Hubitat vs Home Assistant - Best Smart Home Hub

[@paulhibbert]

Happy Saturday everyone! In case it's not clear, both systems are awesome, but no Smart Home solution is without it's faults. I imagine this sentence alone has enraged a large group of lunatics 🤣 If you're interested in buying what you need to put either solution together then they are linked below!... ***BUY THE HUBITAT ELEVATION BELOW*** GLOBAL LINK: hubitat.com/products ***GET MY HOME ASSISTANT SETUP BELOW*** As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By buying through any of the links below I will earn commission at no extra cost to you :) BUY THE CONBEE STICK: UK: amzn.to/3JOseIr US: amzn.to/3sn3KzX BUY A RASPBERRY PI (Power supply case and SD card not included so make sure you order them too!): UK: amzn.to/3z3kS1J US: amzn.to/3hlmuJS BUY THE NES CASE (*Be aware that this case has a shielding issue that affects Bluetooth and Zigbee, you can solve this by swapping the USB cables round in a weird way, more info here*: www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/ipvbon/retroflag_nespi_4_case_issue_with_24ghz_wifi/ UK: amzn.to/3lqPJgu US: amzn.to/3G3GOeA BUY THE KINGSTON SSD DRIVE UK: amzn.to/3Pp2ohE US: amzn.to/3LrB27p

[@covertpuppytwo3857]

Finally, you admit that Hubitat ALSO provides local control of your home automations without the need for the Cloud. One thing though...in the video you talk about the need to add apps to Hubitat then go on to say why wouldn't Hubitat automatically include the Dashboard... well... because Hubitat actually has more than one dashboard app that you can add that it supports!!! Why would I want all these apps pre-installed in Hubitat if I'm not going to use them... that's the reason!!! I'm currently using two of these dashboard apps and neither one is the one you showed in your video!

[@darrians2912]

Having trouble finding pies

[@espressomatic]

Hubitat is anything but awesome. The ui is terrible. It’s slow AF. Poor support for integrations compared to HA or even something as esoteric as Indigo for macOS. Just a terrible experience. Lasted 2 weeks here and I pitched it back to Amazon lightning quick.

[@paulhibbert]

@@covertpuppytwo3857 I "admitted" it provides local control 3 years ago when I first reviewed it 🤣 kzbin.info/www/bejne/nn3cYYCFpbiVo6s

[@covertpuppytwo3857]

@@paulhibbert I'm referring to your Feb 22nd 2022 Video when you said with regards to your HA review... _"but either way home assistant is the _*_only way_*_ that you can ensure that your system stays working even if the smart home industry goes bust tomorrow"_ ... because of HA's local control... short term memory loss? 🤣

[@JamesScholesUK]

The reason Hubitat does local ZigBee and zwave so well is that it was put together by a bunch of disgruntled SmartThings enthusiasts who got sick of waiting for Samsung to fix things and rolled their own instead. Basically it's all the amazing developer community who built all the amazing third party stuff in SmartThings, now with their own hardware. I believe the two original aims were: 1. everything local that can possibly be local 2. stability over whizzy new features

[@espressomatic]

But their Z-Wave isn't as good as Z-Wave JS. And their entire platform is flawed at the core in usability with no signs of improvement. Yeah I did that for a week and quickly returned the product. I was so pissed at the lack of quality and polish that I didn't even have time/effort to be disappointed.

[@nickharvey5149]

@@espressomatic I expect you are also kind to small animals and children!!

[@TheHookUp]

Oh man, this video. You know things have gone a little sideways when Paul Hibbert declares Home Assistant the winner in the "Ease of Use" category. One thing that I think would have been worth doing is giving a nod to all those angry home assistant users. The reason why HA works with so many different brands and devices is because there is a large, capable, helpful community writing custom integrations. Hubitat's biggest weakness is the size and technical knowledge of its community, because if the angle you are going for is "this is better for a newbie than home assistant" while simultaneously relying on that same user base to write device integrations for you, you're going to have a bad time.

[@SmartAndTidy]

The real Paul Hibbert is the guy with hair that eats crisps. The one without hair is actually one of his characters. Glad to help.

[@paulhibbert]

In all honesty, the future is that Paul Hibbert slowly combines all his characters to become a super Paul Hibbert. Home Assistant has gotten much easier over the last couple years, and I think for beginners it's quite straight forward to get most devices in one place. BUT... Once you want to localise all those devices, or involve Alexa without a subscription, that's where things start to get really messy. Hubitat has the same difficulties for the msot part too. One thing I didn't do in this video that I should have done, is big up the HA developers. Bringing all this stuff together and making it work is huge!

[@ytshotmaker]

I find the home assistant community to be similar to, say, the linux community. You'll get a bunch of people who make the community better with the code they write and genuine willingness to help people. You'll also get a bunch of elitists who are nothing but detrimental and expect people to walk through fire to achieve what they're after. Sometimes it can be difficult wading through the bad elements of the community to find the good. One thing which I think is fantastic at plugging HA's holes is node red. It's a little scary to install, but once done node red just expands functionality so much and makes it all so much easier! As a long time HA user who is very interested in hubitat, I'm currently looking into how well hubitat integrates with node red, because if it does? That might remove just about every weakness hubitat might have. I really hope hubitat-node red is a thing!

[@TheHookUp]

@@ytshotmaker Second the node red plug, but I'm not sure about scary to install. I use the addon so I just press the install button.

[@Jason.family]

HA with node red is incredibly powerful. In 2 years as a user, I've yet to hit a limitation.

[@Mr_Gadge]

I have a tuya Wi-Fi blaster for IR with hubitat. Works great! I don’t need rf but I’m sure they do one? It was a tenner and I’ve had it a couple of years with Alexa “let’s watch telly” etc switching the lot on. I never thought I’d hear “sexy” in the same DAY as hubitat dash’s being mentioned lol. It’s truly awful lol. Sharptools comes closer to “I would with 10 pints” but still not sexy. I just wish they’d flatten this complaint once and for all. I tried HA, meh. Too nerdy and needy. If you like ignoring your family and spending hours to make a device work it’s fine I’m sure. Keep up the great work! Oh and keep bringing the moaners in 🤓 I’ll just sit back and wait for the HA nerds to kick in. ☺️

[@garethjones5068]

Surely Home Assistant is a Yamlgotchi………I’ll get my coat

[@paulhibbert]

You can stay on this occasion. That's just brilliant. Xxx

[@garethjones5068]

@@paulhibbert Script doctoring & punny caption writing services are available for a meagre £300 per word

[@paulhibbert]

Bargain! Xxx

[@walkerleigh]

Lol!

[@walkerleigh]

More like Yamlgotcha.

[@kurtwilliams3943]

I’m not afraid to admit it. You are easily my favorite KZbin channel. The fact that it’s smart home stuff is entirely beside the point. You could switch tomorrow to a show about the Kardashians and I would still watch, though not after hovering my thumb over the play button for a few seconds of self introspection. All things considered, I’m glad you chose Bezos jokes over Kanye jokes. Well done. I launch KZbin just to tune in to your channel.

[@paulhibbert]

That's really kind of you to say man ❤️ thank you 😊

[@JohnMcLaughlinPlus]

This is a pretty good comparison -- I've used both and while I think home assistant is more expansive (in terms of device support and crazy things you can do) habitat basically just works. For me I settled on habitat -- My devices & automation have worked effectively flawlessly for a few years now and there are a lot of community drivers (and honestly it's not that hard to write you own drivers)

[@bryanjenks4991]

@Paul there’s some community apps for Hubitat that I think are game changing: * webCoRE: open source rules engine originally created for SmartThings, ported to Hubitat. Works totally offline, more powerful than the built in rules, and easier than HA’s rules IMO. * HomeBridge provides a rock-solid HomeKit integration with most any device connected to Hubitat. * Hubitat Package Manager: community built tool for installing device drivers and apps and keeping them up to date (saves the copy and paste install process for most things) Adding those has made Hubitat an absolutely awesome hub for me. (Also I’ve been using a retired broadlink device driver. For whatever reason the dev took it down a while back, but the code can still be found on the internet and seems to work fine at least with the older devices) Been watching for years- really great content. Thanks for all you do!

[@smitty9398]

I added in the community created drivers for my Kasa plugs. Works great, works local too.

[@JoshuaWyde]

There's a new driver written from scratch. Used it for months and it is great. Install with HPM.

[@georgeboydratcliff1036]

Bang on! I was a keen Home Assistant owner, but got sick of fixing it. I’ve had Hubitat a couple of years, and it just keeps working

[@garathekd]

I started with Hubitat and then added HA as something fun to play with. I now use them together. Hubitat handles the zigbee and zwave and will use the hubitat cloud for notifications and Alexa/google. HA controls wifi devices, connection to homekit for siri control, and TTS announcements. Automation is divided up between which ever platform does what I want the best for that task. I also like hubitat better for making virtual devices.

[@bonivuselderheart2716]

I went with the hubitat primarily because of the 'no-subscription' amazon integration feature. There's also a 3rd party integration that lets you send strings to the amazon devices ("Echo Speaks") which will let you do things like pushing a zigbee button and have a specific echo device start a timer or do other interesting things. (At least that's what I use it for; I have a couple of the bluetooth clocks paired with a couple echos, so I push a button and the one at my desk kicks off a 1 hour timer to remind me to get the laundry, for example.) I will note that hubitat does have updates on a regular basis for bugfixes and quality of life improvements; but it's not intrusive about them, and they do require internet access. It's been ridiculously stable for me otherwise.

[@bonivuselderheart2716]

I want to add that before I went in with the Hubitat, I did try Home assistant, and it was OK but I ran into some of the same issues described with the utterly crap dashboards out of the box and the pay wedge for amazon integration.

[@AlsoAlaskanBeard]

I think future compatibility is something to consider as well. Home assistant, since you're using a dongle and running off an RPi means if a new standard is released you can upgrade for a fraction of the cost of a competing product. And anecdotally, I barely have to touch HomeAssistant. I've been using it for over 2 years and only had a couple issues, both of which were related to breaking changes in an update I didn't bother to read patch notes for. And honestly, I should be reading patch notes before upgrading any infrastructure in my house. Obviously this is just my experience, but I don't think HomeAssistant needs any attention unless it's to add or keep up to date.

[@davidburris3500]

Call me crazy, but I'm using BOTH. I use Hubitat as my Zigbee/Z-Wave hub and Home Assistant for the dashboard(s) with Node Red for the automation logic. I'm using the PI 2 with an SSD. Like you, I started with HA on PI with an SD card and had the same results, it would die after a while with a corrupted SD card. With the Hubitat integration and Node Red, I opt to create a Node Red tab for each device I want to control. Then I drop the appropriate Hubitat devices onto the tab and create the logic for that device. When I started, configuring HA was a bit of a hassle, but now you can install an HAOS image onto an SSD. I'm not claiming my solution is for everyone, and cost-wise this includes BOTH rather than a choice. It meets my needs and has been working reliably for my needs.

[@donaldhoudek2889]

Good Morning, You can eliminate the "Home Assistant" cloud subscription by adding a LOCAL VPN on a Pi and connecting to it when remote! Works GREAT!! Another GREAT video!!!!!

[@smitty9398]

Just recently got started with my home automation system. My focus has been home security. I went the Hubitat route and stayed with things that were directly compatible. Hubitat has worked great for me. With my home security system stability, reliability, and much less need to maintain the system were important to me. I can see how enthusiasts would appreciate Home Assistant but for me I already have a ton of time consuming hobbies and I just need this thing to work and to be low maintenance. And... NO cloud. Paul... I just need to hear you say... Hubitat, Hubitat, Hubitat!!!

[@alfredallen6113]

Nice one. How did you set it up?

[@smitty9398]

@@alfredallen6113 I would say the most interesting part was getting my wired cameras that operate with Blue Iris in the system. The Cameras have Deep Stack AI running so they only trigger if it is a human being. And, the doors all have sensors. Glass break detectors throughout. Motion detection.... Next I went with several sirens and lights as action devices. Even connected up a police/fire rotating red light like you see on EMS vehicles. So, if someone gets near the parameter or comes through it the lights and alarms go off all over the house. I set up several tablets to control the system. There are even small windows that display what the cameras are seeing on the tablets. Everything is local and battery backed up. I do not have Alexa involved as in my experience... it is just not reliable enough. I set up Text-to-Speech on the tablets and my laptop to do the announcements. I have a ton of rules that control everything. I have been able to stay mostly with the apps supplied by Hubitat. Although my Kasa lights are driven locally by a community set of drivers. With a security system it has to work when you really need it to work so, I have worked to keep things as simple as possible. Some downsides... the dashboard really needs an upgrade. It is pretty plain and is in need of more enhanced functionality. Also, I found that the zigbee devices were apparently interfering with my LAN to a degree. I run Unifi equipment and the dashboard started showing a lot more errors after setting up all the zigbee devices as they run on the same radio spectrum. So, I switched to z-wave which seems to be better for security as it has built in security and it runs on 900 MHz. After switching to z-wave the error message rate returned to normal on the Unifi equipment. And, lastly I have found that some vendors sensors/devices work better than others. I have replaced several and went with other vendors. Depending upon your point of view... typically stuff that is very feature rich is going to involve a steeper learning curve. Getting all of this to work took an effort. I got through it all with Google searches that started with the word Hubitat. I think I have only really needed to ask questions about one device that was difficult to pair. Most of what I needed to know I found that someone had already mastered, so I just followed along. If I take home automation out any further than home security I would probably set up another system. Again, I want the home security system to be very reliable and straightforward... less moving parts.

[@alfredallen6113]

Thank you for the thorough reply. Can you give me your email, assist to set up something similar?

[@PopCultureMixTape]

@@smitty9398 What door contacts, motion detectors, and keypads did you go with?

[@pimw9805]

Hi Paul, thank you for the comparison. I've never used Hubitat but i've worked with Home Assistant since a year or two. Your pointers are pretty spot on: Home Assistant can do a lot, but it is high maintenance: there are many breaking changes with every monthly release. This way of working has also a big advantage though: innovation speed is crazy fast. Preventing breaking changes would directly mean that innovation speed would go a lot, lot slower. If you're not considering yourself as a tinkerer, i would stay far away from Home Assistant. Don't put it in your moms house. Community wise, there are a lot of friendly people on the Home Assistant fora and Discord channels, but there are a few fanatics as well (your impersonation is pretty funny) which sometimes feels as an energy drainer. All in all, i'm pretty happy with my choice for Home Assistant: i'm considering this as a hobby, and yes, every hobby costs time. I'm just hoping that the release cycles will be chilled down once the platform is solid enough so that non-tech-savy-people can start using it.

[@willdwyer6782]

Nobody says you have to update home assistant every week. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[@pimw9805]

That's true. If it is blocked from internet access, that would be my advice too. If it is connected to the internet, security is a consideration and regular updates are advisable.

[@reviewassistant6891]

You could always yanno not update monthly?

[@flipside1o1]

I guess it's like anything that attempts to support all the things there is no way to fully test all combos and your always going to break something. I've never had an update issue but still diligently check the release notes just in case

[@asdkjh4370]

With all respect but promoting this "platform" is really like selling "snake oil" - countless security issues - within HA and with "integrations" not to mention HACKs, and when you addressing this with examples - "developers" banning you from official forum without warrning. There is also politicaly correct bias with community so if you not following current trends you will also get banned. Deveopers started even banning russian developers:)))) Which is just crazy. And last but no least - non existing stability which has long lasting tradition and it seems that it will never end. If you really thing that you want put your famili safety and security in such a "profesional" and "responsible" envirnoment then good luck. If you just want reliable system - stay away from this "dumpster fire" and chose commercial solution or even alternative because even free alternatives take security way more seriously. By installing this software there is very big risk that you will expose your smart home to the World. ['[

[@SmartAndTidy]

Hi Paul. Zerotier. It is magic. It runs as an Add On in Home Assistant, and there's an app on Android. Then your phone and HASS are on a "global area network" and you you don't need the fancy AWS stuff or the subscription. I also ZeroTier with Blue Iris that has painful security for off-LAN access. Because my BI machine is on 100%, I run HASS in a linux Virtual Machine using Hyper-V (easy setup in Windows) so I don't need a dedicated HASS Pi. Only downside is that Hyper-V doesn't pass-through USB, so I use a Sonoff Zibgee bridge (flashed with Tasmota) connected to my LAN. Very happy with this setup. Always happy to help!

[@bz3086]

Paul Hi'ert! Your skits remind me of Saturday morning cartoons. Always pumped on Saturday mornings because of you! PS- We built a temple in your name!!

[@kicker10bog]

I've had Home Assistant on an SD card and working fine for well over a year. But at the house we're going to move into, I installed it on a VM and that works even better. Only cost so far has been a z-wave stick and a zigbee stick. You don't have to use a pi or dedicated machine for it.

[@mosth8ed]

This is a pretty great thing, too. Before I actually started using Home Assistant, to test it out I just loaded up the premade HomeAssistant image on to a VM on my laptop and ran it there. I actually ran it there for 6 months or so before I actually built a whole elaborate system and moved it to dedicated hardware..

[@hof_prod]

on any modern hypervisor you should be able to pass USB Devices, through the VM.

[@kicker10bog]

@@hof_prod yeah, that is exactly what I'm doing. The zwave stick does occasionally stop being passed through after an update though, so I have to reboot the host system to make it work again.

[@hof_prod]

@@kicker10bog well, thats bad.

[@kicker10bog]

@@hof_prod eh, it works. And rebooting the windows host doesn't hurt to do every so often. Not a big deal.

[@joerirotthier5409]

I'm using both platforms. Started out with Hubitat, then went home assistant and am using them together. The reason for that is the Single point of failure. I'm adding more and more devices and become so reliant on those little boxes that I'm actually scared of the hubitat dying on me at some point in time. For home assistant, I'm not that scared cause I can have a new one installed and restored in under 2hours as a temporary instance on a computer, or another raspberry pi. I wouldn't know what to do if the hubitat dies... . So it's not all about functionality, more about outages for me. Love both platforms though.

[@Drinkyoghurt]

One of the things that people should practice with home assistant is automatic backups that get uploaded to your Dropbox or google drive. My HA makes a backup at 3am and keeps 7 of those files locally, the rest gets sent to my Dropbox. And definitely agree with Hibbert on not using an SD card, that shit gave me a massive headache. It’s just so weird to see how expensive a Pi4 has gotten since I started. I think I paid €55 for a 4GB version pre-pandemic.

[@asdkjh4370]

With all respect but promoting this "platform" is really like selling "snake oil" - countless security issues - within HA and with "integrations" not to mention HACKs, and when you addressing this with examples - "developers" banning you from official forum without warrning. There is also politicaly correct bias with community so if you not following current trends you will also get banned. Deveopers started even banning russian developers:)))) Which is just crazy. And last but no least - non existing stability which has long lasting tradition and it seems that it will never end. If you really thing that you want put your famili safety and security in such a "profesional" and "responsible" envirnoment then good luck. If you just want reliable system - stay away from this "dumpster fire" and chose commercial solution or even alternative because even free alternatives take security way more seriously. By installing this software there is very big risk that you will expose your smart home to the World. 87

[@joerirotthier5409]

@@asdkjh4370 You are right, and will stay right no matter how far in the future we go. If you are throwing in all sorts of IOT and an open source platform, any platform really, holes will turn up. It is therefore important to protect your diamonds and not your paperclips. I understand and accept the risk that such a platform brings. I'll segregate, keep my firewall as closed as humanly possible and monitor my networks thoroughly. It's all I can do really. That, or stop my home automation, and that is not going to happen. The risk is accepted.

[@markandjennyhesketh7149]

I started out with Hubitat but didn't get very far. Now I have switched to Home Assistant I can at last make progress. Hubitat lives all alone un plugged in a drawer!!! I used a NUC for HA and along with the iOS and Mac apps for controlling it I can't imagine using Hubitat again.

[@rogerkant3696]

Went through an interaction process myself, started with HomeKit, then migrated to SmartThings to get more devices, found this was too limiting and the hub was running out of power for a full home automation and now am on HA on a Raspberry Pi. Still run HomeKit for cameras and some use of Siri, use the HomeKit integration into HA. Run some Wifi lights from Lifx as well as a Hue Hub, lights and sensors. HA manages it all and is controlled from a wall mounted Samsung tablet. Did not look at Habutat as by the time I got to HA I was delighted to find most of my devices were supported locally and HA recognized and had support for nearly everything in my setup. There is a bit of system maintenance to keep it all running but mainly it involves a few updates every month to the software. Loving Home Assistant.

[@HonStuartK]

Hubitat now supports Apple HomeKit. It would be nice if you could edit the video to put that banner at the place near the end of the video where you say Hubitat doesn’t support it. Also, the ease of use test is basically the set up. As you also mention, Home Assistant seems to require a lot more tinkering over the long run, so I would think that would be a tie, if not a win for Hubitat.

[@peterrockell1527]

For HA on an SD card, make sure that it is of the V30 variety, that'll survive the abuse that HA will deliver to it, mines been running for over a year now without frying the SD card :-)

[@leopold7562]

Shunting the recorder database off to another device (like a proper NAS that will handle MySQL or MariaDB will help with that, too. Massively

[@Thompsonnumber4]

I solved the SD card issue (yes they do die eventually) by using two sd cards, a usb card holder and a cloning script called rpi_clone. It also solves the backup question and gives me a really easy way to roll back (swap two cards). I think this is mostly a fair comparison other than rpi and dongle price where you got ripped off. But HA is still a bit more suited to someone willing to put time into it and fix things.

[@peterrockell1527]

@@Thompsonnumber4 Sounds like a good idea, better safe than sorry and all that :-)

[@spencerbigum1309]

Need a re-review now again I think with all the latest updates! Great job 👏

[@dragosadriananton]

Hi Paul, I am using both systems, with HA integration for hubitat. Basically I am using Hubitat as Zigbee and Zwave interface. HA is my day to day dashboard, pulling all zigbee and zwave devices from Hubitat. The zigbee and zwave integration from hubitat is better than HA one. There are few things that you did not cover in this review: 1. both systems can work together (hubitat integration in HA) 2. hardware support in hubitat really exists! one of my hubitat hub was replaced in warranty in working days! (of course, those 2 days felt like 1 week) 3. I found that Zigbee and Zwave integration in Hubitat is more stable and reliable in hubitat. 4. the more important one: hubitat is more wife friendly!

[@c-tech_]

Your videos strike an excellent balance, being both incredibly informative and delightfully humorous. One of my favorite channels.

[@paulhibbert]

Thanks dude!!

[@RockGaudreau]

I went with Home Assistant because I already run a full fledged pc as a server and just ran HA as a virtual machine. Added a sonoff/zigbee bridge with Tasmota and I have everything I need with minimal hardware cost.

[@ugh635]

I would say, as a professional techie, that it would depend on the SD card you use. I have it on an SD card for 2 years now. Although after watching this, starting from scratch I'd probably go with hubitat for start up costs. But I had 4 pi 3Bs floating around already so I'm using home assistant instead

[@Walhor]

could it also be because he has so many devices?

[@ytshotmaker]

Long time home assistant user here, it runs my house and I have been looking for an escape from its horrible constant maintenance demands for so long! I STILL have PTSD from trying to connect home assistant to alexa without a subscription a couple of years ago! It took me DAYS (that bit isn't hyperbole!)! And today the maintenance is just an absolute nightmare with the constant breaking changes. If I had a sworn enemy who wasn't incredibly tech-savvy, I'd convince them to go all in on home assistant. Without their own personal Dennis Nedry I'd give them months before their tech enabled home becomes a medieval hovel and they're sleeping on straw! The moment hubitat gets broadlink is the moment I switch. Thanks Paul!

[@paulhibbert]

Glad it's not just me! 🤣

[@ytshotmaker]

@UCb46C2G3mpUGJ6e1nePY4eA This was really useful, thank you! That's it, if I find that link in their forums I'm buying one today! No more being scared of my lights or heating not working without hours of pain due to HA's ridiculous system breaking updates 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@rosiehawtrey]

Dennis Nedry / "Bloody Stupid" Johnson - separated at birth... Now, where did I put my dilophosaur. PS 16 hatchling cornsnakes are really fast.

[@JoshuaWyde]

There is a rock solid BroadLink plugin now. Super easy to install with the Hubitat Package Manager. I have 3 BroadLink RM4 Pros working with my c8.

[@BrunoVoeten]

I am using them both, pick the best of both worlds. However, I would prefere Hubitat supports more devices OR HA is less complicated. I import all devices not available in Hubitat from HA using Home Assistant Device Bridge. Works fine The community of Hubitat fits way more my needs.

[@amisakie]

As a HA fanboy this is a pretty accurate comparison. HA does require a huge investment of time initially but ones you figure it out nothing compares. The other issue is finding a reliable setup that works. If you can get good reliable hardware (which is a crapshoot) it can make for a really terrible experience.

[@asdkjh4370]

With all respect but promoting this "platform" is really like selling "snake oil" - countless security issues - within HA and with "integrations" not to mention HACKs, and when you addressing this with examples - "developers" banning you from official forum without warrning. There is also politicaly correct bias with community so if you not following current trends you will also get banned. Deveopers started even banning russian developers:)))) Which is just crazy. And last but no least - non existing stability which has long lasting tradition and it seems that it will never end. If you really thing that you want put your famili safety and security in such a "profesional" and "responsible" envirnoment then good luck. If you just want reliable system - stay away from this "dumpster fire" and chose commercial solution or even alternative because even free alternatives take security way more seriously. By installing this software there is very big risk that you will expose your smart home to the World. ;l

[@TheVexinator]

I run both - Hubitat handles all my zigbee pairings and HA handles my automations. I ran with just Hubitat for a year and agree that it's the best place to start. If you have a need for HA features, you can control your Hubitat from your HA.

[@arkagl]

I run both also

[@mrchappell100]

I love home assistant and hubitat and I use them both together flawlessly along side tuya, switchbot and broadlink...

[@fredherbert2739]

Do you use the hub it at integration that works with home assistant? Curiously about the set up. Thanks!

[@paulhibbert]

I'm curious too. What do you need Hubitat for? Is it being used in place of buying and connecting the zigbee and zwave dongles directly with your pi?

[@mrchappell100]

@@paulhibbert No mate I find hubitat good for the a few things and home assistant good for others, after lots of trial and error I use tuya for the smart bulbs pulling scene's from the cloud, hubitat for buttons, mode manager and api maker, then home assistant to get it all talking together, and a custom dashboard with mushroom theme, it all depends on the device and which platform it works best and that is what I ended up with 😁... the advise you gave before in a video about not sticking to the same ecosystem has worked out for me quite well so thank you for that buddy🙂🙃😉

[@paulhibbert]

Nice one dude! ❤️

[@JamesScholesUK]

Similar here (except I haven't yet made the jump from SmartThings to Hubitat) - for me ST hub handles ZigBee and Zwave devices, then everything goes into HA for better automation and control. I'm slowly moving all my scenes and routines over so if ST ever dies I just need to change hubs and relink everything Oh, and HA is running on my media server, and I can't be doing with managing zigbee/zwave dongle compatibility on a box that's got 4 other jobs to handle too

[@chrislarge8704]

Just over a year ago I got fed up with the "cloth-eared bint" (AKA Google) so did research on both these platforms. I plumped for Hubitat. The system has been completely reliable and I'm really pleased with it. The help & support from the on-line community is great, not to mention that Hubitat's staff are also actively involved in the forum. Whilst it will function completely locally, some linked systems (like Tado) still need an internet connection to work properly. If you're happy with having that internet connection then there are IFTTT, Alexa & Google integrations that will allow you to control pretty much anything. As for Tado - there's no need to pay for their automatic geofencing or "open window" functionality. With the addition of a bunch of cheap contact sensors on the windows Hubitat will do it!

[@ruostee]

Smartthings with edge drivers is mostly local too. Comminity have produced lots of working drivers already. You should definitely try it!

[@JasonWho]

As an HA user from the very challenging start… fair video with the one exception of not even mentioning the HA Blue or (as I read below) Yellow devices with built in support for other protocols

[@mesoed]

Nice too see something on Hubitat. Hard to find a lot of people talking about it. Usually it's Home Assistant, Smart Things, HomeKit. Good to know it's still a viable alternative.

[@gavinmorgan8861]

I had Hubitat before moving to home assistant. Couldn’t do anywhere near as much on Hubitat as I can on home assistant because there wasn’t enough tutorials out there. Automations we’re harder to write. Couldn’t even get my hive to work with it. GUI wasnt as good as home assistant either. Not enough developers working on Hubitat is the problem. I’d never go back.

[@reviewassistant6891]

Hey man how do you get on with hive? My parents have it and I've given up with it, seems every 5 minjtes it wants me to confirm 2fa again I use Drayton wiser for my home and although it's more difficult to setup it works locally unlike hive Do you have 2fa issue?

[@gavinmorgan8861]

@@reviewassistant6891 I’ve never had to do an authentication on it. Strange one

[@nefariou5]

Yup. I also bought a hubitat (at Paul's recommendation a year or so back). It's pretty telling that he uses home assistant and not hubitat though. I too ended up unplugging it.

[@paulhibbert]

To be fair to Hubitat I only unplugged it to test Homey and never found the time to switch back, and I only now use Home Assistant because I made a video on it and haven't got time to move to or from any solution 😂 I don't recommend Homey though. Good solution, but I don't trust the people running it to keep it that way. I was actually happy using LOOOOOAAAAADS of different solutions and tieing them together with Alexa routines and simple voice control. Never had anything fail. Probably my most robust setup!

[@cyberdude1010]

I have a house full of Insteon devices that quit working last month. It took me an hour to get everything back working on HA. I didn’t look at the Habitat to see if they supported it, but I’m happy.

[@michaelboys2602]

Brilliant video, as always, Paul. Also, your NES home assistant shell is awesome!!!!

[@1stevenreid]

As someone who is just getting started with a smart home, these videos have helped me so much with making purchases. I've actually been looking at the hubitat vs home assistant choice. This helps a lot.

[@PierreLeroy76620]

And did you choose one ? I'm in the same situation as you. I did go into the home assistant forum a bit and I was like : WTF IS ALL THIS ! I was expecting some tutoriels, or some gitbub integration but no I need a developper background to understand what they are doing xD. But hey when I will really did into it, it will probably make more sense to me

[@1stevenreid]

@@PierreLeroy76620 I'm leaning more toward Hubitat because I don't have a developer background.

[@chrislarge8704]

As a Hubitat owner I'm a bit biased, but: I too don't have a developer background and I lurked around the forums before making a decision. The answers to most of my questions were already on the Hubitat forum. The community are genuinely helpful and of the mind-set that everyone was a Noob at some point. The fact that Hubitat's staff are actively involved in the forum is a huge bonus. It's a product that's constantly evolving & improving. Depending how far down the home automation rabbit hole you want to go, Hubitat can be really simple to deal with but is capable of insanely complex stuff.

[@1stevenreid]

@@chrislarge8704 I have just stuck my head in that rabbit hole, but I'm ready to dive. Currently, I have an Amazon speaker, a couple of light bulbs, and couple of plugs, and a million plans.

