We all enjoy quite a lot from a very dedicated team, that have produced quite an amazing product. In the more than two years I've been an owner, I feel like I've received several new hubs at no additional cost thanks to the amazing effort and constant improvements of my Hubitat Elevation hub.
I want to urge anyone that is considering a hub, a second or third hub, etc, to buy the hub before you purchase other devices. First, it is most often the easiest and most cost effective way to solve the problem of old Z-Wave devices that are bringing everything else down, or Zigbee bulbs that are acting as bad repeaters and messing up your Zigbee network. Secondly please don't forget that Hubitat is a small business. In times like these, they need our support more than big companies like GE and Samsung do. They only sell hubs, so please support them by adding hubs when you need them.
For those of you considering Hubitat Elevation for the first time, please know that you are making and excellent choice, and it doesn't take long on the community forum to know that it's a very helpful group of individuals. You will get lots of support from the company and the forum members (just be calm and polite please). Second, please consider that not only are you making a good choice, but you're supporting a small company, rather than just increasing the already enormous cash flow of major corporations.
I just bought 2 more, so I have 3. 1 dev and 2 production. Hubitat don't want to ship to me here in China anymore, but a friend in the US helped out so I got them here after a bit of work.
I brought my first one a couple a week ago after struggling setting up some of devices on RasPI running Home Assistance so I decided to order a new Zwave/Zigbee stick for it. During my searches for a new usb stick, Hubitat was one of the search result that came up because it had a dual radio in it so I ordered Hubitat along with a USB stick for my RasPI.
When I installed the USB stick, I managed to get some devices I was strugging with working on HA then a day or two the Hubitat arrived. First thing I did was try to pair those devices I struggled with over to HE and it paired instantly ..
I was quite happy so I started unpairing my other devices from HA and pair it over to HE.
The RasPI which I had HA running on, I wiped the HA off the sd card and installed HOOBS on it so I could bridge Homekit with my HE. :).
So far, HE has been quite stable for me and I don't see why I need 1 or 2 more if it that powerful. I have not yet install all those inovelli switches I brought yet but my goal is to only have zwave plus network and no zigbee bulb with repeater built in it on my home automation.
But if my Home automation have grew so big that it would be best for me to get another HE, I will buy another one in a heartbeat. Maybe I will buy a separate one for our basement some day if I see the need for one.
Thank you for making HE the best hub I ever owned and everyone who participate on this community board helping me learn more as i go.
I'm all up for supporting them and getting more gadgets, can't have too many... I can also understand the extra hub for dev / test or for multiple locations of course.... Other than those, may I ask, what are you guys solving with multiple hubs that a single Hub can't do? is it that the hub is underpowered and once you get to a certain size you need to separate thing for it to run smoothly? what is your criteria for separating things? by device protocol or devices in one and rules in another? some app that eats too much and needs its own hub?
It would be nice if they would come up with a new "pro" hub with same feature set but much biffier specs for people with large systems...
For me, I'm now moving all lightning related rules as well as lights and motion sensors to one hub. I do this because I want to make it easier to troubleshoot when/if things slow down. As it is I have no issues with my one hub, but it's nice to have more flexibility. The second production hub is for testing new Apps in production as well as for things which don't need instant response, such as power monitoring, laundry done alerts etc. Since it is not as critical that all runs without delay on the second production hub, I feel I can be more liberal in what I run.
The third hub, my dev hub, is just used for my own code and for testing things before they are ready for production.
Other people segregate on different floors, buildings etc, I don't have that need, yet.
I think HE's position has always been you shouldn't necessarily need multiple hubs in order for things to work properly. Zigbee and Zwave are mesh systems after all so should be able to handle most size locations.
However - as you've no doubt seen on these forums establishing a stable network with all the varieties of devices available and different layouts/environmental conditions of a location can be tricky. Sometimes it just works, sometimes not so much.
Splitting hubs allows for task, device and/or protocol separation, extends the reach of the network greatly, increases robustness (one hub going down won't take out the whole system) and makes troubleshooting and managing devices easier. For sure the larger number of devices the more benefit you are likely to see.
I have 3 operational hubs - main floor, second floor and a controller hub. The main and second floor hubs have both Zigbee and Zwave+ devices that are local to their respective hubs. The controller is only used for global system things including cloud access (Alexa etc), mode changes and some global virtual devices (like a "ctrlOvercast" switch). All the hubs communicate with each other via HubConnect - I cannot say enough good things about what @srwhite and @csteele have done with that amazing app!!!
I find the performance of a single hub to be more than adequate to maintain my 140 connected devices.
With that being said, I still own 3 hubs.
One is my main hub controlling everything.
Second hub is on a secondary network providing a dash board to wall mounted Amazon Fire tablets.
Third, on-hand spare should I need it and for occasional testing.
Having a backup hub in case the primary one fails is also a good idea. Another more advanced thought that costs a bit more (for US C5 users) is to add a Y cable and a ZW/ZB stick before setting up + take periodic external backups. That way you should be able to transfer devices from hub to hub if necessary.
You shouldn’t .. But many of the cases are for devices that don’t play well with others in a mesh.. My second one at my house is for lightify alone... I have 3 all together 1 @ office 2 @ home...
Still going to get a dev solo one.. As the last dev project I tried starting up wrecked my z-wave mesh.. Took me a couple hours to get everything happy again.. I need one that I can freely wipe and start over... As I am getting deeper and deeper in the protocols..
I have 3 hubs, and am down to actually using only 1 Hubitat hub. As I do mostly all logic outside of the hub it is largely just a zwave/zigbee device interface. And 1 hub can EASILY do the 120+ devices I have - no need for multiple hubs just based on that device count.
Now, if you do your logic on the hub and have a ton of apps, yes, 1 hub might not cut it. But the things that typically drive need for another hub are development work, or a lot of apps, not the # of devices or the protocol used (zwave vs zigbee).
Yes, the smart people will point out that I do indeed have 2 hubs, one of them just happens to be node-red. True, but that isn't counter to what I am saying above.
So it is either playing solitaire with a deck of 51 or counting flowers on the wall???? Time to expand your Hubitat knowledge, explore new projects, and even (OMG) set up some community projects for the more difficult integrations.
Dave
I have 4 hubs now but still using just one hub for everything. Good to have spares (two C4 and one C5).. things are humming along great lately with an occasional slowdown but node-red will just reboot the HUB for me. Been running so good I turned all my spare time to a new 3d printer (the other rabbit hole if you want a place to spend your time).
I have 2 of those too (Creality CR-10 V2 and an Anycubic i3 Mega S)... And they are a time sink - especially when I'm using a new brand of material, or trying to do ABS, or figure out why just the corners of my PETG prints shrink/curl up slightly (never have figured out that one... But I digress).
Oh, and each of my printers need different print settings even on the same material due to differences in hot end and cooling configuration... Time sink.
and I might be getting 2 more in the near future. I use most for actual use but I need more for tech support with inovelli.
(two C4 and one C5).. things are humming along great lately with an occasional slowdown but node-red will just reboot the HUB for me. Been running so good I turned all my spare time to a new 3d printer (the other rabbit hole if you want a place to spend your time).
