“I've been using the C-7 for around 2 years now and I bought the C-8 as soon as I saw it available. Primarily my reason was the external antenna. My Z Wave network of 45 devices had around 30 connected directly to the C-7. I had purchased the various bits to fit an external high gain antenna on the C-7 as detailed on the Hubitat forum by Lewis H; however, I never went ahead with the modification as I decided my eyesight/soldering skills weren't up to the task.
There was a minor hiccup during the migration process. My issue was that unless you had a Hub Protect subscription in place, the free cloud backup that takes place during migration was not visible on completion (even though it was successful). I reported this on the forum and the HE team have now amended this to avoid confusion.
Once migrated the Z Wave routes get cleared from the database, so although everything worked straight away, it was a few days before all of the routes and neighbours populated in the database. I'm now seeing 40/41 of 45 devices connecting directly so there's a definite improvement in Z Wave coverage with the external antenna. There have been teething issues with Zigbee inclusion, as the C-8 uses a new Zigbee chipset over the C-7; however, these bugs seem to be about resolved now after several firmware updates.
My only ongoing issue is that 500 series devices that support S0 (but not S2 security) cannot be added with security set at 'none' to the C-8 (or C-7) - at least not without the use of a secondary controller and Z Wave Controller software. This is an issue caused by SiLabs SDK and there's nothing Hubitat can do to resolve it. It's frustrating as we have so few 700 series devices available in the EU/UK frequency of 868 Mhz.”
“This C8 is s replacement for my previous C7, and is performing really well, the occasional dropouts I was getting on relays and switches at the other end of our garden have stopped, and it even seems things are working more snapping.
Migration was straightforward and painless, although I had to upgrade the C7 first.”
“I have a C7 and love it. I upgraded primarily to get some more z-wave range and responsiveness as in my house I find that most of my devices on z-wave connect direct to the hub but at a fair distance. So the upgraded radios and antennae are just the job. It works well and I have noticed more responsiveness e.g. speed of switch state change requests. Also the hubitat upgrade process was pretty smooth.”
“the c8 seems to have a better radio range notwithstanding the higher price however factor in matter and thread support moving forward then it becomes a better buy”
“The Hubitat C-8 is a worthy upgrade, even from the C-7 which is very similar spec. The addition of external antennae makes a massive difference. Z-Wave is finally reliable across a wide range of manufacturers' devices. I do think the automations trigger more quickly as well. Hubitat are always actively improving their platform and it's a vibrant community with some great community built integrations to augment the official integrations. This hub is more advanced than some but it's so capable. I did consider moving to Home Assistant but with recent improvements I'm very happy to stay with Hubitat. I'm looking forward to playing with Matter support when it is added. The only slight negative is that there isn't much physical adjustment available on the antennae but it's still working well for me mounted vertically under my stairs.”
“The Hubitat Elevation box is tiny and only slightly warm, so I assume that it's energy consumption is much lower than that of the Fibaro HC2 box I had before. A point that deserves to be highlighted more.
Setup took me about a day (I had to find the driver for my Secure SRT321 Thermostat in the user forum). To improve, the device should make it easier for users to understand the setup process: (1) devices, (2) users as required (e.g. for presence/absence), (3) apps that control devices, (4) dashboards that provide nice graphical interfaces. But once I had figured this out I found the setup straightforward. The apps were very easy to set up after I found out using Google what I needed (the "Mode Manager", the "Thermostat Scheduler", and the "Hubitat Dashboard").”
