Linus Tech tips got hit by the same hack as you Paul, gotta make you feel better that even his channels fell for the same attack vector, kinda shows RU-vid needs to fix their security!
Tell me about it. Sadly Linus didn't mention the biggest vulnerability because he probably doesn't know about it. Linus has Google's advanced protection program which stopped the hackers kicking him out. I got booted out of my own account and couldn't get back in because standard 2FA let's hackers swap it out for their own!
@paulhibbert it's insane that once logged in, that you can swap out 2FA without the need to use the 2FA... Hell, I remember losing my physical 2fa dongle for Final Fantasy 11, and I had to call up and speak to a person, provide proof of purchases, proof of residence matching my account etc before they would remove it and put a new one on! Insane that a game has better security than Google which pretty much runs so many aspects of our lives!
@@paulhibbert I'm guessing the only reason it didn't happen to him is because over 20 people have access to his account. It wasn't his specific account that got "hacked".
As others have said in other areas. I would love to see a HA video where you migrate away from a Pi to something like a HA Yellow or a NUC with a proper zigbee stick installed on a usb extension cable so it is further away from other devices. Ohhhh the Zigbee!!! 🤣😂
Paul, I love your videos, don't misunderstand me. However, with Hubitat (at that time C7) I had a bad experience. Actually, I decided to order C7 based on one of your previous videos and without checking in depth details and if it fits my expectation. Finally, C7 landed in my drawer (waste of money) and is still there. Indeed, Hubitat was able to connect all my zigbee devices, but was unable to be used with any wi-fi device or build scenes with mixed devices, the device which I really wanted. Therefore, since then I'm planning using HA one day (not with Pi due to unavailability, but maybe with old laptop motherboard and 3D designed case). I think the only one system which can control zigbee and wi-fi different brand smart devices on one platform is still HA. Of note, I have no real issue with distance and zigbee devices as I introduced bridging devices in some places (e.g. Sonoff mini zigbee, of' course with purpose such as controlling a light with regular switch and with app), which can forward signal and interact as extender.
Aye, see the end of the video for that. Both tuya and Broadlink integrations are sadly missing. I've been banging onto Hubitat about that for literally years. For automation it's their only real failing. HA is still the answer for very complex things like sending adb commands to android TVs for example.
Monsieur! May I suggest a quick eBay search for HP T630 thin clients? There are many other thin clients available but the T630's are meaty enough that they will run full fat Linux distros and Windows 10 without being immediately so laggy that you want to put a hammer through them yet cheap enough that they can just be loaded up with a single task without feeling guilty. I have eight of them here, they're passively cooled AMD x86 based, use between 8 and 12w typically when under load, take up to two m.2 SATA drives (they usually come with a 32 or 64GB 2242 fitted in the short slot and have space for an ADDITIONAL 2280 if you want to add one), they also take standard DDR3 SODIMMs (usually have 4GB or 8GB fitted but can take up to 32Gb if you are a total power crazed loon) and even have an internal USB port if you want to boot from USB or put a USB device internally... I think I've paid between £35 and £50 for them previously - and that's with a 32GB m.2 SATA "drive" and 4GB of DDR3 fitted - which is cheaper than you can get a Pi with comparable RAM and storage for (even when they are available without being scalped). Alternatively if a T630 isn't meaty enough for your needs (and they do run Home Assistant very well, hell, I've got one of them running docker and multiple containers and it isn't even breaking a sweat but it does have 16GB of RAM and a 500GB m.2 SATA SSD) then have a look for HP Desktop Mini 600 or 800s (again on eBay). They can usually be picked up "barebones" (i.e. picked clean of CPUs, RAM and storage) for about £30 or so but they take standard socketed 4th to 7th Gen CPUs, DDR3 or DDR4 SODIMMs and m.2 or 2.5" drives (depending on which "version" you get - G1 being the earliest - just be aware that if you want to put an m.2 drive in a G1 Desktop Mini then it has to be an AHCI m.2 drive which are scarce and therefore expensive to buy secondhand but they do also take 2.5" SATA SSDs of course), the G2 onwards take a standard NVMe and / or a 2.5" SATA. They can usually be had with CPU, RAM and storage for about £80. I have an 800 Mini G3 here that I bought as a barebones and stuffed in my old i7-7700T (35w) with 64GB of DDR4 and a 2TB SSD and that gives me my main everyday "work" PC that's able to run dual 4K monitors and is the size of a small stack of CDs...
