As many of you know, Lowe’s has decided to shut down the Iris Smart Home Platform, effective March 31, 2019.
Many devices used with Iris Platform are compatible with Hubitat Elevation. For example, second and third generation of Iris branded devices are compatible out of the box. These devices are identified by the part number in the form of: 3xxx-L for second generation and iLxx_x for third generation, where x is a numeric value.
The original Iris sensors are not compatible with Hubitat Elevation or any other smart home platform. Those customers with original version of Iris branded devices, are encouraged to reach out directly to Lowe's for a refund
Yippee, there is hope for a fully operational driver for my iL03_1 zigbee plugs. (looking for the energy reporting side, the switches work great)
Thanks in advance.
I am new to the communnity, I am/was an Iris user who is needing to redo my entire set up at a secondary location. some minimual functions (camera, thermo, locks, lights). So I am a novice at best with hubs that can be developed using codes
At my secondary location, I will mainly be controlling remotly the Thermostat (Zwave CT100), cameras and locks along with Scenes running If/then “rules”
My question is: 1) Is Hubitat a good choice for a hub at a secondary location.
Cameras - Arlo sucks, as I have one at my primary location and the lag is awful. Ring, I have one of those too, the fisheye view is not very becoming, but can get used to it. I have 2 new Generation Iris cameras, will they work with Hubitat. What other suggestions for cameras that can be viewed and record motion both day and night that work well with the Hubitat Ecosystem? Looking for something easy to pair and works well.
Any help and assistance would be greatly appreciated as I only have 2 months to get this up, tested and operational.
Been seeing ads for Hubitat for awhile. Been interested but was an Iris customer so decided is wait. Getting almost $200 for my legacy great made the decision easy and I placed the order same day I got the Iris email.
My setup is simple. Hand full of outlet switches, schlage lock, and a ton of door/window sensors. Plans to upgrade the thermostat at some point but that's future state with now money.
I need 3 replacement door/window sensors though. What is a recommended replacement for this? Open/close notification is all I'm really looking for. I also need about 4 new of the same.
Anything I need to be aware of with the contact sensors I have from a setup perspective? Easy way to leave them in place during pairing?
@cerebus, I have about 6 of the Gen 2, Iris Door Window sensors working great with Hubitat.
If you can find more of them, grab them.
They've never caused me any issue.
The problem is, they aren't really available. I scored some of the 3rd gen cheapish before I went to Japan and when I went to look for more, well they aren't listed and not in the local stores anymore.
Are there other sensors that work with Hubitat? I mean I am sure there are, but are there any that are better than others?
There are a number of sensors that work with hubitat. There is documentation out there with the listing. This is the one I found right away, but I feel like there is another out there. A better one. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
If you have a decent Z-Wave mesh (with powered devices that repeat) you might want to take a look at these sensors - GoControl 5 Pack for $50. Others have used these successfully with Hubitat.
If you prefer Zigbee, there are lots of options.
If you act quickly, you can still buy some Iris sensors at Amazon.
Others have mixed success with the very inexpensive Visonic sensors
However, I will caution you to steer clear of Xiaomi sensors. The are not 100% Zigbee HA 1.2 compliant devices. You will have to tinker quite a bit to make them work reliably. If you have Irisi 3210-L outlets, the Xiaomi devices are know to be incompatible.
Assuming you have a solid Zigbee mesh network (i.e. you have a few plug in Zigbee outlets spread around your house to act as repeaters) then you should have no problem pairing any Zigbee sensor in place. Each device will need to be reset per the manufacturer's instructions before it can be paired with a new system.
Throwing in my 3 cents here.
Zigbee motion and contact sensors are typically faster than their zwave counterparts.
The following are contact multipurpose sensors I would recommend.
Lowes Iris V2 or V3 should they show up in retail again.
Anything Centralite
The Latest Samsung multi, (not the older one pictured above, these are difficult to pair on specific zigbee channels)
Anything NYCE, special plug here as these are the smallest contact sensors I know of, not inexpensive however.
As Mike notes, that's the previous generation ST sensor, and as far as I know, all the features are supported. I was not aware of the ZigBee channel issues, but I guess I was lucky. The new/2018 generation is currently out of stock on Amazon, and vibration isn't suported now but should be in the next hub firmware release.
In any case, ST sensors do indeed generally work well in Hubitat (even the Kickstarter-era ones), as do Iris sensors (most of which are my favorite and I'm sad they don't sell them anymore). I second Mike's observation that ZigBee contact and motion sensors are generally faster than Z-Wave. In some cases, this may not matter, but I use motion sensors for lighting automations, and the difference with Z-Wave is usually annoying. The Iris v2 sensors (never used v3, now may never get to) were consistently among the fastest I used. I wonder how the Lutron occupancy sensors on RA2 compare in speed, but I'm not sure I want to pay enough to find out. (And it's hard to imaging anything much faster than my fastest ZigBee sensors.)
