correct, having the ability to control my Hubitat lights using the remote… Just makes it easier as we have elite remotes/hub in each room and wife is against the voice spies (google, alexa, siri…) so the mic on our units stay disable unless we walk over and press a button, ask a question and then disable the mic again
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Damn man… you are gonna make me buy this… I was trying to ignore all the Lurton praise since I have a gajillion GE switches to replace. But… look like this is the future, and I’m all about the future. Buckle up and back me up fellas when my wife yells at me for buying a bunch of these when our house is already equipped with GE smart light switches.
[EDIT] One question - what protocol does Lurton use between it’s hub and its endpoints?
I heard the other day that Google and Apple both turn on the phone mic’s to listen in on daily conversations to improve automatic text fill for input boxes. I don’t if this is true or not, but if it is, the act of disabling Alexa mic is futile.
They use their own proprietary protocol, clear connect.
Lutron is an engineering company focused on lighting. They have a ton of patents, invented the original analog dimmer switch, and do a lot of things that nobody else can unless they license a Lutron patent.
Protocol whitepaper:
http://www.lutron.com/en-US/casestudypdf/clear%20connect%20technology%20whitepaper.pdf
In 2008, after more than a decade of experience and refinement with the system, and with over a million RF devices installed globally, we introduced Clear Connect RF Technology—our latest advancement in reliable RF communication. Clear Connect has since been deployed in Lutron’s next generation RF systems including Maestro Wireless, Radio Powr Savr sensors, GRAFIK Eye QS Wireless, Sivoia QS Wireless, and Caséta Wireless.
.
This paper will describe the Lutron requirements, investigations and decisions regarding best methods for RF communications in a light control system. Other available frequencies, system topologies, industry standards for RF products, and practical field issues will also be discussed.
The proof is in the results. Most of z wave and zigbee light switch manufacturers aim for a responsiveness of under two seconds.
Lutron aims for a responsiveness of under a half a second, and usually hits it. 
( obviously cloud latency to third-party integrations like smartthings might throw that off, but you’re still starting from a better baseline.)
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This is not true as stated, but it’s based on a grain of truth which it is well to be aware of. 
(next time, include a link when passing along this kind of “news” so others can do their own research. Often the small details make a big difference. These things tend to grow in the telling as they get passed around, so something which happens rarely and typically with little impact becomes a story that sounds like it affects everyone with major consequences.)
What is true is that some voice assistant companies provide a small number of recordings of requests to the voice assistant to human employees or contractors For review sessions to determine the accuracy of the voice recognition. But it’s not eavesdropping randomly. You generally knew you were talking to the voice assistant when you said whatever you said. ( The exception has been when a voice assistant was accidentally activated, which is rare.)
And in most cases, all of the identifying account information has been removed before it gets to the review exercise. That is specifically true for Apple, despite a widely circulated newspaper account which lumped in all the voice assistants together.
Article including Apple’s statement on anonymization. Ignore the sensational headline, it actually doesn’t match what the article says.
This article explains more about Apple’s program, and their decision to suspend it while they look into things:
Google, however, did provide the reviewers with information that could have revealed the speakers’ identities. Because, you know, Google.
( The leak that the newspaper articles all talk about was somebody who worked at Google. Not Apple. )
Here’s Google’s official statement after the leak (again, all of the leaked conversations were to google assistant)
And the article about the leaked recordings:
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Thanks @JDRoberts - useful as always. I didn’t have a link as I just heard it in random hallway talk at work.
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They both have benefits and drawbacks. I would 100% choose Hubitat if I was starting from scratch. Local (and lower latency) processing of events, and not sending 100% of everything I do to Samsung would sway me.
I’d choose Lutron also. With their pro hub so I can get local events over telnet.
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I think private Alexa is an oxymoron. Either you give Amazon your privacy on a plate and buy an Alexa enabled device, or choose not to tell Alexa what to do. 
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I’m trying to decide now. I sold my house which was loaded with Homeseer stuff.
I want to start from scratch and thought ST made the most sense for my needs.
