Originally I set up the SmartThings hub to do hub-stuff, and Home Assistant to handle all but the most basic automation, using the SmartThings integration to HA. Like yourself (and many others, it seems), the reliability and other limitations of the SmartThings caused me to swap it out with a Hubitat.
Now, I use the Hubitat as mostly just a hub, and again integrate that into HA. All my serious automations are done in HA. It all works great. I have Zigbee devices, Z-Wave devices and a handful of “other” (like Kasa WiFi switches), all set as devices in Hubitat, and HA just “sees” them for automation use.
One thing I like is Hubitat has an Amazon Echo skill that works, for free, without all the song’n’dance of HA’s integration. So for the few items I want Alexa control of, it’s done via the Hubitat, and HA sees any state changes.
Bottom line, keep & integrate both. You get the best of both worlds.
The point I was trying to make is that HA has more integrations with what I need… i.e Sense and Flume. I have those services and Hubitat doesn’t have the integration.
Bingo! You and I are singing the same song and came to the same conclusion. We have had nearly identical journeys it seems over the years. X10 > Smart Things > Hubitat > Home Assistant.
I installed Hubitat about a year ago. My network also consists of Kasa light switches (55 of them) plus a handful of Z-wave devices (mostly Zooz scene controllers) and several Zigbee devices.
I just got into Home Assistant a few weeks ago (spun it up as a VM) and quickly found the Hubitat Integration for Home Assistant integration and it hit me just like you - use Hubitat for the devices that require radios. In about ten minutes I realized the Alexa integration is a breeze with Hubitat, HA is a mess as well is the HA Z-wave options.
One monkey wrench I think that I am just trying to get my head around. Will buttons / scene controllers work through the bridge? When the Hubitat integration brings Z-wave devices over does it do it in the same way that the official documentation talks about leveraging other home automation hubs to bridge z-wave devices over?
I’m really glad to find this discussion, I had the same thought about using Hubitat as a hub for the radios with HA for a dashboard. Now I’m thinking of starting with Hubitat which will help with some things for now, but in a year or so I could start on HA since I want its Broadlink integration. The experience of @bpsmicro and @domenicdistefano are encouraging and suggest I can invest in Hubitat and it won’t go to waste.
I use my hubitat hub as a paperweight only. Terrible thing and arrogant developers on their forum. I use HA for all for about three years now and it is rock solid. Hubitat is never been stable. But maybe I was to early for hubitat to be stable. But the developers never ever wanted to know about instability issues. They always blamed other stuff. But they did replace their hub for one with better hardware, and still said it could not be my hub that was the course. So that was bye bye for me to the hubitat.
Just want to leave a reference link here for future users coming to this thread.
There is a (custom) integration to use Hubitat’s Maker API to talk/control devices that are tied to Hubitat - main application is to use Hubatat hub as the radio for zigbee and z-wave.
… other than zigbee and z-wave, you likely could integrate your gadgets directly to HA, and then use HA as frontend & automation engine that ties everything together.
Hi, I am in the same shoes, I use HE to take care all Z-wave and Zigbee devices, integrated with HA through maker API. The other way I use HA integration with HE just to be able to access all devices in both hubs. As a non programmer I find HE rule machine easier to handle more than automations in HA, managing global variables integrating them with Sharptools. The main benefit in HA is the ability to control Wifi devices locally like Tuya and Chamberlain.
I have a HA running on a Synology Dock and want to have one master hub that can manage both Z-Wave and Zigbee devices - As my NAS is in the basement then the HE connected via Ethernet should be able to link to HA on my NAS through my LAN, is that correct?
Have you found any compatibility problems with devices and HE?
Can’t comment on the NAS part, but the principle of having HE on your LAN and your HA instance picking it up is correct, I have been doing this for a while now (and am just in the middle of ditching it in favour of a Skyconnect, i no longer need ZWave).
Be aware that it’s not exactly as it sounds. HA is not using HE as ‘the radio’ as such. You pair all the devices with HE and it can then either pass state info to HA or receive instruction from HA for each device. The devices though are still connected to and managed by HE. Not necessarily a bad thing but I am just looking to manage everything in one place, ie in HA.
