This may be a silly question.... I have just purchased another HE - for no real reason other than to tinker around... I was going to split up my devices across the 2 hubs.
There is no need to have separate Zigbee and Zwave channels across both HE's, right ? I assume that the 2 HE's may interfere with each other if the same channels are used BUT the devices are paired to one or the other . so theoretically all should be ok with the same channels being shared on both HE's.. correct ?
Also noticed that you can change the Zigbee channel in HE. But unclear how you do the same on Zwave...
Z-wave will sort itself out. Zigbee should be on different channels for sure. The sharing happens with Hub Mesh. You have to manually set that up for the devices you want to share between hubs. Sharing of devices is not done by radio between hubs with Hub mesh.
Many use a second hub for testing. I use one of my three hubs to isolate some old 300 series Z-Wave devices that are really chatty because of the way I use them. I then use Hub Mesh to share them with the main hub. They appear and function in the main hub in the devices list as if they had been included to it, but they’re not. They are isolated where they won’t cause issues with my newer Z-Wave devices that are actually included on the main hub.
Note: The Doc is out of date. You will find Hub Mesh under Settings.
Actually, it's a really good question. Many folks have a second or even third hub for precisely your reason. I have three- the primary hub is used for all my zwave and zigbee devices and all of my production rules. The 2nd hub has its radios disabled and runs some of my more problematic apps that would tend to bog down the primary hub. The third is purely nonprod and used for whatever. I use hub mesh sparingly to share devices when needed.
My approach is slightly different.
I have a C3, 5 & 7.
C7 has all my devices paired to it. A few rules but not many.
C5 runs all my rules.
C3 I tend to use for new devices that I have not used before to have a play with. Also has a few rules.
Radios are disabled if not used.
Hub mesh to share devices where needed.
I try to keep things to a minimum on my C3 so that I can use it as a replacement should either of my C5 or 7 go awol.
Thank you Brad5 and bobbles, you've got me thinking....
I have a whole slew of Webcore pistons... I suppose i could have one HE just to run the automation pistons, with radios off, and have all my devices on the other HE.
Another idea was to put all my , god-forsaken, Wemo devices on one HE.
In both cases I would need Hub Connect so each Hub sees each others devices...
You can only use Hub Mesh to connect HE hubs. It will not connect to ST hubs.
I did use HubConnect but when Hub Mesh was released I moved over to Hub Mesh.
Where I can I always use system apps unless a user app gives me a better experience.
If you want to keep your ST hub in use you could connect one of your hubs to it and then use Hub Mesh to share the ST devices to the other hub I suppose.
HubConnect will also allow you to connect two hubs on different networks, if I recall. I find hub mesh works just fine for hubs sitting (networkwise at least) next to each other.
Hub Mesh scares me because when I tried to use it before my devices would always go “offline” even on the same network. I’ve been procrastinating on setting up my new hubs as a result of this and splitting out my network.
It's been pretty solid for me. If your network has issues with UDP try the TCP setting - just make sure they are the same on both hubs. The only time I see a device go offline is if I remove it from the mesh on one hub and don't delete the device on the other.
I have 6 HE hubs. 3 C-7's and 3 C-5's. I have one "Main" hub (C-7) that is the core and runs a combination of Lutron integration, Zigbee devices, z-wave devices, IP2IR (IR hub) as well as my Alexa integration, Homebridge integration and several other integrations. I have one C-5 that does nothing but Zigbee Color bulbs and Color integrations, including a Hue Bridge. I have one C-7 in the shed that handles the back yard zigbee and z-wave. I have a C-5 that handles my weather integrations including my PWS hubs and integrations with NWS, etc. I have one C-7 that will replace one of the C-5's and then I will use the C-5 for testing. In addition to the Hubitat hubs, I have a Lutron pro hub, Hue Bridge, IP2IR hub, Hoobs homebridge hub. As you can imagine, I use HubMesh extensively and it is "solid as a rock" with almost every device on all hubs meshed to the main core hub. The only time that the devices go offline is when I reboot one of the hubs and it takes about a minute for those to come up once the remote hub is back online. Believe it or not everything works great and I really don't see any disadvantage of splitting things up according to geography, application, or any other logical split. With hub mesh it moves like one big hub. Also I use Alexa AND Siri (Since it is on the HomeKit side) to control all devices via voice.
I would like to ask the experts in this group for some help as well.
I have 2 hubs one that connects as Zwave devices with US frequency and another hub with devices that connect zwave India devices. Is there anyway i could run rules or automation that connects devices from both the hubs.
e.g motion sensor is in hub 1 (zwave USA) and a door sensor is in hub 2 ( zwave India) can I run a rule for the door sensor to be active when there is no motion detected in the motion detector.
Yes, you can definitely do this. It is especially if both your hubs are on the same LAN, in which case you can use "Hub Mesh" to share devices from one hub to the other. Details on setting up and using Hub Mesh are here:
