Hello everyone, I have a 2 story 4500 sqrt home, mostly wood and drywall as it is a newer home (in USA). I currently have the hub on the 2nd floor, around my network closet. But I'm wondering if there is a way to figure out if I should/need a second hub. I have about 40 devices. Can I use something like the zwave topology to determine this?
From all I know, one controller should be more than sufficient, so long as at least one of your upstairs devices has good radio contact with at least one of your downstairs devices.
2 Likes
There have been quite a few of these exact same discussions... @LibraSun is correct, normally one hub is enough. I've certainly heard of people with 200 devices on a single hub. It should work just fine. 
I have multiple hubs and I love it. When a new release comes out, I can upgrade a single hub and affect only that portion of the house. I usually time it so that the upgrade runs while people are not using that section of the house... upgrade "upstairs hub" just as we all go to eat dinner, for example. Since I artificially limit the number of devices I'll add to a hub, I get really quick response.
I don't believe that Topology Map can tell you the answer although it's intended to provide clues to your mesh quality and ONE solution to a low quality mesh MIGHT be to split the mesh.
3 Likes
Depends on your hub. If it's a C7, you should be fine. If it's C4, you may want to consider a second hub
1 Like
If this question is based on the home being 2 stories remember that these radio waves are omni directional so they travel vertically just as well as horizontally.
1 Like
For a single structure, one hub with repeaters usually works well. I use Aeotec repeaters for Z-wave. Others like Ring extenders. Similar repeaters for zigbee seem to work well for that technology.
We have three buildings on our property, and having a hub for each of those has proven to be the best solution, but only because the exterior walls seem to prevent having any decent signal to repeat. I've always been puzzled by that because they are each just wood frame construction, but it's the case for us. Once inside, though, the hub is located in the far end of the lowest floor/basement in two of those buildings, yet performs very well.
1 Like
I'm with @csteele - I prefer multiple hubs. I've been using them at several clients (as well as personally) and it's been great. The folks at HE have always said a single hub should be enough but I've found in "real world" usage multi-hubs to be very stable with less quirky pairing/mesh issues overall..
Your layout sounds like it is spread out so you might benefit from such an arrangement. Depending on how you implement if you keep most of your rules local to each hub you reduce the overhead a bit and allow for some resiliency in your system. Make sure you have ethernet capability either via wired, MoCA or powerline to where the hubs would be located if going that route. Also you would use HubMesh to "link" the hubs together and share certain devices as necessary.
3 Likes