There are a couple revisions of the 2nd generation devices. Based on recent testing, the early revisions of the 2nd gen arrival sensor and multipurpose sensors will not pair at all on channel 25 & 26. The v4 fobs and later revisions of the V2 multipurpose sensor don’t have the issue with channels.
It could be, but I have two unique models of the 2015 sensors with a light green vs dark green PCB. The model with the dark green PCB wouldn't connect when I was testing on channel 25. The 2016 sensors have a different battery contact design and are easy to identify by taking the cover off. Those will connect okay.
Man, this community is pretty awesome. Thanks for all the info to chew on.
Hubitat should be here today. Will probably wait for the weekend to move from Iris. Once I have my stuff paired and see what won't work (I have some v1 Iris sensors), I will circle back to find inexpensive options to replace the v1 and add the last 4 window sensors I've wanted. That 5 pack is looking good...
any problems with using some Z Wave and some Zigbee sensors together? Other than they don't mesh of course. Not overly worried about speed of reporting given I was using Iris and their web connection, meaning sometimes it would take 30 seconds or more to be notified a door or window was opened...
No, that's one of the advantages of Hubitat--it can "speak" ZigBee, Z-Wave, and connect to things over your LAN, so regardless of the protocol the device uses, Hubitat can tie it all together. Of course, that should also have been one of the advantages of Iris since it was pretty similar in that regard, but I'm guessing it did most of its execution in the cloud (like SmartThings, also similar in this regard), whereas Hubitat does this all locally (except, of course, the push notification will require cloud access due to the way mobile OSes implement them). A 30 second delay still sounds a bit long, but local execution should, in any case, make this a bit faster.
You are absolutely correct that Z-Wave and ZigBee, being separate protocols, create separate meshes. If your sensors are battery powered, they don't form "routing nodes" in the mesh network anyway, so you're at the mercy of powered devices (and the hub) with either protocol. But one thing to consider is that Z-Wave sensors are often a bit slower to respond than ZigBee--I've seen Z-Wave motion sensors take a second (or a bit less but sometimes more) to respond to motion, whereas I can get ZigBee sensors to do it in milliseconds. Contact sensors--and presumably most Z-Wave devices in general--are similar, but I haven't tested those quite as much. If speed is important (e.g., if used for a lighting automation), this may be worth considering. Otherwise, there isn't any Hubitat-specific reason to care much one way or the other.
I have a few Zigbee powered plugs spread around, along with ZWave plugs for the Schlage lock that was too far from the hub to work reliably. Once I put all that in place, haven't had any issues with drop off.
Still annoyed the Iris V1 stuff doesn't work but that's what happens when you don't follow proper standards. The extra $$$ I got for these coming from Iris takes away some of the sting though.
It probably was a masterful decision at the time "Lock your customers into your own ecosystem" was all the rage then, down by half maybe since then
Yes, technology changes. You will find a lot of discussion around this forum regarding ZWave vs ZWave Plus. Clearly the Plus is better, but the cost of swapping "a perfectly good device (except for the one thing)" for a practically identical device for $$ is painful.
Zigbee at 2.4ghz won't pass through as many walls/obstacles as ZWave at 904mhz. Therefore the spacing of repeaters for ZWave feels more 'generous'. Zigbee loves repeaters, and a lot of the forum members seem to be using 'wall wart' type repeaters, Ikea's Trafri and the Iris power plug, for example.
ZWave Switches and Outlets replacing dumb wall switches and wall outlets, seem to be generally adequate for building a strong mesh. In other words, not so portable, but due to the 'longer reach' of ZWave, not so critical positioning.
An example: an extremely popular Fan Controller is the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controller. A great device IF you also include a Zigbee repeater, possibly two, in the same room. Therefore the portability, so as to find the optimal position for the repeater, is beneficial.
Received my hub today. Got my sensors setup, fairly easy. Had to setup one of my Zigbee outlet switches to get some of them to pair but once I did that, smooth sailing.
The thing I was dreading, my Schlage lock, turned out to be a pain as expected. Took an hour of pairing, factory reset and so on for it to finally allow me to setup codes. BUT. I did it, it works and works really well.
Need to replace 4 v1 Iris sensors, then I can power off the Iris. Probably go with the 5 pack listed above using zwave to save some money.
(And it's hard to imaging anything much faster than my fastest ZigBee sensors.)
