Yeah, the dashboards look more like an Android 7.0 TV setup. Some people have managed to do some real nice ones but I have no clue how. How are you getting any WiFi to work. Even with my LAN devices I am having to search for integration apps for Roku, Logitech, Samsung, Yamaha, etc. One good thing is since Samsung disables custom drivers it then sent hundreds of former drivers writers to abandon them and port their groovy code to the Hubitat instead. Even more have been written ONLY for Hubitat. Meanwhile, ST is dead. Samsung dumped it all on Aeotec to revive it. Did they learn nothing from Linux and Android stopping MS cold. As soon as you restrict user you company is over. The will kill Tesla eventually like it almost did Apple. Hubitat support innovation, Samsung hated it. The Hubitat community is supportive and the company encourages expanding it capabilities unlike Tablo which blocks features. Too bad, it is nice hardware by a shitty company.
@@toriless I’ve been trialing options for dashboards. The Home Remote app is really good although there’s a steep learning curve. My preference has been to run HOOBS on a Raspberry Pi and use HomeKit to view my devices. I leave Hubitat to run automations due to it being bomb proof & lightning quick.
To me it looks like Android TV 7 with it boxes. At least WebOS tried to not look like that too much. It also reminds me a bit of the crude Tablo boxes.
Nice video's you make about Hubitat. I bought the Hubitat c7 hub last week, it's bound to be delivered today. I understand that the Hubitat is so versatile; so many options to customise the app to ones needs, that here might be quite a learning curve. It's gonna be a challenge. But your video's did not discourage me at all, on the contrary! So let my adventure begin; switching over to Hubitat. I've got Philips Hue devices and the hub, but Philips Hue is ridiculous expensive. I use Amazon Alexa Echo gen. 4 (=Zigbee 3,0) as voice control for the Hue. Besides Hue devices I also have devices which are more or less compatible with Hue: Gledopto led strips; I can switch them on and off with Alexa and the Hue app, but for changing colours of the Gledopto led strips I have to use the Hue app, I also have a lot of Innr on/off smart plugs and Innr (RGB) smart light bulbs controllable with Hue app and Alexa. Since the Hue ecosystem is so ridiculous expensive I want to be able to automate my home with devices, which have far better value for money than the Philips Hue devices, and devices which I can control far more extensive than with Philips Hue app and Hue bridge. And what I also fancy: One doesn't need the internet to control the devices connected to the Hubitat hub.
I can hear how excited you are to make the switch. When I got mine I was going to just do a room a day and slowly switch everything over, I got so hooked on it before I went to bed I had everything on hubitat. The first hour of the device felt a bit uncomfortable until I knew what was expected, after that it was pretty smooth sailing. Thanks for leaving me the comment, it's appreciated and good luck.
You can get it to do anything. Want a light to come on at 3 minutes past sunset but only if you aquarium light is on and someone is in a bedroom with the humidity above 47% and the garage temperature is above 63F and then if the outside lux is below 45012 then turn in the back porch light but only if the TV is on. Seriously, you can program rules that complex and it will do them, without problems. It is eons beyond any hub. Personally, I keep my rules simple, outside lights on a sunset, if front door open after sunset turn on lights in front hallway and and any entry lights and then play a sound. I have the ST:TNG door sound play when the back sliding glass door opens or closes (just for fun) but if it is also between sunset and sunrise the dining room lights are on while the door is open since I have cats that go outside and I want them to come in if they go out at night and as long as that light is on I have to be aware if they come in and it safe to close the door without locking them out. If the front door is left open too long. I have an announcement that the front door is still open so I remember to close it. This is all easy with Hubitat. TV is on, dim light and/or close shades. No problems for THIS hub.
Good overview. I dumped Smartthings two years ago and moved to Hubitat. I too had trouble with geo fencing and the problem turned out to be our phones. I integrated the free version of life 360 into hubitat and and now geo fencing is rock solid. It activates at the exact same location everytime.
