Multi HE Implementations - Best Practice

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New to HE - 24 Dec, not to HA :slight_smile:

Received 2nd HE.

All part of making the HA more robust.

So have split out all my Hue bulbs, switches, sockets, and Sensors between two Hue Hubs - I Had too many for one hub anyway - but now that I have an HA that supports multiple Hubs I have broken them out to Downstairs and Upstairs.

I would like to have one HE just running Heating/Cooling and Hot Water.

In my case that means

zwave dual channel boiler controller - Heating Radiators and Hot Water
zwave TRVs ~16 when fully loaded (battery)
zwave Thermostats ~10 (Battery)
Tap into ~17 Hue Hub based Sensors (temp)
~10 zigbee Temp Sensors direct to HE (battery)

and 3 Hue Motion Sensors direct to HE for Fridge and Freezer Temp monitoring/Open door detection (Kept on the Heating HE because the HE is sat very close to the three Hue Motion Sensors)

Also ~5 zwave sockets spread around the house for the battery devices to relay through

So QUESTION?

Is it best to keep ALL Zwave devices on a single HE and all the Zigbee HE devices all on One hub - or segregate them out between the two hubs?

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Answer: It Depends...

Lot of factors in this decision, but ultimately boils down do you have enough devices to create multiple, strong meshes? Looking at the above (based on # of mains powered repeaters), Iā€™d be leaning toward splitting them according to mesh type instead of location, i.e one ZWave, one Zigbee.

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@thebearmay I am thinking aloud and I need to sort this out - but leaving HEATING HE to do all ZWave and have the MASTER do ZIGBEE.

I have about another 50 zwave devices that work as relays to add to HEATING

Move Native Zigbee direct to HEATING HE to MASTER HE - probably have less than 32 zigbee devices in house.

Will expose only the HUE Sensors I need on HEATING HE.

The MASTER HE will see everything on both Hue Hubs.

The vast majority ~90 zigbee devices on Hue Hubs

I can share ZWave devices from HEATING to MASTER that I need for overall control.

4

I don't think there is a "best" way but more of whatever works for you. Hubitat was designed as a single unit and is quiet capable of handling well over a hundred devices with no issues. Likewise, the automations can also number into the hundreds with no issue. Having a good zigbee and zwave mesh also eliminates the the need for multiple hubs. In fact splitting devices onto different hubs can make your mesh weaker on both hubs because there are less devices on each of them.

I see only one practical reason for a second hub; and that is for security during power outages. The advantage of the second hub is that it is setup having no repeaters. Any device that route through a repeater is subject to lost events during power outages because the repeating device lost power. Of course the device will eventually reroute but that can take anywhere from a few seconds to many minutes. So if you are going to use your hub for security keep this in mind.

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@an39511 good points

I will use one for ALL ZWAVE and the other for ALL Zigbee (a dozen or so devices - all battery so no mesh)

That will keep the ZWave solid.

Both HEs are on Hue Plugs so I can use either HE or Hue Hub to hard reboot (remotely if required) with a 10 count an HE hug that gets locked up.

This is mainly for the HE hub that has all the ZWAVE in case it loses ZWAVE again (BTW support think it is one of the custom drivers that caused the ZWAVE to die) but will keep an eye on it.