Hello, great to be on the forum… I currently have a Hubitat C8 with about 50 devices, including switches, thermostat integration with Honeywell, motion / tilt / temp sensors, relays, a Yale lock with Z-wave, as well as a few Kasa WIFI devices that are included via an integration. Other than Kasa, most devices are Z-wave, I also have 4 Zigbee devices.
I also have VeSync WIFI plugs, a Taotronics air filter controllable thru an app, and RainPoint for watering automation, also controllable through an app. The latter support WIFI. None of these are known to the Hubitat hub.
I use about 25 “Rules” (e.g. scenes) for automations, mostly around lighting and in reaction to motion sensing when people enter rooms, garage doors open, etc. They vary from pretty simple to moderately complex.
Additionally, I have about 8 IP cameras, including Reolink, Amcrest and Ring. I also have a Ring doorbell. None of these are integrated with Hubitat, though I’ve tried and given up getting the Amcrest and Reolink cameras to display in Hubitat dashboards.
I like Hubitat, but I’d like to be able to have decent dashboards, particularly for IP camera integration, as described above. Hubitat dashboards are very rudimentary and do not appear to be an area of focus from a development standpoint.
I started with home automation way back using Vera boxes. I moved to Hubitat a couple of years ago after the company was acquired and there was not much support or activity on the forum. I’ve found Hubitat to be a bit fussier then Vera was, one can spend a lot of time trying to work through wonky device behavior and the nuances of creating rules. That said, their community is excellent and very responsive.
I would like to be able to display dashboards on iPhone, iPad, and Windows PCs.
I’m looking into purchasing a Home Assistant device, either green or yellow. I don’t have a PC kicking around to install HA on, since I need to take mine with me when traveling.
I’d like to just use the Hubitat to deal with Z-wave devices. I am aware that HA yellow has Zigbee built in and that with green you have to buy an adaptor. When I buy a HA device, I would use an ethernet connection (not WIFI). I don’t really care if it supports POE or if I need a power supply.
I see there is a Hubitat integration available that works with the Maker API in Hubitat.
I have enough technical competency to be dangerous - I can copy code and figure things out, but by no means am I a coder. I have no skills with Python or other modern programming languages, but I understand programming fundamentals.
From what I gather by watching a bunch of YouTube videos, I think getting started would be pretty easy by using menus and learning some YAML, and then I would patiently build knowledge over time as I get more comfortable with HA. At least that’s the plan…
Couple of questions:
Can I just leave the Zigbee devices attached to Hubitat but leverage them for automations in HA? I assume the Hubitat integration would allow for Z-Wave devices, but not sure about Zigbee. Or is it better to delete them from Hubitat and add them directly to HA?
Also, based on the number of devices I have overall, would the green unit offer adequate performance assuming I replace all of my current Rules and have everything automated via HA? It is likely I would add quite a few new scenes / automations and dashboards given that HA appears to offer a lot more functionality. Or should I bite the bullet and get the yellow?