I recently purchased a C7 hub second hand because I was having slow performance on my C5. I moved one integration (Echo Speaks) because I thought it was cause of the performance issues. And everything has been fine since.
What I haven't done is setup hub mesh (not entirely sure what this does) or moved any devices to the new C7. What are some good two hub strategies? Do I move all the devices to the C7? Do I split the devices per hub by the radio type (i.e. Zwave on C7 and Zigbee on C5)? What does hub mesh really do? Can you all provide some recommendations?
I’ll start with the easy question, hubmesh let’s you share devices across multiple hubs on the same LAN segment. As to the split, there are as many strategies as owners. Protocols are common, cloud vs, local, for large houses different floors or ends of the house… For me, production vs development.
I have all my zwave and most of my zigbee devices all connected to my c7. I have a relatively small house - two storey 1650 sq ft plus basement.
I use my c5 for Alexa speaks, all wifi and lan devices (Samsung TVs’s, onkyo receiver, etc) and apps and RMs that are big and not time sensitive.
On my C7 I run time sensitive apps and RMs like button controllers and motion lighting. I try to separate functions that minimize the number of devices I need to share across hub mesh.
And then I have a third hub (another c5) that I have dedicated to Aqara zigbee devices and hubigraph.
I have all my ZigBee and Z-Wave devices on my primary hub along with all the rules that control automation. I just moved internet and external interfaced devices to the second hub, these include my Ecobee Thermostat, NUT UPS Driver, custom written MQTT receiver for my WeeWx / Weatherflow station data, NOAA weather alerts, etc. I have most of my hub mesh devices published from my secondary hub to the primary to act upon data from those services.
We should have an award for the Hubitat’er (reminds me of Ron White’s “They call me Tater Salad”, LOL) that has the most hubs per sq ft! I would not even come close to qualify (3800 sq ft, two hubs but only one used at a time currently - 2nd hub as a physical backup). I don’t recall who it was but I think someone is running 6 hubs but I don’t know the sq footage of their home.
I believe that is probably @csteele but not sure.. like @steve.maddigan I only have 3 (2 C5s and a C7) in operation at my house. I do have 2 C7s in boxes.. and another one that is activated but turned off.
I've purchased 8 hubs from Hubitat, but 3 of them are "retired" back into their boxes. 5 are powered up: One is a Development hub, so its square footprint overlaps real Production hubs. I only have 4 hubs active in that cluster.
I think I’ve purchased 6 hubs from Hubitat. Three C-5s and three C-7s. One was killed by being underpowered (not my choice of power supply). I sold one C-5. One C-7 is up for sale. The others are all in use.
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