New potential user from vera

Hello, I’m looking to make the switch (finally!) from my Veraplus to Hubitat. My skills at programming are limited but I’m always looking to learn.
How difficult will it be for a newbie to make the transition? All of my devices are Z-wave… Will Hubitat support these devices?
Thanks for any help/support and my apologies as I’m sure I’m not the only one to ask these questions.

Start here: List of Compatible Devices | Hubitat Documentation

And since a lot of Vera people seems to have old Leviton Vizia devices, if you have any of these with 300 or 100 series z-wave chips they may not be able to pair to a Hubitat C8, and even if they do, they will be annoying because they are non-plus devices which need to be polled constantly.

2 Likes

Welcome!

While you can directly code stuff in Hubitat, most people do not. Hubitat is mostly point, click and select. Your Zwave devices will most likely all work without issue, but note that there are many community device drivers for devices outside of the built-in drivers in Hubitat already.

You need to exclude the Zwave devices before adding them, either on Vera when removing them, or on Hubitat before adding them.

For custom drivers, should you need them, you can install Hubitat Package Manager (HPM) app. That install will require you to copy some code into the drivers code section, but once you have HPM you can just search for things and HPM will find them and install them for you.

1 Like

Welcome! Here's a transition-related thread that's worth checking out...

3 Likes

FWIW, I came from VeraPlus almost 5 years ago. I have a number of old Leviton plug in dimmer modules. I use them for "Accent lighting" so if one didn't respond it would be no big deal. However they've been solid giving me no issues.
I do recall in my move from C7 to C8 it was much easier to unpair them with an old Aeon Z-Stick S2.

1 Like

Yeah it depends on how old they are. People have been having trouble with very old Leviton pairing to a C8, so I just wanted to toss that warning out there.

1 Like

Do you have a zwave remote that can work as a secondary controller (eg Aeon Labs Minimote)?

They’re super-useful when pairing 100-series and 300-series zwave devices to a 800-series controller like Hubitat.

2 Likes

Interesting, from the date code my plug in dimmers were mfg the end of 2014. That means it's likely a 300 series, so maybe not old enough to be much of a problem. However who really knows as I've had Aqara (Zigbee) devices working for years when others had bad luck with them.

i made the jump from Vera to Hubitat a few years back when my vera died.
Looked at all the options and Hubitat looked the best.
First several hours were a case of getting to know the environment but within a few weeks it was obvious that HE (hubitat) is easier to use, better laid out and far more reliable.
Some of my old z-wave devices didnt migrate but most did, z-wave and z-wave-plus.

1 Like

Thank you everyone for all of your beneficial comments and links to assist me. I'll be making the switch in approx. 2-3 month.
Two more question:
C-8 is the current hub. When C-9 comes out is the C-8 upgradable?
Will there be a C-9 hub in the near future?
Thanks again everyone!

Traditionally, hub hardware changes have (at least loosely) followed the Z-Wave chip releases (C-7 = 700-series chip, C-8 = 800-series chip, etc).

The C8 Pro is the latest model hub -- it has some beefed up memory (among other things) compared to the C-8, but the 8 and 8 Pro are pretty similar.

I don't foresee a new hardware model anytime soon since 800-series stuff is still relatively new, but anything's possible I suppose. The 8 Pro (or plain 8) is a great hub -- buy with confidence.

1 Like

No. These hubs are basically SBCs. There are no user-replaceable chips on the main board.

I was just searching the FCC database today to see if there were any new Hubitat products in the offing. Such products will normally show up in the FCC database about 3-4 months prior to commercial release. I couldn't find any. So there will not be a new hub for at least 3-4 months.

3 Likes

Huh, I never realized that is what the names were based on. That might explain why when the C8 Pro first came out, there we remnants of it being called the C9 that were still in the code that people saw. Not sure if that is the reason, but it looks like at first they were going to just follow numerically, then decided to stick with the series as the main hub name.

Maybe we will see a C8 Ultimate or something before we see a C9.