[@PierreLeroy76620]

@@chrislarge8704 Still interesting to get you point of view ! One question, how do you handle detection and simple lightning ? The main reason i'm hesitant to go Hubitat is to spend money on the hub and found out to be limited to what i want to do. My plan is to put multiple presence detection so i can get a "vector" where people go. Using this vector i can predict what room to light or not and this i think it may required more "capacity" like Home Assitant Have.

[@MaxC.94]

thank you for this detailed comparison of hubitat and home assistant -- it's a comparison i specifically am looking into because my partner and i want to move away from cloud-based services asap (our smart home journey started with an echo dot and ring doorbell and zero knowledge of just how many options are out there for everything under the sun). this video along with the comments below have been extremely helpful in guiding my decision-making process because, even though i'm a very tech-savvy person and have been my whole life, i don't want to jump into the deep end when i don't even have many devices and i want something that is easy and not intimidating for when my partner has to interact with any of the process because she is not a tech person. so i think i'm going to start with hubitat and if my smart home expands and i start wanting that extra level home assistant provides, i'll move to/add in home assistant later. cheers!

[@Enispecialist]

Hi Paul, excellent video. I’m one of those bizarre users who uses both platforms together. Someone wrote a wonderful home assistant integration for Hubitat. I initially bought a Hubitat, but ran into two problems: 1. Using their dashboard configuration is akin to smashing your hand repeatedly with a claw hammer 2. Their documentation was absolute garbage so writing any integrations, or more advanced automations was hopeless for someone like me who can code but is not a hardcore dev. Therefore all my zigbee and zwave devices are on Hubitat, and I also use Hubitat for my more rudimentary automations. Initially home assistant had really awful automations. I also use the echo integration for Hubitat. I use home assistant for the dashboard and for any advanced automations such as my automation that uses the high and low temperatures for the day to determine which mode my thermostat uses.

[@sygad1]

I completely agree, you CAN go the long way round and connect it manually (I did) but OMG, it is ridiculously difficult and many times I had to replay the YT video that was guiding me

[@reviewassistant6891]

Hey the better option is to buy into a cloud company because there is no way that can fail you 😜

[@jayextarys8616]

Been a long time since i watch your vids. I looove your humor. Not enough yachts and Ohh the zigbe are my favorite moments

[@fp30e]

Hi Paul, You mentioned Philips Hue (sorry) without being sick!!!!! Loved the slap. Another interesting and great video. Have a great week. Take care.

[@rocteur]

Thanks very much Paul, a couple of weeks after I asked a similar question, here is the answer in detail. My fear with Hubitat now that every room in the house depends on it is, what happens if it dies in the arse ... I mean, hardware failure, should I buy one as backup or just pray it never will. I have a bunch of SBCs here in the house, but only one Hubitat box... Not sure.. GREAT video and hilarious as usual! Looking forward to seeing the wrap up of attacks and retaliation from your viewers on your Facebook page ;-)

[@danc6464]

Well thanks Paul I had to buy a Hubitat now. I have been on the Fence but but since I saw this video I pulled the trigger. I am mostly in the Emperors eco system too. I am going to use Homebridge to integrate to HomeKit. I appreciate all of your videos and look forward to Saturday mornings to laugh and be informed about something. Great work!

[@Wouttonio]

I've had a Raspberry Pi 4 laying around for some time which I purchased for way less than mentioned here. Also I don't have any z-wave devices. For zigbee support I have the Sonoff zigbee 3.0 usb dongle, again for way less mentioned. Being an Apple user I also love homekit support. For me, Home Assistant is an absolute no brainer. Hubitat seems like a good alternative, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't recommend it over Home Assistant when it comes to pricing, or most points brought up here, though. Also, my experience in setting up cloud access without paying for nabu casa was absolutely painless. When you're tech savvy enough to set up Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, you're definitely tech savvy enough to set up a simple ddns service and forward a single port on your router. The sponsorship seems to be curving the conclusion just a tiny bit here, although it is true Hubitat does seem more user friendly at only the cost of a bit of flexibility. it in no way is a rip off for what you're getting, that is absolutely a good point being made.

[@rosiehawtrey]

I feel like I'm missing something. Before I got really ill I worked in IT and good IT practice is to only install an update/upgrade is either to have a small scale clone system to test on, or wait until things start to break to install updates. An example, I have the joys of banking with HSBC (Highly Suspect Banking Cartel) and their app is notorious for crapping itself on updates. So what I do is wait until it finally throws a wobbly, telling me I absolutely have to update, before I touch that app. I might suggest that people using the HA system might try the same thing if they can. It might also be an idea for the developers to batch their updates. Spend a single batch update on automation features and another on device discovery features. The issue with singular updates, or any update, is it can crap out supposedly unrelated parts of a system and cause havoc - like happened with TSB in India a few years back. TSB cut costs, hired on a bunch of newbs on to run a legacy system and everything was happy happy joy joy until it came time to run an update on a system that had been bespoked up the wazoo - a single variable was incorrectly set up and not only did the upgrade fall over faster than an assassinated prime minister, the rollback didn't work because about the first thing the update did was overwrite this particular value... We aren't talking about office PCs here - we're talking the *entire* payment and transfers system for a good percentage of the planet... And the fun part - the screwed up variable was a bodge to fix an original bodge that the old *expensive* personnel knew all about - the cheapies were completely ignorant.. Took them *days* to get the system up again. The moral is twofold - devs need to test on the weirdest setups they can think of - and users need to let app updates slide until the deathwish brigade has done the testing for you (ie look at the previous reviews for that version).

[@mikhailkovalev7762]

You don't have to buy a Raspberry Pi just for running home assistant. I'm running my install on my (10 years) old computer (in a VM along with other stuff) which I already had, so in total my expenses for everything were about 17€ for the Sonoff ZigBee stick (and I had also successfully set up an Alexa skill by myself for free). Since it has a hard drive, I'm not worried about it dying or getting slow from having too much writes. And since it's (slow, but still) an x86 computer, I don't have to worry about possible performance issues either. I think old hardware is a great option for running Home Assistant which everyone is always forgetting about.

[@HATipsByLarry]

yep running mine on a older PC as well and its a lot faster then running it on a PI.

[@wizdude]

I'm also interested in how the remote cloud access for Hubitat will end up. Be aware that if you wish to remotely ADMINISTER your device, there is already a subscription fee for that. I think it's currently around USD$30/year. still cheaper than home assistant, but i wonder what will happen in the future. Home Assistant Yellow will be available at the end of the year. Cost will be around 150 pounds I believe but does not include Z-WAVE which is an optional module. Both Hubitat and HA offer great options for different people. I'm in the HA camp as I love to tinker and hack, but Hubitat does bring a good experience to the table for those who don't like to hack as much. Thanks again for another great video Paul! :-) :-)

[@paulhibbert]

I think the fee for remote admin is because a lot of professional installers were buying up Hubitats and setting them up for customers. If they want the convenience of remote setup then they pay Hubitat for that access. For home users it shouldn't make a difference because you'll usually be at home when you want to do any admin anyway. I know they charge for cloud backup, but that's fair seeing as there is a free local backup option anyway 😊

[@Karyn451]

@@paulhibbert Your implication is that Hubitat have replaced a free service with a paid one to gain revenue from (or discourage) pro installers. It is still possible to do your own remote admin, the paid Hubitat service is just a simpler way for home users who may not have the tech skills to setup their own VPN etc..

[@JenaGuitar]

I think that now you cannot switch on a device from outside your local network without setting up a vpn… am I wrong?

[@ingejones8240]

@@JenaGuitar You could do it via something like Google Home integration anyway - it should work exactly the same as it would if you were at home as that provides the cloud connection

[@youngmug]

@@JenaGuitar You should still be able to control devices remotely with Hubitat as long as you have them on a dashboard. Anything more complex via the admin web interface requires either the paid remote admin service or setting up a VPN.

