Non-hub wifi network migration

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1

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been answered in another thread somewhere but so far I haven’t been able to find an answer to this.

Some years ago my wife and I started building a basic smart home controlled by Google Home and IFTTT pro. Because we wanted to have Google Home make an announcement when certain things happen we thought a hub might be the best option. We tried for SmartThings as it was recommended as a pretty easy start point but found that it was impossible to obtain here in Canada. Plus a lot of people seemed to be migrating away from that platform for various reasons. As such, earlier this year we picked up a Hubitat Elevation as it seemed to be a good middle ground. But with things being busy at work it’s only now that I’m having a chance to sit down and get it going.

After reading the docs it seems that I may have to set each device into pairing mode before I can connect it up. We have never used a hub before and have over 50 devices of various types including TP-link bulbs, Wemo switches, Nanoleaf panels and an August Pro smart lock just to name a few. I had assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that I would be able to add these devices to the Hubitat hub automatically via a network scan as I had successfully done it this way adding a few devices to Home Assistant a few years ago as a way to get them working with Homekit.

So my questions are:

  1. Do I really need to reset each device to get each one connected to the hub or can I do this automatically since we have no previous hub to exclude from?

  2. Assuming the answer is yes to the above - are there any other advantages to having the Hubitat (or any other hub) other than speaker announcements for events? It seems to me that the Pro version of IFTTT plus the Google Home dashboard would cover most automation and control scenarios I can think of off the top of my head.

I’m worried I made an error in my Hubitat purchase given the amount of work I now realize it may take to add all our devices and I want to see if I can figure this out before I open the box. Maybe I can sell it on eBay or something if the benefits are not worth the extra work. As you may be able to tell I’m pretty new to this concept so again, apologies if this is a super obvious question!

Cheers,

Shawn

2

To me, the biggest advantage to HE is that it is all local. It looks like what you have is all Cloud based. Unless you are committed to local processing and replacing many of your devices, I'm not sure how much use you would get out of the Habitat hub.
With that all said, I'll give you $50 for your HE7. :grin:

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Your wemos will be easy. No repairing for wifi stuff. Just add the WeMo app and they are pretty easy to use. I'll let someone else answer your other questions as I'm kinda new as well. You'll have to read up on adding customer built apps, but once you get going its really not a bad journey at all. I ordered my hubitat about 1.5 months ago and I've come a long way. I never used zwave or zigbee prior and I've got all the lights in my house automated via motion and door sensors. I've even got humidity in the bathroom and my bathrooms kinda know when the fan should run for a while to clear out the not so fresh smells. :slight_smile: I'm loving hubitat, but it took a minute to get it all figured it out.