Hubitat migration

Configuration Zigbee
1

Hello, new to HA. I have pi4 in the mail and plan on switching from hubitat for more functionality. Just wondering if there’s any easy way to integrate hubitat as a zigbee/zwave radio for use with HA or if I need to purchase compatible radios to use with my existing zigbee devices?

Thanks for any advice

2

There’s a Hubitat integration in HACS. But I would recommend starting fresh.

3

I would suggest the opposite. Try the HACS Hubitat integration and see how you like it. I use Hubitat mostly and experiment with Home Assistant. It reacts quickly.

If you start over, you will have to buy Zigbee and Z-Wave radios then go thru the effort of repairing everything.

If you find that using Hubitat is not working for you, then spend the money and make the effort to go strictly Home Assistant. Which Hubitat model do you have?

2 Likes
4

Stephenn, I have the C7 model

5

If you aren’t having issues with the C-7 then I’d agree that using the Hubitat integration from HACS is the way to go to start off.

I would definitely recommend putting moving your stuff from Hubitat to native radios with HA on your to-do list. I was full Hubitat (two C-7s and then upgraded one to a C-8) before moving to HA. The native Z integrations for HA have a bit more functionality than Hubitat (e.g., ZigBee firmware updates offered through Z2M, easier to setup ZigBee groups, Z-Wave multicast). You may see other improvements depending on your devices (e.g. I have IKEA shades who’s batteries would die in about 1.5 months with HA that have gone 3 months so far and the lowest is showing 85%).

6

I used hubitat makerapi and ha addon for years. Hubitat just acted as my zwave and zigbee radio. I never had any issues with z networks. I decided to consolidate after my c7 started acting up with low mem errors and a few other things. So I bought a zooz stick and sonof 3.0. Migrating my devices was not that bad, all and all I’m glad I did it except for one stupid zwave dimmer plug that drops out on me and it never did before. So if you don’t mind 2 devices keep the hubitat with HA.

7

I am currently running two Hubitat C7’s, one in the house and the other in the horse barn. They are setup as mesh. How would this work for HA? Would I need to have two HA devices plus zigbee and zwave radios in both locations. Can the HA controllers mesh the devices?
I am losing “faith” in Hubitat’s ability to move forward plus their lack of desire to improve their dashboards. I also don’t like their lack of opensource. I tried HA a long time ago but was not happy with it them. With the newer versions it is probably time to revisit.
Thoughts?

8

Are you wanting to use these as your radios with HA doing everything else? Coincidentally, I just mocked up flow charts for someone else that might help.

1000000125
10000001251380×830 51.5 KB

If yes to the above question, then you’d be looking at option 2 without the green lines (no need to feed HA devices to Hubitat with HADB).

If you want to completely ditch the Hubitat hubs, you could setup HA in one location with a USB dongle and just add an Ethernet based ZigBee dongle to the other location. You’d just setup two instances of the ZigBee integration in HA where each instance has its own dongle.

1000000126
10000001261166×378 25.4 KB

Another option making some assumptions:

You have power and network available in the barn. What types of sensors do you have out there? You might find you’d have a better experience by swapping them to ESPhome-based sensors and eliminating the need for the remote ZigBee network.

My recommendation to help ease into it would be to:

  1. Setup HA integrations for non-Z stuff
  2. Setup two instances of the HA integration for Hubitat. One for each hub.
  3. Expose everything from each hub on Maker API to get it all into HA.
  4. Get all of your current automation set back up. The are some gotchas here.
  • Wait for events in HA doesn’t work the same as HE. These will get reset by an HA restart. Setting up automations in HA is a lot quicker so creating new ones to split up HA RM rules is quick enough.
  • Instead of a thousand IF statements, use the “Choose” option in HA.
  1. Start removing non-Z stuff from HE, making sure everything is still working in HA as you go.
  2. Once you get HE down to just the Z devices and everything is working, make a backup and immediately restore it. This will make sure the HE DB is cleaned up with the (presumably) massive changes you just made.

With things stable on HA, then start looking at branching out integrations, making better dashboards, and looking at the new avenues you can take, like ESPhome.

9

This is great Ryan!!
Thanks. Now I’ve got to study this for a while. First thing though is to setup a HA instance on one of my Intel NUCs.
All my devices are all ready in Maker API so that is a good thing.
I will stay with Zigbee though. I have a couple of ESP32’s but I’m not a fan of using WIFI for my sensors. Zigbee has worked great for me for years.
What is the most popular Zigbee dongle for HA?

1 Like
10

Is there a document that explains how to setup the integration for Hubitat?
Thanks.

11

Suggest you first install HACS then configure the Hubitat integration from HACS in Home Assistant and then follow the tips from this guide for Philips Hue Bridge migration to ZHA as the process will practically be the same for both Zigbee and Z-Wave:

12

Here’s the read me for the Hubitat integration from the HA side; installed using HACS.

This is the how-to for installing HACS:

The piece that is glazed over is how to install the Hubitat integration using HACS:

  1. Open HACS
  2. In the bottom right-hand corner, click on “Explore and Download Repository”
    image
  3. Search for “Hubitat” and select it.
    image
  4. Click Download in the bottom right-hand corner, give the pop-up a second to update, then click download again.
    image
    image1523×882 28.2 KB
  5. Restart Home Assistant, then add the Hubitat integration like you would any other from the “device” menu in HA settings.