Yeah, I never got Geofencing or LAN discovery working. In fact long after my many posts about LAN discovery being 100% useless they removed it. Do not be surprised to see it disappear some day.
I assume Life 360 manages your phone somehow. I know Hubitat added an integration called Life360 Connector. This is topic worth posting a video about. Also about flashing WiFi devices with Tasmota and then integrating those.
@@ronm6585 It is similar approach but even more PC like, everything is local, etc. You know, same philosophy in terms of that. It is not as hardware centric in that it runs on several levels of devices however I find Hubitat easier to automate, include devices, etc. There is a big overlap in devices and setting up Tasmota and it as a LOT harder since to do not have integration apps. It take about 20 steps, including all the flashing ones.
Modes and GeoFencing are both important and used differently. I use Life360 for GeoFencing and if my mode is away and I enter the GeoFence of maybe 25 miles away from home, I set my thermostat to my desirable temperature so when I arrive home, my A/C or Furnace, would've had time to run to the desired temperature. If I use modes and motion sensors instead(since you discourage GeoFencing), automation would adjust the temp the minute one arrives home (motion sensed) and that is not optimal as I would arrive home to a non desirable temperature. Adding GeoFencing to the mix make your home smarter. Many other uses for GeoFencing, turn mode to away when everyone vacates the house - but only of distant of maybe 5 miles from home (just incase someone is walking the dog) . If I left home and I'm 2 miles away and its a Monday, text me "did you put your garbage can to curb", etc.
You are right, it doesn't about for heat up or cool down duration. I have a few pets in the house so my range of temperature swings isn't very large. Maybe in the future I'll want both as a solution, where it sits right now I'm good with just modes.
Adding devices has gotten even easier with the new GUI interface. It was but clunky before. The only device that was a pain was some GE Z-Wave switches but that was mostly due to a poor description of how to include them.
The whole 14 hour fish tank scenario is where webcore comes back in. Rather then having a 14 hour timer running for that long. Instead, when an automation turns it on, you store the time it came on as a variable. Something like; When fish tank changes to on Set variable 'OffTime' to $time + "14:00" As long as the power is on when the automation turns it off it will work. No timer needed. Of course with webcore being a very advanced tool, you can actually define parameters for switching something off. Like; Every 30 mins do If time is outside of range $time & 'OffTime' Turn off fish tank So even if the fish tank turns on and then your power goes out for 15 hours. As soon as power comes back, the fish tank will turn off within the next 30 mins. Make the time less if you want it sooner. It also has the benifit of not running a piston for 14 hours during which anything could retrigger it or if you click test accidentally. The above would only run the piston once every 30 mins just to check if the time is outside of a range.
I don't know if you revisited geo-fencing but if you have interest in re-visiting it, you don't have to leverage the Hubitat App for geo-fencing. For example my kids already have Life306 running on their phones, so I tap into that to tell hubitat when the kids are home or away. On my phone, I use a macro tool and tap into the hubitat API's to trigger events based on specific conditions and location
I've opted for the motion detection route using modes, but I'll definitely keep that in mind if I ever have a need to use it. I've heard others vote for Life360 as well.
For things like a 14 hour fish tank, you should have "of between 7am and 9pm, and fishtank off, turn fishtank on." Then "at 9:01 pm, shit fishtank off" or "if between 9pm and 7am and fish tank on, turn fish tank off." This will never ruin an automation as long as your device doesn't lose too much power. But for things like animal care, it should never rely on a cloud service.
Interesting idea. To be clear the hubitat is not cloud based everything runs locally. That being said you are right about animal care, the aquarium filtration I have runs 24/7. The lights are the only thing on a timer, but I have also put a failsafe switch for the pumps and heaters so if I forget, they will automatically turn back on after an hour.
