SmartThings to Hubitat

I have Smartthings with 100 devices. I was wondering how many Hubitat's would be recommended? From what I've read you can link the Hubitat's together to help with the distance? With Smartthings I have 6 WiFi Hub's to help with the WiFi & Z-Wave signal.

We're moving away from Plume because it has to many glitches & you can't turn off the WiFi in them. How many devices can be on one Hubitat will it have any performance issues with scenes that turn on & off all the switches? Also if you link them would you need to add each device to each hub or would it do what SmartThings does & use the satellite hubs with one main one?

Thanks for any help.

There's no reason most people need more than one hub, and the problem you're trying to solve (Zigbee and Z-Wave range) is usually not one of them. Both of these protocols have devices that can act as repeaters--generally any mains- or USB-powered device, including smart plugs/outlets, switches/dimmers, the elusive USB-powered motion sensor, and dedicated "repeater" devices (which, again, most people do not need due to these other devices). If all your devices are battery-powered, then you will have to fill in the gap with repeaters of some sort.

Each protocol (Z-Wave and Zigbee) will only repeat for itself and for the same network to which it is joined (e.g., if you also have a Hue Zigbee network, your Hubitat devices won't repeat through that). If you have the ST system I'm thinking of, then it's likely your ST Wi-Fi "sub" hubs also repeated Z-Wave and Zigbee for you. However, an additional Hubitat is different--it will create its own Z-Wave and Zigbee networks, not extend your existing ones, and you'd need to link them together over your LAN using apps on both hubs like HubConnect or Hub Link/Link to Hub. So in that sense, it could actually make the problem worse. :slight_smile:

My recommendation: one hub, then make sure you have adequate Z-Wave and Zigbee repeaters. These articles may help:

I have only been using Hubitat a couple of weeks, so my experience is somewhat limited. Currently I have 140 devices on one Hubitat hub. It's a collection of z-wave, zigbee, and Iris gen 1 zigbee. I have no latency issues with any automation.

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Before getting SmartThings WiFi Hub's I did try out the devices on the Hubitat that I had. It did start to bog down so maybe I had something wrong back then? It crashed a few times that I remember. That's why I was thinking I needed 2 Hubitat's on my 2nd try. I bought Hubitat & SmartThings Hub not WiFi to compare both back then found out that I needed the WiFI hub to extend the network. That's why I was seeing what you all recommended before I tried it out again. Maybe I got a defective one?

That's good to know maybe I'll try it again with just one. I have a 3500 SQFT home all on one level with a basement so it has to go a ways to get across the house & to the basement. Good to know that one Hubitat can support 100+ with being stable. One thing that's a big plus to me is not relying on internet to use the devices.

Some people report hub slowdowns on Hubitat, but in may cases they can be traced to bad apps or driver or poorly written rules. If you stuck with in-box apps and drivers, then something odd could have been going on. (I know that coming from SmartThings, it can be tempting to use lots of custom apps or drivers, and I did early on in the platform. However, they have a lot built-in now for both, so I'd be extra sure that what you're looking for really needs one.) I'm not sure I've ever seen a defective hub stated as the cause of such problems, but occasionally hubs are bad for one reason or another, so I guess I couldn't rule it out.

If you still have Hubitat, doing a full reset and trying again would be my recommendation. If you experience issues despite following the best recommendations, Support might be interested in figuring out what's going on, so I'd encourage you to post here again or contact them officially directly.

Some people do indeed use multiple hubs to "take the load off" of one, but we're told that hub resources are rarely the constraint at hand. Zigbee and especially Z-Wave bandwidth, however, are fairly slow, though sufficient for the (hopefully) infrequent and small messages they send. Still, this is one reason some people like to use multiple hubs. Others like to segregate possible "problem devices" to one, like chatty energy meters or Zigbee smart bulbs. It can't hurt to try this either, but it's more work to set up (nothing can "automatically" connect the two--you have to configure a built-in app or a popular, far more flexible community app and driver set do this), and it creates two entirely separate networks (so range of both becomes a concern), so I was hesitant to recommend starting that way.

I stuck with the default setup on the Hubitat. Factory reset it 3 times & added it back on never could get it to work correctly but was thinking that maybe it's gotten better or I really did have a defective one... I do not have it anymore had to return it since I went with SmartThings back then. I remember back then I did see the logs. Also there was no errors & it was just slow for some reason. I should of probably asked questions on here but was worn out of adding devices on to the hubs. LOL When I was on wink hub I had two for the house & the basement. How would it work with controlling devices if they're on separate hubs? Would I have to go into each control panel & create two dashboards on each hub? Thanks for you time & help!

I'm trying to remember exactly what happen back then & the more I added to the Hubitat the slower it got even on adding devices. It was factory default with no custom apps or drivers.

Almost everything can cause a result like "it's slow to..."

  • Simple Networking problems... it's slow.
  • Defective Z-Device, flooding a mesh... it's slow.
  • Perfectly working Z-Device, flooding the Mesh... it's slow.
  • Drivers that Poll the Internet based service or feature when it's down... it's slow.

And More.

Which one or two are you going to have?

Some are easier to fix than others BUT any fix is based on determining what/which is the source of the single symptom of "It's slow".

In other words, we (the Community) have seen a lot of these topics. We are willing to help. :smiley:

How would you figure out if something is flooding the mesh?

Just migrated 70+ devices from ST to HE C7, working faster than dysfunctional ST on it's best day...