TLDR: Between the Hubitat Elevation and the ZWaveMe Z Station Dongle, which is better? Which is easier to set up with Home Assistant?
Context: I have a Yellow with a usb Bluetooth dongle and a usb zigbee controller on ZHA (migrated from a pi and didn’t feel like manually adding all my zigbee devices to the built-in zigbee controller). Been wanting to get an ethernet zigbee controller to dual-run ZHA and Z2M on the same network, because some of my zigbee devices don’t support ZHA.
Now I’m looking into using Zwave as well and this is starting to use up all the Yellow’s usb ports. I’m looking for the best/easiest solution to support all these (and possibly more) protocols in Home Assistant, while also reducing/streamlining the number of controllers & hubs plugged into the Yellow.
The options I’ve found so far are the Hubitat Elevation (pro? what’s the difference?) and the ZWaveMe Z Station Dongle. Which of these is better / easier to set up with Home Assistant? All input is welcome.
Habitat is a hub with its own s/w. I’m not to familiar, but you can certainly integrate it with HA using some integration.
Z-Station is a USB dongle that connects directly to Yellow and is seen as two USB ports (but occupies only one). Z-Station supports both ZHA and Z2M (you might need to upgrade the firmware, check their site) as well as ZWaveJS or Z-Way. You can also benefit from the Zniffer tool available for Z-Station Zniffer / A.R.T. — Z-Wave Sniffer Tool for Network Analysis
There is an integration in HACS that works well and I’ve read that people who have gone from Hubitat to home assistant have done what you’re suggesting. However, isn’t the Hubitat hub a lot more than you need and cost more than your other option?
I use Hubitat as my main hub and added Home Assistant for things Hubitat can’t control. There is a Home Assistant Device Bridge community integration for Hubitat to go the opposite direction of HACS integration.