I like you loved the home automation platform that i had before the one i have now except the one i had before was hubitat and the one i have now is Home Assistant. Don't get me wrong Hubitat is great and all but home assistant takes it just that much further. No proprietary hub almost everything you integrate is local based and it supports just about every IoT device out there. Sorry I know hubitat is great and HA is not for everyone but just had to get this out there. 🤗
Good morning, I'm having trouble with my ecobee recognizing that a user is home. When my wife leaves for work and is past the geo fence the thermostat sets hold to away even though I'm home. How can I resolve this? Thanks
You should be able to use a motion sensor or 2 to let the ecobee know you are home. Alternatively you could add a home automaton hub, and I'm also told life360 is a great geofencing option.
There are a few videos in the hubitat Playlist that add wifi devices. Unfortunately they are all a bit different. Typically you need to install a driver make the device ip static on your router and your gtg.
@@HouseDadLife I haven't find any in their channel 😕, I just saw one of ther old tutorials how to discover zigbee and z-wave devised and I noticed in the options still show lan and cloud, but my software just have zigbee and z-wave
I have one Lutron shade and had to purchase a Lutron Caseta bridge to make that work. the bridge is good on it's own, so I haven't bothered to even connect it to Hubitat yet.
Hello Brother, believe or not I purchased hubitat over a year ago and never used it ever since, I have so many things under smartthings it would be a struggle to go over them all with hubitat, including all the automations etc, things go smoothly and not having things local never bothered me but that might be just an excuse to keep it in my drawer lol
Wink has been offline since July 1st. I dropped their subscription and moved to the Hubitat about a week ago. I have everything connected except my Lutron shades. Wink was great, but you just cant ever rely on them.
@@HouseDadLife I couldn't tell right at first, but thought it might be heterochromia. I didn't want to ask, since it doesn't really matter, but was curious so I checked the comments.
I did manage to deuglify it a bit, maybe it's a video worth posting, but yes, it's not pretty. At least it's reliable, I choose that first if I have to pick and can't have both.
People ought to know that the Hubitat is an ABSOLUTE PAIN IN THE ASS to set up. To add a device, you must know what company made the device. For instance, if you want to add a lightbulb, you can't just ask the Hubitat to find the lightbulbs in your house. You have to tell it to find the XYZ lightbulbs in your house. And if you don't know who made it, you aren't going to be able to add the bulb to the Hubitat. And who in hell remembers the manufacturer of a device they bought 5 years ago? Furthermore, if you bought the device before you bought the Hubitat, you will probably find that the device is not supported. In other words, there is a small list of supported manufacturers, and if your device's manufacturer is not on the list, you are SOL. I will have to learn how to make it work, but anyone considering buying a Hubitat needs to know it has MAJOR setup/compatibility issues. If you are not willing to make Hubitat your life's work, you probably want to buy something else.
You raise some valid points. Checking for switch compatibility is key when adding something new on wifi. I think the standard of zigee and zwave are more company regulated though, so any of those should work. You're right about setup, it could easily be a nightmare of a task, I also took the hard way to this, not knowingly, but simply because I was trying to treat it like other platforms I had used. Lesson learned for me, I'm still very happy with it. And I'm in no way sponsored by anyone for that opinion. That way when something better comes along, I'm not obligated to stay.
I've recently completed adding about 46 devices to Hubitat, some I've had for over 8 years. My experience...most products have some kind of identification on them and that was what helped me. Zigbee Bulbs, Z-wave plugs, contact sensors, motion sensors, Bali shades, Leak detectors, Chime/siren, voice controls all connected with Hubitat. Hated that Wink went comatose, but glad I endured the aforementioned Hubitat pain and made the switch. Still learning about the Hubitat device settings, which are most certainly more complicated than Winks.
That's a ton more devices, there is a learning curve to this machine, no doubt there. My switch only involved smart things, Google home, ifttt, and I think there may be more I can't remember at this moment. Glad to hear you're happy and completely switched.
