I think I am going back to SmartThings. When I moved out of the old house, I decided I needed to get away from the cloud reliant smart hub. So when the house sold, the new homeowner got my old SmartThings hub.
Hubitat is a good and clean platform. Everything that works works well. Rules do exactly what they are programmed to do, and everything happens near real time (much faster than the cloud based hub). The dashboard is nice, and the interface (especially for apps and drivers) is very easy to use and intuitive. That said, I find more and more deficiencies each day, and I just want to be able to do everything I used to do. Honestly, my inability to get the z-wave thermostat working with Alexa is probably the single biggest thing, and it seems like people have been asking for it for a while. I know that there are a few cobbled together semi-solutions, but they don't work well. Also, all of my Logitech routines registered as lights with Alexa (or switches), which is cool except I can't put them in their appropriate rooms with Alexa, without Alexa turning them off and on with the rest of the lights. Finally I can't make calls back to Hubitat from the Logitech remote. So I can't dim/illuminate the lights from the remote anymore. I know I can still do it by voice, but if the movie is playing and I don't want to talk over it or pause it, I can hit the buttons on the remote and run the routine that dims the lights and sets the AC. These are all functions I had with the ST. I don't hate the Hubitat and I'm not mad about it. I will hang on to the hub so as it matures I can migrate back to it, but for now, I really need some of these other functionalities that I used to have. Unless anyone has some compelling arguments...
I don't use Harmony (which I assume you are talking about there), but there's no reason you could keep Hubitat as your primary hub and just use ST when you have an extra, mostly-cloud need (Alexa thermostat support would be one). If Hubitat had that capability natively, I think I could entirely get rid of SmartThings; instead, I've set up HubConnect to mirror a few Hubitat devices to ST, and then I get voice control of that. Works great for me! (It's a tiny bit of work to set up, but totally worth it--and not much work if you only need a couple drivers. I'm using it for a lot more because I also have multiple Hubitat hubs.)
Also, what bulbs are you using? If Hue, I assume you could integrate directly to Harmony instead of trying to go through Hubitat. If not, perhaps ST plus HubConnect could be the answer again.
Of course, at some point, it might make sense for you to just use ST entirely. It all depends on what you use the hub for. I'd say lighting automations are my primary use for Hubitat, and thus speed and reliability are extremely important to me. SmartThings barely cut it on a good day, and on my first day with Hubitat I was blown away with how fast everything responded when it was all local. Your needs may be different, and if you've evaluated them and concluded that another way is better for you, then there's nothing wrong with that--you certainly know your situation better than anyone else here, and from the way you've clearly written specific concerns, you seem to have thought about this a lot more than some people who just complain without knowing why they are.
I'm sure you'll find the best choice for you. Good luck either way! But I'd definitely encourage you to keep checking out Hubitat if you decide to move away--they're adding support for new devices all the time, and every once in a while the Alexa skill gets some love (last time they added motion and contact sensors; alas, thermostats are still the exclusive domain of Google), and it's certainly something you could use in conjunction with another system for things where Hubitat's strengths matter.
If you search my posts from almost a year ago you will see that I was considering the very same course of action as you are. My reasons were different but no less valid. I chose to stick it out and I am glad I did. But there were and still are, some things that I miss with SmartThings (i.e. Arlo integration) that are just not available with Hubitat.
I wanted the best of both worlds; the stability and reliability of local control and automation, but the availability of cloud integrations that were not available on Hubitat.
That’s why I created HubConnect which can pretty seamlessly take all of your SmartThings devices and mirror them on Hubitat, and mirror all of your Hubitat devices back to SmartThings. All in real-time.
But I’m not going to mislead you. It’s going to take a bit of time to set up, but once you get it going it requires almost no maintenance.
I have a very large system, with one Hubitat hub acting as a server and 4 Hubitat hubs, one SmartThings hub, and a Homebridge server all connected together. This gives me Arlo and Ring support with realtime updates from SmartThings, fully local execution for all of my Hubitat devices, and even local HomeKit access on my iOS devices.
I recommend that you check out HubConnect out before you give up on Hubitat! You might just be glad you did.
I had the same issue with Harmony remote buttons. So I kept ST to control the buttons. ST then sends the button pushes to HE. Works great. Since the Harmony was going thru the cloud anyway, using ST wasn't gonna make any difference. Doing it this way you don't need the ST hub (mine is unplugged) as it is all handled cloudly.
