Hubitat Elevation Model C-7

The Hubitat C-7 is the older version of the company’s smart Bridge. I needed a Z-Wave bridge, and this did not disappoint. I got this on sale and was looking for a “cheap” solution. This was not the cheapest potential solution, but it was by far the most complete solution at its price point. It’s small. It’s lightweight. It runs off the small micro-c usb (cable and plug + Ethernet cable included). I set mine next to my Router and have it direct wired to my network, so I cannot speak to the ease of WiFi set up. Scan the QR code with your phone and follow the instructions. Went really smooth. Once in, now it’s no longer a beginners game. This is a community supported “open source” device that will interface with Alexa (probably others from what I’ve read), but you need to be in the devices network address (if you ever had to log into the admin functions of a router, it’s like that), and then add your devices and enable cross connectivity to your Smart hubs and Smart apps. You can make run routines. You can access all the device features. For example, once my dimmer switch was found, Alexa can turn it on and off, as well as set the level. In the Hubitat account, I can make it flash, pulse, write a run routine program, integrate it to do things with other devices… pretty cool! Let’s face it. You want a lights on, lights off when you come home, and this lets that happen. The rest is fancy distractions. But if you are old like me and want to make your Gen Z kid who knows everything wonder why the new lights you installed are acting “sus”, those fancy distractions are there for you! Background: A couple years ago, I started buying items that would make my old house “upgraded” with smart home features, like LED lighting, dimmers, Smart TV’s… you get the idea. I bought a Ring doorbell, then a hardwired flood light, then went overboard with a whole lighting kit bundle with switches, bulbs, garage door opener, light bridge… what was I thinking! Well, the Ring light Bridge appears to be useless without a Ring security hub and I didn’t want that. Basically, everything with a Z-Wave logo and my garage door opener was useless. I gave up. Over time, I got the garage door opener to work on its own but not integrated with a single Smart interface. Then I started investigating why the switches didn’t work. Well, you need a hub. We had an Echo dot. Turns out, it only has “limited” connection features for WiFi and Bluetooth. I read the bigger and newer Echo 4 had Zigbee (mistook that for Z-wave… or a new name? Naive on my part) which is NOT Z-Wave. After confusing batch of misleading articles and incorrect A.I. generated responses, I found the Hubitat C-7. It was on sale. Online forums were hit or miss on its review, but consensus was I needed a Z-wave mesh network that would talk to Alexa and this was going to do that without a subscription. TL/DR: Z-wave, bridge, not for beginners, Alexa comparable, newer version available, pay subscription available, but not required.

I have owned a Hubitat C7 for over a year now, and I have been impressed with it. I moved from SmartThings when they shut down the Groovy IDE and the ability to use Webcore, as I had hundreds pistons with all of my automation logic in Webcore. I was able to move all my Webcore automation pistons over when switching to the Hubitat C7, as it runs Groovy code. There is a Rule Machine app to create automations in Hubitat as well, but Webcore is powerful and easy to use and I never played around with Rule Machine. People complain about the need for a subscription to administer the hub outside of their local network. I have never had a reason to subscribe to this, and it really is only needed if you have a hub in a remote location (like a rental property) that you need to administer remotely. In this case the administration subscription gives you access to do administration stuff, like rebooting, adding devices, adding drivers, adding apps, etc. I have never had a need to remotely administer my Hub that is in my house. I can control everything for free from Dashboards remotely as far as actually controlling my home and devices. The Dashboards are available from the internet, and there are links provided on the dashboard setup page to use them remotely. There is a learning curve to really customize the dashboards to make them look nice. If you edit the custom CSS, you can do a lot of things with dashboards like changing text and using custom icons, layering tiles, changing colors, etc. I can run everything in my house from my dashboards, either remotely or on my home network. Over the last six months, I have learned that the true power of this hub for me is the ability to write your own custom apps and drivers, or to find and use (and modify) apps and drivers that the community has written. This hub can become a casual programmers hobby, as if you know the basics of programming you can learn Groovy fairly quickly. I have now written custom apps and virtual drivers to reproduce all my automation logic I had in Webcore down to just a handful of custom apps and custom virtual device drivers to run everything. Most of my automations are based on motion and illuminance sensors with some schedules for changing modes. I have over 200 devices connected and automated, and my Hubitat is never really idle, but the hub has handled all the work like a champ. I have not seen any of the issues other people have reported about devices not staying connected, lock-ups, etc. I have to assume this is user error or a defective hub, but the platform itself is rock solid for me even with taxing it with everything I can throw at it to make it do more work. It handles code exceptions well when developing apps, I've thrown code into it that was not debugged and it reports the exceptions in logging and just continues on without issues, allowing me to find and fix the issues in my code. I highly recommend this for casual users as well, as the UI is not as bad as people make out, and most people should be able to figure it out pretty easily. There will be a learning curve like with any new product, but once you get how it works it if fairly intuitive. Dashboards have their own learning curve, but they are important as they allow you to control everything easily and remotely once they are set up.

I definitely recommend the Hubitat Elevation (HE). I like the idea that Hubitat runs the home automation locally (as opposed to the cloud based model of some other devices, with the potential for latency issues and downtime if one's internet is down). However, I have to admit that I was a little reluctant to order the Hubitat with some of the reviews indicating the "steep learning curve". Other than programming some timers in an old X-10 system, this is my first foray into home automation equipment. After shopping around and reading the reviews (professional and owners on various websites), I had it down to the Hubitat or Smart Things (ST). As of this writing, ST did not appear to be available anywhere except at ridiculous prices so the decision was made easier. I received my Hubitat Elevation C-7 around three weeks ago and have found that getting it up and running has been pretty straight forward, with help from the Hubitat community and a little investment of time (glad the reviews didn't scare me away). I started out reading the manual but quickly lost patience for that. What worked for me was doing a Google search with a description of what I needed. Everything I wanted to do was very well documented in the community forums (good thing that others came before me to find/create the solutions). So to date, I have installed 17 z-wave switches/dimmers (Leviton and Zooz), 2 locks (Yale), 3 motion sensors (Zooz) to trigger some of the lights, and relays (Zooz) to open/close my garage doors. All are now working with the HE. Within short order, I will be adding some more switches to control ceiling fans and ventilation fans. For the most part, I have found the applications included with the Hubitat (Groups and Scenes, Motion and Mode Lighting Apps, and Simple Automation Rules) to be sufficient for my needs (hands free lighting when entering a dark room or basement, vacation timers, unlocking doors and opening the garage doors without needing a key). I have not tried the Rule Machine yet but understand it is more powerful. Even though I had never heard of a Dashboard before getting the HE, I now have created dashboards for monitoring the sensors, security dashboard for controlling the locks and doors, lighting dashboards to control all the lights and fans and dashboards within dashboards. I also have the Hubitat application from the Apple app store up and running so I can control my system through the Dashboards remotely (and no monthly fees). In terms of my review rating, I knocked one star off (gave a overall rating of 4 stars) as I think there are some things that Hubitat could improve upon (for my use cases anyway). 1) I would have preferred to have built in wifi (this is something that made Smart Things more appealing) as ethernet only limited where I could locate the controller (I didn't want to spend more money on hardware to set up an AC line based ethernet solution); 2) Having had this functionality in my X-10 timer, I would also have liked the built in apps to have a feature for randomizing the vacation timer on/off times (give that lived in look). Yes, the Hubitat community has posted methods using rules to get this functionality but a pull down menu option in the built in app would be much easier to use; 3) Understanding that some controllers are moving away from built in batteries, I still think it would be a nice to have to ensure the controller could have an orderly shutdown in case of an extended power outage. Overall, I am very happy with the Hubitat Elevation C-7 and can only imagine the home automation solutions it will eventually be able to implement (solving needs that I don't yet know I have).

Update: Well, initially I was quite impressed and still kinda like this hub, but it's not open source, and is kind of open source. So, you may never be able to get your device to work, and the help is a little spotty. The other issue is that it's not that stable. I think it's a bit of the Microsoft bug, where developers want to innovate things that already work fine, and end up breaking them. I'm good with making things better, but change for sake of change is more what I'm seeing. It's not really a hub you can fire and forget. Recently it's just plain not worked, and there's really no help. Original review below I wasn't sure what to think about this box when reading the reviews so I thought I'd put some thoughts down in case it helps. 1) This Hub has worked well for me, and communicates with all my devices. There's nothing external but you'll need to hardwire it somehow. I have it wired to my Orbi satellite and use the USB off the back for power. Works great. 2) Setup was simple. I did reset my Z-wave devices because they were paired already, and that was the easiest path. Reliable and no drops. 3) The user interface is a little clicky / complex for rules and dashboards but it's more that it takes longer than you'd like rather than difficult. And longer is relative. Probably 5 minutes to set up a rule, if you take your time. Less for a dashboard. For how often you do it I wouldn't call it a CON. If you're tweaking that often the options are a definite pro. If you're not, it doesn't really take much more time than anything else. 4) I use the dashboard interface for control and set up a shortcut on my iPhone (Share, set as home screen shortcut). It actually looks like an app to me and I like the fact that I got to make the font and layout bigger. You can also just include the stuff you care about. Better for me at least. Even if they make a formal app, I don't see me wanting to move away. 5) The rules are quite good, more complex than most and have allowed me to do things I didn't think I could. For example, it has Life360 integration (didn't know about that) so you can have it open the garage door when you get home. Hope this is helpful!