Actually if you know if your device is a Zwave or Zigbee, and can remember how to set up you devices in pairing mode (which you kinda have to know anyways), then you can add devices without knowing brand. It’ll find it just by using zwave or Zigbee tool
A great robust platform, if you're not after looks, local is the way to go.
Yeah, the dashboards look more like an Android 7.0 TV setup. Some people have managed to do some real nice ones but I have no clue how. How are you getting any WiFi to work. Even with my LAN devices I am having to search for integration apps for Roku, Logitech, Samsung, Yamaha, etc.
One good thing is since Samsung disables custom drivers it then sent hundreds of former drivers writers to abandon them and port their groovy code to the Hubitat instead. Even more have been written ONLY for Hubitat. Meanwhile, ST is dead. Samsung dumped it all on Aeotec to revive it. Did they learn nothing from Linux and Android stopping MS cold. As soon as you restrict user you company is over. The will kill Tesla eventually like it almost did Apple.
Hubitat support innovation, Samsung hated it. The Hubitat community is supportive and the company encourages expanding it capabilities unlike Tablo which blocks features. Too bad, it is nice hardware by a shitty company.
@@toriless Maybe that warrants a video, going through how to make a nice looking dashboard. I'm sure a ton of people would like a better UI.
@@toriless I’ve been trialing options for dashboards. The Home Remote app is really good although there’s a steep learning curve. My preference has been to run HOOBS on a Raspberry Pi and use HomeKit to view my devices. I leave Hubitat to run automations due to it being bomb proof & lightning quick.
@@HouseDadLife have you tried SharpTools for you dashboard?
I haven't, might need to look into it!
Nice work. I can’t imagine living without my Hubitat.
Glad you like yours as well. I can't imagine going without it now. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
Zing with the Windows 3.1 reference, lol! Very slick, my friend. I rate this info a SMASH!
Thanks for stopping by Hydro and for smashing!
To me it looks like Android TV 7 with it boxes. At least WebOS tried to not look like that too much. It also reminds me a bit of the crude Tablo boxes.
@@HouseDadLife I squish, not smash
yes , UI is shitty but everything else after coming from smartthings is net superior, that's the only con for me
I'm looking at some ways to get a nice ui. If I find a good solution I'll post it on the channel
Nice video's you make about Hubitat. I bought the Hubitat c7 hub last week, it's bound to be delivered today. I understand that the Hubitat is so versatile; so many options to customise the app to ones needs, that here might be quite a learning curve. It's gonna be a challenge. But your video's did not discourage me at all, on the contrary! So let my adventure begin; switching over to Hubitat.
I've got Philips Hue devices and the hub, but Philips Hue is ridiculous expensive. I use Amazon Alexa Echo gen. 4 (=Zigbee 3,0) as voice control for the Hue. Besides Hue devices I also have devices which are more or less compatible with Hue: Gledopto led strips; I can switch them on and off with Alexa and the Hue app, but for changing colours of the Gledopto led strips I have to use the Hue app, I also have a lot of Innr on/off smart plugs and Innr (RGB) smart light bulbs controllable with Hue app and Alexa.
Since the Hue ecosystem is so ridiculous expensive I want to be able to automate my home with devices, which have far better value for money than the Philips Hue devices, and devices which I can control far more extensive than with Philips Hue app and Hue bridge. And what I also fancy: One doesn't need the internet to control the devices connected to the Hubitat hub.
I can hear how excited you are to make the switch. When I got mine I was going to just do a room a day and slowly switch everything over, I got so hooked on it before I went to bed I had everything on hubitat. The first hour of the device felt a bit uncomfortable until I knew what was expected, after that it was pretty smooth sailing. Thanks for leaving me the comment, it's appreciated and good luck.
You can get it to do anything. Want a light to come on at 3 minutes past sunset but only if you aquarium light is on and someone is in a bedroom with the humidity above 47% and the garage temperature is above 63F and then if the outside lux is below 45012 then turn in the back porch light but only if the TV is on. Seriously, you can program rules that complex and it will do them, without problems. It is eons beyond any hub.
Personally, I keep my rules simple, outside lights on a sunset, if front door open after sunset turn on lights in front hallway and and any entry lights and then play a sound. I have the ST:TNG door sound play when the back sliding glass door opens or closes (just for fun) but if it is also between sunset and sunrise the dining room lights are on while the door is open since I have cats that go outside and I want them to come in if they go out at night and as long as that light is on I have to be aware if they come in and it safe to close the door without locking them out.
If the front door is left open too long. I have an announcement that the front door is still open so I remember to close it. This is all easy with Hubitat. TV is on, dim light and/or close shades. No problems for THIS hub.
Good overview. I dumped Smartthings two years ago and moved to Hubitat. I too had trouble with geo fencing and the problem turned out to be our phones. I integrated the free version of life 360 into hubitat and and now geo fencing is rock solid. It activates at the exact same location everytime.
That's great to know, I might want to revisit this in the future, thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I never got Geofencing or LAN discovery working. In fact long after my many posts about LAN discovery being 100% useless they removed it. Do not be surprised to see it disappear some day.
I assume Life 360 manages your phone somehow. I know Hubitat added an integration called Life360 Connector. This is topic worth posting a video about. Also about flashing WiFi devices with Tasmota and then integrating those.
Agreed Life360 is a rock solid option. Works every time.
Thanks for the upvote I'll definitely keep it in mind.
Great info, thanks for sharing. I currently use Home Assistant and it has been very reliable for me.
I never tried home assistant, how do you like it? What kind of things do you have automated?
@@HouseDadLife I love it. Mostly my lights, plugs (including my outdoor plugs for the block heaters). Use it to monitor heat, humidity etc.
Same things as me awesome!
@@ronm6585 It is similar approach but even more PC like, everything is local, etc. You know, same philosophy in terms of that. It is not as hardware centric in that it runs on several levels of devices however I find Hubitat easier to automate, include devices, etc. There is a big overlap in devices and setting up Tasmota and it as a LOT harder since to do not have integration apps. It take about 20 steps, including all the flashing ones.
Modes and GeoFencing are both important and used differently. I use Life360 for GeoFencing and if my mode is away and I enter the GeoFence of maybe 25 miles away from home, I set my thermostat to my desirable temperature so when I arrive home, my A/C or Furnace, would've had time to run to the desired temperature. If I use modes and motion sensors instead(since you discourage GeoFencing), automation would adjust the temp the minute one arrives home (motion sensed) and that is not optimal as I would arrive home to a non desirable temperature. Adding GeoFencing to the mix make your home smarter. Many other uses for GeoFencing, turn mode to away when everyone vacates the house - but only of distant of maybe 5 miles from home (just incase someone is walking the dog) . If I left home and I'm 2 miles away and its a Monday, text me "did you put your garbage can to curb", etc.
You are right, it doesn't about for heat up or cool down duration. I have a few pets in the house so my range of temperature swings isn't very large. Maybe in the future I'll want both as a solution, where it sits right now I'm good with just modes.
Adding devices has gotten even easier with the new GUI interface. It was but clunky before. The only device that was a pain was some GE Z-Wave switches but that was mostly due to a poor description of how to include them.
I agree it has gotten easier with the new release!
Great device. Can’t beat it for average to pro level work.
I like it, glad you do as well.
The whole 14 hour fish tank scenario is where webcore comes back in. Rather then having a 14 hour timer running for that long. Instead, when an automation turns it on, you store the time it came on as a variable.
Something like;
When fish tank changes to on
Set variable 'OffTime' to $time + "14:00"
As long as the power is on when the automation turns it off it will work. No timer needed.
Of course with webcore being a very advanced tool, you can actually define parameters for switching something off.
