Question

I’ve been following the group for a couple weeks now because I’d like to get away from the WiFi devices and migrate to a hub but haven’t been able to decide which route suits my situation. As someone who is fairly green with automation and very little experience with code and programming, how do you decide which is the best hub for your application? The type of things I’d like to add to start would mainly be an outdoor security cam or two, motion sensors on doors/windows and light switches/bulbs. Having a tablet that can control it all also would be ideal so it’s easy to use for my wife and various family members who are here babysitting our kids while we work.  

Answer 1

URC total control is a great moderately priced control system. works with everything!  

Answer 2

Following, since I’m pretty much in the same boat. BTW. Thanks for recommending this group, @alegar

Answer 3

One thing to be aware of. Depending on your reasoning for moving away from wifi, the zigbee protocol generally uses the same frequency as wifi, so it doesn't decrease the interference. Zwave uses a different frequency. I still use both.  

Answer 4

Zigbee seems to be becoming the defacto standard. Used by Philips, Samsung, Alexa, Google, . I'm starting to move things away from WiFi to zigbee now (using an £8 USB stick as the hub - even replacing the Hue bridge)

Answer 5

When you say wifi . do you mean internet controlled wifi devices? Local wifi devices work really well and use very little data! As for hub look at hubitat, smartthings and home assistant and see what you like?  

Comments

@alegar home assistant will probably be a large learning curve. Be worth it once its all up and running! Personally any wifi device I have is flashed with tasmota so its locally controlled via home assistant. I can appreciate the amount of apps you would need to entertain if you had lots of different manufacturers devices! Ive never used hubitat or smartthings but see them mentions a lot!