I adopted the other platform around 2017 (ST). I went nuts and replaced about every switch I could throughout my 3BR home with Z-Wave switches, already had Alexa (love/hate), Z-Wave Lock, Door Sensors, Temp Sensors, Thermostat, Water Leak Sensors, and various Z-Wave outlets. Also had Philips HUE and wanted things to all work like one big happy smart family... I spent weeks and weeks and weeks trying to "get it right", create logic rules that were reliable and easy to manage, as well as to build and troubleshoot. In the end, I really spent more like months trying to tune things just so... I had my wife pretty upset with me for a few years, but tolerant... she'd never use a doubletap nor Alexa to control anything, but she got used to the switches and appreciated the front door unlocking for her as she approached. I finally got fed up trying to "fix stoopid" (I hear that's hard to do). I bought this Hub thinking "what have I got to lose?" All I wanted was something better. What I got is SOOO MUCH BETTER!!! Sure, it's not "easy" if you're not tech minded. You should certainly understand logic rules, basic if-then-else statements, setting local or global variables, etc. The real difference is THIS WORKS with everything, as intended, and it's WAY QUICKER than the old setup (cloud based). In fact, the speed is remarkable... it's milliseconds versus seconds sometimes - that finally starts to feel like you're in a smart home, not a dumb smarthome. I now have every switch neatly programmed and organized as a "button device" and have all the flexibility to easily program anything I want. I have some Homeseer WD-200 Dimmers that work really nicely and can even set the individual LEDs if I want to see that the door is unlocked, or something is awry when I nod off to slumber. When I ask Alexa something, it happens immediately, even with the HUE bulbs - like BAMMM, done! Setting up the rules and variables is not only organized and simple, it's so much better with customized event logging, meaningful features, and tons of flexibility. This is not the setup for someone who isn't willing to set things up and customize the system - it's work to invest time and testing to get things right. However, I was forever frustrated and lost in the ST interface! I couldn't figure out why and when some things worked and others didn't. It made me feel like an idiot for buying all the switch gear in the first place, already confirmed by my wife, haha. Well, nowadays she's double-tapping, triple tapping, and commanding things from Alexa without the endless frustration of the prior hub / tools. I ONLY replaced my ST hub with this hub - if you are invested at all in ST or home automation, then look no further, in my opinion. This is a dream compared to anything else I've seen. Yep, the interface/GUI is a bit clunky and a little easy to get twisted, but you know what? It works, it works reliably, and it's easy to figure out when you do something wrong (which is inevitable with home automation). Why isn't my phone automatically unlocking the door? Whammo, just look at the logs, the rules, and the devices - all captured and easy to figuree out what's wrong and fix it. I'm finally NOT feeling like an idiot with my home automation thanks to Hubitat. Hope you find this helpful.

