New House - New Hubitat So Many Questions

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So I am like so many others - current house I have smart things, harmony, hue lights and some sensors.

We're moving into a new house that I want to setup correctly using Hubitat. But I don't think I am going to get my dream come true. Here is what our plans and wishes are - where am I going to go wrong.

Currently have:
30 or so Hue Color Light bulbs
7 light strips
Nest Thermostats
Iris Contact and motion sensors
And last but not least Google Homes (5 of them).

We really like the colored bulbs and controlling them with Google home. We like the iris contact sensors when opening closet doors. We also like motion sensors in the bathroom when you walk in and have different scenes based on the time of day.

Where will hubitat fall short of being able to control my groups of lights via voice and hubitat. Will I still have to just trigger "hue" scenes via IFTTT

What I don't have are switches. The new house has many (30 or 40) recessed LED lights - not sure of brand yet but am hoping to get switches to control them.

I hear great things about Lutron Caseta is that what I want to get to replace my wall switches? I don't want to spend a fortune but is that the best bang for my buck when it comes to dimmer switches?

Also - this one I haven't been able to nail down. There are about 4 fans that you can current infinitely adjust with dimmers - not just low med high ... Is there a switch/dimmer available to control that like the current circle dimmer they have today to control the fan? Oh and one of the fan's does have a RF remote with it.

To summarize
Google home - telling things to turn on/off set scenes,
Recessed Lights - luntron caseta? (or better?)
Variable speed fan - what to use .. (I assume you'll need the brand of that)

I have some knowledge but with all the information out here - sometimes its hard to pick the right path - I want to venture into cameras and more door sensors, locks, garage sensors, sprinkler control ... home alarms and on and on .... Any suggestions - things you'd wish you'd done early on?

One thing I noticed with my current stuff is you get so far into it ... making some changes and wreak havoc on the whole system - renaming things etc.. with HA so young I guess that is to be expected.

Thanks for reading and if you have any suggestions.

Paul

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I believe google though is high on their list but not yet implemented. If this is very important maybe just get the hub and work with it until its released. Its coming. At least you can get the rest going.

I really wished I stayed more away from any sort of closed/cloud system (even though they have the hype). So if I had the chance to do over a bunch of stuff, I would have skipped the ecobee and looked for a more native zwave thermostat. The ecobee is nice but I override most of its features with my own control. I would have kept away from the ring floodlight and doorbell. I've written code to integrate them but its never reliable. I doubt they will ever open up integration nicely. And for garage doors stay away from MyQ.

Those are 3 (important to me) systems that don't work when internet goes down or when their cloud services are having issues (and they do have issues).

I do use some ifttt integration but slowly working away from it. And the echo is not important if its down as I'm still able to control things via the dashboards. Don't rely totally on voice.

I'm not a fan of smart bulbs (just a personal preference) but all of my switches are WeMo switch. They have cloud connectivity but also can be control.ed via code on the local lan. They do rely on wifi. If I had to do that again I would probably look into a different brand that at least had 3way options and maybe just stick to zwave or zigbee. The fact that WeMo doesn't have 3 way messes with the consistent switch look I wanted to achieve. And there dimmer also isn't supported and doesn't match.

Hubitat is GREAT though. Especially if you dig in and get your hands dirty with groovy. You will feel like anything is possible at that point and write your own apps for everything.

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So if you don't use smart bulbs then I assume you don't have color - I am not a fan of the white smart bulbs- but we shure use the colors alot - our kitchen is probably the only room that gets "white" or some temp close to it.

In the new house the smart bulbs will go in bedrooms and a few other places we want some additional color. There are 3 times as many lights in the new house and the recessed leds will be nice when a dimmer attached - that is what is probably the most new piece for me.

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We have implemented Google Home integration. Awaiting approval from Google.

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Nice thats awesome ...

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Ya. I don't use color. I don't really have a lot of experience with smart bulbs so I can't give any recommendations on them if you are going to use them. I have 4 of them in my basement but they are basic zigbee bulbs that I have all turn on when the main light is turned on. Only did this because the basement is not finished and I didn't want to rewire all of the lights.

If you go with smart bulbs, maybe you might want to rewire the switches to bypass the switch and then put in a smart switch that will control the lights via the hub. Then you can probably add in smarts for dimming or color and still have a physical switch without worrying about somebody turning off the smart bulbs. I did this for some of my outside floodlight motion sensors.

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So is this situation possible.

If I have a room. In my lamps I have Hue smart bulbs - but in the ceiling I have dimmer leds (for example they are connected to lutron caseta dimmer / switch). If I set up a scene say "Watch TV" ... I want the ceiling leds' to be set really low and the lamps to run a scene from Hue Scenes .. I assume I can use hubitat to flip a switch and activate all those pieces to happen together?

I realize IFTTT may be involved - (heck I just need to set it up and play with it).

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Ya pretty sure you can do this. Especially with the latest update since they added the scene app. It should do what you are asking.

I only have a bit of doubt because I'm not familiar with the hue bulbs. But assuming they can be controlled with hubitat you will have no issues. If its via IFTTT then you can do it as well.

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Had a sense it was. Now I just need to figure out the switch/dimmer brand and model ..

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You'll be able to do what you want with Hue. I would steer clear of Hue dimmers. They're ugly, they don't have precise button presses (easy to hit the side and it doesn't do anything until you hit it a second or third time), and they rely on Hue cloud. The lights will keep working though, unless you lose internet and then lose power. In that instance, you'll have to wait for the internet to be restored and sometimes you simply have to reboot the Hue Bridge when that happens.

However, if you're going to have 40 Hue or Hue bridge compatible smart bulbs, then each bridge supports 50. You can directly pair bulbs with Hubitat, but I believe the limit is still 32 if I'm not mistaken.

You can get less expensive Ikea Trådfri bulbs and they will pair easily with the Hue bridge, but they're not as nice as Hue bulbs. Decent though. The fact that you want to use color bulbs everywhere except the kitchen is at odds with not spending a fortune. I do like smart bulbs personally, because of the easy of changing zones around. However, they do not dim as much, so you have to get creative sometimes by only enabling some bulbs at their lowest levels. Having said that, they don't hum or buzz like you can get with certain combinations of standard LED or Halogen and smart dimmers.

For ceiling fans, you are very limited. Not only in choice of aftermarket fan/light control, but also in the speeds available. There's Z-Wave, Zigbee, and proprietary options like Insteon, but they are all three speeds I believe. Might just want to keep those manual if fine control is important, or put that one down the list. I have 7 speeds on my aftermarket Lutron Maestro fan control (manual), but if find that three speeds are really all we need. Depends on how nice the fans are. Some with very large blades and precise motor control (which is sounds like you have) are worth having that fine adjustment.

Lutron dimmers and switches are very nice. The SmartBridge Pro with Hubitat is absolutely worthwhile. Pico remotes are only $15 each, and depending on your local codes, you may or may not be able to completely replace the standard switch by mounting a pico in it's place. They have a special mount for that. Whole thing will cost about $20 a switch for the basic 5 button pico and it goes up from there. Lutron RA2 is a very nice setup and Hubitat also supports it, but not inexpensive at all.