Just an update…
So after about a month with Hubitat, I purchased a Vera Plus. I’m finding that for someone like myself, Hubitat isn’t flexible enough nor detailed enough for my needs. That plus their support for devices doesn’t match up to what I currently own as much as Vera does. I’ve already had Vera for a week, and I haven’t transitioned any devices over yet. I just installed all my apps and added a few new devices I purchased which aren’t part of my “main” system. So far its been good and generally comparable to my UI5 experience. I dislike that manual routing is gone though. I liked that lot. At least Vera has direct associations. Hubitat doesn’t.
My problems with Hubitat aren’t great, but they bother me everyday. I have some door sensors that don’t report within a reasonable time frame, or if there is a lot going on, things don’t get reported at all. I’ve tried all kinds of normal trouble shooting steps like heals, exclude/include, etc. I just always have a door left showing open or a lock unlocked…just something that requires me to always double back. Most of my devices are only one room away from the hub! And if I’m trying to automate things off of that, things just don’t happen the way I want. Their Dashboard interface is also a bit slow compared to Vera and Homewave which I was using on my iPhone. I also purchased a z-wave plus device which was on their official compatibility list, and it didn’t work. I emailed support and after no response for a week, their forum guy confirmed that there is a bug and will be fixed in the next firmware. On the plus side, firmware updates are like every week or two almost, and they fix a fair number of issues and add improvements. But that same plus device works great on my new Vera from the getgo. Funny. I’m sure other people will tell me they’ve had issues the other way around. And I would believe them!
Overall my experience with the Plus and UI7 hasn’t been totally smooth either, but being experienced with a previous Vera unit (and PLEG, etc), the only adjustments I’m having to make are to the UI differences. I’m still having problems with the complete app list loading, but otherwise it’s been comparable to my previous Vera. I wish UI7 had the status messages up top like UI5! Although the problems aren’t similar, Vera has been no worse than my experience with Hubitat.
I will say though, Hubitat can be set up much faster, and it does work. I think for a lot of newbies to this type of hub, its a great unit, probably better than Vera. I think as time passes and improvements are made, both from the manufacturer and from users, it can become just as powerful as Vera has been for me. But as it stands today, it falls a bit short in what I’m looking for or used to. As I stated earlier, it will do that majority of what people want to do - for me like 85%. But that other 15% is what made me buy a Vera again. I think it just depends on your needs. Definitely do your research.
For now I’m going to use them concurrently as most of my devices are still captive on Habitat. I would link the boxes but Hubitat only has a link for other Hubitats. They don’t do the primary/secondary controller thing with other controllers. I’m still making modifications to rules on there, even knowing I’m probably going to be moving them to Vera. But we’ll see. I could always change my mind again. I wasn’t expecting to buy a Vera so soon, but I missed its in depth flexibility and device compatibility (to what I have) more.