I had a Wink 1 and a Wink 2. Really liked them. Did not need any extra features. Wink is going out of business. I have 18 zigbee lights (Sylvania Osram and Cree), an Ecobee Thermostat, a Z-Wave switch, and some Ecolink door sensors. If you have used the Wink Hubs you can use these. Most annoying Wink feature? When the power goes out and everything comes back up, the Hub would not work without a reboot AFTER the router came up. So if I was away, and the power went out, and I looked at my IP cameras to see that 18 lights are burning at 100%, my hub would not work and I could not turn them off remotely. No good. The Hubitat WORKS after a power outage. Power comes on, modem and router come up, and hubitat works. As it should be. I don't have to reset things. If the power comes back on while I am in bed, I can just keep my eyes closed for a few minutes, then mumble "Alexa, turn on bedtime lights" and all the lights set themselves correctly. SOOOOOO much better then getting up at 3 am and rebooting routers and hubs. Ugh. Bye Wink. And THE LACK OF A PHONE APP DOES NOT MATTER. Once set up, Alexa or Google Assistant (GA) are your phone apps. Everything on the Hubitat can be synced to GA and/or Alexa. I control my lights remotely using Alexa whenever necessary. No Worries! You don't need an extra phone app. It is just not a concern. Setup? Not that bad. There is a bit of a learning curve with the browser-based interface. But for most simple smart home setups with some lights, a few plugs, and maybe a lock, it is pretty easy. Just do this: Don't even worry about "apps" in the interface. Not yet. Just "Add devices" from the "Devices" tab. Follow manufactures instructions to put devices into pairing mode and carry your laptop around the house from device to device. (To reset Osram bulbs: On, count to three, Off, count to three, On, count to three, Off, count to three...Do this FIVE times and then leave on and wait 5 seconds and the light will flash (pairing mode). For Cree, do this, counting time: On, Off, 1, 2, On, Off, 1, 2, On, Off, 1, 2, then On. On the THIRD on, the light will flash (pairing mode)). Once all of your devices are paired (up to an hour or two, no matter WHAT hub you get), go to the Apps tab and add the Alexa and/or Google Assistant app. You will have to tell the Alexa/GA apps WHAT devices to control (there is a "Select All" option). Then go to your phone, open the correct app (Alexa or GA) and Discover Devices. Then use Alexa or GA on your phone to set up groups (living room lights) and routines (bed time lights). It is not NEARLY as hard as reviews would lead you to believe. It is tedious to switch hubs. No getting around that. But this is a good hub. Works well. Seems bullet proof. Runs locally on your LAN. Does not go through external servers to work (Wink does/did). Note: Using Alexa or GA to control your home DOES require passing through external Internet servers as these devices only work if they pass through their respective servers. But, if the Internet is down but you have power, you can use your laptop to control your smart home. Otherwise...the hub essentially DOES require the Internet because you are using Internet devices to interact with it. The other app you need to install is the Dashboard app. But you DON'T NEED IT. AT ALL. You can stop your Hubitat setup as soon as your devices are discovered and your smart home apps are activated. The Dashboard gives you a fancy browser-based interface with all of your devices neatly lined up, with icons, so you can click on them to turn them on/off/dim (YOU have to set it up). But you don't really need to do this. Only if you want to poke around with your smart home on your computer. For the average Alexa end-user, just add devices, add Alexa, add All Devices to Alexa, then use Alexa to discover devices. Then Group devices, then set up Routines. Begin telling Alexa to control your home. Done. When you run into a road-block, use YouTube to get help. (Like if a device shows "on" in devices tab, but Alexa has turned it off, you can click "configure" and then "save" and it will likely fix the issue. Got that from YouTube.) It is pretty easy, but I did spend a about 4-6 hours setting everything up, including learning curve, watching a couple of youtube videos, and resetting all of my bulbs and routines. Not that bad. I am REALLY glad I switched. So much more responsive and everything works after a power outage. Just all around better than the Wink. The Rule Machine app is useful. It is basically an ITTT interface. I set up my front porch light as follows "turn light on, 30 mins before sunset. Turn light off, 30 mins after sunrise." I had to do it twice to figure out the interface and what to click on. Took a youtube video and about 15 minutes the first time. But now I have an automated front porch light. Pretty cool. But not necessary. You don't need the Rule Machine app. Or the Dashboard app. Just extras if you want to use them. If you have already set up your whole house using the Wink app, Alexa and you have set up routines, you can do this. If you have no idea what I am talking about....it might be a rough time for you. HIGHLY RECOMMEND (2019...these things change).

Short version: I really really wanted to like this Hubitat - and ended up returning it instead. Long version: Having used VeraPlus for years, dabbling with OpenHAB on Mac/RaspPi, I wanted to see if the moment is right to migrate to a "new" developed platform. Promises: no cloud storage, no monthly fees (A must in my opinion), local data so YOU own your own security and data for privacy, and a new development. The unit overall does provide all this. However - now for the deficiencies - the competitive OpenHAB is totally for geeks, with oodles of CLI-coding, a total science project basically, so I was hoping that Hubitat would provide similar openness and integration as OpenHab, but with a better graphical UI and modern user interface. But in the end, it appears to be hit or miss: integrating one zwave switch worked flawlessly, integrating another, took several retries. Then, removing the switch (the Achilles heel of the zwave world overall, imho) did not. In the end, even a force-remove -works on Vera and OpenHAB all the time!, did not succeed but ended up with an error-500, "please contact support or review the user community for a resolution". This was only 3 switches into my home automation migration! I suddenly felt like OpenHAB again, working feverishly to overcome development & integration issues. The UI is nice and customizable overall, but feels a little unpolished. This is subjective of course. All told - the unit did not work for me.

