New Hubitat user, just settling down to explore

Thought I’d drop a few lines to say hi and maybe kick off some conversation.

I’ve been dabbling on and off with ha ever since I first thought, wouldn’t it be cool if...

Littered around my house is a ragtag collection of many things ha related, whenever I’ve started looking at sorting something I hit a major problem or it hasn’t behaved how I needed it to and the project got put to one side.

Seeing the HE and its local nature prompted me to have another go.

Seems to me the backbone is what’s important, then I can make proper buying decisions and keep adding to the system, hopefully the HE will prove to be that backbone.

I have a Broadlink Pro and its smaller cousin, a Logitech harmony, a powered projector screen(RF remote), some powered blinds(Tuya based), a bunch of RF controlled light switches, Honeywell EvoHome heating, poe cctv cameras, Amazon echoes, fire sticks, google home hub and a couple of bits I can’t recall.

Anyway my goal is to have everything linked properly and controllable both home and away, I have an IFTTT account, amongst others and am not afraid of replacing something if it’s going to be an issue.

I guess first question would be is there a standard that would be recommended by the majority here for the lighting?

I’ve got some light switches with a neutral wire and the rest are standard UK switched live.

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I think it depends primarily on where you’re located and what devices are available to you.

In the US, many of us are huge fans of Lutron Caseta, since hubitat has a really well done integration with that product line.

But my understanding is that in the UK you don’t have that option. Z-wave devices seem to be generally available there, possibly zigbee, although in general there are fewer in-wall zigbee switches than z-wave.

Personally, I would avoid WiFi-based devices, but again it depends on what’s available locally, since I’ve seen that many people use WiFi switches/bulbs in other parts of the world.

Also, do you want just on/off/dimming? Or also the ability to change color temperature or even full RGB color control?

As another UK type I actually gave up on switches a while back, I've been through a few systems over the years (started with X10, last hub was smartthings) and I've migrated my lighting from from a homebrew RF system to a mixture of tradfri and hue bulbs on a hue hub, logic controlled by Hubitat. It's been reliable for me, but then again I may be an outlier - as all of my Xiaomi sensors and buttons are rock solid...

As to external access, if it's a necessity then I'd look hard at configuring a VPN for your LAN.

The real beauty of Hubitat is the way it allows you to integrate a mongrel assortment of hardware, there are also some very talented (and helpful) developers in the community. Welcome :slight_smile:

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This is indeed very helpful if you need to access your hub's admin interface when away from home.

But if all that's needed is device control or monitoring of device status, then dashboards can be setup to allow access through the cloud, no VPN required.

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Oops, I should have mentioned that right at the start, I am in the UK.

One of the biggest annoyances for me are the powered blinds, bluetooth network that is rubbish and one of them stopped working 2 days out of warranty.

Those will be the first things I attend to I suspect.

Although I do need to sort the RM Pro, Harmony setup too.

You did :slight_smile:

I was just pointing out that, in general, one should start by thinking about what's available in one's region/country before getting too far into the weeds with all the potential options.

I'm not sure what's available in the UK for automating window blinds. I think IKEA added a line of blinds to their zigbee-based devices? There is a category here in the forum for UK-specific discussions, so you could always post a question there, where it's more likely to be seen by others in the UK that may have more specific suggestions.

That's easier to deal with, since both have community-developed integrations with Hubitat that can connect to those devices over your LAN and it shouldn't matter where you're located! See this thread and this one.

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This is very true, but speaking as the one who's responsible for fixing things when something fails to do what it's supposed to (which always seems to happen when I'm not actually there to look into it) I have found to my cost that remote access to the admin side is very, very beneficial to a harmonious home life... Admittedly I've been impressed at how generally stable Hubitat has been for me, but there has been the occasional hiccup and while there are dashboards available my wife is less inclined to use them. Mostly, granted, because stuff usually "just works" so she's never got familiar with them.

I should probably have made that clearer :slightly_smiling_face:

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Agree 100%, I have a VPN server at home and use it to access my hub (and other resources on my LAN) all the time.

Just wanted to make sure it was clear what Hubitat can do without the need for additional remote access strategies.

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