Hubitat Elevación Modelo C-8 Hub

Seemed faulty so returned for a replacement. The Z-Wave radio didn’t function

Review Hubitat C8 Pro Having previously owned a C7 hub from Hubitat in the past and never had any issues with the Zigbee and Zwave radios in terms of reliability, I decided to move my existing smart home system (not Hubitat) to the newer Hubitat C8 Pro, mainly for the updated Zigbee and ZWave radios with antennas. My house is brick built in the 1940’s and some of the walls had a metal mesh applied prior to the original plaster being applied. As you can imagine this has restricted wi-fi signals around the house and up until now, needed a lot of router devices to bridge all the rooms for Zigbee and Zwave devices. Even with a lot of devices the downstairs toilet and bathroom had issues with Aqara devices dropping off. Since setting up the Hubitat C8 pro, I have not been disappointed the two radios are simply excellent. A solid mesh has been setup and those Aqara devices in the bathroom and toilet are rock solid. The radios can even connect directly to devices on the other side of the house previously impossible. Given I setup my original C7 some years back I cannot say what the latest setup experience for new users is like now. However from screenshots I’ve seen some apps and examples are setup. Online videos and guides do give more context and advice, but like any good system allow time to read and digest. I’ve been into smart homes since 2015 and used quite a few systems now, they all have there own strengths and weaknesses. For me system reliability and quality of the Zwave and Zigbee radios was the most important factor. Let’s be honest no one wants to be sitting in darkness with automations failing because some update just broke the system. I’ve never had to worry with Hubitat with the C7 and now C8, I am sure like any hardware there must be faults / failures but I’ve not seen them so far several years in. Unlike (Home Assistant and Smartthings I’ve had serious downtime, that was no fault of mine.) Listed below with scores are my thoughts on the C8’s Pros and Cons Pros 5/5 Zwave and Zigbee Radios are excellent in my opinion, better than all prior systems and there has been many. 4/5 Built in apps to setup automations well thought out, from simple quick automations, lighting and room automations to complex rules. There is even a mini app to quickly set actions to button controllers, like Philips Hue dimmers. 4/5 Built in Safety and Home monitoring app. Think of it as an alarm system, that can also monitor for Water leaks and other issues depending on which sensors you own. 5/5 Inbuilt ability to text users mobiles based on system events. Not every system has this or has this free of charge. 4/5 C8 Pro has faster processor and more memory than prior models. Processing speed improvement is noticeably quicker. 4/5 Apps provided to connect to Apple HomeKit, Google and Alexa provided. Currently free of charge (no monthly fees) Cons 2/5 Dashboards and Templates used to change device setting outside of automations is now looking dated in comparison to other platforms. *However see notes below. 3/5 Built in driver support could be better with some popular brands omitted. Some that are there by brand don’t automatically add a driver. However missing drivers can often be added by third party drivers or by using generic built in drivers that will add the basic functionality but may omit some device functionality. I would check the online compatibility list before purchase. 3/5 The Philips Hue and Sonos built in app integrations could do with a 2024 update. For example you can link across your Philips Hue Lights and Groups but not plugs, motion sensors, dimmers or scenes. There are third party apps that can added to achieve this but would be nice to update standard apps. 3/5 Migration from C7 to C8 pro via online restore went through ok but Zigbee devices did not connect for me and remained offline. I needed to rejoin my Zigbee devices, which fixed the issue. Zwave went through perfect. Even though the built in Dashboard is not ideal, there is nothing stopping users using Alexa, Google, Apple smart home applications which in some cases may be more family friendly. There is also options to use other applications such as Sharptools web app or bridge devices to Home Assistant and setup your own custom dashboards.

The Hubitat c8 pro is one of the most powerful hub you can buy. I used smartthings for over 4 years and decided to migrate to Hubitat. The hubitat is much faster, reliable and responsive.

The GUI is loads faster compared to the C7. Not really noticed many other differences

Just upgraded from a Hubitat C-7 to Hibitat C-8, for matter supoport, and the process was simple and straight forward. The online documentation relating to the upgrade was clear and easy to follow.

Really pleased I purchased. I was looking for local control and automations. Previously using a combination of homebridge, HomeKit, Alexa, Hue hub, but lighting automations were too slow. Consolidated all zigbee devices to teh C-8 and everything works like a dream. Still use homekit as my frontend.

While devices seemed to work correctly on the hub via laptop, many problems with the phone/ipad apps - multiple instances, incorrect operation of lights, incorrect status reported on the Apps. Hub returned for refund.