I am so impressed with my Hubitat. I've been on Samsung's SmartThings platform for three years and they really don't seem like they care all that much about reliability or retaining customers. My SmartThings hub is a V1 hub which means that it cannot do any processing locally. If I have a z-wave light switch set up on a z-wave motion sensor using a "Smart Lighting" rule: The SmartThings hub sends the motion event to Samsung's servers hundreds of miles away. They process the event and send back a message to my local hub telling it to turn on the light. For this to work there cannot be any issues with your local router, your modem, any issues on your ISPs side nor any issues on the SmartThings server side. I did a traceroute and found there are at least 30 network router hops between me and the SmartThings servers. This leads to very large latencies (delays) between your motion sensor picking up motion and the trigger actually firing something like turning on a light. So Samsung tried to address this in their V2 hub... But they left customers on their V1 hubs stranded. Since the z-wave radio in the SmartThings hub is "built in", if you bought a new SmartThings V2 hub the process to migrate over would require literally excluding every single sensor or switch device one by one, and re-pairing it with the new hub. I contacted Samsung several times to see if they were planning on offering anything to help customer migrate from V1 to V2. The answer was always a resounding "No". So especially for me: Moving from a V1 hub to V2 hub would be just as much effort as migrating from ST to another HA platform. To add insult to injury the more I researched the "local processing" capabilities of the V2 hub the more disappointing I became. Only the simplest of "Smart Lighting" automations would be processed locally, and only on a limited number of "supported" devices. So I figured if migrating from V1 to V2 would be a hassle I might as well be open to migrating to a non-ST platform. I tried out Hass.io and OpenHAB and those platforms were both horrible. I gave each platform a weekend and ended up spending an entire weekend on each platform trying to pair just a couple Z-wave devices, and both platforms failed miserably. In two days neither platform could have even the most basic "If motion detected turn on a switch" capability set up. So then I decided to try Hubitat. Within 30 minutes of unboxing Hubitat I had made more progress in pairing devices and setting up automations than I made with either Hass or OpenHAB in the two days I spent on both. What is especially appealing about Hubitat is the automations (Apps) and Drivers (Device Handlers) in Hubitat are both written in Groovy: The exact same language that SmartThings uses. That means that if you have already invested a lot of time and effort building SmartApps or custom device handlers in SmartThings you can just copy paste that Groovy code over to Hubitat and it should work with only very minor tweaks. I did, in fact, have some very complicated SmartApps to port over so I was a bit worried about how difficult that would be. One of my custom apps was an app I had written that controls the recirculating pump for my water heater. It would monitor motion in the bathroom, monitor DS18B20 temperature sensors installed on the water line, compare that temperature to the ambient temperature in the attic (Where the water heater and hot water lines are run) and compare those temperatures to the temperature of the water in my solar water heater tank (We have solar pre-heater to heat the water before it enters the main tank). It would then run the recirc pump for a determined amount of time or until one of the temperatures reached a certain threshold. Fairly complex stuff (300 lines of Groovy code), and this app only took me about 5 minutes to port over! There have also been a couple older Z-wave devices that weren't "natively" supported by one of Hubitat's built in drivers and I was able to copy the "Device Handler" code from SmartThings and these devices immediately started working. Migrating to new Hubitat Hub's will also not be a future problem: Hubitat allows you to back up your entire Hub configuration to your PC, and the Z-wave stick is removable. So if Hubitat releases a new piece of Hub hardware migrating to it will be as easy as taking a backup, removing your Z-wave/Zigbee stick from the only hub, inserting into the new hub and restoring the backup onto the new hub. Since the devices are associated with the Z-wave/Zigbee radio inside the included USB stick on the Hubitat moving between hubs is a breeze. Overall I am blown away by the ease of migrating from SmartThings, the performance, capability and support I've received so far from Hubitat. If you're using ST or thinking of it and think it's silly that every single event or trigger that happens in your home is sent up to Samsung's servers to be processed: Then Hubitat is the perfect solution.