I’ll have alot of Samsung appliances, zwave, Ring, Hue, Yale, Trane Nexia, Alexa etc
Based on the number of cloudcentric items, ST seemed to make alot of sense.
The more I read about Hubitat, the more curious I become though.
I keep hearing the ST can be slow at times so that concerns me too. Homeseer is still an option as I’m used to it but it’s much more expensive and I think these newer systems show alot of promise.
This time around I really want a simple single system solution with a low WAF that incorporates everything. Can’t decide!!!
“want a simple single system solution with a low WAF”
Is this payback for the new house? 
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LOL Honestly I had been building the Homeseer setup for years until it became a monster.
I don’t want to go that far again but just keep it simple and dependable for sure.
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Achieving low WAF is easy, get a bunch of different hubs and load them with Zigbee devices. Set each hub to the same channel and also make sure they overlap your Wi-Fi channel and you are all set.
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I agree with that. I’m leaning towards starting this new build with ST then maybe playing with Hubitat later? Another plus for ST I think it integrates better with out galaxy phones and galaxy watches.
I’m curious how the Hubitat ecosystem is performing. I see that the hub has diminished in value a lot in the last year. Has anyone here that purchased on still using it?
I would say “come down in price” rather than “diminished in value”—they have an increasing customerbase.
Every home automation system has pros and cons. There are many people who switched who are still using hubitat and don’t post much in this forum anymore. you can see them over on the hubitat forum. There are some who switched and then came back to smartthings for various reasons, including the improvements in the new V3 smartthings app. and there are some people still using both. 
Hubitat has better local processing, better Lutron integration, and better admin tools for the individual customer, including the ability to roll back to a previous hub firmware version and better back up capability.
SmartThings has many more cloud to cloud integrations and a much more polished app.
Both have very powerful rules engines with stacked conditionals, although in hubitat it’s an official feature and in smartthings it’s custom code.
So both are good systems, neither is perfect, hubitat has the pluses and minuses you would expect from a largely local system from a tiny company and SmartThings has the pluses and minuses you would expect from a largely cloud-based system from a giant global company which doesn’t make reliability its first priority for the system.
both are worth looking at, it just comes down to which is a better match for your own needs and preferences. And again, some people run both. 
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Yes, I am still using Hubitat as my main hub for all of my home automation needs. I am very pleased with my decision, as I really like the flexibility of the Hubitat platform, and its local processing capabilities. These days, my ST v2 hub is only turned on when I am trying to assist ST users with ST_Anything.
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I am using Hubitat. I like the ability to use multiple hubs. My setup works great.
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I have to reset my Hubitat Hub every other week. Triggers miss about 10% of the time. Seems like it lags until the first automation after a rest period then things are snappy again. I haven’t noticed any benefit of local processing and often ST is faster.
Now, I will be honest and say that I haven’t created any new rules in a while and haven’t used the new rule engine in Hubitat. Might be what the issue is. I updated the firmware about 3 weeks ago and that made things worse.
Meanwhile, my ST system has been buttery smooth for quite some time now. (knock on wood)
♂
I use both as Hubitat as a sorta of a sub system to ST. I can create rules in ST to control devices on the Hubitat Hub but 90% of my rules for Hubitat is built using the old Rule Machine.
I’ve hit the 300 device limit on ST so everything I’ll connect in the future will go on the Hubitat Hub.
Having used both systems for a while now, I choose ST over HH.
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I am using both HE and ST. Most of my devices are on HE. I still have some older devices that just won’t work reliably on HE. There are pros and cons just like @JDRoberts mentioned. I would stick with ST if you have the old non z-wave switches/Dimmers. I replaced them with Lutron Caseta and quite happy.
Personally, I find ST WebCore is much easier for rule engine compare to HE Rule Machine but most likely because I am not as technical compare to others.
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Bought a HE hub and tried to move stuff over. There are a few integrations that i have like the Harmony Elite Hub which we use to control ST lights using our Harmony remotes and EnergyCurb which dont work on HE
Plus the interface leaves a lot to be desired and does not pass the family acceptance factor
HE is currently sitting in a box unused…
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