What can HE do that ST can't?

Other than local processing.....

Anyone ever seen a side by side comparison of HE and ST? The two big things I struggled with were geofence triggered automations and the garage door in general. I would love to see more side by side comparisons if anyone knows of one that exists.

Thanks.

For me "local processing" WAS the main reason for making the switch so I consider it the most important difference.

Also doesn't the SmartThings V3 have the 500 series Z-wave chip vs HE C-7 700 series. If so then the advantages of the HE architecture will only become more evident over time.

Those are the big ones that stand out to me.. other than HE seemingly being a lot more flexible/adaptable - being able to share devices across hubs etc (maybe ST can do this now dunno).

ST def does some things better like (for some users) the UI experience and resilience in being able to use cloud processing to offset some local resource issues. The downside of course being seemingly random and somewhat frequent cloud outages - don't know if this is getting better with the new framework or not.

Both communities are still awesome with lots of info available.. I only lurk infrequently over on ST forums nowadays so am not sure what the impact of all the changes have had on the devs.

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That's an easy answer... HE can control your stuff without the Internet. With ST when the Internet goes down you're dead in the water.

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This. It may take a while to appreciate this benefit, but it will eventually happen. Somewhere between power outages, internet outages and me ripping out my home network to replace with Unifi + pfsense, itā€™s always been nice to walk into a room and still have my lights come on.

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To everything that @erktrek and @cstory777 said, let me add:

  1. Hubitat's Lutron integration blows the ST integration out of the water.

  2. Thanks to @srwhite and @csteele, Hubitat's capacity to scale across large houses (or even separate properties) using HubConnect is incredible.

Edit - I want to add two more things:

  1. Hubitat has strong built-in automation apps (Motion Lighting, Rule Machine) that are far more versatile than the limited automation provided by the built-in mechanisms in ST. While external mechanisms available to ST users (webCoRE) are also available to Hubitat users.

  2. Hubitat's build-in MakerAPI app provides the capacity for users to write additional integrations with ease, bearing in mind that MakerAPI is a supported app at the Hubitat end.

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Oh boy do I agree with ^ that... Lutron on Hubitat is the best integration I've ever seen.

And thanks for the shout out on HubConnect. I'm biased... :slight_smile:

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This 100% :point_up: The Maker API is a huge plus for HE.

I also agree that the 3rd party apps like HubConnect are incredible. To be fair ST has had their share as well - like RBoys lock stuff and others.

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Not exactly a side by side...but here is a post that I wrote over in the ST Community focusing on each platformā€™s strengths.

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For people considering migrating from ST, as I did, it's also important to know what Hubitat doesn't do as well as ST does, and so far I've found exactly one thing -- it doesn't have a tight integration with Leviton Decora WiFi devices.

@tomw and I have been working on an HTTP-based polling driver for these switches (OK, he's done most of the work). It can control the devices flawlessly, but since the cloud API it uses isn't officially supported by Leviton, it doesn't receive asynchronous state change notifications, so these devices that had near-instant status on ST no longer have that on HE.

For most people who started on HE, this isn't a big deal, but I know I was not the only one coming over from ST who needed this integration.

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In general, SmartThings officially supports more cloud integrations - even more so for those instances where a vendor doesn't have an open API (Leviton/Arlo/etc) or isn't accepting new integrations (Logitech Harmony).

Edit: And at least for now, HubConnect can be used to bring in ST-cloud connected devices into Hubitat.

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A word of caution here. I unsuccessfully tried to do this over the weekend, and it was an exercise in frustration rather than being helpful thing.

Maybe it is because I don't have a Smartthings hub? Maybe it is due to the new Samsung app vs the Classic app? Maybe my IP is on a naughty list? Don't know, all I know is the new Samsung app would not allow me to log in without a lot of crazy "games" of install/uninstall, wiping the cache, android cleaner apps, and more. That took like 6 hours of continuous :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: around to get to that point.

Then it would not let me paste the needed Hubconnect "secret code" in the Hubconnect app on Smartthings. The option isn't even there to allow this, at least on my particular instance. The code itself installed fine, but if you cannot authenticate to tie hubs together, this app is worthless. That was another few hours of :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: around.

In my opinion, I don't think this is a viable option going forward. I would try to find a different way.

Yes. This is an area where Hubitat should focus resources, IMHO, especially with the way ST is butchering their platform. If Hubitat could get those cloud integrations, there wouldn't be any competition between the two. I know that Hubitat's philosophy is to keep things local, but there are so many excellent devices that are cloud-only.

Is anybody from Hubitat support reading this?

Hubitat's primary focus has been working on integrations that are local. Relying on cloud service providers to simply turn on and off a light switch is not exactly what Hubitat's promise of local processing is all about.

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Agree 100%.

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I get the local only philosophy, but this is one bad thing about Hubitat. Very common things that are cloud based like thermostats are such a pain to deal with.

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Hubitat does support some cloud-based thermostats, like Ecobee. They also used to support Nest Thermostats, prior to Google killing off the Works with Nest program. Now that Google has a new API, perhaps Hubitat will look into providing that solution again.

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Personally I would rather they focus their efforts on getting all the bugs in the platform (some users are having lots of issues, personally I'm not) before worrying about getting wi-fi devices working well with HE.
Just my 2 pence worth.

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You do have to have a SmartThings hub for the initial setup. After that it isn't needed. I wouldn't be too upset though, as Samsung's cloud isn't something that seemed super reliable when I was using it.

Only for HubConnect 1.6 and lower. But not for HubConnect 2.0RC1 and higher.

Sorry. I could very well be wrong as it's been a while since I set it up.