samsung Automation Stuidio pallet to help creat virtual devices on my hubitat and keep them in sync through the new samsung API. As of this morning i can keep my arlo cameras completely in sync between ST and Hubitat.

I'll avoid adding anything negative or inflammatory here by simply saving that I was a long-time "power user" of smartthings.

Last summer I hit the peak of dissatisfaction when (yet another) overnight update prevented my zwave boiler switch from turning off again. Sweltering heat with a new baby's arrival due any day.

Straw that broke the camels back, that one. Sneakily purchased a hubitat hub and began the (sneaky!) transition whilst building a half-decent dashboard with @josh / sharptools.

Bearing in mind the wife detested my smart home hobby under ST (something always broken!), she actually fully supports hubitat. Thinks it's amazing. She actually asks me to add various projects here and there now.

Said it before, I'll say it again. Hubitat works ace. Wife loves it.

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Weā€™re going to automate zones for backyard lighting and replace a switch with a recessed outlet and mount a tablet running a dashboard dust for the outside zones. The wifeā€™s actually pretty excited about it. Wouldnā€™t have even tried with SmartThings.

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Check out nodemcu's :wink: