“I decided to take the plunge on buying the Hubitat since my smartthings hub just wasn’t able to do what i wanted it to. I can now say that i am over the moon with my swap. I am no longer limited by the “works with smartthings” as the community is truly amazing with building integrations for all types of devises both z-wave and zigbee. I would tell anyone with a little bit of knowledge on smart home products to get this home hub.”
“A lot of this just works out of the box, though the user community provides extra drivers and apps on GitHub if necessary, or you can develop your own with 'Groovy' code. It's very fast and reliable because it all runs locally and doesn't rely on the Internet connection - it would suit people with flaky broadband! The Cloud service allows remote access and the mobile app is 'improving'. The online documentation is a work in progress, but new sections are being add all the time.”
“Having bounced between a few different home automation platforms, I’ll be sticking with Hubitat. It’s a great, customisable system that can be used with a large range of devices and the community support is absolutely first class. The latest firmware has sped up performance on the hub a great deal and while I would agree that the system dashboards are frustrating to use, there are free third-party add ons that can be installed to improve this. Rumour has it that improved dashboards are in the works and there are regular firmware updates.
The real bonus for me is that the hub supports pairing AlertMe equipment, which was sold as 'Iris' in the US. Because the platform also supports third-party drivers I was able to write them for all of the most common AlertMe devices available in the UK, meaning all of my smart plugs, motion sensors and key fobs work again. That's a huge saving on having to purchase all new devices which more than offsets the purchase cost of the hub. If you're also an AlertMe refugee, a quick search on the Hubitat community forum will turn up everything you need.
I don't own any Z-Wave equipment so I can't comment on that side of things, but all of my Zigbee kit is working fine. Drops a star only for the finnicky dashboard and to be honest, I feel a bit mean doing it. Four-and-a-half stars. :)”
“I'd read a lot about the C7 and decided I'd try it out to see if it would be a suitable replacement for my Vera. Initial impressions were good. The device is well packaged and is neat and tidy. Initial setup is fine and I added one or two devices (Zigbee and Z-Wave) without any issues. The problems came when I tried to add Fibaro Dimmers (Mk1 versions). Firstly I found some instances where the Hubitat just flat out refused to include them, even though they were just feet from the hub. When I did get the dimmers to include I then faced an uphill battle getting them working correctly with toggle switches (bear in mind they worked perfectly with Vera). I was also not a fan of the dashboard. Again, I am sure it is a very powerful dashboard, but out of the box it is ugly and deeply inelegant. It would also fall out of sync with the paired devices, not displaying the correct status. I have since deleted the few devices I tried out and added them back to Vera where they now work again.
I think what we have here is good hardware crippled by a poor UI (a common issue with DIY Home Automation I feel). That's fine if you have the time to study, Google, ask the forums and face the deep learning curve, but for those of us that want a solid, straightforward HA hub, I don't currently think this is the solution, although if there were major reforms regarding the UI I would reconsider.”
“Hello,
First I got a defect hub but customer service from vesternet is top. They send me another hub within 24h.
I tested the hub most of the features are present. However I ran DYI system since many years now with domoticz open source software and recently moved to home assistant. Of course you need to have the hardware. I do want to have the freedom and explore new tools, of course the bad side is you need to code. With hubitat you don't. I will recommend for someone who start cause of ease to use.”
“Great smart hub that even allows you to control smart things when the internet is out, and the c7 use the latest chip set and on top of this there is a great Community and with lots of great apps and drivers supplied by other enthusiasts”
“Having had a SmartThings hub for the last 4 years, recent changes imposed by Samsung persuaded me to look for other solutions. The Hubitat seemed to fit the bill very well, and indeed, fixed my 2 major gripes with Smartthings; local processing and being able access from a PC (Windows).
Dispatch from Vesternet was as usual very efficient and I received the unit within a couple of days.
The unit itself is quite small - smaller than the Smartthings, but like the Smartthings only requires a ethernet connection and power - it has no battery backup, unlike the Smartthing hub v2.
Unfortunately, after nearly 2 weeks of almost solid endeavours, I was unable to establish a solid, robust Z-Wave network. This despite using the devices I had been successfully using with the Smartthings hub. The RSSI figures (which, usefully, are accessible on the Hubitat) were very low which were the probably the problem. Although most of my devices are Z-Wave I do have some Zigbee devices, and again I found the same issues; unliable network, poor range and low RSSI. Despite the recent firmware updates supplied by Hubitat I could not achieve solid networks on either standard, I only hope that I had a faulty hub. I have now migrated back to the Smartthings where everything is working OK.
I am very disappointed because I had high hopes for this Hub as in most respects the Hubitat was exactly what I was looking for. Perhaps I was just unlucky. Hopefully once the C7 becomes more established I will try again. I should state that the reponse I received from Vesternet has been good (as I have come to expect) so five stars for service but I can only give a disappointing 3 stars for the hub.”