Guess I should have clarified this. I didn't use Hubconnect as it would require the ST hub to be connected, or at least I believe it would. I used MakerAPI. In ST I created an app that then sends to the Maker. That way you don't need an ST hub, just an ST account.
It doesn't. I still have HubConnect connected to SmartThings and my ST hub has been turned off for a long time.
EDIT:
No, you don't need the ST hub. The ST hub is only needed if you want to interact with devices connected to the ST hub via the ST Hub radio. Any cloud integration will work without the hub
I stand corrected. For some reason I thought you had to put in the IP address of the ST hub in Hubconnect. But to be honest, I really didn't check. I'll have to relook at that option.
I thought this as well. Doesn't HubConnect complain if it can't reach a remote ST hub, showing it as offline? I guess that's no big deal if it has no other effects. I'm using HubConnect to mirror lights to ST, so I can use them with my Harmony remotes. If I don't need to keep the ST hub powered up, that'll be one less thing to worry about.
Nope, shows it as online as it should. HubConnect only connects to the cloud endpoints of SmartThings and has nothing to do with the hub or ever communicates directly with the ST hub.
OK, something not right here. I installed the Hubconnect on both my HE as server, and ST as remote.
Went into the HE, selected Connect To Remote Hub. It asks for a local LAN IP of the client. Since the ST hub is not connected it will not be online. So I put in the IP which it would have been if the hub was on. And hit all the dones and then an error shows up in the logs saying it couldn't find it.
Than you created a Remote Instance on SmartThings (in the SmartThings classic app) and entered the connection key, correct?
At what point in time did you get the error message that you are referring to? And was it on SmartThings or on Hubitat where you saw the error message?
Don't do it. Hubconnect is awesome. Just leave any devices that don't work on hubitat in smartthings. Works great. Can access whatever you want both directions thru either hub.
I even use smartthings as an intermediary between hubitat and brilliant home control. Works great.
The Smartthings connection was added later and at that point in time the IP address was already a mandatory field. It will never get used with the Smartthings connection
HubConnect supports "distant" Hubs.. both SmartThings and Hubitat.
If you have a Hubitat Hub in a 'remote' physical location, defined as being not on the same LAN subnet, then HubConnect offers a mechanism to connect the two via Hubitat's cloud. Hub "here" connects to the Hubitat Cloud for Hub "there" and the entire 'conversation' is held via the cloud.
Your 'distant hub' might be 10 ft away on another floor or in an outbuilding.. whatever manages to place it on a different subnet. Equally it can be on the other side of the planet, or out in the woods, a cabin, for example.
SmartThings is simply a focused case of the above. As Dan said, the need for the IP Field was already a requirement. If you have devices paired on SmartThings and you expect them to respond, then Yes, the ST hub has to be powered. ST's cloud will converse with it's ST Hub and cause the commands to flow. However, if you have no actual devices paired with ST, just virtuals, those all 'live' in ST's Cloud and the ST hub does not need power.
Well @gijosh28, lots of reasons why you don’t have to go through the bother of jumping backwards!
I really appreciate your honest and forthright post, and I’m glad you did it, because I just learned that HubConnect doesn’t actually need a ST hub, which is very cool. I too, assumed that it was meant to connect just the hardware, which is kind of a silly thought for me to have because I’ve used a lot of the cloud services on SmartThings in the past, to supplement what was temporarily missing on Hubitat.
Thankfully there’s really nothing that I need from a ST hub today, but it’s nice to have that tool available to me as well, having no ST hub anymore.
I agree, hubconnect to get the last few things that aren't working on HE with ST. Then later it's really easy to move just them over. That's a VERY simple solution that you can implement in a few hours with your setup now...other than sounds like you might have to get another ST hub.
Actually.... It's there for a few reasons.. First, it's consistency of user experience across platforms. It's also used as a component in assigning unique ID's for the virtual devices HubConnect creates.
And last, and probably most importantly, it will be used at some point in the future to support HubAction calls so ST hubs can talk directly to Hubitat hubs. It's a feature that the Hubitat team has in the past nicely asked if I could implement since that traffic currently passes through their servers.
It would be one great feature though!!!