@@philharris9631 Thanks for this tip Phil. Having some old laptops home, I was wondering to use one of them for HA/little NAS (actually none of them has dedicated GPU), but still have not figured out the power consumption (should not be too high) and would it be powerful enough for home media server. In summary, instead of putting laptops to landfill, I wanted to use them for something useful.
Absolutely. When I first tested the stick on my desk, I had some trouble with the pairing of devices. At some point I lost interest and mounted the PI back into the rack. And of course I used an usb extension cord, so the itself stick can be outside the rack. And suddenly I could pair devices without issues. I had a similar issue with the left HDMI Port and Wifi-Channel 1. That is the reason why my RPs are all mounted inside a small rack.
have you considered the idea that the root cause of your reliability issues could be in the set up and quality of your zwave/zigbee coordinators used on your HAS instance?
Yes. The theme of this video really is that a purpose built box is less susceptible to these issues. I imagine home assistant yellow is a good solution too!
As a long term home assistant user and having used several coordinators over the years I can tell you this. There is always a few problematic devices for some reason no matter what you use. It's can be maddening.
I see they've still not invested any time in the interface. I lasted about 4 days with my C7 before I relegated it to the great storage box in the sky (well, my garage tech dumping ground). I still struggle with the cluster£$%^ of the Home Assistant interface but it's leagues ahead of the Hubitat, still.
Hi Paul, I have been using Home Assistant with Hubitat for past 3 years, and get the best of both worlds. So most of my Z-Wave and Zigbee devices connect to my C7 (I may upgrade to C8 at some point), and most automations are controlled via Home Assistant on my QNAP NAS via the HA->Hubitiat intergtraton. It means I can reboot Home Assistant when needed and because the devices are connected via the C7 they resume immediatly upon HA restart. It is a bit of a faff getting the devices into HA using the Maker API, but not overly complcated. Thanks for another great video.
Switched between Home Assistant and Hubitat a number of times. Everything you say is correct, you have to keep repairing Home Assistant regularly. And it was forever failing on a Raspberry Pi. So been on Hubitat for a number years, and was happy with it …. except it never seemed to improve! Dashboards are terrible. So switched back to Home Assistant running in a docker container on a mini PC. It’s amazing! I won’t go back to Hubitat
I have been using Hubitat (C5), HA, Alexa, and Google all together in my 3800 sq ft home. I tried the Conbee stick you recommended and the Sonoff stick - both shit. I only use Hubitat to pair my devices, then I import it all to HA for automations (better UI). I got rid of any ZigBee and wifi bulbs - z-wave lights are FAR more stable. I've been so happy with my GoControl z-wave bulbs, Zooz z-wave multi sensors, third reality zigbee motion sensors, and Sonoff ZigBee plugs. A year worth of headaches to get to this point. Still can't find reliable contact sensors tho.
I'm using a C7, and love it. When I've got some cash to spare I intend to upgrade. As far as dashboards go, have a look at the Action Tiles Hubitat integration.
This is Paul at his best. Great video. Told me exactly what I wanted to know about the C8. All of the newly made jokes made me laugh. And Paul looks back to being really happy again... I have a lot of the same cheap Tuya stuff so it was interesting to see how well it all worked, apart from the disappointment of no Tuya WiFi! Can anyone confirm that there are ways to make that work?
I bought the new Habitat C8 before the video was over. I'm hoping I can resolve some of the inconsistencies in my smart home setup that drive my husband crazy. Sent from my 2,650 square foot house. 🙈
He finally said it!!! He finally said it! "These incredible people running UP your screen". UP! UP!! Aah love this man. Keep it UP Paul. Thanks for everything you do.
I currently use Hubitat as my device handler for a majority of my devices and expose them to home assistant with that exact integration. Works flawlessly!! I absolutely love the threesome 😜
I have a C7 at one location and the I cannot stand the interface and much prefer the HA dashboards. I use the C7 as the radio's for most things and started porting over rules to HA but still have a mixture of rules in each hub. Started to look at the C8 as I'm starting fresh at a new place and have HA set up with Hue bulbs at moment.
I want to point out I have a 5600 sqft house and everything including my Ring v2 outdoor contact sensor 100 feet away at the edge of my property on the fence gate directly connects to my hub with the C8. This is through two interior walls and then a 2 course brick outer wall...
