Not sure if this a new sale or a continuation of previous but in any event, this is $19.95 cheaper than usual.
Note: the Australian version includes the AUS compliant radio frequencies for Z-Wave via a USB stick (rather than inbuilt radio). Zigbee is via internal radio.
The Hubitat covers more devices and scenarios compared to the cheaper Samsung Hub.
It's a complete home automation hub. It's basically a combined hardware/software solution to do all the things HomeAssistant can do except you don't need the individual zigbee/zwave hubs/sticks and the software is arguably easier for less-technically-inclined persons.
If you're willing to tinker with HomeAssistant and purchase separate hardware components for Zigbee and Z-Wave radios, then you can probably do all that Hubitat does for cheaper. But whether it's easier and less stressful, well, that depends on the individual. Some people are happy to pay for the convenience and long-term support.
Hubitat covers more devices and scenarios compared to the cheaper Samsung Hub."
I'm not sure that everyone would fully agree with that, but there are definitely some pros over Smartthings but also some cons. It's also not overpriced compared to other Z-Wave hubs (i.e. Vera, Homeseer) but it's certainly not the cheapest for us to purchase in Australia given the freight and the extra USB z-wave stick.
The primary benefit for Hubitat is the local control you have over your automations, everything runs local (except for anything you cloud connect) and is mostly quite quick. I'm really enjoying it for myself, but the product is still new (only really kicked off in 2018) and is still in active development. The Community is seriously amazing and it really is a wonderful product, though certainly not perfect.
Many Wifi devices you'll find in Bunnings/Officeworks/JB are not easily connected (without changing firmwares which isn't for the novice) due to the cloud dependent nature of those devices (walled gardens), but certainly zigbee/z-wave devices are supported very well with local integrations for Philips Hue as well. You also can't manage the system remotely (apart from using a remote dashboard to turn things on/off). It's designed to keep your system local to prevent the risk with IoT systems. There is an App, but it is used to access the remote dashboard, for presence detection, and push notifications to your phone, not for setting it up or configuring it. Configuration is done on a local web page.
I certainly recommend it to folks that do have a somewhat technical inclination, and although I'd say it's not quite as high level as running your own Home Assistant server/pi setup, it has a lot of rough edges that do present as a barrier for the less technical. That said, there are many folks that have picked it up quite quickly, just not sure if i'd give it to my grandparents. It's still a maturing product, but I'm loving it!! :)
Thanks for the write up. I've moved from a Raspberry pi and Domoticz and OpenHAB to Samsung Smartthings wifi hub kit from RACV. Much much much simpler to set up and still a lot of customisable integration capabilities. I would recommend Smartthings for the novice. Only issue is the cloud dependency but I guess you kind of need internet and cloud anyway of you want to use Google Assistant anyway which is one of my use cases.
I dont know, I am struggling to see how this is better than a SmartThings hub. Hubitat does mention locally running automations as their advantage, but you can do that as well with SmartThings. Local processing has been available since the V2 SmartThings hub so its a bit of a lie on their comparison page between SmartThings and Hubitat.
SmartThings can get fairly user unfriendly if you start to mess with custom device handlers and scripts. Some of the more complex webCoRE automations on SmartThings do have latency and reliability issues, which frustrated me about the system.
I would be interested in knowing more about latency and reliability numbers for the Hubitat's scripts, as well as the extensibility and custom device support.
First thing to note is I'm not Smartthings user so I'm only going by what others have told me who moved over to the Hubitat platform - so I could be misinformed. From what I've gathered, local processing of certain smartapps did occur, such as their lighting app, but any custom app or third party integration does not.
It's also still heavily dependent on the cloud services for operation, and will not function (even locally) if the Samsung cloud is out (which occurred recently apparently). Hubitat will continue to work with all locally addressed devices without internet at all, and all custom code continues to run. Integration with cloud services obviously doesn't work though, so no Google/Echo. The two platforms are actually based on very similar underlying groovy code framework, so many custom smartthings apps have been ported across, although heavy ones like WebCore have struggled on the lower spec hardware (compared to Samsung's cloud infrastructure). Hubitat is a Quad Core Arm chip with a Gig of ram, so like a Raspberry Pi but with a proprietary platform on top. You control when (if) to update the platform as well, you can also do your own backup/restores for automations as well.
