I upgraded from a Wink hub after they went subscription only. I wish I'd just done the Hubitat from the start.
Now. It IS more cumbersome to set up. It's app is not full featured like Wink or Smart Things. But don't let that fool you. Unless you're a complete moron, the web interface is not only simple, but FAR perferable to getting real specific with your devices. And works MUCH better than other hubs, the Wink or anything else (apart from maybe Philips Hue, but that only runs Philips stuff, not the lights I have). It has more customization to really set things how you want them. For me, all I really wanted was a LOCALLY PROCESSED hub (very important, no cloud, unless the device requires it) that played nice with Homebridge.
What's Homebridge? it's what you need if you use an iPhone or any iOS device and want random non-Homekit devices to play nice with Homekit. I've been running Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi 4 for a while and it works great, but the Osram Lightify bulbs around the main level of my house are a real pain compared to Philips Hue, the one advantage being that they're like 10% of the price.
The Hubitat Hub made these lights work 99% as well as Hue. That's how good it is! Wink was a nightmare. The Homebridge-Wink plugin was buggy. The official Osram Hub you buy with your Osram lights is 'fine' if you use their app, but again, the Homebridge-Lightify plugin is terrible. You'd try to set color temperature and it tries to use colors instead of white/yellow lighting or it's just super buggy. The Hubitat WORKS. And the Homebridge plugin for it sends the correct commands to get the color you want. Sometimes you would ask for Blue and you'd get Red when I used Wink - no longer. Everything is FAST and all the colors and color temps work.
HOWEVER - the best part is this. With Homebridge plugin via MakerAPI, you set which 'devices' you want shown in your Home app. And instead of just the light itself, you can also tell Hubitat to make it's own SCENES available as a Homekit accessory. Why? I mean, yes it would be nice if they showed up as actual scenes in Homekit just like Hue's hub and app do. But who cares. THEY WORK. And they work well. You simply create groups and scenes in the Hubitat back end - you know, the web interface everyone kinda complains about. But you get everything perfect, set it, and then forget about it - never have to use the Web interface again unless you wanna change something or add a new scene/group. Now you use the MakerAPI Homebridge plugin to share these groups and scenes over on Homekit, and they simply show up as simple switches to trigger a group or scene. The group is sort of redundant because you can group together accessories in Homekit anyway - but I chose not to. So I have each INDIVDIUAL light as a tile, but also a tile for the group of lights. So I can set the 12 living room lights together or separately, much easier than when Homekit groups the accessories together. Then I also have about 10 scenes for all these lights, that are just switches in that Homekit room. Hit it and it's IMMEDIATE. No cloud rubbish.
Another nice feature is the fading option in Hubitat. So instead of using Homekit to create scenes (which can still be somewhat buggy/slow or not set everything correctly) just have Homekit activate the Hubitat scene which is pretty much flawless each time. In each scene there's tons of options, including the fade time. So as Siri or Home app changes a scene with a simple switch or Siri command, the lights beautifully change over 10 or 15 seconds (whatever you choose) because that's the setting you've made in HUBITAT.
I've also used the Siri Shortcuts app on iPhone to create more complicated lighting changes, covering multiple Hubitat scenes and/or combining with Hue scenes for the few Hue bulbs I have. That way you can have one Siri command or Shortcut widget activate a bunch of things, incluidng multiple Hubitat scenes. I've found putting a 'scripting wait' of about 6 seconds in between Hubitat scene commands just so it doesn't get overwhelmed.
Bottom line, Hubitat is the clear winner here on all fronts. It seems to work great with Alexa and everything non-Apple as well. But for getting non Homekit accessories to play nice with Home/Siri on iPhones and HomePods and Apple Watches etc, I've found Hubitat to be the best so far. The only thing I haven't tried and therefore can't compare to is the OpenHAB thing that is even more fiddly and hard to setup, apparently. Whilst I could have handled it, I think Hubitat is a great mix of both - customisation but also well put together and ready to go.
I was nervous about whether it was really going to work better with the Lightify lights - but they really do. And having scenes activated by a simple switch is PERFECT. For instance, with Wink to do the same thing (activate a Wink scene/shortcut from Homekit) I had to go via the cloud through IFTTT using WebHooks. Sometimes a scene could take a minute to activate that way!! Or to do the same thing with the Osram hub, I had to set up a Dummy Switch on Homebridge that had a contact sensor embedded, which then activated an Alexa routine that watched for that contact sensor to 'activate' (which was activated manually by you hitting the Dummy switch in Homekit), which then activated the Osram scene. Again, slow, cumbersome and a dumb workaround.
I haven't really bothered with the Dashboard on Hubitat. Although i can see this would be really nice on an iPad or something. Set up a nice custom dashboard with all the buttons you want, control it from the app or whatever. But the app still needs work for this to be good. I'd rather just use Home for now, as the tiles are essentially the same thing as the tiles in the Hubitat Dash.
Hope this helps!
| Manufacturer | Hubitat |
|---|---|
| Part Number | HC5 |
| Item Weight | 8.1 ounces |
| Product Dimensions | 2.95 x 2.95 x 0.67 inches |
| Item model number | HC5 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Color | Black |
| Voltage | 120 Volts |
| Item Package Quantity | 1 |
| Special Features | WPS |
| Batteries Included? | No |
| Batteries Required? | No |
