I was wondering about if it would be a good idea to use multiple HE hubs rather than just one. Looking to improve reliability, reduce resource strain on individual hubs and help communication between devices/apps etc.
In my case I had to relocate my hub originally in a closet the first floor to a central place (in the rafters) in my basement in order for a Yale side basement door lock to function properly. This has caused some issues on my 2nd floor when trying to pair etc. I've likely created ghost devices etc which is a different conversation.
My thought was to add a hub to the 2nd floor and let it handle the upstairs devices while the basement hub handled the basement and first floor devices things might work a little better.
Im currently running two in production, the second unit is specifically dedicated to zigbee bulbs.
The intent being to eliminate my hue bridge.
Currently it's only got 7 bulbs on it, but they are playing well together.
I've thought about using one hub as my critical hub with all of my devices and almost all first party apps. Obviously Rule Machine.
Then having a 3rd-Party hub which runs all of the 3rd party apps with Hub-Link to link it all together...
I'm just so cheap though...
The party hub sounds like a fun place to be though...
I've had the exact same thought - and might do it. Sure wish you could run a 'compute only' instance of HE in a VM... But I do understand why they don't open that 'pandora's box'.
That seems like a cool idea - especially for those who have units with 2 sticks. You could get an additional "bare" hub and have a zigbee hub and a z-wave hub...
In my case I'm worried about keeping the hub as close to the devices as possible.
I do like @keithcroshaw's idea about dividing apps builtin/3rd party apps too..
I have a 4000+ sqft house, and have no issues with signal strength or coverage with one hub.
I put my hub dead center of my house, connected to the network with a powerline adapter. I also have lots of repeating zwave devices, and soon a bunch of Ikea Tradfri outlets for the zigbee side.
I mainly am thinking of a 2nd hub for the user apps/development.
My hub is dead center as well - in my basement. The Yale wouldn't function properly unless the hub was close. I think I have other issues than the strength of the network.
However I am looking for the most bullet proof solution possible - It is my intention to offer the HE to my home clients and I therefore need as much stability as possible. I say this having learned a painful (and still ongoing) lesson on doing too many manual exclusions..
Using powerline is an interesting choice. I've had mixed results mostly decent sometimes flaky depending upon the age and setup of the house wiring. I've used it to create a wired-backhaul for certain WiFi mesh systems.
I've seen the same. On homes <10-15 years I have had zero problems with powerline (for low bandwidth uses like HE - I have seen intermittent problems with video streaming). In older homes I've had a LOT of problems with it, though.
I've also used MOCA adapters in some homes, when unused coax outlets were readily available. It costs more, but the network is usually rock solid - especially if you can dedicate the coax to the network use, and not piggyback on AV signals - although it is designed to work fine there too, but you need to make sure the AV equipment (cable co box, etc) aren't also trying to use a MOCA network - they often do.
This is interesting - so the bulb hub is only passing ZLL messages? Or is it passing ZHA, but without any problems due to there not being any other ZHA devices in the mesh?
FWIW, I've been running my house from a central closet with hub connected via power line adapter since when I was on ST, and always since I've been on Hubitat. Perhaps twice in 4 years has the actual powerline link gone down, which is easily reset simply by power-cycling the source end.
I now have cat 5 & 6 running to centrally located closets on my first and second floor so am good there. I was using powerline for my office connection and things were mostly good - there were occasional dropouts/slowness. My house wiring is a mixture of old and new.. When we started this latest reno was also able to run cat 6 to the office.
Powerline is definitely a nice quick and inexpensive solution to connectivity issues if the wiring can handle it.
I realize that 2 HE hubs might in fact be overkill but if it helps with reliability/stability then it seems it might be a good idea to recommend it to people especially those with larger homes or bigger properties.
Seems like you'd get additional flexibility as well - like being able to have a "bridging" hub that only connects to 3rd party hubs etc or limit a hub to certain device types or apps etc.