Like;
Every 30 mins do
If time is outside of range
$time & 'OffTime'
Turn off fish tank
So even if the fish tank turns on and then your power goes out for 15 hours. As soon as power comes back, the fish tank will turn off within the next 30 mins. Make the time less if you want it sooner.
It also has the benifit of not running a piston for 14 hours during which anything could retrigger it or if you click test accidentally. The above would only run the piston once every 30 mins just to check if the time is outside of a range.
Definitely a great idea, clearly I'm not a coder. Thanks for leaving the information for other viewers!
Nice video. Thanks!
Thanks for taking the time to leave the comment. Glad you enjoyed.
I don't know if you revisited geo-fencing but if you have interest in re-visiting it, you don't have to leverage the Hubitat App for geo-fencing. For example my kids already have Life306 running on their phones, so I tap into that to tell hubitat when the kids are home or away. On my phone, I use a macro tool and tap into the hubitat API's to trigger events based on specific conditions and location
I've opted for the motion detection route using modes, but I'll definitely keep that in mind if I ever have a need to use it. I've heard others vote for Life360 as well.
For things like a 14 hour fish tank, you should have "of between 7am and 9pm, and fishtank off, turn fishtank on." Then "at 9:01 pm, shit fishtank off" or "if between 9pm and 7am and fish tank on, turn fish tank off." This will never ruin an automation as long as your device doesn't lose too much power. But for things like animal care, it should never rely on a cloud service.
Interesting idea. To be clear the hubitat is not cloud based everything runs locally. That being said you are right about animal care, the aquarium filtration I have runs 24/7. The lights are the only thing on a timer, but I have also put a failsafe switch for the pumps and heaters so if I forget, they will automatically turn back on after an hour.
I like you loved the home automation platform that i had before the one i have now except the one i had before was hubitat and the one i have now is Home Assistant. Don't get me wrong Hubitat is great and all but home assistant takes it just that much further. No proprietary hub almost everything you integrate is local based and it supports just about every IoT device out there. Sorry I know hubitat is great and HA is not for everyone but just had to get this out there. 🤗
Glad you shared your experience. I've been curious about home assistant.... maybe the future will have me using one as well...?
You are right, the UI is old as the code. It is VisiBasic. Old and reliable, and super easy to learn.
Clearly you are more gifted than me, I struggle with coding. I know only enough to get into trouble typically.
Good morning, I'm having trouble with my ecobee recognizing that a user is home. When my wife leaves for work and is past the geo fence the thermostat sets hold to away even though I'm home. How can I resolve this? Thanks
You should be able to use a motion sensor or 2 to let the ecobee know you are home. Alternatively you could add a home automaton hub, and I'm also told life360 is a great geofencing option.
Great review, I just get a C7 but I didn't find the way to add all my wifi devices, have you have a video tutorial how can I configure them?
There are a few videos in the hubitat Playlist that add wifi devices. Unfortunately they are all a bit different. Typically you need to install a driver make the device ip static on your router and your gtg.
@@HouseDadLife I haven't find any in their channel 😕, I just saw one of ther old tutorials how to discover zigbee and z-wave devised and I noticed in the options still show lan and cloud, but my software just have zigbee and z-wave
ua-cam.com/video/VV5mZ6ahAzM/v-deo.html that should point you in the right direction.
@@HouseDadLife that's pure gold, appreciate it 🍻
Good review. Thanks. Does it work with Lutron light switches?
I don't have any, but I logged into my hubitat and see there are Lutron devices listed.
I have one Lutron shade and had to purchase a Lutron Caseta bridge to make that work. the bridge is good on it's own, so I haven't bothered to even connect it to Hubitat yet.
Note that Hubitat integrates only with the Lutron Pro hub. Wish I had known that when I went all-in on the standard Lutron Hub.
That's very good to know... I have looked into the Lutron as well.
Hi Can you make a video, How to integrate Hubitat with Home Assistant
I've never used home assistant, but it might be something that happens in the future.
