I'm new to Hubitat and smart homes in general. I have some Philips Hue lights which started me on this path. I also have installed an Eaton smart switch in my office. I did some googling and found the Hubitat and bought a C8. Next year I would like to really start moving the smart home direction, but I find myself a bit overwhelmed on a direction with all the options.
I'm hoping y'all can help me come up with a general idea of best practices on what devices to start with or how to move forward. Should i start with the lighting in my house or a thermostat. What devices do people generally use for security? Things along those lines.
Like I said currently I have some outdoor and indoor philips hue bulbs (7 total) and the Eaton smart switch in my office. Any advice is welcomed.
If you don't want them to interact with each other in any way (and I can't think of any reason to, not that I'm sure no one has...), I think you can go either way. I started with lighting because it's what I wanted first, but your preferences might be different.
I use motion sensors for lightning and use those as part of my "security" notifications when I'm away. But Hubitat is not a replacement for a security system if you really want that. I just consider this a nice extra (and honestly good enough for my needs, but again, yours may be different). I also have contact sensors in Hubitat that I use for this as well as a camera system, not integrated with Hubitat except for some webhooks that give me motion events (which even then I haven't found a good way to use yet...).
For lightning, I like Hue. It's also what I got started with, so that could be part of the reason, but I've tried other bulbs and usually ended up disappointed. I have some Inovelli and Zooz switches or controllers that supplement my motion sensors for automations but could also be used without those if they were the only way you wanted to control the bulbs. Look for "smart bulb mode" or the ability to "disable local control" or similar on the switch if you're using them with Hue or other smart bulbs--or if all you need is on/off and dimming, there's no reason you couldn't just use them with regular bulbs.
I think this is something you have to think about your house and household habits a bit, and decide how to solve that problem.
For me, I started out with some simple stuff like "wouldn't it be nice if the outdoor lights came on when I open the garage door at night?", or "it would be cool if the bathroom fan came on when the humidity gets too high from the shower and turned off when the humidity returned to normal.". Things like living room lights turning on at dusk or bathroom lights coming on very dim in the middle of the night via motion are common things people start out automating.
There are lots of examples of this on this and other home automation forums like Reddit if you need inspiration, but it might take some digging and reading or some specific google searches to find lots of unique samples of what people have done.
As far as devices, the nice thing is a hub can use various brands and protocols to create these automations. One place to look for what devices is the compatibility list, which is all the confirmed nice players with Hubitat. List of Compatible Devices | Hubitat Documentation
There are certainly other devices that work with Hubitat beyond the official list, this forum is a good place to search, but you may need to have some specific things in mind when searching, an example would be you may want to search for something like "Z-wave dimmer". Beyond a basic search, there are some fairly recent "best of" lists compiled by users that may help. Most Popular Motion Sensors in 2023
The other thing I would say is to post here with questions, you will typically get some good feedback if you post and say "how do I make my lights come on at dusk" or "what light switch would you recommend given that I want XYZ". There is a bit of a learning curve with any device like this, and users here are willing to help you, were were all in your situation at one time.
I think a basic decision is whether to emphasize smart bulbs or smart switches. I went with smart switches, and no smart bulbs, yet anyway. They seem to be more robust.
I think you always have to ask yourself, "how will things work when (not just if) the hub is down?". I wouldn't depend on Hubitat for mission critical stuff, like hvac or security. As an adjunct, yes.
Then there's Zigbee vs Z-Wave and now, Matter and some local WiFi. Here in the US anyway, there seem to be a fair amount of Zigbee/WiFi interference topics, and fiddling with channels and power recommended. Matter currently requires some kind of voice control system, like Alexa, to join devices, I believe.
Matter and local WiFi bear some increased study, at least on my part.
Zigbee seems to have the widest assortment of devices, but quality is spotty and a lot of the most intriguing devices need special driver treatment (by an expert) to get them to work right.
Long range Z-Wave, the latest and greatest in Z-Wave world, does away with the mesh with devices communicating directly, only, with the hub. It has the potential for improved reliability, but the jury is still out in real world application.
I replaced all the switches in my house with smart switches and went from there.
Lighting certainly can offer a somewhat simpler set of use-cases to work with in terms of automation compared to temperature control.... Depending on what you are wanting to achieve it both..
My pick would be lighting as it can offer an immediate response when working with automation design more generally.
I agree with the other folks. Lighting is a great start. It will give an immediate reward and is one of the simplest to get completed. You can can then expand on the lighting to motion sensors as noted to turn the lights off or on when leaving or entering the rooms, easily turn them off and on at sunrise and sunset. You get the idea :-). The lights alone will give you some good experience all by themselves.
