Review / perspective on C8 pro

Why Hubitat Elevation
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Ok so im a new user to Hubitat and I wanted to give a review or perspective on my Hubitat C8 pro after using it for about 10 days.

Ever since I was a kid all learning on a pc and such was always trial and error.
Finding information how to fix a computer problem, being software issue or removing or installing new hardware, I did all that.

So ive been involved with smarthome for a few years, mainly its about Philips hue lightings and sensors from Hue, cameras from Google nest - Aeotec multipurpose and multi 7 sensors and finally alot og Govee lights.

I started with Aeotec smartthings hub and honestly it worked really well with my stuff, but Im into security of my house and I never really gotit to work the way I wanted, or maybe I just didnt invest enough time to find out..

So now Im into homekit and local control, so Im getting my feets wet with Homekit and it works well, but also causes issues. I have 2 hue bridges, connecting the first to homekit was a breeze but when i connnected the second bridge with all my outdoor lights and sensors, it became so ureliable that I had to remove the hub from homekit and factory reset it and start over.

So I started to look into a new hub that could operate locally
so it became Hubitat vs Homey pro.

No denial homey pro looks awesome and UI looks amazing, but it also had alot of issues as far as I could read, so when I finally watched a youtube video from repairguydk about seeing his setup with homey pro in his apartment of around 1100 sq ft. setup was a homey pro and 3 satellites and a coupple of zigbee plugs, so the price for all that would end up being a total of 635$!?

Well you can guess what road I took

I grabbed the Hubitat C8 pro and that might be a little overkill for what Im using it for, bt i wanted the latest one and got it.

Straight up installing the hub were super easy and set it up in the app as well.
The way the UI works is alot different from what im used to and the UI in general looks a little tired and dated, however when you crack the code on how it really operates, it then works flawlessly.

first i added the first Hue bridge and got all my lights in, then I added all my sensors and found out it was not a good idea to add all sensors first before actually, the problem was about 1/2 of the contact sensors would not gibe me the option of making it a contact sensor and about the same for the motion sensors, so all most sensors had to go and be reinstalled. If I had just read the documentation better it would have to told me to set up each sensor first before proceeding to the next.

Speaking of documentation, the hubitat website have alot of great documentation on the system/apps and what not, incl alot of videos showing how to set up, all this have helped me alot
website is goof and the community forums are quite amazing, you can fins answers to most questions there.

Next I installed the second hue bridge that gave me a ton of issues in homekit, quick search in cummunity on this topic and it was solved super easy by just installing the hue app again, second bridge up and running in no time and no issues at all.

I do wonder why the native hue app dont show the sensors at all, but just the lights?. problem solved with advanced hue bridge integration, but i still do wonder.

setting up the Hubitat safety monitor, worked so smooth that Im still in shock over how easy it was, the arm away and disarm all sensors and such takes like a few minutesto set up, in smartthings it took forever.
Im sure I still need to tweak it here and there, but HSM do what I want it to do almost, theres just some lighting delay issues I need to find out how I solve those and in what app.

Homekit integration were smooth sailing, the dashboards is a bit tricky to get started and moved around with, Ill say the hubitat dashboard were a little tricky to start off with, and also a little heavy to work with since you gotta move all the tiles around manually to fit it, but main thing it works without issues and thats the main thing, I dont need dashboaards with insane graphics and such, I need something that works without any problems and it does, but down the line Ill try to finetune it more.

So my setup at home is a Hubitat C8 pro - starling hub - 2 hue bridges - apple tv latest and Asus RT-AX88U and all works rocksolid

Quality of the Hubitat box it self is amazing
UI could use a workover
quality of what the hub can actually do is amazing

In my opinion the best hub for a smart home you can get at the moment, if you are not intimidated by putting in a little work and studying to get to know this little hub.
Im pretty sure its more hassle to work with home assistant - homebridge than the Hubitat UI.

Thanks alot Hubitat and please keep that UI on your to do list

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I've got this same router.

My previous setup was a Ubiquiti "UniFi Dream Machine Pro", their 24 port PoE switch, and a couple of their APs.

I've had WAY less issues in the last 2 years on the "crappy" Asus router than I ever had on UniFi. It's such a great router, and Merlin lets me do a few extra things on it that I couldn't do otherwise.

I wrote one of the Home Assistant integrations. I'm definitely familiar with it, inside and out. I ran HA for a few years. Hubitat is so much better. It's WAY easier to write little one-off apps/drivers to get things to work the way I want on Hubitat. Hubitat apps, like HPM, make things that are a lot of work on HA pretty easy.

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So true, I’m not a developer and can barely code at all, and yet I was able to take over an abandoned driver, improve it and publish it via HPM.

Since then other folk here on the forums have helped me vastly improve it compared to the original version.

I never could have managed this on HA, it’s a black box for me.

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good write up.

I am really happy with HE, I do agree that the interface is really early 2000's though. I know they are busy with functionality., but yea, it needs a real refresh.

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Hey there
I used to run netgear routers, but years ago switched to ASUS for quality and updates.
To this day I never had any hickups on any ASUS routers I have ever owned, my recent ASus as mentioned, have performed excellent together with 2 ASUS RP-AX56 extenders.
I cant comment on UNIFY, I never owned any of their stuff.

For homeassistant and homebridge, I def believe both can do awesome things, but i dont code or anything and for me it have to be easy and done in short time, I have no time to sped hours troubleshooting and such, I do however truely appreciate all the people who does all this

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haha yes for sure, but I prefer functionality over looking nice anyday. things works for sure, but a little brushup on the UI would be nice

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true
HA and homebridge are capable of doing crazy stuff and gives you full control, but as far as I understand, also very time consuming to deal with all this
I have no idea about codes and all, so the Hubitat system, just fits my needs perfectly

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Consistency is key. I know where to go and how to get things done. Please don’t change HE team.

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I think the over all navigation structure is fine, just needs a fresh front-end framework like Svelte or React.

This will enable things like better looking and easier to manage dashboards, and less clunky front ends for things like RM.

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I absolutely disagree that HE needs a UI refresh. The last thing I want is for Hubitat to adopt the same ■■■■ UI everything else uses these days. Seems like every UI everywhere is totally 'flat', with no contrast. Buttons have no borders or borders that are like 2% darker than the rest of the button making them all but invisible. Just a few minutes ago I was trying to log into a site where some dummy decided it would "look good" to make the username and password text boxes "modern" and I couldn't even find them. The only way I could tell where to click to focus on the input box was by finding the word "username". The box itself was basically invisible. Total garbage design.

For a good example of "modern" UI that's total trash, go look at Bitbucket. Where are the buttons? Tabs? Who knows, it's all the same color with no borders.

I don't have to waste time staring at the HE UI to try to figure out where to click to make it do something. It's nice and clear. Not everyone is 18 with 20/20 vision and a 45" OLED monitor. I'm thoroughly tired of all these stupid "modern" UIs where everything is a shade of grey and there's as little contrast as possible between UI elements.

I'm not that old, but my vision sure isn't what it used to be. I just bought a new LG DualUp just to get text big enough to read comfortably while I code. Making the UI "shinier" just so it doesn't "look dated" will decrease the usability a LOT for many people.

Give me better documentation. Give me Groovy 4+. Give me pretty much anything other than a UI refresh that will just make things worse.

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Agree. That is the absolute worst UI design trend of the last 40 years, and makes EVERY UI harder to use that does it.

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I'm not saying change the operations of the UI, I'm talking about cleaning it up, using the technology we have (better implementation of HTML5)

. Example, Rule machine, if you ever try to update a rule on mobile, once you click something everything jumps around, edits are odd.

It also does not always play well with smaller screens. Etc. etc.

