So I have a 4 hub setup that is working extremely well for me currently. I have 3 c7 hubs, one for all my cloud devices, one for zigbee, and one for ZWave. Both zigbee and zWave hubs were modified with external antenna mods. The 4th hub is a c4 that interfaces with my iotawatt for power monitoring. All hubs are using hub mesh for communication and running of my rules successfully.
My dilemma is … if it’s not broke, dont fix it… I’ve been asking myself if there’s a compelling reason for me to upgrade to the c8 pro or whatever new flavor is on the horizon? What benefit would I really get at this point? Migrations always scare the crap out of me in a well oiled working setup. previous posts I’ve seen where the C7 has performed better than the c8 or c8 pro for zigbee and ZWave (unless I am mistaken), and then today with the new zWave release its having me reconsider. Are the antenna that come with the c8 pro as good or better than the ones I am using on the c7?
I don’t use dashboards
i like and want to keep my homebridge setup through makerapi
I don’t use or have any wifi connected devices
Also curious how the migration is working from the c7 to newer now that it’s had time to bake for awhile?
Well the differences from the C7 to the C8 pro are
More ram
Faster CPU
Updated Zwave 800 chip
Updated Zigbee 3.0 chip
Newer java backend
No we we have a newer Zwave backed with current firmware
Built in antennas
Support for Zwave LR
Ontop of what is mentioned above moving away from the C4 will will also give you more performance as it runs in 64 bit mode instead of 32 which is more of a hindrance then a good thing when you consider the limited memory it has. I also believe it uses some memory paging that further impacts performance.
The potential issues you will have are just related to the updated radios.
Some zigbee stuff that didn't properly follow the standard lost support with the Zigbee 3.0 hardware. As i understand it they had some coding magic on the older radio done to help stuff work that wasn't full following the spec. That stuff wasn't possible with the new radio.
Zwave should be all around better as long as the gear isn't to old. If you have some gear that isnt Zwave Plus you may want to proceed with caution
I have a C4 and haven't used it for some time. It is just to slow to do much of anything.
The included antenna are better then the default stuff that was part of the C7 but may not be better than the antenna mod on those. That said you could probably move the antenna from the old C7's to a C8 pro.
No matter how you look at it though there is no tool for migrating from a few hubs to one. So if you consolidate there will be a bit of mucking around.
Personally i would get a C8 Pro then pick either Zwave or zigbee hub to migrate to it. Probably the radio with the more recent and most devices. Let it bake in after the migration. Once that is done then get whatever is on the C4 migrated and decom the C4. Again let it bake in. Assuming all is good then consider moving the devices from the C7 with the other radio devices one at a time. Again after migrating them allow time to bake in and such. Lastly if everything is good consider moving the last hubs stuff to the C8 Pro.
The key i think is to be patient and let stuff settle after migrations. One thing to keep in mind is that you are going to be going from 16 slower cores to 4 faster ones. There is potential to create cpu load issue since you got things so segregated.
This - I would generally leave it alone, if it's working for you.
The C7 does work better with old Zigbee stuff and I keep one for just this reason.
You already have the external antennas.
Down the road, if you need updated ZWave, or ZwaveLR - I would consider the Zwave C7 as the one to target for some Christmas upgrade to a C8P. - That would seem to be the one that potentially has some value to an update, as the extra memory will be helpful it/when you add Matter into the mix (it will happen at some point)
Personally,if you don't need LR, or don't want to mess with a consolidation, I don't see the need for an upgrade. - I agree with your architecture split, but obviously, YMMV if you find some reason to consolidate, then a C8P may add some value.
Ironically my migration from my C7 to the C8 went remarkably well. My migration from the C8 to a C8 Pro not so much.
Now we have the C8 Pro with Zwave JS which should as I understand fix allot of the lingering issues with the previous Zip/Gateway used on the C7 for Zwave. That said I would probably wait a little bit just for that to get tested more with migrations. In theory it should be fine, but the more testing the better.
@inetjnky Something I didn't see explained though is why did you end up with 4 hubs in the first place. Was there a reason this happened, or did it just evolve into this situation.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback. Multi hub has sort of evolved over time. I have a raised ranch style house and my front and garage doors that have Schlage door locks that were pulled from support year ago are all on one side of my house. I have the ZWave hub located in a closet under the front and garage doors about 4ft from the locks and I have never had a problem with them working. Adding the antenna mod has helped with allowing me to have a ZWave problem free system however I only have about less than 30 ZWave / zWave plus devices. Because of this location I had zigbee related communication issues so split zigbee off and put that hub centrally located in the middle of the house for better coverage as the majority of my zigbee devices are the old Lowe’s Iris / Centralite motion / contact / leak / etc sensors. The v2, not v1 devices. With adding IotaWatt and speaking with @ogiewon and understanding the amount of processing power adding the iotawatt and all my child devices from that addition, I moved that to an old c4 that I wasn’t using. And with the split of ZWave and zigbee it just made sense to use a 3rd hub to keep cloud devices separate. All my lighting is Lutron Caseta including my shades.