I moved from HE to HA 6months ago. This was my initial setup, to ude HE for zw and zb devices. But I discovered that HA is better in terms of device managemnt then HE. It doesnt have for e.g. so frequent aquara sensors drop issue, zwave device parameter configuraton is more user friendly and list of supported devices is much wider (e.g. I had a lot of problems with older Fibaro ZW devices in HE). Not mentioning the response times, which are faster with HA compared to HE, possibility to do zigbee groups, etc.
Very glad to have found this thread. I had been pretty happy with SmartThings with several custom groovy apps (MyQ, home bridge, flume lock user managements, Konnected alarm, etc…). However for everyone using the groovy or custom DTHs Samsung just flipped us the bird as they broke their groovy integration as of January 2023. I preemptively purchased Habitat this past Dec. thinking that would be my next move.
Then out of pure chance I happened to install HA on a friends machine to record some cameras using MotionEye. I hadn’t touched HA in about 3 years and to be honest that experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I found HA really overly complex and unstable at the time (was using HASSIO on a Pi). However my recent experience was quiet the opposite. So much so that now that I’m about to get started moving all my ~90 devices from STH to HE I paused and wondered if I should be giving HA another shot (using it as the main integration hub via usb ZB & ZW radios).
Reading some of these posts is inspiring me to use HE as just a hub for those zigbee & wave radio devices (bulk of my home) since I already bought it. I did already have a ZW USB z-stick s2 laying around so I got it setup with HA last night but was a little sad to see I couldn’t start pairing mode in HA. I had to unplug the stick and press the button on it near the switch. Was hoping for a friendly web UI for adding/removing ZW devices. There was an ok Web UI for adding / removing devices (although removing was not working)… YMMV. So reading about using the HE hub with the API integration sounds like a great compromise. I just hope that HE takes full advantage of all the features of all my Zigbee & ZWave devices.
One thing that I have to say worked really well in STH was their “Smart Home Monitor” which was basically three sections to monitor alarm hardware, leak detector hardware, smoke & co2 detector hardware. It was super easy to setup though lacked customizability. I believe I can get that going again with HE (if I understood that correctly) since they’re both written with groovy.
Few questions for you guys if anyone has experience with any of the following anything you could answer would be greatly appreciated.
Have you had any stability issues with HE?
If so was it the latest hardware/sw?
Has anyone had any reason to use zwave, zigbee devices directly with HA for any reason (like missing device features or functions)?
I mainly intend to interact with my home using Apples Home app. I’ll also likely eventually get around to creating some custom dashboard for some fire tablets I have wall mounted. Any recs on clean HA dashboard themes?
Is there any problems hooking HomeBridge up with HE?
Does HE have a HomeKit integration directly?
I understand HA has a way of sharing out devices directly via HomeKit, would that be better for any reason?
Is HA or HE better at integrating with ZW locks?
Again thank you guys for all the great info on here already. Cheers from San Diego!
I can only answer a couple of those - HE was pretty much rock solid for me for the 1-2 years i used it on its own. When I first switched to HA i left the devices on HE and used the integration to bring them in to HA - sometimes this was a bit flaky and i couldnt always control devices from HA, but mostly it was ok.
In the end i recently got a skyconnect and changed to using ZHA and pairing direct to HA (i only had a couple of ZWave devices which i switched out for zigbee). I did this because i just wanted less devices to manage, still monitoring it see how it goes for reliability.
Well I went head first into Hubitat and Home Assistant. While I have most of my functionality back I am having some stability issues with both platforms. I decided to use proxmox to run HASSOS and occasionally get kernel panics with HA
Overall very happy with HA so far, integrating tons of things I didn’t even know I could add.
To answer some of my previous questions, I initially tried the built in homekit support from Hubitat, and while the devices it was able to share did work, there were too many that were restricted (3rd party apps like ecobee thermostat, konnected alarm sensors) to keep using it. I ended up just using the Maker API integration that oddly did allow me to share every device hooked up to HE with HA. Then HA’s homekit support did the rest. HA doesn’t have full camera support yet so I’ll be keeping my homebridge around for a few custom integrations that just work well there (orbit irrigation, flume water monitor, bond fan controller hub).
