I am interested in knowing for a two-story house of approximately 8,600 square feet what is the best technology to work with. Zigbee or Zwave or other. It is worth considering using two hubs and joining them via LAN. I do not consider myself an expert on the subject so I would appreciate which is the best option for this type of projects that are larger than a typical house. I currently use Zooz devices which have been very stable on other residential projects but I would not want to get involved in suggesting a system that does not have the capacity to cover a project of this size. Want to also integrates HIKvision cameras but don’t know what benefits i can get by having them work with HE.
Thank you for the feedback
You mostly have an RF range puzzle... ZWave, Zigbee, Matter, etc. all are physically small with their antenna's hidden inside. The hub's with their larger, external antennas might be able to be able to reach out to a device, but not the return message. That will prevent you from Joining/Pairing devices or make the edge cases unreliable.
I would start by imagining 30' radius sphere around the spot you plan on putting a hub. If that doesn't cover all the wall sockets, light switches, that you plan on automating, you'll need another hub.
Hubitat is great at linking multiple hubs, loosely or tightly depending on your needs. You can treat individual areas as if they were zones unto themselves or interconnect the hubs to allow any device on any hub to interact with any other device on any other hub. If you plan on Voice (Alexa, Google) then you can have one hub be more 'central' to allow for the limits of those two vendors.Siri and HomeKit are more flexible, because every hub can have it's own connection to HomeKit.
Video is not a built-in feature of Hubitat, instead most people use something to record video and those systems have 'triggers/alerts' that can be used by Hubitat like any other sensor. But study this carefully to make sure there's a driver for your choice of DVR.
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My home is 6400 square feet and some parts are quite remote from the hub. Z-Wave has served me well. It tends to have better range than the other protocols. I do use a Zooz Zac38 to bridge the furthest rooms (an addition onto what used to be an exterior wall) and that works great. I would imagine, with a centrally placed Hubitat, that an 8600 square foot house with a solid Z-Wave mesh would perform well.
Can't help you on the video/DVR front. I have a system that's not integrated with HE. Maybe that actually answers your question 
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Thank you for the feedback. Do you use just one C8 and add Zooz ZAC38 ? How many ZAC38 do you use? How many zwave devices do you have? Regarding security cameras I am looking for something to send a signal or dry contact so lights controlled by Hubitat could turn on. Any suggestions?
Thank you. Besides the info on hubitat docs regarding connecting multiple HE via LAN is there any other links or videos where I can learn. Not sure how complex that could be. I have installed 5 HE already and I’m getting the hang of it but a hose this size is something that I need to understand how to make it to work.
I’ve got a 4500 sq ft house and have no problem with a single hub. I use both Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. I also use mostly Lutron lights without any additional repeaters for that system. For your project 2 hubs is likely enough, but YMMV
I have one C7. I have about 45 Z-Wave devices (not counting the dozen or so seasonal devices I just decommissioned). I have one ZAC38 to help with that far wing I mentioned. One of my devices is the Zooz Titan valve actuator, and its signal is apparently super strong so it acts as a repeater on the other side of the house. I haven’t had the need for anything else. I think it helps to have Z-Wave switches in most rooms, it distributes the signal quite well.
Thank you. I will definitely need about 60 or more Zwave devices for these property on all rooms so house should be mostly covered plus I will throw in 2 ZAC38 to get covered. Thank you for the advice
I use Reolink IP cameras with Blue Iris NVR. When motion is detected on a camera Blue Iris sends a push notification to a local end point in HE as the trigger. From there you can do whatever you want in RM. Works great, also pretty fast.
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I would think that either zigbee or z-wave can work in this scenario. As long as you build out a mesh with attention to repeaters.
Interior square footage isn’t the only consideration wrt wireless protocol performance/reliability. The shape of the house, stuff inside the walls, other electronic sources of RF interference in the home, etc. All of that could be a factor in a specific home that would be hard to generalize based solely on the size of the structure.
Are you making suggestions for a friend/relative’s house? Or is this an installation job for a client?
Available devices in your location may tip the balance one way or another. Or the homeowner’s preferences re: aesthetics of switches and other devices.
Thanks for the feedback. The project is for a client and considering the size of the house would like to have possible failures that may affect communication.
I have had a good result with the Zooz and some Zigbee disposses in other projects, but considering the size of the house I would treat in this case it would be to use only zwave since mixing with Zigbee could require establishing two mesh networks that I imagine will require more equipment so that both Networks (Zwave and Zigbee) have a strong signal around the whole house. Suggestions are always welcome
You may want to consider camect for your security camera/video solution if you like "purpose-built" appliances instead of a software solution that requires you to provide the hardware (or VM). It's not inexpensive (starting at $519).
There is a community driver available. The device seems to be very well liked/reviewed.
Disclaimer: I don't have a camect yet. I will probably buy one in the next 30 days or so as a solution for the same function you are looking for, i.e., turning on/up outdoor lights when specific object types are detected. Also, all other things being fairly equal, I always prefer a purpose-built appliance (like HE) over a software solution.
I have a camect, it's awesome
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