It’s incredibly powerful, capable, and complicated.
But should you use Hubitat in your smarthome?
Hubitat is a true smarthome hub designed to be the center of your automation.
It connects to Z-wave and Zigbee, Alexa and Google Home, Lutron and LAN devices.
What makes it different from most smarthome hubs is its emphasis on local control and incredibly advanced automations.
This will even work if your internet goes down.
SmartThings and Wink can’t reach that level of complexity, especially while relying only on local control.
That command is processed and then sent back over the internet to your router and then to your hub.
Finally, your hub sends the command to your light.
Without some support for local control, this doesn’t work when your internet goes down.
Hubitat handles most of the work locally, which offers several benefits.
If your internet goes down, these locally controlled capabilities will continue to work.
You’ll lose some speed and privacy when you use those devices and anything controlled by them.
One of the other benefits of Hubitat is cost.
Once you buy the Hubitat hardware, you’re done.
Hubitat
Hubitat usuallysells for $149.95, although right now Hubitat is offering the latest hardware for $99.95.
With Hubitat You Create Complex Automations
Automations are the real smarthome superpower.
While we love talking to our homes, Hubitat can make voice control unnecessary.
Hubitat
Hubitat allows for advanced triggers and rules.
At that point, your house doesn’t seem so smart anymore.
Voice control helps because you won’t need to move towards or stumble to find the switch.
Hubitat
But fast automations are even better because you don’t need to do anything at all.
Instead, the house is anticipating your needs.
Simply put, Wink and SmartThings aren’t capable of this detailed level of automation.
Hubitat
Alexa or Google Assistant routines certainly aren’t, either.
Advanced Features Don’t Come Easy
Unfortunately, with great power comes great responsibility.
When you first set up a Hubitat hub, you’ll start by opening up a local webpage.
Apps in the Hubitat realm extend its capabilities.
The web interface controls all of this.
It’s like using a router’s web interface.
You’ll spend time clicking menus, choosing dropdowns, and saving changes.
That’s how it works when everything goes right.
Occasionally, something might not work well, and you’ll need to work with code by hand.
You’ll also need to learn how those apps and rules work.
Hubitat does have excellenttutorial videosand anactive and helpful community.
But it’s a learning process, and it’s a new logic to master.
Hubitat’s logic is consistent.
But getting to grips with Hubitat will take time, effort, and the willingness to learn.
The best you’re free to do is build acustom dashboardfor your home.
The various dashboard options are nice and incredibly intricate, but they do take some more legwork from you.
And currently, those dashboards are the only way to enable remote control of your smarthome.
