My use case for Hubitat may be a bit tame compared to some of you, I'm using it essentially just as a radio. I have a C5 hub, and using my Maker API it just pushes devices into Home Assistant. Home Assistant has all my devices, and then pushes to Homekit
So far I am very pleased with this configuration. My once concern though is that Hubitat is a single point of failure. The rest of my setup is highly redundant, but not Hubitat
Is there any way to get a second Hubitat hub to sync the configuration every X hours, and then take over if the first fails?
Or, is this not possible because of having to re-pair Z-Wave and Zigbee devices?
Not in the way you suggest, no. There are a number of architectural obstacles with zwave and zigbee that make this difficult, if not impossible.
However, if you subscribe to the "hub protect" product, the zwave database gets backed up to the cloud. This would allow you to restore at least your zwave devices to a new hub. Not sure how it works on the C5, but that's the idea on the C7 at least. I don't believe there is a zigbee equivalent.
Your use case is actually a common issue, and I anticipate that Hubitat will ultimately release future software/hardware that makes redundancy a little more feasible. As @brad5 points out, Hub Protect can backup the z-wave radio already. So I anticipate that in the future, they'll either work out how to backup the existing zigbee radio, or change zigbee silicon to a version that can be backed up.
I guess the best solution here is to buy a second Hubitat and then just keep it around. Of course going and re-pairing everything sounds very fun!
I thought about the hub protect, but you have to pay return shipping. Its going to cost at least $5-10 to ship back, and then I have to go to the post office/UPS Store. Now we're already what, $15 in? That paired with the $30/yr means that in 2 years and 1 failed device, I could have just had a spare on site...
The difference is that with Hub Protect, you will not have to exclude/include all your z-wave devices. So that can save hours of labor ..... and in my case, contorting my body to reach devices under sinks or in the attic
They should offer Hub Protect with an on-site option. Personally the only feature I care about there is that ability to restore, an extended warranty on a $99 item isn't really any value to me
Either a cheaper subscription just for that, or a more expensive one where they essentially just loan you a future replacement
I find myself looking for WiFi options more and more lately, much less hassle with pairing. If one of my AP fails, the others just take over anyway I can replace it in my leisure
Worth exploring... I too don't see the "need-it-yesterday" utility in a replacement device sitting on Hubitat's shelf instead of mine.
Might the approach go along the lines of a (gasp) "license to register" a hub at full price and then a second "backup hub" would come as an option with Hub Protect at a lower cost?
However, based on my experience so far,...the upside / downside of such a spare would be it would sit-in-the-box for a loooong time as the platform evolves & upgrades then it would become junk.
I was mostly zigbee when my c4 died. With 50-ish zigbee devices and a good backup copy, I'd estimate I spent 4 hours re-pairing. Finding all the re-pairing instructions was a nuisance so I made a doc for next time. I also used the opportunity to get rid of the last zwave devices.
Out if interest, what makes you prefer Zigbee over Z-Wave?
Another tactic I have, is that I'm stocking spare WiFi versions of devices I need. I have a bunch of WiFi switches laying around, so if one of my Z-Wave ones die, or the hub dies, I can quickly swap it
Also, using Wagos in the electrical boxes makes it a breeze. I can swap a switch in under a minute
Zigbee meshes tend to be more resilient to a router failure than z-wave meshes do. For instance, there's no limitation in the number of intervening hops. Zigbee also uses a high speed (250 kbps v/s 100 kbps for z-wave+, or 40 kbps for 300-series z-wave, or 9.6 kbps for 100 series z-wave).
I had been wifi prior to switching to HE. I was looking for local-only and to consolidate device management rather than an array of apps. Prior to that, I was electro-mechanical (timers & contactors). And prior to that, X10. I had zero experience with zwave, zigbee, or hubs. When I first started with HE I was all zwave because I thought the greater distances on the mesh would be a big advantage. But after few months here I noticed that the zwave devices often required maintenance. ...And they were slow, with frequent complaints about latency in motion detection. Someone posted about his wife doing the "zwave shuffle" at the top of the stairs waiting for the light --that was it, I ripped out about $400 of Jabsco zwave switches and a water mains valve and started over. Best decision ever.
There are 3 negatives with zigbee; 1 - Device for special functions or with special features are more limited that zwave (contact sensor with terminal screws, I'm calling you out). 2 - Your network may be so dependable and autonomous that you forget how to do HE (I'm serious). And 3 - Shorter device mesh distances (that has turned out to be a non-problem but it is technically a disadvantage vs zwave.
I like z-wave for outdoor sensors that are a pain to change the batteries in, as they tend to keep quiet most of the time. Zigbee devices seem to need to keep talking about themselves. I used to think zwave would be best in my house with its thick plaster ceilings and solid brick walls, but in fact these days I have so many zigbee devices that they are all helping each other communicate around corners.
While we wait for the possible solution others have mentioned, being a platform solution allowing for easier switching devices from hub to hub....
One thing that you could focus on, and use a second hub for, would be to analyse and understand any pinch-points in your setup. By syncing your devices via Hub Mesh to a second hub, you can offload the overhead to then run various apps on the second hub to understand health of your devices, including activity levels and battery status.
You may also be interested in the Hub Information driver, a commonly use tool amongst regulars here, to keep tabs on various metrics that can indicate load on the hub, which can impact the performance or even the availability of the radios on the HE hub.
I've sort of been through this already, I was using my Hubitat for everything and then pushing it into HomeBridge. But the HomeBridge V2 app was using a LOT of CPU, and I would constantly get "Hub load is severe" which was pretty frustrating, as I didn't have that many devices.
So, I started working on moving to Home Assistant. Running in a VM, I have pretty much unlimited CPU, memory, Disk IO and networking. I moved all my WiFi devices over there leaving just radio devices in Hubitat. That's when I learned about the Maker API and getting devices into HomeAssistant that way, the hub load is 10x lower running the Maker API to get devices out of Hubitat than the HomeBridge V2 app, I guess just something about how they are written
So now my Hubitat sits nice and idle, just pushing devices into Home Assistant. I really like Hubitat as a radio, seems much cleaner than a Raspberry Pi with random USB radios plugged in
Now my plan is to move as many devices over to WiFi as makes sense, while keeping a decent mesh going. I need to improve my Zigbee mesh a bit for my water sensors, some are pretty far out there. But the goal is to just have those devices in there that need to be in there, smoke alarms, door sensors (Zigbee ones are much easier to come by) and water sensors. Neither of these are critical items, so if the hub fails, that's fine (well, it would still be a pain in the butt, but not as much)
