I'm sure this has been asked or commented on before, so feel free to point me other threads...
Apart from those who have purchased a new hub as a "development hub" to provide some safeguards when developing new code or testing new devices, I'm interested to know how people have made use of a second, third, etc, hub as part of their daily "production" setup, particularly given the recent sale. Common uses as I understand it are to separate devices in some way, putting problematic devices and/or apps onto another hub, etc.
I took the plunge and ordered an extra hub earlier today and was interested to know peoples thoughts and experiences, particularly those who may have chosen to do this recently.
One common use would be to create zones, i.e. a first floor hub and a second floor hub, or a north hub and a south hub to group devices by physical location (which should semi-reflect the mesh activities).
I have one client where we have two hubs, one in the main house and the other in their barn / workshop. Each has their own Z-wave and Zigbee networks since they are about 1/2 an acre apart connected by a Wifi bridge. With the new hub mesh I have given the owner even more control of devices between the two buildings. One of the best features I enabled is that he can unlock the side garage door of the main house for packages when they arrive and remote lock when they are done with the delivery all without leaving the workshop.
I am thinking about recommending a 3rd hub for command and control supervision.
Thanks @ronv42, Admittedly not my use case, but certainly one of the outcomes I was looking for.... it shouldn't always be about me and what I need.... Thanks for sharing your use case for other's to benefit from.
I use my C4 for "devices", Zwave & Zigbee, and my C5 for rules and externally hosted devices (hue), Lan devices etc.
My new C7 is being used to redistribute the devices into 2 zones, one, in the basement, and one on the second floor. The C7 is presently installed in the faraday cage that is my utility room (where I have a bunch of devices), and will gradually (if it can) take over the basement and whatever part of the first floor it can see better than the 2nd floor hub.
I have a new C7 incoming that will take over the second floor from the C4 and likely most of the first floor.
The C4 may get relegated to a secondary rules processor or Lan Device host or simply a backup to the C5 - not sure yet.
I like the new 700 Stack Z-wave on the C7, and all the associated tools, hence the reason the C4 and C5 are getting relegated to the Pub leagues!
My 'extra' hub is used for all my zigbee bulbs that are known to be sketchy routers, this allowed moving them from the hue bridge where they formally lived.
I use my second hub for all my automation rules using Webcore. All my devices are on my first hub and I use the new hub mesh feature.
It all seems to work really well for me.
I have four in use now, 3-C5s and a C-7. The C-7 has all Z-Wave devices. One C-5 runs all the IOT stuff, weather, Rachio, Echo, Sharptools and Google Telemetery syncing. One C-5 runs the HVAC system, which includes 17 Keen vents, 2 dozen or so Aquara temp sensors, CentraLite Pearl, and some rules to manage it all. The last C-5 runs the security stuff, Kiosk Browser, controls the indicators on the wd200 switches, Schlage locks, Konnected, etc.
They all sit behind the crown molding of the kitchen cabinets and are powered by a Ubiquiti POE switch. The switch is nice because you can remotely shutdown a port to force a hard restart of the hub should the need arise, which 'knock on wood' it hasn't.
I found that as the hubs are loaded up with devices, apps, rules, etc they seem to get sluggish. So I just add another one and segregate functions off to them.
hmm well I just counted - lol 6 hubs here - I think I have a problem.
Currently 2 c7 1 c5 3 c4's
the c4's are all but retired.
1 c5 and 1 c7 linked up via hubconnect - c7 is handling zwave stuff. c5 is zigbee and cloud stuff. the other c7 I use to test stuff / play with code / sacrifice to beta releases for testing purposes and such.
Thanks everyone for your responses (and grammar corrections ) .
Is there a preferred approach to which hub (or hubs) are used to serve up dashboards and the admin UI? Guessing the admin side would be done by each hub separately, but just thought I'd check.
I recently asked this same question...you may want to look at the replies on that thread as well.
Overall consensus seemed to be to separate devices by location, i.e., one side of the house on one hub, other side on the other hub. If your house has multiple floors, probably one on each floor might make the most sense.
Now that Hubitat has the hub mesh I have setup one hub specifically for security. This includes locks, door, window, and certain motion sensors. This hub has no repeater devices guaranteeing that no events get lost during a power outage, including the device that reports the outage itself. This solves my long time issue of missing events due to being lost when the repeater lost power before it could relay the event. The other hub handles everything else such as lighting control, etc.
This is a little sketch I did a while back of my setup, not that much has changed.
It looks very convoluted, but its fast and I'm running my Dash and mobile access via HA. Node red for most automations, and connection to Alexa devices, and a few custom apps and dashboards for my Bose SoundTouch etc running via HA, and dash.
I probably don't have a big enough house to justify separate floors or zones within the house, downstairs is essentially the double garage and a laundry area, so probably half a dozen door sensors and 2-3 smart outlets. I'm hoping I can manage any issues with those devices through repeaters and other measures.
I'm leaning towards the option of physical devices and interactive / time-critical type apps related to those devices on one hub and other less time-dependent, cloud-based or problematic apps on a second hub. I guess it will be part of the fun to play with it and see what works for my setup.
You mention that hub 3 runs your dashboard. Are you able to control devices on the other hubs in that setup? e.g. are you able to put say a switch tile on a dashboard for a light upstairs and turn the light on / off from the dashboard?
Yes, that's possible. Well, it was working with HubConnect, so I assume it works with HubMesh too. I don't actually use the dashboard that much, and I still need to rebuild it since I switched to HubMesh.
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