You definitely made an excellent choice selecting the Hubitat Hub and joining the Hubitat family!! A lot of great folks always willing to help out in this community!!
I agree with this statement. Think long and hard before committing. I also prefer smart switches/dimmers over smart bulbs - but that’s just me.
I also echo others here - lighting is a good place to start. When I built our house 7 years ago, we tried virtually every reputable zwave dimmer before picking homeseer. These days, I personally think zooz has the best offering at the best price - although I still buy the occasional Homeseer WX300 - I love the status mode on the led indicators. But do your research and see what works best for your needs.
And as others have said, this is a very welcoming/helpful community so feel free to ask for help/suggestions along the way.
Agree with motion sensors and light control first. I also like the tilt sensors on my mailbox door and garage door. I get a push notification on my phone when the garage door opens and closes or has been open for 1, 2, and 3 hours. I also get voice notifications via Alexa and Echo when the mailbox door is opened.
I see you said you have 1 or more Inovelli switches. I have all Inovelli Red Series Z-Wave switches and love them. The favorite thing for myself, wife and daughter is that the config button (little button to the right of the main switch) can be programmed so I also call it a "favorite" switch. I figured out what the lowest setting the switch could be set to that would turn on the light(s) it controlled by just trying to set it to a low value and keep changing it to a lower value until the light(s) wouldn't turn on anymore. Then I set the config/favorite button (7 push, as least for the Red Series) to that value. Then early in the morning or late at night we push that so we're not blinded by the light, as Springsteen or Manfred Mann might say.
Other easy things to do with them is to use a double push (on) or held (off) to turn on some other light, say if the "real" switch isn't in a convenient location or to have a double push/held turn on/off say that main light(s) and some other light(s) too. I use the former on one switch to turn on 4 can lights that are above a breakfast counter, where the real switch is on the far end of the room and hard to reach as it is behind my coffee maker. As such, it was virtually never turned on until I had my main kitchen switch turn it on/off with a double press (on)/held (off).
My kitchen is right next to my dinning room and I often want to turn both sets of lights on at the same time. So I made a double push/held of the dinning room switch turn on/off both the kitchen and dinning room lights.
I also have a hutch in my den that has an upper and lower light and each has its own plug. I plugged each one into a smart plug. I then set an Inovelli switch so that pushing it "on" would toggle the top light on/off and pushing the "off" switch would toggle the bottom one on/off.
I didn't mention Inovelli Reds in this thread but I do have some. They are amazing but honestly, I really don't use or need all of those cool features. I sometimes get annoyed scrolling through all the options just to change the dimming rate. It's like always having to use a Swiss Army knife when I just need a screwdriver. Don't hate me! I'm a Zooz fanboy at this point.
I do agree with using a smart wallswitch with smart bulbs like my LIFX bulbs. Disabling local control is much cleaner than using tape on the switch!
For our newbie I would say read these and other posts. You can buy one device of a certain kind like Z-Wave, ZigBee, WiFi, or Matter and see what works for you. My Hubitat easily manages the hodgepodge of assorted devices I have accumulated over the last five years or so.
Your Hue hub should integrate directly with your Hubitat hub via the Hubitat Hue integration, so you have a pretty easy on-ramp to try out some home automation by just adding a few motion and/or contact sensors. Then create some simple automations using to trigger bulb on/off events using contact/motion events, or even just time of day, and you're on your way.
Assuming you/family like the initial automations you can then look into expanding your smart home capabilities w/wall switches/dimmers, more motion/contact snsors, leak detectors, etc.
Some support docs worth looking through before you buy stuff:
And Matter, another newish device type/connection option:
Another newish kids on the block is a new connection type called Z-Wave LR (Long Range). Devices using that protocol connect directly to your hub w/out using a mesh like traditional Z-Wave and Zigbee. LR devices could be easier to work with in some cases, since they don't rely on any other device to talk to your hub. They are a newer tech and there are still some growing pains w/LR.
Best advice, repeating what others above have said, is the measure twice, cut once saying. In this case "read/think twice, ask questions here and think again, so you only have to buy once.
I see it was Bert that had the Inovellis. As I mentioned, the thing I like best about the Inovellis is the Config/Favorite button. Since that can be set to whatever dim level you like with the simple button controller app it would be easy and straight forward. I don't remember if some/all Zooz switches can do a double tap. If so, you could do the same thing that way. JMEYMMV, high family approval with having a dedicated button for that. We don't have to think about a single or double tap before properly caffeinated.
Thank you for all the advice here. All of it helps a ton. The humidity thing sensor was a great idea I never thought about to be honest and would be great in my bathroom.
I think I'm going to start taking a look at switches. I think that will be the best place for me to start.