[@Gaarax1981]

Hi Paul. In last Hubitat update they added homekit support...in case u want to update ur video :)

[@dougtoombs9195]

Hmmmm. If only I'd seen this about one week ago ... could have perhaps saved myself some future headache. Just got a standard RPI kit for building out a new HomeAssistant configuration. The new guidance is apparently to look for "Application Class 2" level SD cards which apparently handles small reads/writes better ... so hopefully that might make things last a bit longer for me. But thanks to you now I know ... I'll need to make backups of my HomeAssistant config just in case. Thanks, Paul Hibbert!

[@FPVMike]

great video paul. There is obviously a lot more to both of these solutions, but as a long time hubitat user, i can say the lack of integrations is the biggest downfall. The RM4 is by far the biggest and most annoying problem with hubitat. But there are also so many other things i can't get to work with hubitat that others have working in home assistant. I just dont have time to stuff around with home assistant.

[@JohnMayfield-NS]

Maybe I'm just lucky or not knowledgeable enough to break it, but Home Assistant has been very stable for me for years and I mess with it all the time. I had a failed install with a VM but that was user error because I had no idea how to do a VM and decided to start both HA and VM learning at the same time. A solid install with Pi until the SD card failed, I could attribute that to the card since it was a cheap no name and I was using the set up to learn, but either way it failed. Moved to an SSD (thanks, backups!) and it was solid for a year. I then moved HA in to Proxmox and it's been solid there for almost a year now. The UI improvements have been great but the interface and things like adding devices I agree - it was written by programmers for programmers. This year is all about making it more streamlined so I'm hoping for more UI improvements and for the love of all things, drag and drop, resizable, dashboard components. Now I'll wander off and knock on wood. :)

[@DallasHerrmann]

Just spun up a Home Assistant install on an old laptop, and am currently running it in tandem with Hubitat

[@erikjoha]

I tried Home Assistant when I was moving away from SmartThings. After tinkering with it for a while, I was unable to get all my z-wave devices to play nice with it - so I gave up, grabbed a hubitat, and boom, worked out of the box. Lack of Homekit support in hubitat isn't a big deal, I run homebridge for that, and that makes that integration a piece of cake. Home Assistant looked promising to me when i first started, and had it been able to make my z-wave network happy, I would have kept it - but i ran out of hours i wanted to dedicate to it - so I am glad I made the switch to hubitat (and I already had homebridge running from my smart things days, so moving that integration over was a piece of cake)

[@dougle03]

I gave up with voice assistants about 6 months ago. I have both Google and Echo's in the house but either they were rubbish at understanding what I wanted, or I simply forgot the correct device name when asking for something. I instead decided to invest time in NodeRed to make the house 'just work' with minimal interaction from its occupants. I'v hidden some fiendishly complicated automation processes under very simple buttons on the HA dashboard for anything out of the ordinary, but we find we're mostly creatures of habit, so relatively easy to craft automations accordingly. All that said though, Home Assistant needs the competition from players like Hubitat to keep the core devs honest. My biggest fear is that HA will grow so large that it'll eventually be bought by the big boys looking for a ready made platform with lots of users all willingly sharing their data.... I hope that day never comes, but as HA grows, it's attraction to investment also grows....

[@JWW855]

I'm gonna try to get over my ocd of having all my devices made by the same company for compatibility sake, and try Hubitat with different types of devices. Thanks again for another intuitive video that gives me the courage to try this!

[@ClassicGOD]

Why VS? I use Hubitat as a bridge between ZigBee and Z-wave networks and HomeAssistant. They work beautifully together.

[@chipbeef9694]

I've used Both HA and Hubitat. I settled on Hubitat due to now knowing that the Nortek zigbee/zwave stick is a POS and was likely the culprit of my HA mesh being non responsive. Anyways wanted to mention that Hubitat community is constantly creating drivers so devices not officially supported, though still behind HA. The cool thing is if Alexa can support a device, Hubitat can as well by using virtual switches. This vastly enhances the compatibility of Hubitat. Additionally Hubitat has 3 ways to work with HA. First you could share your devices from HA to Hubitat. Second you could share your Hubitat devices to HA. Last but not least, and this is where the real buy recommendation for Hubitat lies is if you you decide you don't like Hubitat at all, you can use the Hubitat as your Zigbee and zwave coordinator in HA. This is kind of like a get out of jail free card in the home automation wars. Don't like us? Fine use our Hardware on our competitors software.

[@MrSupersidewinder]

I didn't know... I looked at smartthings to be able to build an ha server eventually using the radios only then... Didn't like what I saw so I went with the sonoff zigbee stick... I would have tried habitat if I knew this... I am happy with what I have though...

[@HATipsByLarry]

thats strange i have used the nortek zigbee/zwave stick on HA for almost a year now and have not experienced any zwave/zigbee problems.

[@clellbritt3434]

I'm still using Smartthings and if gas ever comes back down I might have the money for Hubitat. Though I have an old laptop with Home Assistant on it, but that's as far as I got. Great video, you even made my wife laugh.

[@jimintheboxaudio7771]

So far I’ve found using hubitat with home assistant is the best of both worlds. Home assistant lost all my zigbee devices 3 times in the same week with a conbee stick but not one zigbee issue with hubitat over the last 2 years. Once I started pairing all zigbee and zwave devices through hubitat and then syncing that with home assistant everything has been rock solid with all the customization and device support that home assistant offers and hubitat doesnt.

[@MAD20248]

do you need an actual hubitat device or you can achieve that using hubitat integration in home assistant?

[@jimintheboxaudio7771]

@@MAD20248 You need an actual Hubitat device. Essentially I am using my Hubitat as a zwave and zigbee bridge for home assistant, if that makes sense.

[@Max_Jua]

I have hubitat and I am using broadlink. The community made a driver. It is not easy to use but it works

[@PrototypeNumber5]

Pretty accurate comparison, but here's a few observations from using Hubitat long-term (been using the C5 since it was the new hotness): If you have quite a bit going on, the Hubitat will NEED a weekly reboot. Otherwise it just starts having issues. Lights can take several seconds, sometimes over 30, to respond. It's annoying to have the stair lights come on AFTER you've finished going up/down. But...the Hubitat developers just can't be convinced that it's a good thing to allow a scheduled reboot. Last I checked, the only way to automate it was to use an add-on that basically logs into the web interface and does a reboot that way. An add-on running on the Hubitat has to login to the Hubitat's web interface to do a reboot. Ridiculous. You'll get told that you should find the root cause of the problem (um, it's the Hubitat), and possibly that you need a second (or more!) Hubitat to take some of the load off the one(s) you currently have. Another major annoyance is updates. You'll see plastered everywhere about how you don't have to constantly update, you can just stick with "what works." That's awesome, that's exactly what I want...except I do occasionally update my devices for various reasons (security fixes, new features, etc.). TWICE I've run into an issue with updating that was likely caused by me jumping too far, i.e. imagine trying to go from Windows 95 to Windows 7. Might work, might blow up. Sometimes you need incremental updates. Go from Win95 to Win98, then WinMe, then WinXP, you get the idea. The issue with the Hubitat is that you can ONLY update to the newest software. You can't pick a lower version, there's no way to download older versions from an archive and upload that manually...it's newest or bust. First major issue I ran into, I had to post on the forum and keep reiterating EXACTLY what my problem was, so eventually someone important would go "oh, wait, so you're NOT a complete f-up and this is actually an issue" and had to manually fix my backup (some kind of database corruption was present). You might think that an easy way around THAT problem would be to just enable automatic updates...but you can't! The second time I ran into an issue upgrading...I just gave up and switched to Home Assistant. Oh, and backups. They're encrypted. You can't see anything that's going on. Seems a bit shady. I know other companies do this too, I'm not sure why it seems any more shady that they're doing it, but still. It's very frustrating that I could probably fix issues myself if I at least had access to what's inside the backups. They seem oddly money grubbing at times. For example, if you want to upgrade from one hub to another (say, a C5 to a C7) and don't want to repair the dozens of Zigbee and Zwave devices, that's possible...for a fee. On the other hand, no recurring fees for Alexa integration. If you plan on getting everything setup, are happy to not have access to any newer features added later, and don't mind logging in to the web interface every week or so to manually reboot (it really does make a difference), the Hubitat is hard to beat. It really does "just work" with the caveats previously mentioned. Personally, I'm glad I moved to Home Assistant, I have a lot more control and with the weekly reboots, it's just as reliable as Hubitat was (habits die hard). Since I already had the Hubitat, I'm actually using it for the free Alexa integration. Just link Home Assistant devices to Hubitat, and then expose them to the Alexa integration like any other device on the Hubitat.

