Many Wink users are looking for greener pastures. For them the question sometimes come down to which local hub: Hubitat or Home Assistant.

What I want these users to consider is BOTH!

Let's look at why!

The CONS of Home Assistant:

• requires a $5 sub for remote access (unless you're great at networking)

• requires that same $5 sub for Google and Alexa connections (ok you got your port forwarding figured out and you're praying the internet doesn't find your hole...next is becoming a google dev!)

• requires a zwave and a zigbee stick (that $35 raspberry pi needs antennas!)

• requires picking MQTT2Zigbee, deCONZ, ZHA, etc and dealing with their quirks (button controller dear lord help me)

• requires programming (no matter what anyone tells you...programming is required. Everyday Home Assistant gets better and easier but it isn't as easy as wink. I fell for this trap from the fanbios)

The CONS of Hubitat:

• ugly interface (dear lord is it ugly)

• hubs slows down and lock ups (you start putting a lot of programs on the thing, it just can't handle it)

• poor wifi compatibility (LIFX, MyQ, Google WiFi monitoring, presence monitoring, Roku, etc. Home Assistant doesn't skip a beat handling these but Hubitat will start to bog down adding all these programs)

• poor data analysis and databasing (that little hubitat hub can only do so much!)

The amazing thing is put these two system together and they solve each other's down falls!

Hubitat solves your local access and voice assistant connections for free! Home Assistant works well with node-red, a tons of wifi stuff and so much more! Hubitat has an easy to use and understand zwave and zigbee interface! No need to sort through ZHA, deCONZ, etc for downloading compatible quirks and other programming required. Hubitat has a simple button controller! You can put rules or automations in either! You can make the ugly hubitat dashboard if you want or go full beautiful in lovelace! Hubitat can integrate with your expensive lutron stuff (need a pro hub).

If you're going Home Assistant, you have to buy one or two zigbee/zwave sticks, might as well buy the Hubitat as your antenna! The price of buying two sticks is about equal the price of one hubitat. Nortek's stick is cheaper in that is has zwave and zigbee in one. I never got great performance out of it. Nortek's sticks have quality issues. I may have just gotten a bad stick. Many speak of not having the problems I have, but I can't justify shelling out more money on antennas. Also when you're troubleshooting problems, knowing in the back of your mind, the stick might just be a dud really demotivates me troubleshooting it a lot.

So if you read this far maybe I convinced you! First I want to say that Home Assistant is never simple. It will not be a straight forward process but it is a doable process. First you need to get https://hacs.xyz/ on your home assistant. Honestly to open up Home Assistant fully this is a nice tool regardless if you use Hubitat or not. So you'll probably end up getting HACS anyway. Next is to go to https://github.com/jason0x43/hacs-hubitat and follow those instructions. This explains linking Home Assistant and Hubitat. The Hubitat part is easier. It almost always is! You just click App -> Add Built-In App -> Maker API.

Everything will connect together! This is my current setup. I gave up on my Nortek stick. The range was horrible. It registered my buttons as double presses. It just was a headache to program and what is this thing with messing with zigbee clusters to avoid popcorning my lights?

So now the full disclosure! Those cheap IKEA remotes you might have been eyeing but are not compatible with Wink. They are not compatible with Hubitat either. ZHA claimed the IKEA remotes worked but I was never able to keep them connected beyond one button press. IKEA lights and outlets work just fine on Hubitat. It is just the remotes use a different zigbee protocol cause they like to throw a wrench in things for the sake of it.

Hubitat is also the only hub I know that is compatible with the alert.me protocol. Alert.me is IRIS v1 devices zigbee protocol. It is so cool that everyone sell Iris v1 devices for a few dollars cause they think the devices are trash. I bought a ton of contact sensors for every window cause they are so cheap.

Any questions let me know!

The fanbois will come in and say this is stupid and only stick with one or the other. Don't worry about them. If someone is not willing to discuss the PROS and the CONS of a setup then they aren't being honest with the pitfalls of either system. Btw I pay for the $5 sub to support the devs but I use the hubitat google integration. I use the $5 sub to access my lovelace remotely cause the home assistant dashboard is so pretty!

As a side note: smartthings can integration with hubitat and home assistant as well. I focus on Hubitat here cause it isn't something most people consider. Smartthings will honestly be the system of choice for most wink users. It is just simple and vast. I move to smartthings first before moving to hubitat and then home assistant. I continued to learn and outgrow each system. My current setup is a Hubitat antenna with a Home Assistant as the brains.

Good luck in your automations!