I am in the process of moving, so I bought an 8Pro so that I can have both houses on line at once. Did this last time and it worked great for the transition. However, last time I only ended up with the new HE as I gave my old one to my son.
This time I will end up with 2 hubs and I'd like to make use of the tech. Playing around, I was able to setup the mesh, but to what end? If only one hub has apps and devices what is the benefit of the 2nd hub? Is there any logic other than extending distance?
Hub Mesh doesn't really "extend distance" on its own -- it's just an entirely separate hub with its own Zigbee and Z-Wave networks (if you use those features). Depending on the placement of everything and other variables in your specific environment, it might help you cover more area than a single hub, but it doesn't really "extend" anything. An example use case: this might help if you have a detached building or exceptionally large residence. But for most people, the built-in mesh capabilities of Zigbee or Z-Wave (or the longer distance inherent to Z-Wave LR, though with it being so new, I don't know how much real-world data there is) are probably enough.
What it does do is let you share devices from one hub to the other over your LAN. So if you can't or don't want to put certain devices on the same mesh as your "main" hub, you can add them to the second hub and share them this way, allowing you to still use them in apps/automations on that hub. Some people do that for a reason like the above, some people do it to separate an old or chatty Z-Wave device or two (could really be anything, but it's usually that...), some people do it to run particularly intense or unknown third-party code on a second hub if they don't want to risk something on their "main" hub ... and others probably do it just because it's fun.
But if you don't have a use case in mind, there probably isn't one.
I have 3 production hubs at my home and manage a couple more at my father’s.
I have found the following benefits from having more than 1:
resource intensive apps can be relegated to their own hub
One hub can be used for radios only, no apps, and another can be used for rules only, this has helped since I have a very large number of devices and rules
One hub can be housed for devices that don’t play well with others, like some older Zigbee devices (Aqara and such)
When I went to the Pro I wanted to get the mesh set up and have apps/ZB/ZW modularized over 2 hubs.
The community kept says, "Why do you want to complicate your life, the Pro is plenty".
Alas, the C8 sit on the shelf, they were right.
It gets out of hand sometimes.
I could used the C8 in the shed where the pool and other sensors are by pulling an eth cable into the conduit but.....then I would have to buy another UPS and protect the hub from the critters and what have you.
When I get bored one day I will do this and regret all the trips to the aback garage.
I started with a C7 and later upgraded to a C8 Pro when I felt I was over-working the C7. Initially I used the C8 Pro for Zigbee and Z-Wave and most rules, and the C7 for some LAN and cloud-based integrations.
I recently tried moving everything to the C8 Pro and stopped using the C7. While it was able to handle it, I noticed that the apps pulling the most hub busy time were cloud integrations, so I decided it was probably a good idea to recommission the C7 and move all the LAN and Internet apps/devices to it.
My C8 has over 200 devices (including about 46 shared from the C7) and over 200 apps (mostly Rule Machine, Room Lighting, Button Controllers) running.
What I have on my C7:
Wiz Integration (WiFi lights)
Yeelight integration (WiFi lights)
Chromecast integration (Google speakers)
Lennox iComfort integration (for my thermostat)
OwnTracks
Tesla Connect Tessie (for my cars)
Tesla Powerwall manager
ThinQ connect integration (for LG washer/dryer)
Solar Forecast driver
SmartHQ driver (for GE kitchen appliances)
OpenweatherMap Alerts driver
Most of these are community apps, but what they all have in common is they're LAN or Internet connected. The only LAN-connected devices I have on my C8 Pro are a few Matter over WiFi bulbs that I originally couldn't connect to the C7. Your post prompted me to re-check that limitation, and it looks like the C7 can now support Matter, so I'll be getting those last few WiFi devices switched over to it tonight.
I use 2 Hubs: C8 Pro for all my devices and C5 for all automations. Technically I have 3 cause I have Home Assistant also for dashboards and the occasional device that Hubitat doesn't support.
