The State of WebCore on Hubitat

#1

I recently bought a Hubitat Hub and beginning to test it out. I am trying to discover the truth about many of the claims that running WebCore on this hub is loaded with problems. I have a sense of rivalry between WebCore and Hubitat, is that true? And if so, is it causing problems?

I tested the latest version of WebCore and it seems to be working okay. However my test pistons are simple. “Contact sensor opens, switch turns on”. The same routine can easily be done using RuleMachine but don’t understand how to integrate the two apps without causing undue confusion. Many of my pistons make use of complex of variables which are shared with other pistons, something RuleMachine seems lacking in.

So, is using WebCore on the Hubitat a long term solution? Or is RuleMachine the way to go? I know Hubitat won’t support anyone running WebCore so if users run into problems their on their own.

I am very happy with WebCore on the SmartThings platform but I’m really attracted to local processing aspect of Hubitat.

What are your thoughts?

#2

The latest port is running pretty well (for me at this point)

I have spoken with the HE folks about their big warning (and softening it).

They have told me they will consider this but they want to see more time / experience / feedback on the changes I have made to webcore for HE.

I’m currently not aware of open issues on the changes I have made. Some users report it is fast. Webcore does run locally on HE (this is explained in the first and 2nd note of the thread below).

#3

Give webCoRE on HE a shot … if it works for you, great, no need to learn/use RM then. I’ve been using webCoRE on the HE hubs since last Nov/Dec with no problems, so it’s a long term solution for me :smile:

#4

So far it looks like two of my major hold backs was a Weather Tile that worked with Wunderground solved by https://github.com/CobraVmax/Hubitat/blob/master/Drivers/Weather/WeatherUndergroundCustom.groovy

and

a replacement for SMS solved by Pushover which is native to Hubitat now.

A question for anyone out there that maybe tried this. If I go about transferring all my devices to Hubitat being careful to name them exactly as they were on the SmartThings hub, can I do a backup of my WebCore apps on SmartThings and import them directly to Hubitat?

#5

I have used backup codes of pistons on ST and restored on HE. HE asks me to fill in/set devices during the import, and if you already enabled the devices on HE and to webcore, I just select the devices and go.

Before you move any devices you can test this on the HE just restoring a piston, and have a dummy virtual device created and you will see what I describe.

#6

Excellent tip! Thanks!

#7

I will have to update my HE WC version with the more updated one.

#8

I am still on the fence about getting HE

#9

I don’t know if this tip has been posted elsewhere but if you have zigbee devices on you SmatThings hub you don’t have to delete those devices before moving them over to HE. All you need to do is reset the actual device and then pair it with HE. If for some reason you want to move that device back to SmartThings just reset the device again and then pair it using the SmartThings app.

Zigbee devices have a unique ID that never changes allowing you to easily move between platforms. 80% of my devices are zigbee so if things don’t work out on HE I can just re-pair them without disrupting any apps on SmartThings.

#10

It works better than the current SmartThings device. The HE works more like it did before Wunderground dumb down API went into place. However in order to get that you need to be uploading your weather station data to Wunderground. If you do they give you your own unique API key.

#11

Is it either/or with Rule Machine and Webcore? Or can you use a mixture of both? I’m not happy with how slow things run sometimes using SmartThings and I’ve been considering making the move to Hubitat.

#12

you can use both

#13

Thanks E_Sch. I’ll most likely buy one next week. At which time I’ll probably have a lot of questions on how to get Webcore to run locally.

#14

RM3.0 might make me finally move all my devices over :slight_smile: maybe

#15

WebCore runs all pistons locally, but the interface to create or edit pistons is in the cloud. Also, if a piston makes use of a cloud tied commands such as sending SMS then that portion of the piston requires a connection to the outside.

#16

Thanks. As long as they run locally, that will be great! For now, I’m not using SMS for anything but that’s good to know in case I do in the future.

#17

don’t be it’s lovely and green over here :smile: no outages super fast and just works :wink: honestly it just works

#18

It has been several days since I started porting devices over to Hubitat and so far things are going well with 70% of the devices moved. I’ve been using HubConnect to mirror devices back to SmartThings where the majority of the pistons are still running. Once certain clusters of devices are all on Hubitat I then port pistons over, so far about a dozen pistons happily firing.

The only snafu I ran into with WebCore on Hubitat is the inability to use External URL. The workaround is to use RM until WebCore fixes that problem. Other than that performance seems to be good.

#19

Today I was able to move the last few devices over to Hubitat and spent the day restoring all my pistons from the SmartThings platform. I was really dreading it but it wasn’t as bad as I thought, Before porting I made screen caps of all the pistons. As I restored each one I could reference the screen caps to see each part of the piston that needed attention. Had to make a few tweaks for the minor differences between the platforms. Now I debug the automatons for the next few days.

#20

A final update. I moved 62 devices over to Hubitat and about as many pistons as well,
With a bit of piston debugging from the platform conversion webCoRE is running smoothly with no lags. With everything running local I am finally on a system I wanted since SmartThings came out back in 2015? I still think SmartThings is great but with all the changes, and buyouts, I’m just not sure how long it will last. Still glad I made the move.