And I understand that we are used to the UI, but it does look old and worn out and will in time loose market place if new home automators decide to find other devices that have cleaner and more interactive UI's.

I'm an old command line jocky, I understand the old dog and new tricks, but the mass majority, it's a market death for a lot.

Heck I spent a decent amount of time talking to a buddy who was gonna go HE , but when I showed him it, he scoffed over thenUI, and is most likely going another route

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If anything, just add a nice Node Red-ish automation UI and leave the rest alone. 95% of the time a normal user will spend in the UI is making automations. How often are you really in there adding/removing devices? Hubitat is more about automation. It's never had a lot of effort on dashboards because, honestly, dashboards are crap. It's just manual control, but worse. A physical button/switch is a million times better than the best dashboard. And automation is better still. Automation > physical control > voice control > dashboards.

I'd be up for a UI refresh if it's just to use newer underlying tech but keeping it simple and high contrast. Thankfully Bruce seems to have an emphasis on usability over 'shininess', so we'll likely never end up with some contrast-less monstrosity.

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I do add a device from time to time, I am always frustrated how the mobile app is so difficult to get in there to fix it. I've learned all the nuances but that is my point, the nuances.

And I agree the dashboard looks like crap, so I had to go out and pay for a better one that takes my dash in the cloud, defeating the purpose. And making my point.

Again, your fwe are talking old dogs that won't learn new tricks.

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I don't bother with the mobile app. Just use the web UI. It works the same on mobile as desktop if you click "use desktop version", especially if you pull it up on a bigger device like an iPad. Whenever I need to go around the house and fiddle with devices, like when I recently added a few more motion sensors (the new Ikea Vallhorn ones, which are pretty nice for $8), I just carry my iPad around and do everything there.

I don't have a dashboard, I don't want a dashboard, and I'll never have a dashboard. The lights are automated. If that's not good enough I just stand up and press the wall switch. I can walk across the room and tap a wall switch in a tenth the time it takes to fumble around on some silly dashboard. And for the 2 times a year where I have some reason to mess with something from my phone, HomeKit works just fine for that.

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I guess I hit a sore spot for people, but my point was to make it abit more intuitive, never did I mention a complete makeover, I just feel it works in a strange kinda way, but I def manage to get past that.

Yes the dashboard section is pretty poor, I can live with that, but wish I could drag and drop the tiles in the order I want them, I know theres a workaround that, but I would rather see that function in the native app.

yes I agree main function is automations, but in order to make those as easy as possible it would not hurt to re think the interface a bit to make navigation more clear for the common user like myself

Otherwise as I said the Hubitat is amazing and can do amazing things, but it also have to be a little bit on their toes as well, when you like at eg. Homey pro looks like and can do

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There's more to UI than just contrasty icons/text. Even HE's dashboards suffers from this (just look at the stock switch icon - white text on a yellow background when on). Most people (here at least) are focussed on ease of use ie not always having to refer to a document or bookmarked post to figure out how to do something.

Also dashboards aren't only about controlling switches. I use my desktop dashboard for an at a glance view of everything plus showing video feeds, status, weather, power use etc. I also have a nest hub on my desk which does precisely that plus a few switches to manually control certain things. In this context a better UI would be very handy in organising and displaying data.

As would most of us :grinning:. But painful as it is, it's a once off task anyway so TBH not a dealbreaker, Anyway for more customisation outside of one of the various apps out there you can check out using CSS here The Noob's (in)complete guide to CSS for Hubitat

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Im on that as well

reagrding dashboards, Ill like to be able to see them while travelling, is everything in order, the HSM system operates correctly and so on, it would not hurt to have larger icons for sensors or door opens or closes etc. Im sure it can be done, but Ive just played around with it for less than 2 weeks so...
but thanks for that link, Ill for sure check it out, looks very interesting, even I have no coding experience at all haha

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The UI is ugly, but its biggest problem is its usability. It is extremely unintuitive for the uninitiated and those without a developer background.

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Wow has this thread perverted into something else.