I run both HA and hubitat in much the same setup as your plan. Hubitat manages the connections to all my ZigBee and Zwave devices (plus a few wifi devices that are a pain with HA). then Hubitat exposes the HA setup to cleanly named devices.
I’m looking at switching to hubitat from home assistant I’m tired of the integrations on home assistant constantly breaking. Today tuya integration took a dump so that has my smart home completely screwed up.
Can you please do a comparison of this to the Homey Pro. It has aerials for most things too but not sure how well it works with a wide range of devices.
I'm halfway through till 6:20 and I'm a bit puzzled, as none of the problems you describe (my ikea bulbs pair just fine via the zigbee mesh) really have anything to do with home assistant. It might be a problem with how you have your home assistant set up, but so far all you have shown in this context is a raspberry pi in a case which would also have wifi so the point you are trying to make at that timestamp remains a huge mystery to me.
Hi Paul are you still using Hubitat in April 24?, just moved my Zwave and Zigbee devices to the new C8 Pro, what can I say this hub connects to devices my Sky Connect couldn’t even see, even though I have loads of routers in every room. Post migration to Hubitat connection are super rock solid. I am using this hub as a bridge to Home Assistant, Alexa and HomeKit but am using safety monitor and lighting automations, which have rock solid. Shame Hubitat cannot update their Dashboards.
I stopped simping for brands and (types of) tech looooong time ago because I realised they are nothing but tools in your toolbelt. And like tools you should use the ones that you are comfortable with and that do the job well for you.
Hi Paul, lol had exactly same issues with PI and HA and Zwave/Zigbee, ditched the PI, now run HA in a VM (VMware) on an Intel NUC (with I also use for many other windows things, plex server, mail server .....) and had no connectivity issues since.
Hi Paul, First of all thank you for helping out the world with all the tech stuff. I have an issue i have been struggling with for quite some time mostly i get all the answers from your videos but this one is though. I bought lifx led strips a while a ago now some of the controllers have given up. I tried buying just the controllers but lifx doesnt sell them. Now i want to know if its possible to connect the led strips to an alternative controller such as a wled ahtom controller? Could u be so kind and explain this or make a video about this because lots of people are struggling with this issues without any solutions according to google. 🙏🏻 thank u
Hey Paul I am curious on what wifi hardware you run? I have 4 unifi access points over my house and have 70ish wifi things on it, and I put anything I can on to Ethernet, at the start I did have some issues but upgraded to the extra waps to keep the wifi rage down. Also on local tuya I had alot of unavailable issues and the creators of the integration have done some updates and it's alot better now, I also created a simple automation that detects if 4 local tuya devices show unavailable for more than 15mins it restarts local tuya, that elevated most of the issues.
I think the problem with HA is it tries to be all things to all people, while at the same time appealling to geeks and non geeks a like. That's a recipe for complexity and problems. But the best way to make HA behave I have found is to use a MINI PC and flash HASS OS onto it
I'll be sticking with HA as I recently discovered the widgets on the android app so I can now switch things on and off direct from my home screen and also see live data I also found you can add a custom HA button to your dropdown settings menu, Brilliant!
@@MrSupersidewinder To add buttons to your drop down menu just use the "Edit Buttons" option from the three dots menu then scroll all the way to the right and there are 12 HA tiles you can configure. the widgets can be added as any other widget is done. You can even stack the data widgets so you can swipe through a number of data.
Having baulked at HA I wondered if Hubitat might offer a local control system? Checked the compatible device list and not one of the devices I own was listed, I realise that there may be community developed support but that puts us back into HA's world. Sorry, not for me.
Question: if I have the old Hubitat C-7, do you think the C-8 is a worthy upgrade? I've just started switching from a primarily Alexa-driven smart home, to having the Hubitat manage pretty much everything it can, and it's been great. What does the C-8 bring that the C-7 doesn't have? I see hints that they may support Thread and Matter on it later this year; do you think they'll deliver on that? Maybe I should just wait and see if they do a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale and spring for the upgrade then?
My C7 is absolute junk. I was having all kinds of problems connecting to any of my devices, while SmartThings could reach a sensor in my mail box 200Ft away and through two walls… And that was with the hub parked directly on top of my Wi-Fi router. The C7 can’t connect to my Zigbee bulbs unless they are three feet away… And that is with the external antenna mod people were doing on the forum and as far away as possible from the Wi-Fi router. With the issues I have had with it, I will not be risking even more money in the C8. The Hubitat forum has been nothing but toxic towards me and the work arounds and excuses they give for things that work just fine elsewhere has convinced me to stay away as well. I think they just want to get bought like SmartThings did and that requires good hype and a large user base. Once you buy the hub, they have your money and don’t care if it’s working for you.
