Does Hubitat place an artificial limit on the number of rooms?
No because HE doesn’t use rooms.
Hubitat has a “Built-In App” called “Groups and Scenes” that would allow you to create groups based on the devices’ rooms. This is primarily for controlling multiple devices at once. You also have the option to create Dashboards for each room. For those, you have a web interface that allows you to control individual devices and see their status. There is no artificial limit on the number of Groups or Dashboards you can have.
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No (although they don’t have rooms, but groups), and they also don’t have a 200 device limit either (like the new ST app has).
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Feedback from Hubitat converts on the following would be greatly appreciated:
- Can you give me an example of response time for automations with a dozen or so distinct steps?
- What is your real world failure rate for automations? In other words - 1 per hundred? per thousand? never happened?
I woke to find one ST automation failure, and my wife alerted me to another overnight. I removed as much complexity as reasonable (i.e. set level versus fade), but still have about a 1% failure rate.
An automation that involves 12 steps can easily take 20-30 seconds. In fairness, some of the devices are using 3-4 hops to traverse a total of 200 feet (60m). However, it kind of defeats the purpose of being motion activated.
I have almost resigned myself to switching, but am in the justification phase. Also, Hubitat is still out of stock as of this morning, so I can’t make an impulse buy.
I dont have hubitat but from what I read, everything is local. Basically hubitat is the old smartthings. I believe rules are created on a pc & the mobile app needs alot of polishing. I know action tiles is coming to hubitat but there is no rboy apps available as of present. If you use any of rboys app I recomend contacting hubitat letting them know you want to see his apps available on their platform. I did that but never heard from them. I know sharp tools work with hubitat & that app has a very polished interface, which I imagine alot of people are using. Hubitat has no camera support, but I’m sure that is something that is planned down the. You will also find alot of former smartthings users & developers on the hubitat forms. My recommendation is create an account on the hubitat form & ask away any questions you may have. My opinion if smartthings continue following the cloud trend & does not fix what is broken, this place is gonna become a ghost town. I do hope I’m wrong, but time will.tell.
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It would depend greatly on what those 12 distinct steps are. Can you provide some examples?
I have many motion lighting automations on Hubitat that are triggered by Iris v2 Zigbee sensors, and turn on Lutron Switches/Dimmers and/or Sengled Zigbee bulbs. These automations typically run in under 350ms.
My WAF went up significantly when I switched from ST to Hubitat. She actually started to ask me to automate lighting throughout the house. Now, closets, bathrooms, hallways, the laundry room, garage, etc… are fully automated. I would say my personal success rate for these automations is probably 99.9% or better.
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The one that stand out, is such:
Trigger = motion
Turn ON (2) Zigbee dimmers; Turn OFF (5) color string lights; Turn ON (5) white string lights.
Not at all, just a quirk of the community platform.
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In Hubitat, I would probably create this as a SCENE that could be activated by a motion sensor using the built-in Simple Automation Rules app, or the Motion Lighting App, or even Rule Machine depending on the complexity of any logic required.
A Hubitat Scene, when activated by simply turning on a ‘Scene Switch Device’ (which is automatically created when you capture/create the scene), will make sure all of the devices are commanded to the proper state. This is an efficient method to achieve your example above.
Also, Hubitat supports Zigbee Group Messaging. If you create a Group of Zigbee lights (bulbs and/or switches/dimmers), then those devices can all be commanded simultaneously with a single Zigbee command. This is great as it minimizes Zigbee traffic - AND - it essentially eliminates the “popcorn effect” when commanding a large number of Zigbee devices.
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Interesting. The string lights are Z-Wave, but the ZigBee group messaging support is good to know.
My only concern with Scenes is that the sequence is important to me for this specific case. However, if it is fast enough (i.e. whole sequence within a second) then a Scene would be a reasonable option.
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Hubitat also supports z-wave multicast or whatever it’s called that is the same (one command many devices changed).