I was relieved to see two very important integrations for me in Hubitat, Home Safety Monitor (HSM) and Lock Code Manager. Which were really easy to replace similar functionality from STHs home monitor. The HE app and UI leave a lot to be desired from a UX standpoint, but it mostly works.
Z-Wave has been pretty solid in HE. The only issue I had was a few devices not automatically finding the right driver. Zigbee however is another story. I’m having trouble keeping some Sonoff Zigbee motion sensors & Zemismart roller blinds online/paired in HE. I’ve tried 3rd party drivers & stock generic drivers with limited success. They seem to work for a while then drop off the mesh network. I just saw they launched a new C8 hub with stronger antennas but since I JUST bought mine I don’t plan on upgrading. I don’t really think it’s an antenna gain issue, since they DO pair and work for a while. It seems like driver issues to me. Hopefully I’m able to figure that out. I bought a usb Zigbee radio so if HE keeps being flakey I may go that route in HA.
I know a month has elapsed, but I can add some adecdotes as well: I had bought HE a few years back and had drug my feet in transitioning from ST and only used for a few (segmented) solutions. I will say that HE as a hub and for what I had on it seems stable over the years, but recently started moving legacy devices over to HE [due to ST groovy plans and Smartapps starting to stop working] and to take advantage of localization. however, I have had issues with the Zwave and Zigbee connectivity dropping (and am still not sure yet if it is wrong drivers being selected, radio signal strength, interference, and/or mesh issues). To wit, HE is currently releasing a new hub with external antennas which presumes that there was a signal strength issue in older units up to version C7. My issues are both with zigbee motion/contact sensors dropping (Smartthings, 3rd reality, etc), zigbee outlets drop from responding until I manually go over and push their button, as well as Zooz Zwave dimmers not being consistently triggered in group scene activations). This unreliability gives me pause until I figure out why what used to work with ST for years, even in cloud mode, with never a hiccup (except with occasional WAN or SmartTh cloud short term outage) but is so sporadic in HE. My plan is to keep all hubs until I figure out the HE issues. If that gets resolved, I will likely divest of ST and use HE as my Z/Z hub to supplement my HA incremental build out. Hope this helps everyone in decision-making.
PS- it should be added that I have Sharptools (shameless plug) dashboards that integrate with the three platforms discussed here (sometimes I even stitch together attributes from two hubs in one dash component or use the rules engine for cross-hub automations); I know it is not localized, but has been rock solid for years with exception of ISP problems on my side. And I also have HA which has come a long way but is more intensive for me as non-developer (have to find time to learn) and I have more Z/Z devices that wifi ones at this time.
Whilst the C8 does include more power for the ZZ transmit and also a bit of extra gain on receive you really only need to reach the next ‘local’ devices and they can repeat onwards from there. So possibly a C8 may not provide a fix to the dropouts you experience. It could be devices using marginal paths deeper in the network. In fact more distant devices may become attached directly which may improve things but theoretically could even make things more problematic
Routing in all these ZZ networks is quite a dark art and typically requires that the network is ‘built out’ from the hub in a recommended way. Moving to a C8 could alter that. I think most frustrations stem from routing path issues and not specifically the direct to hub path. That does reduce hops and hence routing steps though.
There are many people with stable networks and a few with frustrations which of course get vented on here. I have one particular area in my house, a corridor, where even 5m line of sight just won’t work. I think it’s to do with interference with the energy reporting Z network that my supplier implements. But I only have a few Z devices. Lighting is all hard wired with C-Bus.
Fair points on C8; thanks. I know I have my work cut out for me to build out mesh and resolve configuration and interference issues, especially since I haven’t finished moving things over. Part of my issue on Zigbee side is I currently have limited devices. Smartthings devices were very reliable once connected. I wish a reasonable, DIY C-Bus type solution was more common in US.
thank you guys for all the great info on here already. Cheers from San Diego!
but since I JUST bought mine I don’t plan on upgrading. I don’t really think it’s an antenna gain issue, since they DO pair and work for a while. It seems like driver issues to me. Hopefully I’m able to figure that out. I bought a usb Zigbee radio so if HE keeps being flakey I may go that route in HA.