I’d be very interested to see this integration into HomeKit, does it expose ALL the devices into HomeKit ?… with full control … I’m trying to move away from hubs to native HK devices but this has again stirred my inner nerd…..
You can use the dashboard when away from your house to control your devices, however by default you can't administrate the system unless you're on your local network, though you can pay a subscription to hubitat to enable the ability to administrate it remotely.
@@paulhibbertThanks. Controlling is what matters to me. I just ordered one. I was looking for a HA alternative for a long time as I don't want to spent all my spare time configuring YAML files. Hopefully, this new Hubitat is that alternative I was looking for. Thanks again for the video. GREAT as always.
Does anyone know if hubitat works natively with LightwaveRF Smart devices? the only info I can find are community posts from years ago where people have written custom integrations
Hi Paul how do you get echo 4th generation to control zigbee 2 gang light switch I can only get it to work one switch through the Alexa app or do I need a zigbee hub
Have you not considered maybe change your coordinator, from conbee to something that has proper range… you just fragmenting your setup, with more points of failure….
Great video, as ever, Paul. Quick question, regarding the driver for your Tradfri Bulbs, I can’t seem to find one anywhere in the “community”, and I’ve tried typing in all sorts of variations. Any chance you could point me in the right direction, as to where you found it or who created it? 7:20 I’m new to Hubitat, and only just got hold of the C7 about a month before they released the C8, so gutted I made the jump a little early. Keep up the great work 👍🏻
I'm not at home at the moment but I THINK it was this one... github.com/eliotstocker/hubitat-ikea-rgbw/blob/main/ikea-tradfri-rgbw-device.groovy Like I said in the video, I had to hold the hub against the bulb to pair it, so keep that in mind 😊
@@paulhibbert thanks 👍🏻 I managed to get them parked without any real issues, but soon realised the colour spectrum was not going to happen 😂 The other thing was, I bought the ones with the dimmable controllers, but when you “pair” them with the light, that’s the only way to use them then, so have to re-install them on Hubitat. Not seen anything to show you can use them both together yet, but keeping a look out Thanks again Paul 😊 really appreciate it 👍🏻
Hi Paul, what lights are you using down at the bottom of the garden on the Zigbee plug?? I ordered a set that look identical last summer and after one day of light rain half the bulbs died, returned and replaced with Amazon - a week later one day of rain and the same thing! Been hoping to find a better version for permanent use this summer
I read SO MANY reviews before settling on these for this exact reason, though there are still some reviews on these where people have had issues. I guess the perfect festoon lights don't exist, but my experience has been good this past year... Outdoor String Lights Dimmable,... www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08YYS5HPK?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Great Video as always Paul, love the humour. Im a complete noob as i dont have any smart home stuff yet but doing my research, ive narrowed it down to these 2 but still undecided as i want it to install once and not keep swapping over to an other hub. So if anyone on this comments can give any further info that would be great, please tag me in it.
Kind of unfair comparing these two. HA is software, bring your own hardware and mods, while the other is a closed source software and hardware package. They're not for the same purpose. That's why it's great to use them together in a single home automation system.
I'm not blaming home assistant the software specifically, it's definitely an issue with the whole package, though I am curious as to how all this would shape out if I used home assistant yellow.
So, I've been hating the cloud based servers I'm running on, and tried the c7 before, but being so new to it, I couldn't get on with it. I also tried HA on a local server, but it crashed. I'm now toying with The c8 as I want to persevere and bring all my automatons local. My only worry is things like my wifi lights, aqara sensors and my flic controls. Have you any advice on this?
great video! My house isn't so big so zwave 700 is fine for me. Tuya integration with home assistant is a kludge unless you go localtuya which doesn't support all the devices, so I no longer use Tuya. If I can use hubitat with home assistant that is compelling though for when I migrate to zwave 8. Once you have that setup, I am curious what can replace hubitat should they go under, hoping that never happens of course.
It all operates locally so fingers crossed I will never have to replace it! My tuya local stuff still fails regularly. I have no idea how that's even possible!!
