Struggling with the best practice on this and would like to avoid setting up a load of additional accounts that may become redundant over time as these issues get fixed.
I have 2 hubs now, located at 2 different locations with 2 users (my wife and I). It's a mess regarding geolocation, Google Home and IFTTT. GH allows multiple homes to be set up but it really doesn't work properly. I have a GH mini in the 2nd location yet it appears in the 1st even tho' moved. I don't see any effective way to set up IFTTT with HE unless I have 2 IFTTT accounts because when I access it from the 2nd hub I get the 1st hub's devices and switches, it doesn't combine them from both hubs. Further, if I go into settings in the HE app, and switch hubs, it doesn't switch the geolocation. If I drag the geolocation to the 2nd hub and then switch hubs it ls clear there is only 1 location saveable irrespective of the hub selected. And this is without the complexity of unleashing my wife into the system. 1 hub or multiple hubs at one locations seems easy. But multiple hubs at multiple locations is a mess.
I've not seen a detailed operating guide for these types of use cases. I think it needs a lot of work (not just at HE but in terms of the industry too).
You can try using hubconnect and like the 2 hubs together. Read on this post for details and info.
Having 2 hubs with one account is not as simple either. HE doesn't have or work with multi hubs with one account on IFTTT, Google, Alexa, dashboard or Sharptools yet.
Thanks yeah. It also looks like 2 IFTTT accounts are required. When connecting up to the one HE account from IFTTT an option is provided to select a hub/home to connect with (which is good) but no option to aggregate devices and connect to both hubs. I decide to create 2 Gmail accounts now, one for each property, and use these for IFTTT and maybe for the Google Home also, to avoid Google's soppy software not working properly across multiple home locations either.
Specifically for HubConnect, no, the hubs do not have to be on the same LAN. Using the oAuth connection option, the traffic would be 'via the cloud.'
This is how @srwhite is using HubConnect to his RV, especially when it's in use at a campsite, vs parked next to his house being fitted with another 60 devices.
I think the camper is a few devices short of 60 right now. I’ll have to check. Right now it’s spending a month at one of our favorite campgrounds. Problem is I’m not there. Lol
Ah, that's interesting. Thanks. It may be a solution although it's not really an approach I think makes sense for 2 separate properties. If Hubitat can eventually support each hub's geolocation (and ideally additional geolocations too) in the mobile app, that will help me get presence working properly. The rest I will do with separate accounts in IFTTT and other systems I think. I'd prefer to keep each property distinct.
I am dealing with this right now as I transition to Hubitat from Smartthings. Google voice control is intuitive and a key component to a happy family. Voice control is the most used interface in my home and Hubitat will do all the heavy lifting. My issue has always been voice control confusion. With 3 locations and the Google Home app as my primary voice input I have been forced to set up 3 separate Google accounts and 3 separate Smartthings accounts to prevent the voice input from confusing one location for another. Even though the Google Home app can assign devices to separate locations there is no presence aware feature. You would think that if I am sending a command to the kitchen lights using a Google speaker assigned to the kitchen of house A that house B and house C do not confuse the command from that speaker as a command to be performed in another location. The problem is duplicate names in separate locations. Sure, I could name things Kitchen A, Kitchen B and Kitchen C but that would destroy the ease of voice commands since naming variables are not going to be remembered or understood by family and guests. The goal should be 1 Google account and 1 Hubitat account with presence detection via the assigned speakers. I can't believe this has not been implemented but hope that Google and Hubitat are working on a solution. Any input from the community on how to better address this problem before I switch over hubs in my other 2 locations would be appreciated.
I'm not finding that issue. I have 2 properties set up with Google Home and when I ask a device in one room to switch on/off the lights or AC in that room, it does address the correct device(s). This is simply achieve by allocating the GH device and the target devices to the same room in the same home set up within GH. What doesn't work properly is if you issue the command to Google Assistant (as opposed to a GH device). GA isn't aware of its location (I suppose eby design, since you can issue a command to your phone wherever it might be, or to GA in Android​ Auto for example). They really should fix that so that if your device running GA is at one of your Google home locations then it should address those devices. Well, it should at least be an option. But Google doesn't even properly support location/geo awareness yet so they really do have miles to catch up.
I have found it necessary to create 2 IFTTT accounts for various reasons at these properties.
Right now I'm struggling with Hue. That really is pathetic for multiple locations. I have 2 hubs, again at each location. The phone app can only work with 1 location (multiple hubs yes, but they'd better be connected to the same router). I've ended up setting up 2 accounts but now their soppy website is not recognising one of my hubs. I really wonder if these companies properly test their sh1tty software sometimes rather than us have to find all the (really not all that difficult to imagine) so-called "edge cases".
So if I am to understand you correctly, if you are in location and you ask a local Google speaker to turn on the Kitchen and you also have another device named Kitchen on another hub in another location; the command works as intended and only turns on the Kitchen in the location that you are in and that the speaker is connected to without turning on the other Kitchen location/home or giving an error message? If that is the case then this is acting very different in your setup than in mine. Anyone else experiencing this?
Correct, that is my experience. That's how mine works as long as you set up the 2 homes in Google Home, under your one account. Then you assign each device and each Home Hub to a room and as long as they match the the correct devices are addressed. However a command issued to Google Assistant (for example on a phone) doesn't know which home to address. Make sure it's definitely your Google Home device that is receiving the command.
Are you still using Node-RED? Have you found any issues with using NR to handle multiple locations? Seems like it should work well - also you might be able to use single IFTTT and Alexa accounts not sure. You definitely can add multiple HE hubs on different subnets.
Maybe you posted something like this on the NR forum I can't remember - if so carry on!
Are the hubs at the same location, or two geographical separate locations? The reason I ask is because Hubitat now supports “Hub Mesh” which makes it easy to share devices between hubs that are on the same LAN. Thus, you could host your dashboards on a single hub. Otherwise each hub would need its own dashboards.
You have to switch between your hubs in the app settings. Sadly its not smart enough to know which LAN you are connected to and offer up the appropriate hub.
Wish I could help, but I really don’t use the Hubitat mobile app. I use Pushover for all notifications, and that can be installed on all hubs easily. I use Life360 for mobile presence, but I only have one hub that I use that with. For dashboards, I simply save the cloud link of each dashboard to my iPhone’s desktop. I also use HomeKit as a simple UI.
