Now Sorted, was clicking on the device not the +
Sorry coming to this a little late as you've already set things up. Another approach is deploying the hubs "by location" where you have hubs in different areas of your house (I had mine in the basement and 2nd floor for example) and pair the devices nearest to each hub. Also create rules local to each hub as well using Hub Mesh only for cross hub rules etc - like for the Alexa app. The advantage to doing this is splits up the workload reducing overhead and offers some additional stability - if one hub goes offline the other will still work.
Better late than never, all information is welcome. This is what i intended to do with the second hub for the workshop. However what you suggest in a use case for the bulbs would probably cause problems.
If you put hue zigbee bulbs on a hub with other repeating zigbee devices, its likly to screw with your zigbee mesh due to the flaky repeating performance of these bulbs. Really, they are better off on the hue hub, but i dont have one to hand.
I think once ive got it all sorted and everything working i, and more importantly the wife will be happy!
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That is good to hear! Yeah I ditched my Hue stuff a while ago (including the few bulbs I had) preferring to keep all things HE as much as possible.
I had to use the multi-hub arrangement for a client of mine whose detached garage (with an ethernet run!) was just a little to far from the house for a reliable signal. Still working great for them 
Thats great! My home is a test bed for home automation. Once i have it operating reliably, i hope to market it a reasonable price to others.
Yep that's exactly what I did.. good stuff!
If you ever get to the point where all your automations are working the way you want, then you clearly don't have enough automations.
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Your My wifes worst nightmare!
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Well im having very little luck with the new setup, the lights are not consistent at all sometimes they come on sometimes not, other times only 1 light will come on when the automation asks for all of them in that room. Im thinking that is ive but the bulb mesh on a different channel that the mesh isnt robust enough. Whats the best way forward with this?
Ive moved the hub to the same location as the old hue hub and im hoping that will work better, but if not im going to have to add some repeaters. Im not a huge fan of repeaters that just do that function, maybe i could put some power outlets around and use them for other stuff?
I could just ditch the hue bulbs for something else i suppose, but thats going to be expensive!
You can get some Ikea Tradfi outlets:
I've heard they work great (also for Aqara stuff too).
Yeah you've got some sunk cost in Hue unfortunately. Rather than spend a ton of money you might consider getting another Hue Hub - you can STILL use your 2nd HE hub though.
This is why I generally stick with one type of device hub if possible - especially for my clients. Even the HomeAssistant setup I have running at home does not really control any devices (other than testing) just some services like Ring and some other stuff.
The have the looks only a mother could love!
Was thinking something like this may work?
Well Yes, I have 30 lamps, and replacing them would be costly.
However im interested in reliability and the system working without the interweb (excluding Alexa)
My hub mesh also failed to restart on power outage and so im afraid its not looking like a long term solution.
In the short term im looking at all of the hue automation on one hub, with some repeaters included and all of the other automation on another. Im looking into the hubmeh restart on reboot at the moment.
In the long term i think im going to follow your lead and move away from HE for the rule side of things and use HE for device control only, but thats another learning curve and at the moment i need a quick reliable fix.
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Those look cool - should be compatible but I'm in the US so cannot say for sure.
Something in your setup is not right if hub mesh does not restart after a power failure.. something with your network maybe? If you haven't already consider some sort of power backup for each hub and router. Something like these (I have the US equivalent of both)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TalentCell-Rechargeable-6000mAh-12000mAh-Lithium/dp/B0713T4XT9/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TalentCell-Uninterrupted-27000mAh-Wireless-Smartphone/dp/B08FBB4Q8V/
Im Told that they are compatible and repeat well, so im going to buy 6 of them, 1 for each floor on each channel, Im hoping that will sort out the zigbee mesh issue. over time ill replace all of my sockets with them.
regarding the UPS, ive been running a UPS on the hubs for a while and so unplanned reboots are rare, but from experience can still happen and so i want to know how the setup behaves if it happens.
Its strange that everything loads up just fine apart from the Hub mesh....I changed from UDP to TCP and they seem to re establish contact now, so im going to run with that....
Once its running im off to learn Node Red. HE will be relegated to device management only i think.
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Okay cool - do you have your router on a UPS up as well?
Yes that's exactly the way I do it too and for me it works well. Feel free to PM me with any questions etc or post in the NR section.
Not yet, but thats an ongoing thing worthy of another debate... but it will be done....
Strangely enough moving the hubs down to the rack location, which is on the ground floor under the stairs, (this is where the Hue hub was, seems to have improved the lighting reliability.
This is very counter intuitive because they were originally located on the first floor in the center of the building...
Dark Magic the EM spectrum is 
The UPS on the router keeps the subnet stable. I am using a big UPS with my gateway/router and POE switch and have never looked back...
My subnet is causing me many issues 
, Along with my appalling internet connection which stops when it rains....
We have had a government grant to have FTP installed, which will i hope resolve most of my issues, but Open Reach, who handle the UK comms network infrastructure are crap. They were supposed to have it installed 12 months after contract and that was 18 months ago....
Well, I think im getting to the bottom of the issues, i dont think its the zigbee mesh causing the issues, its something to do with the HE setup.
My reasoning is that, if i ask alexa to switch on all lights, she does so and all of the lights come on. I then ask for all off and off the go. So the zigbee mesh must be ok, yes?
Again any buttons that i use work flawlessly, they turn the lights on and pause the motion rule, and when turned off they resume the motion rule.
BUt the motion rule works intermittently. How do i get to the bottom of whats going on? i cant see any logging for the bulbs on either hub. i have descriptive logging on for them but im not seeing any logs for them.