I've used several platforms over the years and none tick every box. One worked great but had a dismissive support team, another had no way to integrate Zigbee. One was SO complex I walked away... Automation is to make life easier! The Hubitat C-8 however (so far) seems to do it all except BlueTooth.. but who cares? As a functional and capable device it is awesome. It's smaller than a beer mat but runs rings around my HC2. It works local without internet. It has Alexa/Google integration for free (some charge). The Life360 integration has been a game changer for me. The android/apple app is fairly good, not brilliant. The Forum/Community is vibrant and helpful too. Why the 4 Stars? The dashboard is utter pants. Not just boring but un-intuitive with multiple clicks to get from A to B. No drag and drop layout. 3rd party dashes are available but I've yet to find one useful AND free. Including devices can be a challenge. It refuses to see ANY of my NodOn buttons. Some devices need an additional driver searched for and then added. Other devices add ok but the C-8 wants to play "Guess what it is" and until you do... it won't work. That said, great forum. I've solved every problem by searching there.

I'm a big fan of Hubitat, I've been using a C5 for about 4 years and automated a lot of things around the house. The integration with Google home is excellent, and the rules engine is capable of doing anything you need. I just upgraded to the C8 because it boasted a free cloud-based migration process, so I could be up and running in no time. However... the old C5 came with an external USB z-wave stick for the EU frequencies, and there appears to be issues migrating the z-wave radio database details. Apparently, the white/grey USB stick doesn't work with the migration, so you have to repair every single z-wave device you have. As I found out the hard way. In the end, the new C8 was so messed up and the z-wave mesh was completely knackered with devices taking 10s of seconds to respond, I had to factory reset and start from scratch (without migrating) from a clean system. i.e. factory resetting every z-wave device, and including them all again, one by one. Copying over the custom app/driver code. Setting up all my rules and notifications again. Extremely painful and time consuming, especially considering I have a lot of Qubino flush relays, and they are a PAIN to reset/include - don't get them, get the Aeotec nano relays instead). If this is your first hub and you're starting out, then it's actually a very good device (just make sure you include your mains powered z-wave devices first, starting with the ones closest to the hub and working outwards). One thing I would say, the external aerials are very flimsy - one of my aerials was broken on arrival (and I didn't check) - which also contributed to my weekend of migration pain until I figured out what was wrong. Also, hats off to the support guys on the Hubitat support site, they're extremely responsive and very helpful.

Migrated from the Vera platform, experience has been good so far, some Fibaro dimmers and some older devices required community drivers to work correctly, some minor bugs on the IoS app, apart from that all good

Simplest possible migration from C7 to benefit from the much stronger Z wave signal that results in 99% direct connection to the hub from all devices.

I was upgrading from VERA and to be honest, would never go back.

I've been using the C-7 for around 2 years now and I bought the C-8 as soon as I saw it available. Primarily my reason was the external antenna. My Z Wave network of 45 devices had around 30 connected directly to the C-7. I had purchased the various bits to fit an external high gain antenna on the C-7 as detailed on the Hubitat forum by Lewis H; however, I never went ahead with the modification as I decided my eyesight/soldering skills weren't up to the task. There was a minor hiccup during the migration process. My issue was that unless you had a Hub Protect subscription in place, the free cloud backup that takes place during migration was not visible on completion (even though it was successful). I reported this on the forum and the HE team have now amended this to avoid confusion. Once migrated the Z Wave routes get cleared from the database, so although everything worked straight away, it was a few days before all of the routes and neighbours populated in the database. I'm now seeing 40/41 of 45 devices connecting directly so there's a definite improvement in Z Wave coverage with the external antenna. There have been teething issues with Zigbee inclusion, as the C-8 uses a new Zigbee chipset over the C-7; however, these bugs seem to be about resolved now after several firmware updates. My only ongoing issue is that 500 series devices that support S0 (but not S2 security) cannot be added with security set at 'none' to the C-8 (or C-7) - at least not without the use of a secondary controller and Z Wave Controller software. This is an issue caused by SiLabs SDK and there's nothing Hubitat can do to resolve it. It's frustrating as we have so few 700 series devices available in the EU/UK frequency of 868 Mhz.

Amazing hub and good service from vesternet

This C8 is s replacement for my previous C7, and is performing really well, the occasional dropouts I was getting on relays and switches at the other end of our garden have stopped, and it even seems things are working more snapping. Migration was straightforward and painless, although I had to upgrade the C7 first.