Was Hubitat A Bad Choice?

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My first experience with Hubitat was short lived in '22. We had been in our new home for 6 weeks, I had played with my new Hubitat Hub for maybe a week, when the house burned down. I was aware it was not as straightforward as Samsung SmartThings, which is what I had used for many years in our other house and at my office.

Now several years later, I have recovered from the losses of the fire and I purchased a used C8 Hub on eBay.

I want to publicly thank BobbyD for helping me get that online and properly registered. I greatly appreciate your help on that.

What attracted me to Hubitat in the beginning was privacy, everything is local. Also the ability to create backups. I had issues with ST not having the ability to create backups. Recently, I've had issues with ST and my Matter enabled light bulbs (lamps). Then the Hub I was currently using that had all of my devices, routines and automations, bricked itself. So I said that's it for ST and whole heartedly jumped head first into Hubitat Elevation.

I've spent the past 9 days adding devices and creating rules, programming schedules, learning how HE works and getting everything like I want it. 9 days... Last night I started on the devices upstairs. My bedside light was first. It's a Matter lamp (bulb). It all went ok until it was "Checking WiFi Connectivity" it timed out. I tried again, several times. The hub is downstairs but directly below my bedroom. Upstairs, I have a separate WiFi router configured as a hotspot and I had my phone within 12 inches of the lamp. No go. So I went downstairs with the lamp screwed it into the lamp in my office where the hub is and where I added the other 18 Matter lamps to HE... Still, no go. I looked it up on the Internet. The information that I got was reboot the hub and Wi-Fi router. So I killed the power to the router and the HE hub. Waited several minutes and turned them back on. After a few minutes everything came back online. I tried adding the lamp form upstairs and it paired ok and added itself to the rest of my devices on HE.

Thinking all was fine, I sat down in the den and reached over and hit the button to turn on the lights from one of my remotes. The light didn't come on. That was a first with HE. I tried again, it didn't fire. I tried the app, no light. I tried a different light, not working either. I tried all of my lights and all of my remotes. None of my matter lights will work with any of my remotes or the app. They are showing in the app but when you issue a command, nothing happens and their state doesn't change. 18 lamps and three remotes not working. This was an issue I had with ST and Matter Lamps. When you IP changes the Matter devices quit working. You would think just add the lamps again. The lamps are in three hard wired ceiling fans with no switches in a vaulted ceiling 10 feet up. I have to drag out a ladder, take the fixture apart unscrew the lamp, scan it, screw it back in six times to reset it and then re-pair. All on top of a ladder. I can't do this every week like I had to do with ST. I have 25 Matter lamps all over the house and in the Narnia light in the backyard. My IP changes regularly because of the crappy fiber service we have, I'm always having to reset my router. I don't have a static IP address and I'm not paying the extra fee to get one.

I thought/hoped HE would solve this issue I had with ST. I'm wondering if I made a bad choice with HE or is this just a Matter issue and I should get different non-Matter lamps.

Anyone else have this issue? What did you do to solve it?

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I'll be blunt and probably unhelpful; I have tried Matter devices and found them to be less than satisfactory. My fix is to stick with Zigbee.

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I have tried and do use different hubs in my home. Hubitat is the workhorse and hands down easiest to create complex automations with.

Do not judge any hub based on Matter. It still has many problems. As mentioned, Zigbee is a solid choice as long as you build a stable network with mains powered Zigbee devices to act as repeaters.

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Have you turned off DHCP, NAT, and are you using the IP address pool from the main router for all the IP addresses (i.e. a common subnet for all the devices)? Is the AP router Ethernet connected to a LAN port and not the WAN port? is the other end of that cord on the LAN side of the primary router?

You don't need a static IP address. Are you talking about the WAN IP address to your home (from your service provider)? Or Hubitat's IP address on your LAN? If the latter then set an IP address reservation on your primary router for Hubitat or setup a static IP. Changing your WAN IP address shouldn't effect much of what is happening within your home. Hubitat is local control so doesn't need WAN connectivity to work. You seem to be mixing a lot of concepts together.

Why not try a few ZWave and/or Zigbee devices just to get some comparative data points.

p.s. Hubitat is not a bad choice.

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Thanks for your feedback. Keep in mind that Matter controllers rely on your router and access points, which may struggle to coordinate a large number of devices. As others mentioned, protocols where the controller has direct control over the radio are likely your most reliable option. Since Hubitat manages Zigbee and Z-Wave networks directly, it avoids reliance on your Wi-Fi infrastructure.

