Placement of Hub?

My office is in one of the corners of the home, where the networking equipment is running. I don't savor the notion of crawling in the attic to drop a cat5 cable to the middle of the home, although that would be ideal for coverage. Can the Hubitat hub remain in the office and still reach all the required z-wave sensors?

I have a gate sensor outside which triggers a Blue Iris PTZ setting, and with HS3 running on the office PC, it is usually hit and miss. I've been attempting various AC-powered z-wave devices (smart bulbs, motion sensors) in the hopes of expanding the z-wave network, but with limited success.

I've placed mine centrally using a powerline adaptor.
Works OK.

It might be worth getting a longer Ethernet cable and testing hub placement throughout the house to determine the optimal location. Another option is to use a long USB extension cable to move the stick location. The USB spec allows for max cable length of 5 meters (16 feet 5 inches).

Thanks for your suggestions.

Really hard to answer your question, there are many variables. How big, construction? I do have mine in my office in a corner and it works fine. If you build with z-wave plus ac powered switches, outlets and dimmers, strategically placed to act as repeaters you can create a nice z-wave mesh that will give you good coverage.

Your issue might be the z-wave bulbs, they are poor repeaters and can cause more issues than help. Also use z-wave plus devices for your repeaters.

1 Like

I have my hub in a corner, works fine, but my house is not so big, maybe a powerline adapter or a small wifi bridge like Vonets should work fine if you want the hub in the center of your house.

The Vonets you can connect the hub power supply to it and it has a tip to connect it to the hub, or you can use any other bridge, it will work.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014SK2H6W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LqPiCb79G8BVC

There are so many variables that determine where to place your hub.

For me my house it's all wood. No brick, metal or concrete to deal with so mine is at the far end of the house where my switch is located. Of course hub radio signal from your zigbee/zwave is what really matters not the actual hub.

For instance ST hub is a pile of crap when it comes to it's radio signal and I had to place it dead center of my all wood house. Where as my HE hub did just great where my router and switch is on the far end of the house.

It really depends on what sort of structure you house has.

As others have said there is a lot to consider.

However my hub is located in the far corner of my basement. I however do have properly placed zigbee and zwave routers around the house to help with the devices at the far end of the range. My hardwired devices all repeat already so those help out a lot but I did have to ad a few zigbee outlets to help with my xiaomi devices and adjust their location with problem devices.

Now it’s very stable and no devices drop.

My hubs, yes I have 2, are in the opposing corners of my house. Not centrally located at all. I use Zigbee and z-wave repeaters and have no issues because my hubs are in far away corners.

I put my hub in the middle of the house connected back to the main network via a powerline adapter

My hub is located in the center of the house, but I had interference from our furnace and the duct work. I moved it from under that and have had no troubles. (literally 2 feet) I think that you'd be fine unless you have a huge house. Then reconsider placement. I think that zigbee would struggle more than your zwave. But zigbee seems to be more of a headache than zwave. IMHO. Repeaters are your friend.

Mine is centrally located as well but hidden in a cabinet. I'm using a this usb extension cable for the adapter so the cabinet doesn't impact the signal (have not idea if this makes a difference).

From what I understand, the real key is how you build out your z-wave/zigbee mesh and the overall coverage.

I have my hub centrally located in my house connected wirelessly with this range extender. I had this one laying around, but you can get a cheaper model since the hub doesn't really need much throughput. I have the extender set to not repeat, it just acts like a wireless switch and connects to my AP over 5ghz.

I had my hub in my office's network closet but I was having a lot of trouble with some devices on the edge my network so I had to move it. I have a mix of zigbee and z-wave devices.

People say that bulbs are historically not very good repeaters, I guess it depends on the manufacturer though. Smart plugs are a pretty good repeater.

Adding a question to this thread; I have a wooden house conscisting of two levels. Does it matter if I place the Hub in the top floor or the bottom floor?

Mine is ground floor under the stairs. Have a few sensors in the Attic which work fine, very few repeaters in the house.

1 Like

While the location of your H can a difference, I think it's probably more important to focus on how to build solid z-wave and Zigbee networks. There are lots of articles on this forum that go into quite a bit of detail. That being said I doubt if first or second floor will make a huge difference, all other things being equal, but there are a lot of other factors that can make a difference - interior wall construction, where the HE is in relation to your wifi access points, what channel you're using, and so on. The best way is to test it and see :slight_smile:

1 Like

One thing I found when I was still on smartthing is that you should keep zibee hubs away from any USB 3 devices.
I had lots of issues and after looking through pages of possible causes I found that USB3 does cause interfearance with zigbee.

1 Like

Thanks guys! I guess I’ll try my way forward then. :slightly_smiling_face: I have two Asus AX6000 Meshrouters to choose between so I gues I can move around the one of them that acts as a node until I’m happy.

Nevertheless I think I’m gonna try to spread my different hubs between those two to limit the possibillity to cause interference. (When I got all my smart home stuff I did’nt have a mesh system so now everything wired is connected to the main unit)