[@LarMorgan]

Thanks.. as always, entertaining and useful. Your point on why to migrate from Alexa struck home. One point of confusion; how do you migrate from Alexa to Hubitat? Do you just delete the skills on Alexa? Can you still give voice commands to Alexa, or does switching mean no more Alexa? Thank you.

[@Magnous06]

I use a Firewalla Gold router to host a local VPN, which I can then connect to when away from home. Once I’m connected, I can control Home Assistant as though I were on my home wifi. It’s actually really easy to implement, but it would also double the cost of your Home Assistant build. If they’re easily available in the U.K., I highly recommend taking a look at Firewalla’s products sometime.

[@TomWard-jd7it]

Have watched you for years, very glad you’ve covered Hubitat which is my smart home hub of choice. I’ve had a great time with it and it suits me fine. Would love to see more Hubitat content, or just mentioning in the future the the devices you cover are supported by Hubitat? It would help my purchasing choices. Thanks from another East Midlander.

[@ArnoSnyman007]

I bought the Hubitat based on a lot of Googling and I think it was a waste of money. There are so many things not supported (including user drivers). They have a VERY small Ikea list, which makes up a lot of my smart home set up. I am trying my best to make the best out of a bad situation, but I will say that Hubitat feels like a waste. I should have gone with Home Assistant.

[@ecotts]

Paul , have you tried a Sant-Sudo01 (Ewelink PCI X1 device (Under a tenner)) for your PC or server. You can bootup and shutdown your PC with it versus using a home plug which just cuts the power. Its useful if you have a machine which your might need access too when you're out and about and you don't want to leave it running 24/7, its also nice when you set your routine for returning home to find you PC is already booted up and ready to go the second you step foot in the house. The device shows in Ewelink like all other sonoff devices.

[@HATipsByLarry]

i use HA with MQTT intergration and a windows service called IOT Link. It shuts down the computer correctly instead of just cutting power to it like a smart plug would do. Then i do use a smart plug and set the bios on the computer to power on after power is restored. then i have a automation that can turn the computer on by powering it down while its already off then back on which will cause the pc to turn on and boot up.

[@dancoon7653]

Was about to point out that a raspberry pi doesn't cost that much....then I looked and found they are out of stock for there normal £50ish price EVERYWHERE. Wonder what's going on there cause my raspberry pi 3 needs replacing but I'm not gonna pay scalper prices for a new one. As for hubitat I might look at that for some friends and family that like my system and want something similar without me needing to go round and fix it every other day, but I'll stick with home assistant, it's taken me an ice age to get my govee, hue (I know I know) tp-link, aqara, LG, Sony, Xbox, Sky Q working with so many routines I forgot what half of them even do. I'm not about to start from scratch again. Anyway thanks again for another useful and amusing video 🙂

[@paulhibbert]

Chip shortage has really screwed us 😭

[@johnward6516]

One thing I think that might have been missed in the setup is that Home Assistant can be installed on existing hardware such as PCs or in my case I have it running on a SAN. HOWEVER you still need the extra devices such as zigbee /rf/ir dongles or devices, so there is still a cost. I do like the idea that all of these are built into the hubitat. On a side note the subscription for HA Cloud seems a bit on the high side just to have a connection to Google and Amazon

[@claytongreer7532]

I believe the HA cloud subscription is priced at a level to fund their business model for ongoing development and support. Given the history and current state of the industry, how a hub supports itself is another reasonable selection criteria. Wink? Smarthings?

[@magnusgustavsson2230]

Considering to install HA on an old TV-box.

[@DerdOn0ner]

Screw it, I‘m buying a Hubitat. IFTTT has just announced the free plan will only have 2 applets and I was running Tado automations over IFTTT. Was going to buy a Pi, but Paul, you convinced me to buy a Hubitat instead 😂

[@trippinonaduck1379]

I think the ability to use node-red makes HA the more powerfull platform. Even the HA integrated automations are limited compared to node-red's ability to make complex automation flows. If you don't need the granularity of automation control, Hubitat is certainly capable as well.

[@kaktus3175]

Hubitat does support node-red as well.

[@djashjones]

I went from HA to hubitat and still use node-red

[@kaktus3175]

@@djashjones which is an attractive factor as well: switching systems without having to do all automations all over again!

[@djashjones]

@@kaktus3175 yeah and also hubitat's rule machine is a PITA, 🤣

[@stevetb7777]

Hubitat can run webCoRE. Most would agree webCoRE is superior to node-red.

[@neekster28]

I am running HomeAssistant on my NAS, a device which I already had running. This made the hardware effectively free, and I'm not running it on a crummy SD card.

[@solidus784]

Thw whole Alexa setup was a pain in the hole but once setup, home assistant has been absolutely rock solid now for about 18 months. With very little maintenance.

[@reviewassistant6891]

Good to hear, I personally don't want my stuff in Amazon or Google, if a device needed manual input outside buttons my first instinct is to pull out my phone, my home button opens the app I find smart devices often don't hear me properly and I just cba with it now so I have not missed it one bit Well most my devices are actually on my hue hub so there exposed via that if I really wanted

[@solidus784]

@@reviewassistant6891 Yeah I here yeah, but they way I use my smarthome is all automations and voice control. I rarely even use the app.

[@shlokbhakta2893]

Great video, but I can’t help but think that the sponsorship may have affected some of the things you could say in this video

[@paulhibbert]

You are bloody joking. The video ends with me sticking with home assistant, and explains why!!

[@shlokbhakta2893]

@@paulhibbert thanks for clarifying, and great video! I use home assistant too I was just worried that some of the things that you said were pushed onto you by your sponsor but that doesn’t seem like the case seeing your response. 😅 I didn’t mean to come off as rude and great video! 😃

[@shlokbhakta2893]

@@paulhibbert also, I just realized this video was uploaded ages ago, nice to see that you are still reading the comments on your old videos😃

[@ingejones8240]

Actually Hubitat does create a sort of dashboard automatically. If you open the app on your phone, and tap "Devices" at the bottom, you will see the devices grouped by room and can operate them from there.

[@Reject06]

Would really enjoy seeing some more hubitat vids from your channel. I see a lot of home assistance creators but only a weirdo trickle of hubitat ones

[@chris_croft]

I do like a bit of home automation on a Saturday morning Paul👍

[@magnussvensson5153]

Wonderful video. I like hubitat, but my daily drive is domoticz for all automation. I love how the ui are on hubitat and how you can customize it. But I want a more robust language, I have a environment script for each room and scene script for movies and other occasions. It feels to messy with behavior for each thing. For my living room I have one script that sets the light and Kelvin depending on time, and lux in one script. I used to have my scenes in it too, but to make it easyer to manage so are they in a own script. Easy to overview how it is and to make changes in. Ha gives me nightmares trying to get that working. I would love to see your take on domoticz 😊 Thanks for all the good videos!

[@tdegler]

ok, I don't want Amber coming around. That worked. I've subscribed. Please! Send her awayyyy!

[@tombloemker9434]

Those prices seem a little inflated, I think my HA solution was $60 U.S. Samsung micro SD card is going strong 3years. The Nabu Casa subscription is the real issue. Thanks for sharing this option which would be cheaper over time.

[@paulhibbert]

The chip shortage has sent the prices through the ceiling sadly.

[@fredherbert2739]

Anyone running it on a NAS such as synology?

[@FreshfrogmarketingUk]

@@paulhibbert Odroid N2+. €130 with HA preinstalled. Basically a Home Assistant Blue without the fancy case.

