Home Assistant VERSUS Hubitat

[Arjun]

What's your preference and why? For Home Assistant to work with Z-Wave / Zigbee / Matter I have to buy dongles, whereas it is all in one with Hubitat. Is there a pro and con to each? I feel like there is too much necessary redundancy.

 

[jpc-s4]

I have both.

My "main" one is the Hubitat, because it's pretty straightforward to program/use. The HA is a bigger PITA to learn and do stuff with, but there are tons more devices supported. I use a bridge to define devices in HA and bring them into Hubitat.

 

[Arjun]

I have both.

My "main" one is the Hubitat, because it's pretty straightforward to program/use. The HA is a bigger PITA to learn and do stuff with, but there are tons more devices supported. I use a bridge to define devices in HA and bring them into Hubitat.

What version of Hubitat do you have, C8 Pro?
I wanted Zigbee/Zwave/Matter support and got the official dongles for my HA

 

[jrbeddow]

I've been using a now ancient, C5 generation Hubitat since January 2020 (just barely pre-Covid). The choice at that time seemed easier: HA was (and perhaps still is) the hard core DIY/programmer's choice. The latest Hubitat C8 Pro seems like an even more capable system, tempting even for my light use case with better antennas and faster overall processing (and a few newer standards thrown in).
Overall though, I am pretty satisfied with my choice.

 

[jpc-s4]

What version of Hubitat do you have, C8 Pro?
I wanted Zigbee/Zwave/Matter support and got the official dongles for my HA

Currently running both a C8 Pro and a C8. I use the C8 to run OwnTracks and maybe a couple other things, while the C8 Pro has everything else. I also have a bit of a strange setup, as I have a Lutron Homeworks QS system in my house, so my use of Zigbee/Z-Wave/Matter is more limited than most...

 

[Arjun]

I purchased Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 and Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 to enable support for all protocols - its certainly overpriced for two distinct antennas. Would it have been better to sell my Home Assistant Green and Hubitat C7 and invest in a Hubit C8 Pro alone? I already have a Raspeberry Pi 5 with 16GB of RAM which can utilize Home Assistant. I use Pi Hole on a Pi 4 I have laying around. What are your thoughts?

 

[eeeeesh]

I was using HomeSeer for years, but about a year ago, they wanted to go down the 'subscription' route if you wanted Alexa integration. At first I purchased an Aeotec (smart things) hub which works great for some of the new protocols (Z-Wave, Zigbee, Matter Gateway, Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, WiFi) and it was real easy to setup and works great with Alexa but it doesn't have some of the more advance features that HomeSeer or these other platforms have.

Some of my Z-Wave devices date back to 2009 (intermatic) and started developing problems so I looked into upgrading the Z-Stick and it made sense to go with the Aeotec Z10 Pro because it looked like I could upgrade my existing network without having to start over again from scratch - but due to firmware issues, it didn't work out.

Home Assistant has it's own os so it was very easy to get it up and running in a VM - using the Aeotec Z-Stick 10 ($60) but Alexa integration is lacking where I understand with Hubitat it is pretty easy to setup

Anyways the Home Automation dashboard is light years ahead of Home Seer but everything is pretty much still working and I have transitioned over many devices to Hubitat from HomeSeer

What I like about using a standalone Z-Stick is the software that can backup and restore the Z-stick so if your trying to add a new device and it goes sideways on you, I just restore the previous backup and try again

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DV9RFSR9