Well you do have monthly/annual subscriptions for cars now right? Things like OnStar and other connected services. Every manufacturer has some sort of residual thing going these days.
The basic backup and restore works pretty much for everything except Z-Wave. You could limit yourself to mostly Zigbee devices and keep a hot spare or 2 around... you could maintain that system for a very long time without too much trouble I guess.
My goal for my system and my residential clients is viewing HE as an appliance not a tech gadget. In my mind appliances should last a lot longer than just 2 years or so.
In addition to a multi-hub configuration I also employ a "companion" server (RaspberryPI) running various programs like Homebridge, Node-RED and WireGuard. The idea there is to offload as much overhead (apps/rules) to a more agnostic system under my direct control leaving HE to do what it does best - flexible device management/communication.
That may be a true statement in many cases, but it’s inaccurate when applied to Hubitat.
Hubitat has had a built-in backup feature for the three-ish years it’s been commercially available, before the optional Hub Protect service was released several months ago.
Yes, the hub protect service adds some features the built-in backup service lacked. But it is entirely optional.
It would be very different if it (and its associated subscription fee) were required. Or if they had removed a feature set that was previously free.
The solution for those who don’t think the features available with the optional subscription are worth the cost is simple: just don’t use it.
Apologies for the late reply and thanks for the comprehensive response as always.
I do now understand that the HE's generic ZigBee drivers won't work with the ones (non zigbee) available for the Hue Bridge integration so I'll just leave the non-Hue bulbs connected directly to HE as they work as expected this way.
This appears to be a fairly effective approach which I might consider in the future - I've only been using HE for around 6 months now and I still have a lot to learn before trying other platforms though.
I am very grateful for what I've achieved with HE so far compared to ST which I'll be decommissioning soon (only have my garage door opener left running on it).
The only caution I'd give here is that Hue bulbs (and many other brands but possibly not all generations) may be poor repeaters for non-bulb devices on your network. Many people have tried this then gone back due to problems; staff have also objectively observed it with a sniffer. Not everyone does have problems, and if all your devices are bulbs, you shouldn't be affected, either. But just something to keep in mind.
A related question: it sounds like maybe the Hue Bridge integrations you tried worked, just not with these specific drivers? If so, is there a reason you want to use them instead? Is there a feature they provide that a Bridge-integration driver doesn't? CoCoHue, in particular, should be comparable in most cases, and if not, then it's just something the Hue API doesn't expose; the built-in drivers are still pretty close. Just a consideration if you decide to go back, maybe for the above reasons, I suppose. Otherwise, I guess no need to know.
I haven't had any issues as such, I just wanted to pre-empt future ones by solely managing my bulbs through the Hue bridge. I do have a variety of battery powered devices which are my bigger concern.
Only worked with Hue bulbs - The other generic bulbs could be turned on or off but I was unable to dim or change colour hence I rolled back the change as they work as expected with HE's generic drivers.
As I mentioned before, I recently purchased a second HE hub which I am still deciding on an approach as to how to deploy it - At this stage, I might be either keeping it as a hot-swap device or adding all my bulbs to it in order to establish that network segregation as I know for a fact that they will function as expected.
I do, however, need to do some research about the 2-hub set up as I am not sure how I'd be setting up rules, for instance, from the 'general-purpose' hub using the bulbs from the 'bulbs-only' one. I guess there might be some sort of mesh configuration I can hopefully use.
Yes, that is exactly what Hub Mesh is all about, allowing you to easily share the state of devices between hubs as though that were directly paired / setup on the remote hub, as well as the ability to control devices across hubs. You could, for instance, have a switch paired with hub A trigger a rule defined and executed on Hub B, equally, you could have a light paired to Hub B controlled by a rule on Hub A.
Multi-hub setups work great. I use Hub Mesh to share devices from my 2 "main" HE hubs (C-7 - Z-Wave & C-5 - Zigbee) with a "Network Hub" i.e. a C-5 hub with the radios off and only network and "cloud" apps/devices.
It's a little overkill but I already had the extra C-5 lying around and I like the idea of isolating these kinds of services/devices. Note: Have only done this for my home setup NOT my residential clients.