Overall everything is working well. Because of my ecobee thermostat and the app and driver I’m using for that, I do occasionally run into high load on the cloud hub but I just simply reboot it periodically.
One of the things I am considering, but pains me to say this is, i introduced a HA OS setup on my proxmox hosted cluster for my garage door with ratgdo and I’ve been toying with the idea of reconsolidating into HAOS and using the ZWave and zigbee hubs as my radios. But I am not ready for the amount of work it’s going to take me to set up all those rules again. I love my hubitat setup as well which is another reason I haven’t yet. But losing a hub and the power consumption / network requirements of having multiple hubs while miniscule, I’m still in favor of consolidation and organization if I can help it.
I would probably leave the Zigbee and Zwave C7's alone. I wouldn't touch the Zwave one until you eliminate the non plus devices. The Zigbee list you mention seems like it would be likely to include devices that wouldn't be supported on the C8 as well.
If I was to do anything I would replace the C4 and the C7 for Cloud integrations to a C8 Pro. That should migrate easy and the extra memory and CPU will be the most beneficial to those functions.
Then you could at least test moving some devices to the C8 Pro if you wanted to see if there were compatibility issues with your specific gear.
HA is certainly an option and one nice thing about it is that it possibly moves your load from the Hubitat to a much more powerful x86 CPU in your cluster and you can manage the resources.
I have a ton of Lowes Iris v2 (Centralite OEM) Zigbee HA1.2 devices (outlets, motion, contact, and leak sensors) connected to my C8-Pro without any issues whatsoever. But, everyone's network is somewhat unique. So, it is a YMMV situation for sure.
When I got my C8-Pro, I consolidated everything back down to one hub. I do not use Z-Wave, though... I use Lutron Caseta, which has been trouble-free for years.
I think you’re conflating older ZHA1.2 devices, like Iris v2 devices, with Iris v1 devices, which use a pairing mechanism that is not compatible with ZHA1.2 or later. Zigbee 3.0 is pretty much a superset of ZHA1.2, and the exchange during pairing is almost identical.
I guess I am curious why you have a 4 hub setup, do you have some insane number of devices and apps running that you need it?
I run everything on my single C8 without issues, with about 40 Zwave devices, well over 100 Zigbee, many virtual devices, and lots of custom apps running all my automations, which keeps the hub constantly busy. Still, it runs like a champ.
I like the idea of separation of duties with multiple hubs, but is it really necessary?
The split of ZWave and zigbee was a necessity based on placing those radios in the best proximity to devices for best overall connectivity. That’s what started it. I was having high utilization with all my iotawatt child devices along with my thermostat and other cloud connected devices. I also took a step back and evaluated my disaster recovery scenario. By centralizing everything to a single hub, if my hub died my automations were dead for the entire house. Having one hub die out of 4 allowed most other services to continue functioning until that hub was replaced.
When thinking about consolidation to HA OS, running it in a virtualized LXC in a 3 node setup allows me some level of redundancy should one of the nodes go down so I wouldn’t be without services. This is where I wish Hubitat would reconsider its position to running a hubitat OS in a virtualized container and allow those of us who may not want to continue running a physical hub to be able to do so.
Looks like the only non ZWave plus devices I have left are my Schlage BE468/469 locks. I hesitate to upgrade them because they’ve been very reliable for me as well but I know I need to bite the bullet and do it. The big question is stick with ZWave plus or go with zigbee versions.
I have had both z-wave+ and zigbee locks. The zwave+ locks I have (Kwikset Home Connect 620) have been fairly reliable. But the Yale Assure Zigbee locks were far more reliable.
Thanks for that suggestion. I was hoping to stay with the Schlage Camelot but just realized they only offer a ZWave plus option. I def dont want a wifi lock which they offer. I’ll have to go down the research rabbit hole. Ascetics with having the same footprint on the door was my main reason for staying with the same brand.
I have 2 of the Zigbee version, I replaced my older non-plus Schlage locks with them. Amazon is the only place I could purchase them at the time (been several years). Not sure if that is still the case but at the time it was part of the Amazon Key relationship where the Amazon Echos with a Zigbee radio could control the locks.