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What is this mysterious "it"?

Screenshots of error messages are very helpful.

Elaborate on this. Hotspot is probably not the right term. Access point maybe?

  • Make and model of main router and secondary router?
  • What is backhaul on secondary (wifi or ethernet)?
  • Provide an IP of a device connected to the main router, and an IP of a device connected to the secondary (this is to determine if they are on the same LAN segment).
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This is my second favorite question.

My first is “Who is the mysterious they that you refer to?” :blush:

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My first automation would be a ton of smoke alarms, forget the lights.
Seroiously tho, I have about 30 Zigbee lights from various brands, and they work great. Of course some brands are more reliable than others. I don't do Matter, as I don't think it's ready for primetime yet, but my experience is very limited.

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Like with many things.. There are a bunch of garbage cheap devices out there that have all kinds of issues.. But all the Matter devices I have in production are all working very reliable..

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For my 2c on this... your comments around the platform and staff seem relatively positive, it is more the experience with a specific technology that has been problematic (matter), which appears to be a broader issue. I would therefore respectively question the title of the topic... I know, I know... This comes across as "how dare you question the HE platform...."... I'm not trying to be one of those guys, just to respectively post a question...

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Is this the OP's first post? No initial help about how to fix it? Just directly to questioning the whole thing? This doesn't add up.

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Does that matter (pardon the pun)?

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Matter, no. But typically if a person has a problem they ask for help on the problem. This is not that approach. I wondered if there was a second account they were using.

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I am now on my third Hubitat. I started with a C7 hub, upgraded to the C8 when it came out and then to the C8 Pro a little later. My experience has been quite satisfactory That is not to say that I have never had a problem, but I have been able to resolve problems with help of the community.

I have a mix of devices. For mission critical lighting, I user Lutron Caseta devices and Pico remotes. They are not cheap, but they are reliable and the Telnet between the Lutron Pro hub and Hubitat is solid. I do have a few Phillips Hue lights and a couple of WiFi lights. If you want to keep your spouse happy, do not go the cheap route for lighting.

Other than lighting, the vast majority of my devices are Zigbee 3.0. The more Zigbee devices you add to your system, the more robust your mesh becomes. Inexpensive Zigbee smart plugs make excellent repeaters.

I have Z-wave devices as well. While more complicated to setup, the protocol is well established and controlled by a single entity.

Matter is still in its infancy compared to other protocols. That can mean some growing pains. It will eventually be quite good, but it is not quite there. Be sure to do some research before purchasing.

There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum including the Hubitat staff, community developers, ambassadors, etc. Anytime you get stuck, ask for assistance. Someone will be able to help resolve the issue.

A couple of tips:

  1. Always check the Hubitat compatibility list before making a device purchase. There are a lot of posts from people who say "I purchased device XYZ, can you develop a driver for it?". Depending upon the device, it might not be possible to do so. Developers have limited time.

  2. For any devices using an IP address, always reserve that address on your router so it will keep the same IP address whenever the router reboots. There are many people who post "I cannot access my Hubitat at the address I have been using". In most cases, the l router assigned a new IP address. Reserve any critical addresses such as Hubitat, any supplemental hubs and all IP connected devices. Doing so will avoid a lot of headaches.

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Then I guess we are asking a similar question... I too felt like the title of the topic could be dismissing the platform before understanding the nature of the issues... I feel it is important to put forward these types of issues in a relatively curious tone... but that is just me... Not to say everyone has to adopt this approach.

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Thread title sounds kinda click-baity to me.

I’m not suggesting anything about the content of the OP itself.

Just that it seems to me that the title—which is a little vague and perhaps implies there’s a deep, existential issue with the hub—may have been chosen to get attention/replies.

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This, and the fact that OP is still a no-show here... I realize it's been less than a day, but if you start a provocative thread like this and then aren't willing to engage in the discussion it quickly & inevitably stirs up, I think that's straight up disingenuous and pretty shady in terms of signaling your intentions.

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To be fair, it's not uncommon to use a "spicy" topic title in forums to try to get more attention/help. I'll admit to doing it a few times over the years. :slight_smile:

This topic is "Was Hubitat a bad choice?" (question) and not "Hubitat was a bad choice!" (statement). Obviously, small changes/nuances can have big affects on tone, which can be hard to read accurately online. :man_shrugging: :slight_smile:

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I stopped reading when I saw 'and a second router as a hot spot'.

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My guess is the intent was as an "access point", which I have done years ago. That may only prove the op is not a network engineer.

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