I’ve been using Hubitat for a number of years and am interested in converting to a Home Assistant.
I’m tempted by HA Green because of its simplicity. However, I’m not sure if that’s what I need. I currently have 97 devices, 80 of which are Z-wave and 17 are Zigbee. There are quite a few automations. I’m not sure how to quantify the demand for memory and processing. Most automations are based on the time of day (sunset, sunrise), the amount of light to shut shades in bright rooms, motion, and temperature.
I expect a steep learning curve. So, the goal is to transition by converting each room to HA.
What I’m looking for is a recommendation of what to buy in terms of hardware and suggested best practices for this conversion,
Or if you want to “test the waters” before committing money you could install home assistant in a VM on any PC. Not recommended long term. The PC would have to be on 24/7 and Windows is an awful OS for a server. But for testing this is fine.
If you end up liking Home Assistant it is a simple matter to backup and restore HA to any new hardware.
My first recommendation would actually be to take a little search in the forum. Don’t worry, this is not the usual “do a search” that you get in forums, but chances are high, that other users had done this transistion already and there could be some useful ideas and experiences in these threads. So yes, in a case like this, I really do recommend to give the search a shot - in addition to you asking here.
A recomendation for hardware is always difficult, as there are many factors to take into account, especially your personal preferences.
But as Tom said, the GREEN is a fine device, that’ll fit your description. If you want a little more DIY, a Pi is a nice device. And if you want to go crazy from the beginning, go with your own little server, like a mini-PC and eg. Proxmox as virtualization.
For the devices you have, a GREEN is suitable and will not lap in performance. And you have an all in one device.
If you really dig deep into Home Assistant and home automation, you’ll likely buy something “bigger&better” in the future. If you’re staying with your setup, and not get crazy, you’re good to go for a longer time with the GREEN.
As you asked about your transition. If you like Home Assistant, here are two links that might be interesting for you:
And especially this one (that is listed in the cookbook as well):
I would firstly install it virtually, and then install the Hubitat/HA integration. Just play around with a few automations in HA, but operating in Hubitat. Over time, you can move the zigbee and zwave networks across, and simply switch out the Hubitat device for the HA device.
If you are serious about HA, you’ll eventually go Proxmox. it’s super easy and powerful. If you have a spare laptop or low end machine, use that.
Bear in mind that Green doesn’t include a ZigBee or ZWave interface although both can be added as dongles. You can also bridge your Hubitat Z devices to Green using an integration which saves a lot of re-pairing of devices.
HA Yellow includes a ZigBeee interface and ZWave can be added via a dongle.
Running HA virtually will help you discover lots about the environment you are intendingc
In case it wasn’t clear, with either HA Green or VM approaches, you will in the end need a zigbee USB dongle as the zigbee coordinator, and then a z-wave USB dongle for the z-wave equivalent.
Hubitat hubs have both zigbee and z-wave radios inside. So I think that’s one of the major differences you’d want to know upfront.
And that’s not a bad thing that HA Green doesn’t have the radios - it’s part of the learning curve. So, if I were you, I would:
Doing so you would have multiple benefits: (a) Hubitat essentially becomes the zigbee and z-wave radio stack for HA, and (b) you would be able to migrate at your own pace, taking time on the said learning curve
IP-based (wifi or lan) devices can likely be migrated into HA with ease. No rush to migrate zigbee or z-wave (see #6 below)
Start building your frontend UI and recreate / improve your automation rules in HA
When you are ready, you can then go slow and migrate zigbee or z-wave devices guadually from Hubitat to HA, via your new zigbee & z-wave USB dongles.
Adjust automations in HA, in response to zigbee / z-wave migration above.
You can link your hubitat to your HA hub directly so that the Hubitat devices show up as devices in HA. This really helps ease the transition. Some people just leave their zigbee and z-wave devices paired to the Hubitat permanently and use their HA box for automations. That way they never need to purchase the zwave or zigbee dongles as the Hubitat handles the pairing and device handling. However, nearly eveyone eventually moves all their devices to local dongles because HA has many more device integrations that are available earlier and include more features. Bugs get fixed faster in HA too (despite what Hubitat fanboys might tell you).