@@HouseDadLife Thank you for your prompt reply
Hello Brother, believe or not I purchased hubitat over a year ago and never used it ever since, I have so many things under smartthings it would be a struggle to go over them all with hubitat, including all the automations etc, things go smoothly and not having things local never bothered me but that might be just an excuse to keep it in my drawer lol
Lol it could be, I didn't need a reason to change until I had some isp outages effect automations then it bothered me pretty fast.
Do i need zigbee hub to connect zigbee devices to habitat?
Hubitat is the hub.
What model do you have?
I had the C7 but recently upgraded to the C8
A little embarrassed to admit I’m still using Wink. Would this be a reasonable platform to move my Wink devices to?
I've never used Wink but I'm so happy with the device I'm not looking for anything else.
Wink has been offline since July 1st. I dropped their subscription and moved to the Hubitat about a week ago. I have everything connected except my Lutron shades. Wink was great, but you just cant ever rely on them.
Glad you found a replacement. I don't have any Lutron devices here so hopefully that goes well.
@@HouseDadLife Lutron shades now connected via Lutron Bridge. Everything working fine. Glad to be rid of Wink.
Glad to hear it working out for you.
Background music is very distractive
I do try and balance it, sometimes apparently not as well as other times
this man has different colored eyes
Busted!
@@HouseDadLife I couldn't tell right at first, but thought it might be heterochromia. I didn't want to ask, since it doesn't really matter, but was curious so I checked the comments.
My go to, the comments section often reveals all.
I’m a Mac user and also worked for Apple so, yes, looking at the interface, o was like 🤢🤮😫🤬
I did manage to deuglify it a bit, maybe it's a video worth posting, but yes, it's not pretty. At least it's reliable, I choose that first if I have to pick and can't have both.
People ought to know that the Hubitat is an ABSOLUTE PAIN IN THE ASS to set up. To add a device, you must know what company made the device. For instance, if you want to add a lightbulb, you can't just ask the Hubitat to find the lightbulbs in your house. You have to tell it to find the XYZ lightbulbs in your house. And if you don't know who made it, you aren't going to be able to add the bulb to the Hubitat. And who in hell remembers the manufacturer of a device they bought 5 years ago?
Furthermore, if you bought the device before you bought the Hubitat, you will probably find that the device is not supported. In other words, there is a small list of supported manufacturers, and if your device's manufacturer is not on the list, you are SOL.
I will have to learn how to make it work, but anyone considering buying a Hubitat needs to know it has MAJOR setup/compatibility issues. If you are not willing to make Hubitat your life's work, you probably want to buy something else.
You raise some valid points. Checking for switch compatibility is key when adding something new on wifi. I think the standard of zigee and zwave are more company regulated though, so any of those should work. You're right about setup, it could easily be a nightmare of a task, I also took the hard way to this, not knowingly, but simply because I was trying to treat it like other platforms I had used.
Lesson learned for me, I'm still very happy with it. And I'm in no way sponsored by anyone for that opinion. That way when something better comes along, I'm not obligated to stay.
I've recently completed adding about 46 devices to Hubitat, some I've had for over 8 years. My experience...most products have some kind of identification on them and that was what helped me. Zigbee Bulbs, Z-wave plugs, contact sensors, motion sensors, Bali shades, Leak detectors, Chime/siren, voice controls all connected with Hubitat. Hated that Wink went comatose, but glad I endured the aforementioned Hubitat pain and made the switch. Still learning about the Hubitat device settings, which are most certainly more complicated than Winks.
That's a ton more devices, there is a learning curve to this machine, no doubt there. My switch only involved smart things, Google home, ifttt, and I think there may be more I can't remember at this moment. Glad to hear you're happy and completely switched.
Actually if you know if your device is a Zwave or Zigbee, and can remember how to set up you devices in pairing mode (which you kinda have to know anyways), then you can add devices without knowing brand. It’ll find it just by using zwave or Zigbee tool