There are differences between the drivers, but the choice is yours. As always, Hubitat will only “officially” support the built-in drivers (custom code of any kind is on you). That being said, Hubitat staff tend to still be pretty responsive to users and Inovelli certainly is, so if any problems arise with Inovelli’s custom driver, I’d expect those to be addressed to the best of whoever’s ability.
Differences you’ll note:
- Inovelli’s driver exposes every Z-Wave parameter as an option; Hubitat chose what I’d assume they’d guess as the most “popular” options (any parameter can still be changed regardless of the driver you regularly use by switching to either Inovelli’s driver or the Basic Z-Wave Tool to make your changes, then switching back)
- Inovelli’s driver adds a few features some users like, including the ability to create preconfigured “notification child devices” as switches you can turn on/off to make use of the notification LED. This is still possible in Hubitat with the custom
setIndicator()commands (which Inovelli has in some of their other drivers to match Hubitat’s drivers but not this one at the moment) - Inovelli’s driver exposes all scenes (mutli-taps, presses, holds, and releases) as some sort of event. Hubitat’s driver does too with the exception of maxing out at double-taps (so you lose taps 3-5 in each direction). Hubitat’s button numbering and event naming makes a lot more sense, but Inovelli’s is usable once you know what corresponds to what (and, in their defense, is presumably a compromise they made since Hubitat’s button model does not natively support “quintuple tappable”)
- Hubitat’s driver makes use of standard debug logging and “info”/descriptionText logging, consistent with what you may see from other drivers (e.g., debug logging enabled for first 30 minutes after install, info logging enabled indefinitely, where info logging shows device events in the log like “switch on” or “button 1 pushed”). Inovelli’s logging is…interesting but more or less similar if you have the right settings. (Some Hubitat users care a lot about their logs. I confess I’m one.)
There are probably more
So, I guess the best advice is the usual advice on Hubitat or any similar platform: if the built-in driver meets your needs, I’d start there; if you want something only the Inovelli driver offers, I’d switch to that.