Scenes in Vera Equivalent

[squirrelly1]

I use Vera. I’m thinking of getting Hubitat. Vera has Scenes that automate devices turning on and off.

Where in Hubitat can you do that? i could not find it in the documentation.

[thebearmay]

Have a whole category for you Groups and Scenes - Hubitat

[Sakman]

@squirrelly1

i could not find it in the documentation

https://docs2.hubitat.com/en/apps/groups-and-scenes

[squirrelly1]

Thanks! Does Hubitat allow me to turn on devices an hour before dusk and turn then off a half an hour before daylight?

[squirrelly1]

Also turn a pump on every 30 minutes for 1 minute?

Thanks in advance

[Sakman]

Yes absolutely. Once you create the scene, Hubitat creates a virtual scene activator that you can use in any automation. For turning on/off a certain time like before dusk, I would suggest using Basic Rules....Basic Rules | Hubitat Documentation

[hydro311]

Both of those things are totally possible.

Hubitat has numerous different native (i.e. built/maintained by Hubitat staff) applications to manage automations -- that can be understandably confusing at first...

For instance, for rule-building, options include "Basic Rules", "Simple Automation Rules", "Visual Rule Builder", Rule Machine" and WebCore. Then there are more specialized options for dealing with specific things -- like "Basic Button Controller", "Button Controller" and "Room Lighting".

In some cases, these options may be older tools that aren't deprecated, but also aren't being actively maintained since they were replaced with a newer tool. An example of this would be that "Simple Automation Rules" has been superceded by "Basic Rules".

The "Group and Scenes" app mentioned previously is another example of that -- it's been superceded by "Room Lighting".

These older tools are still available because it would be hard for many exisitng users to transfer to a newer tool if they suddenly disappeared,

If staff ever decides to fully deprecate any of these older tools, I'm sure they'll give a healthy head's-up about it, but I myself would not use them if I were brand new to the platform... If I was just starting out, I'd plan to avoid the older tools. But that's just my $0.02 (and worth that much!)

The Hubitat Documentation is very good, and can be a helpful research resource.

The Search tool within the community here is also a powerful resource (magnifying glass in upper right corner of this window).

This post here would be helpful with respect to nuts-&-bolts transition planning:

Are you new to home automation or Hubitat or coming from a different platform such as SmartThings, Vera, or Wink? This may help!

Just throwing this out there. It may or may not be a help and I'm sure many others will contribute to this thread. Here are a few things to start you off. Z-wave Devices: 1: You do not need Wink/ST/Vera etc. to exclude your existing z-wave devices. Hubitat can do the exclusion for you. (Make sure you turn off your old hub first!) In most cases this is sufficient before pairing. Sometimes though you may need to factory reset the device. Non Plus z-wave devices may have to be included/excluded …

[CuriousB]

I am a longtime Vera user, over 10 years. I switched to Hubitat last March and have been very happy with my decision.

1. Hubitat is well supported. They do a code drop every few days with new devices, bug fixes and roadmap changes
2. Hubitat has an very active user community and strong forum to seek advice and help.
3. Hubitat support thousands of device.
4. The platform is stable. I have only had to reboot my unit once in 9 months. I have since put a wifi plug switch in front of Hubitat so I can power cycle it remotely if need ever arise.
5. Rules are different than Vera scenes but very powerful. There is a bit of a learning curve to transition from Vera to Hubitat but you can start small and take on more and more as you get more comfortable.
6. The UI process for Hubitat is a weak point. Its slightly better with the new UI capability but it seems circa 1990's in capability. If you want to learn css you can customize to your hearts content but that is a steep learning curve and only for code warriors.
7. I haven't found a good 3rd party iPhone app to dashboard Hubitat. Hubitat has one but it is the same UI and mundane unless you get deep into css. I loved Homewave for Vera but I don't see an equivalent to Hubitat.
8. While I mostly use ZWave Hubitat support Zigbee and Matter. I haven't tried these yet but will wade in eventually.
9. Hubitat can get confused on complex rules that turn on lots of devices in a single rule (like an "all on" or "all off" rule. It works 90% of the time ok but 10% of the time I have to run he rule a second time to clean up devices that didn't update. Interestingly most of the devices that didn't update (about 80%) actually changed to the proper state but just never had the device or GUI reflect the new and proper state. A device refresh fixes this. So I have a "refresh all" rule as well.
10. Conditions in rules allow conditional execution of actions. Here you can trigger on an event but then only execute the action if a condition is true. For instance trigger on a door opening but turn on lights only if it is dark outside.

Anyway I had given up on Vera and Ezlo due to he slow progress on the platform. Ezlo is very buggy, changes are glacial, and many features are only partially implemented as if they were a demo for a proof of concept meeting. Not hardened as needed for an important home control appliance. They do a lot of apologizing on the Ezlo forums but not enough action behind it.

[Sakman]

@squirrelly1

Also turn a pump on every 30 minutes for 1 minute?

As @hydro311 states this is totally possible and there are several ways to go about this. Rather than go into the details for this application, I suggest starting with automating your lights. Once you are comfortable with that, you can post back here in the forum on how to turn your pump on every 30 minutes and we will help you.

[TArman]

@CuriousB

Hubitat can get confused on complex rules that turn on lots of devices in a single rule (like an "all on" or "all off" rule. It works 90% of the time ok but 10% of the time I have to run he rule a second time to clean up devices that didn't update. Interestingly most of the devices that didn't update (about 80%) actually changed to the proper state but just never had the device or GUI reflect the new

Try using the “meter” option to spread out the load of switching all on or off (or other actions.)

[CuriousB]

I can't seem to find the meter option in my actions. Do I need to enable it elsewhere??

[TArman]

There may be other ways, but I use “run custom action”, choose switch, select them, choose on/off.

[squirrelly1]

@CuriousB how do we message each other? I purchased this and then read your post. i need to be able to set up scenes and turn them on and off with an app like we were able to in Vera.

[CuriousB]

I run scenes via the gui by creating a virtual switch in Hubitat and naming it something similar to the scene name. Then I put that switch as a trigger on the scene I want to manually control. In the scene action section I switch off (with delay) the same virtual switch so it runs only once. I put a delay of 1-2 seconds on the switch turn off so there is more of a tactile look on the gui of the switch going on so it doesn;t immediately turn off making you think something is amiss.

Easy to do and works well.

You will learn in Hubitat world there are two camps. One say having a dashboard and gui to control is normal. The other says you don't need a dashboard or gui because all scenes should be triggered without manual intervention (motion, time of day, event of some sort) and that "proper" automation is well thought through and doesn't need dashboards. As with anything the truth rests in the middle somewhere and is different for everyone....