Custom code from the community adds a large amount of value for integrations for things that aren't official, and many long term Smartthings devs moved over to Hubitat due to their own frustrations with Samsung. If I'm being honest, the Hubitat platform does have it's bugs and leaks that cause frustration for some (but not all) users, so my view on latency and reliability is very positive but not everyone has had the same experience.
Custom apps and drivers are handled pretty easily, though there isn't a storefront/app store to curate them and the environment is not as integrated like the cloud IDE that was on the classic smartthings app side. We can currently do things like websockets, local http api, udp, mqtt and other local features that make custom development quite flexible. Plenty of areas for improvement, but the community is simply amazing as a source for extra device and integration support.
Official integrations are there for things like Google Home / Amazon Echo / Philips Hue / Lutron Caseta (US) / Ecobee / Rachio / Sharptools / Sonos / Chromecast / Yeelight.
Custom Integrations from Community support things like Xiaomi / Lifx / Broadlink IR (local remote control of Air Con / TV) / Tasmota (Tuya) / TP-Link plus many more.
Smartthings is great for many as well, just Hubitat has some features and a community that are worth any trade off imho.
Cheers,
M.
Well I pulled the trigger last night. Will be interesting to compare the two solutions and which one will end up faster/more reliable. Overall, most of my devices appear to have handlers in Hubitat so it shouldn't be hard to recreate my existing setup.
@FuRyZ: Awesome. Make sure you jump into the community to get help with any setup/devices/custom app/drivers you need.
I'd say that you'll miss some of the polish of Smartthings, as Hubitat is certainly rougher with it's interface and design. It has a few built-in apps for automations - Simple Lighting, Motion Lighting, Notifications, and Rule Machine. Rule machine has a steep learning curve unfortunately but can offer some quite advanced automation logic, which i'd say is more a parallel to WebCore type capability from SmartThings.
Custom Code is pasted in (or written), or imported from a GitHub. You can create user apps and user device drivers very easily.
I'd recommend a UPS/Battery backup device if you've got one as well. Last thing to remember is just how new the product is and how small but dedicated the team is. They're advancing at a very fast rate, but there are some very obvious areas for improvement. It's not a case of Beta testing a product, but it certainly is a work in progress. Cheers, M.
@morkoz: I found a way to import Webcore into Hubitat which means a lot of those custom scripts are portable into Hubitat. The rules engine did not scare me too much either and I did spend some time searching the community forums and the resources available were quite good.
That lack of UI polish is the main thing I have seen complained about from the various reviews I watched online last night. I dont think that is a deal breaker. I can forgive that if the overall speed and reliability is smoother than SmartThings. Watching some of the testing, it did appear to be faster so I am cautiously optimistic.
@FuRyZ: You can also link Hubitat and Smartthings together in a multi-hub configuration as well. There is a built in app called Hub-Link as well as a community app called Hubconnect. That will allow you to present devices from one system in the other. It's handy also for Cloud based integration that Samsung have wriggled with their 'Gorilla' corporate size that someone smaller like Hubitat can't get a look at. Some folks even keep the Smartthings hub running to connect to things that only Smartthing has (cloud wise) and then bring the devices into Hubitat to include in automations.
Personally I wouldn't recommend running WebCore on the hubitat side, it's generally safer to stick with the built in rules engine if you can. Webcore runs great with Samsungs cloud servers behind it, but it wasn't really built for something like Hubitat's hardware (could cause performance problems). That said, there are still many users that do use it locally and love it, so your mileage may vary.
Good luck, hope you like it. :)
I'd probably be more interested if it had HomeKit support - unfortunately there doesn't doesn't seem to be any move in that direction.
Hi SirDale,
The Community has some great integrations to homekit via Homebridge. Does require another device (raspberry pi) to act as an intermediate, but it allows you to expose all z-wave/zigbee integrated devices to homekit. Not something that I have a need for, but a few users have done it and really enjoy it. They prefer the homekit interface for device control.
https://community.hubitat.com/t/new-homebridge-plug-in-via-m…
Cheers,
M.
I don't understand, is this just an overpriced Zigbee/Zwave hub?