I came back to read up and wanted to post that I am now 99% off ST and all factors of life are just better. I feel taller, I sit a bit straighter, and I don’t even need to load any dashboards or apps anymore because everything “Just Happens ™” or is commanded via Alexa. I’m not doing CRAZY amounts of stuff, but Node red has customized Inovelli color/alerts based on certain inputs, I am controlling “adaptive lighting” which is basically circadian rhythm on steroids (manual overrides, separate color/brightness/sleep modes, resets, etc.), and EVERYTHING is local that can be.
Scenes with 20+ devices execute in under 2 seconds, 100% of the time (I’ve literally not noted a failure yet), and the logging and state history charts are amazing for figuring out WHAT did WHAT to WHAT and when.
I just wanted to give some further feedback from a reasonably late adopter (bought hub in 2019) but someone who got fed up and decided to start from scratch.
Here’s to hoping ST can get it put back together, but it seems like it’s in pieces at the moment.
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Quick reply… Failure rate? One screwed up firmware. Which was rectified within a couple of hours. Aside from that? Nothing. Works ace. Wife loves it.
I bought a hubitat hub but I find some things are working better on SmartThings and other things are easier on hubitat. The HubConnect app allows you to control most devices on both hubs. So I can run automations on Hubitat for devices connected to SmartThings. The individual setup will tell what works better for you and can help reduce failure rate. (E.g. Older zwave devices don’t report status well on Hubitat; timed automations fail too frequently in Smartthings )
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Good to know. I am also a fairly recent adopter - maybe July 2019. Never thought that I would outgrow it so quickly.
Hopefully Hubitat has reached out to request permission to use that as their catch phrase and positioning statement. Rarely have 5 words better captured a desired outcome.
I am resigning myself to the idea that I may need to retain the Smartthings hub also. However, the linked services that initially caused me to download the app (Bond, Honeywell) would be fine without it.
I appreciate the inputs, and I also appreciate Smartthings being willing to host this type of discussion on the forum.
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I recently completed migrating from a ST version 2 hub to a Hubitat C-5 hub. My primary motivation for switching was to be as independent of the cloud as possible. I was also frustrated by the unreliability of timed events like shutting off a motion-activated light after a minute.
I first moved my Lutron Caseta light switches and Z-Wave fan switches over with no issues. Encouraged by this, I moved the rest of me devices over. For the most part everything is working as it should, with the exception of my Schlage Connect Z-Wave Plus smart locks. While they report status immediately when operated locally, I’m having a lot of difficulty sending commands to them from the HE hub. Clicking on the tile results in an hourglass icon which just stays stuck there; looking at the lock reveals the command was never executed. This happens even after I added an Aeotec 7 repeater midway between the hub and the locks. By contrast, ST never had any problems communicating with these locks even without a repeater.
I’ve also noticed that some devices don’t always update their status reliably. I had one contact sensor showing up as open when in fact it was closed; opening and closing the door triggered a status update. Another sensor stopped reporting its open/closed status entirely, even though it continued to report acceleration and 3-D motion data.
I never heard of HubConnect until reading this thread - it may just be the way to get the best of both worlds.
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As I sit at my desk, I see that my front lights completely skipped a “motion inactive for 3 minutes” automation. Back lights did the same last night. My mind is made up. Just a matter of having hubs in stock and a minor budget discussion.
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I have been walking around in the dark again. After 6 years and 120+ devices I’m getting a HE C-7 to move at least the Z-Wave over. Every few months all my Z-Wave device decide to add 10-30+ second delays before ON happens; no rhyme or reason. Lasts a few weeks and then everything start responding again.
I’ve tried everything except a spectrum analyser.
Could be drone interference. Seriously. 
especially if there’s a fire department or other government agency that does a local survey every couple of months. (if it’s a neighbor’s drone, it will usually happen a lot more often.)
But if that’s it, you would see the same thing happen with the Hubitat.
And it’s more likely to be some kind of cloud artifact.