[@ustoopia]

You are hilarious in all your video's. You're helping to maintain the cliché that people from the island are the funniest folks in the whole world. Good job sir.

[@matthewjenkins1161]

Hi Paul, been laughing along to many of your great videos and great respect on the recent one regarding a very difficult topic, but I wondered, have you thought of running Home Assistant on a Proxmox server? A while back I had several Pis running different functions, such as a VPN gateway, Pihole, PBX and more, so for convenience tidied all in to one server, an HP Elitedesk G2 800 now running 6 containers and 2 virtual machines including Home Assistant. Since I was running the server anyway, I've just added a Sonoff Zigbee Dongle (E) which along with a USB extension cable and a used 2nd gen Google Nest Mini cost under £34. Can add Z-Wave if and when I need it, but with Raspberry Pis so unobtanium right now, the versatility a small Proxmox server can provide might open up other avenues of interest. Appreciate the world of Linux is likely as intimidating to most newbies, as the world of Windows which I've barely used in 2 decades, is frustrating to me, so I'd recommend checking out Network Chuck for inspiration and great guides.

[@Theguitarguy972]

I’ve actually got a Hubitat and homeassistant. I run zigbee/zwave through Hubitat and pass devices through to home assistant. Hubitat supports more devices which is nice.

[@ChiefBroady]

I just installed home assistant in a VM on a Windows machine I already had running 24/7. For the zigbee and zwave connectivity I used my old samsung SmartThings hub. Agree on the subscription.

[@martynlidbury3700]

This video has inspired me to try home assistant again. I too have a lot of Tuya smart life gear but when I last tried the ir sensors I have (and something else Iv forgotten) weren’t compatible so gave up. Thanks Paul :)

[@markchisholm2657]

I think you have missed probably the best controller. The Bosch Smart control. It's localised so no internet access needed, end to end encryption and cheaper than Hubitat. Plus being Bosch it will work as it's a massive organisation with no chance of going bust. It's also a charity so must act with a moral compass - Bosch that is.

[@thanasisbethanis]

Hubitat's price is so lower but does it use an SSD, does it use an eMMC, an SD card? What model of Zigbee board does it have inside? Same for Z-wave. I couldn't find any mention on these on Hubitat's webpage. Would have expected those to be easy to find/mentioned. At least with HA you have the option of adding the one you want/consider best. With Hubitat you hope it's a decent one inside

[@paulhibbert]

I've never been one for stats. I've bought so many things over the years with the biggest numbers only to be told "ah yeah, but because you've paired it with blah blah blah its not running at full capacity" amongst other such frustrations. I'm more of a "does it actually work" kind of a guy. Hubitat works instantly every time. That said, I appreciate the curiosity. It's a bit annoying the components aren't listed!

[@paulhibbert]

I suppose the other consideration is that without knowing what kind of hardware Hubitat's OS needs to run the stats aren't all that useful anyway. It seems like a really bloat free system.

[@devilsadvocate1597]

I am biased... I have been using a Hubitat for nearly 2 years now. However you don't realise just how well it integrates with not just your computer... but your mobile! You get to design every button! It's colour (so sorry I'll translate for US citizens.. color) it's place, the icon it uses and of course the button size!

[@scabbyjoe21]

I've got HA running in a VM on my NAS integrated with Hubitat to give Zigbee and Z Wave connections.

[@michaeljohnson9760]

Well, two years ago you predicted zigbee and zwave are soon to be non-existent. I remember explaining why they wouldn't, and that they are only growing, so you invited me to return in a year (chest puff challenge) to see that you were right. Glad to see you're reviewing these devices two years later.👍

[@paulhibbert]

It was only a year ago and zwave is practically extinct and the matter alliance has no interest in it. I was right, things are clearly headed in the exact direction I suggested, with hubs taking a back seat to things that work directly with the echo. Samsung dropped their hub and all my advice ever since thtmat time has been about buying products that work across more than one hub/directly with the echo where possible because you never know when the manufacturer is gonna drop their cloud or bridge.

[@michaeljohnson9760]

​@@paulhibbert Hubitat revenue sure didn't have a bit of problem, until the chip shortage began in September 2020, which began sometime after the claim. So, yeah about two years it was. And now they aren't experiencing a slump worse than any other business. All the other hub brands and devices are still showing units being sold, and new reviews always rolling in all the time, so I don't buy it. During 2020 even before the shortage, their biggest problem was being sold out. All too often I've had to wait for inovelli, zooz products and several other brands which were often sold out. I see people in all the forums still buying house loads of new equipment, just as mush as usual. New products are still being announced and released. I haven't seen any sign of this extinction at all.

[@paulhibbert]

If you can't see the writing for zwave is on the wall now that matter have chosen to support every protocol BUT Zwave then I can't help you dude.

[@michaeljohnson9760]

@@paulhibbert Ok, well we can just make it two out of three, and I'll be back in another year then? Well I guess if it's still around then, it will really be the third year, 3 out of 3. So, lets go for 4 out of 5? See you next year.

[@paulhibbert]

Cool, next year you can tell me its 4 years and downplay that zigbee is on its way out. 😉

[@katrina291]

I am debating on moving my system to Hubitat due to the issues with Alexa and worry that it's going to become subscription based in the future. I'm still on the fence, though. I've got questions and I can't find the answers I need--like, I know it works with Alexa, but will I be able to control my new Amazon thermostat with Hubitat? There are others, too. I just don't want to go through the expense and time only to find I can't get my whole system to work, and my system is far less involved than yours. Can you do another in-depth, Hubitat-only video for fence-sitters like me? Or do you have some sources you can give me to try to find out on my own?

[@davebareham1075]

I think this is a fair review. I love HA but I think it is for the tinkerers amongst us. I also use an SD (shock horror) but have not had any issues with it mainly due to the fact I keep my disk storage used to less than 15% on a 128GB card

[@jyvben1520]

using the sd card read only ? is a raspi-config option, i expect it prevents the logs from updating and destroying the sd card , probably a config.txt or cmdline parameter ... so easily removed

[@nate_river_]

I'm glad you're saying that, Dave. I was wondering if I'd just been lucky for the last three years. I think as long as you buy a good quality card, overspec and don't hammer it, things should be ok.

[@paulhibbert]

I am curious, if there is a way to configure home assistant so that it doesn't burn out an SD card, then why don't the home assistant crew configure it that way by default 🤔

[@davebareham1075]

The way I do it is I make sure I do daily local backups at 5am and then back them up to Google cloud. I then have a dashboard element which shows only if my disk usage exceeds 15%. This works very well for me

[@nate_river_]

@@paulhibbert I'm sure other people have better answers, but in my case I just bought a SanDisk Extreme 64GB with A2 app performance and V30 so it could handle 4k video levels of IO. Massive overspec for HA, but seems to be working. Put about a tenner into the Mr Bezos Yacht Fund. 😉

[@evamuhlhause]

Really fascinating but it's most likely more than I will ever want to do. I've reluctantly decided to fund some yachts for Bezos and have added some other stuff that works with She who shall not be named. Love your voice here, always interesting information that's not from the US, two thumbs up. Maybe one of these days 🙂

[@JoshUddin000]

Installed HA 2 months ago, enjoying the tinkering. Can you do one on energy monitoring options for HA?

[@greetp]

Cheers Paul, excellent & interesting video! Still no HomeKit, sort of?

[@paulhibbert]

Its mentioned at the very end 😉

[@wogfun]

I was on the verge of throwing all 3 of my Hubitats in the garbage. I started with one C5 and had poor zwave performance, added a 2nd C7, and finally bought another. I'm using all 3 meshed in a weird configuration but I have a lot of devices. Anyway, my house isn't big, and my zwave has always been PISS POOR with hubitat. About 6 months ago I found a thread on their forums with instructions to solder external zwave and zigbee antenna. This was literally night and day, fixed ALL my radio problems. I didn't have a bad unit, because I would have needed to get THREE bad hubitats. No, the internal antenna just isn't great. A shame really because it's a great kit, but if you're having radio problems look into this.