Hub Mesh - When and Why? Do's and Dont's question

🧰 Built-In Apps and Drivers Built-in Apps
1

Hello All! looking forward for your advice on whether I am over complicating my setup or if I am indeed on the right path.

Few months ago I upgraded from my C-5 to a Brand New Release day C-8, love it of course. And was wondering, hey, what should I do my with C-5. It's just there gathering dust, and selling it, "could" give me back some money, but, wondering if I can do something.

I've followed the official guide for the migration, on the disabling of Zigbee, etc. etc. and Enabled Hub Mesh between my C-8 and C-5.

My idea of this mesh, is to split automations between the Hubs, mostly what needs a "non HE" device, cloud, virtual, etc. should be hosted by C-5 and whatever is "native" C-8 Should run in itself.

My Network is "small", at most I have like 70 devices, as my house is tiny and overall I just keep playing around with home automations, dare to say that Hubitat Safety Monitor is my main Home Alarm as well, so that's why I was thinking on "investing" to keep the C-5 so the C-8 never gets "hogged" down.

Am I on the right path onto something here? or given the scale of smallness of what runs C-8 am I just adding a layer of complexity that has no real benefit? I'm on the ropes trying to understand whether or not Meshing is a good idea, if everything was working fine before.

Oh, Btw, the 5 sits next to the 8th, just because... space :wink:

Thanks for your comments and guidance, appreciate it.

2

It sounds like your hub was running fine before and both are running fine after. That leads me to conclude that you'd be OK either way. Most people don't "need" two hubs, aside from very specific scenarios where devices don't play well (certain Zigbee bulbs plus other non-bulb devices being the classic example).

However, some people choose to use two (or more) hubs for a variety of reasons--say, "native" or otherwise trusted apps/drivers on one and possibly questionable community code or "intense" apps on another (old Z-Wave polling or some aggressive LAN or cloud polling-based apps, maybe?). There's certainly nothing wrong with your setup if you want to try it, whether it's one of these reasons or just wanting to learn more about Hub Mesh. :slight_smile:

While it is a bit more complicated to manage two hubs (and you'll have to find some solution if you need presence or notifications on both), only you can decide if it's ultimately too much work for whatever benefit you find. Hub Mesh makes sharing and swapping devices fairly easy, though, so I suspect you won't mind too much even if the intrigue is main reason!

1 Like
3

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, you definitively bring good points that I'll have to consider. Appreciate your input!

4

I use my old C5 as a secondary Homekit instance. I wanted a Homekit interface for someone else to use that didn't have all the devices that I have on mine. Since the current app doesn't allow for more than one instance, the 2nd hub let me do that. Then used mesh to connect the devices. Just an example of something that can be done if needed.

4 Likes
5

I have a ranch house with a metal pole building next to it and then a conventional detached garage next to that. My first attempts at stringing zwave and zigbee through everything didn't go very well. I bought a second hub and installed that (along with a UPS and another one of my mesh wifi routers) in the metal building which covers it and the garage. Things started working a LOT better after that.

I have all the devices I care about controlling/monitoring/etc shared to the house hub with hub mesh. Everything works great. So for me the biggest use case of a second home is "extending" your mesh (in quotes because I know it's completely separate Zigbee/Zwave meshes) but keeping a single interface to all the devices when you need to bridge longer distances or overcome physical obstacles for the radios.