@@paulhibbert - my garden lights and pond pump are on Tuya sockets and regularly vanish offline or fail to respond so I have 25 Tasmota sockets set up to replace all the Tuya stuff but I just haven't been able to get Home Assistant to be stable enough with my Zigbee switches and Tasmota sockets to be able to do the move over ... it may be that Hubitat is the answer so I think I'll give one a try next payday, certainly if it integrates in with Google Assistant and Google Home then that would be handy for my other half who refuses to use voice commands and so I've also been needing to find her an alternative to the Tuya app.
@@paulhibbert Tuya for HA is based on the idea that you're a startup and getting a free ride to test your product. As such they don't seem to feel the need to be that reliable, compared to what they might do for say a hardware vendor paying them $10k a month and up.
I'm curious as to why you're having ZigBee connection issues. I'm in s duplex. My dad is on the other side. I have zigbee sensors and light in the basement, 2 floors down, on the far end of the house (about 400 sq ft per floor) I've had no connectivity issues with those except when I didn't change the battery in time.
I suspect I have some dmradio interference trouble. It is only certain devices, though they do seem to rotate shifts on who wants to annoy me each month
I know HA is typically marketed to just "work" with whatever wild home automation setup you already have and that's still true for the most part. But of course, building out your setup from the ground up with HA in mind makes the whole thing a much smoother experience. Looking at Pauls setup, I genuinely wonder how it all works to begin with considering it looks about as organised as a plate of spaghetti.
Don't know about Home Assistant, but for a small fee ($29.99 per annum), Hubitat has remote access. so you can control anything from anywhere via the internet! I find Hubitat does everything I need (though none of my set up is as complex as yours!) Great video, Paul.
Or you can control most of it through the Google/Alexa integrations. You won't get sensors and hub access or anything but it works well enough for me at the moment - although I do have duplicate sensors in hubitat and WiFi tuya so that gives me the ability to trigger stuff in hubitat from tuya sensors manually... For example: was having CT scan yesterday and the Tegu room was rather cool on the WiFi tuya sensor. So I used Home to trigger the socket through Hubitat...
You can access Dashboards remotely to control devices without a subscription. The subscription allows you to remotely access the hub's web interface to make changes.
Oh, the Z-Wave! 868MHz will have at least three times the range of any 2.4GHz device (at similar radiated power). I did warn you that Smeg would turn smug (with AI), evolve into Proteus V, and do its thing (a viral infection should be the least of your worries)
None of your home assistant issues are with home assistant, but with your USB stick being in a bad spot, not on an extension cable, or leaving an antenna.
@@paulhibbert Fair enough. I'm probably spoiled by my TI CC264R1 Dev kit I use as a ZigBee stick. Full nerd level device I had to flash with firmware. Not really conducive to a consumer only channel like you provide. I am a huge nerd though, so home assistant works fine for me 🤓
your latency looks terrible, is that a zigbee or z-wave thing? personally I use wifi devices and since moving to HA recently I have seemingly zero latency.
Oh Paul, if only you knew the struggles my fiance and I go through with Google home, partially in part I assume because of my Netgear router that occasionally wants to refuse to connect to certain things in my house. Or the 1 single fucking light bulb in the fan in the living room that constantly unpairs itself. Or the fact that I have to reset all 3 of the bulbs every time because I don't want to unscrew the lamp cover. Or the sub fact that, when I reset them, they all decide individually that they will either do a short blink:easy pair, long blink: connect to it's WiFi to pair, pretend nothing happened: where it doesn't blink at all, or my personal favorite, it doesn't come on at all: gfy mode. So now I have to remember to go through the pairing process multiple times trying to get all 3 lights to pair, if they will. It's usually a 20 minute process. You just see the fucking house flashing from outside. Lolol
Paul, what are your thoughts on the emerging standards Thread & Matter? Since these standards allow for local control, I feel like HA no longer provides any value.
I love tech and all its innovative and excellent products, but.. It's somewhat huhlarious to me that all these gadgets meant to make life easier can cause such stress and meltdown for those involved if we weren't such optimists we would just go back to turning stuff on and of manually lol. My broadband (, mobile) which is limited to my phone hot-spot and 2 Alexa units 5inch and 8inch screened units thankfully reigns in my acquisition of tech, to 9 bulbs and 2 WiFi plugs, l would like to join the many but l won't pay for the real WiFi to be connected to my home. But l enjoy Paul's site very much his humour and info and a lot of the reply a lot of you guys are very knowledgeable about tech l both envy and admire all your skills. I'm 66 now and came to tech late but l would like to see more homes advanced in these ways. This is the way.
