I am looking to purchase a 3000 sq ft home with three floors and a fairly tall attic.
The first floor is separated from the other floors by means of solid concrete.
Should I be looking to get a hub for each floor?
I am looking to purchase a 3000 sq ft home with three floors and a fairly tall attic.
The first floor is separated from the other floors by means of solid concrete.
Should I be looking to get a hub for each floor?
Given your situation, that would probably simplify things. Tie them together via a wired network would be my recommendation. Concrete and rebar are not going to be easy to get radio signals through.
That just made my knee that needs replace start aching.
I concur with the above statement, it's possible you could be fine with just one, but likely you will see much less frustrations with more than one.
... an example from the opposite side.
My hub is installed in a three floor house and the most distant devices are separated by several load bearing concrete walls and almost 40m (130 feet) away from the hub. (Exterior lighting is also hub controlled.)
Now mostly Zigbee, with repeating bulbs and outlets doing the trick.
Maybe lucky, but with Z-Wave and Zigbee’s meshing capabilities, one single hub proves to be fully reliable.
ok thanks for the feedback, much appreciated..
Hi
Maybe before buying a new hub you can try putting repeaters in tactical places
Buy repeaters is never a bad idea
I just bought the first hub for the new place as I wanted to take advantage of the Spring special that is currently running..was just wondering if I should get a second..
I will be putting zigbee outlets and zwave switches throughout and they should act as repeaters I believe. Will see how that goes then go from there..
Read the topics about the repeater it teach me a lot
And if you are starting from 0 ... try it for me set the bulb last
Noted..
Just connected three hubs together today. My first test was using a Zigbee remote to control z-wave lights on another hub. It was instant. Of course ethernet is best if you can do it. I have a flat roof and no basement, so a few Wi-Fi mesh extenders with ethernet ports are how mine are connected to the router. But with the response and how easy it is to set up, I can't think of a reason not to go with multiple hubs.
A strong backbone and a single hub will get it done too, but peanut plug repeaters tend to get moved which isn't helpful. And fighting to discover devices on the periphery may be more of a headache than just setting up multiple hubs to begin with.
Now I am completely biased because as of today, my setup has that new hub smell again.
I have three hubs. largely for distance reasons. One is in my main house where most of my devices and automations exists. Another one in the garage (separate structure). The third one in my pool house (on the other end of a swimming pool). I started with pool house and main house on separate hubs because the signal didn't reach at all. After that i added the garage because automations where too unreliable in the garage. Fragile mesh out there.
With hub mesh the automations are super easy. All devices look like the exists on the same hub.
I’m not trying to suggest anyone doesn’t need repeaters. You certainly do. But if I’m trying to get signals through concrete and rebar when I can just add another hub (on sale) and route some Ethernet cable to it, well it doesn’t take any guessing to figure out that that’s going to be the more reliable choice. And it’s likely going to be less expensive too.
If you can get away with two repeaters to get from one floor to the other, you’re lucky and it will cost about the same as another hub, but without the advantages you get from a second hub. But if it doesn’t work, and you need a third or fourth repeater to do the job, now you’re spending more than the cost of a second hub (which would have just worked straight away) and you still don’t have the benefits of a second hub.
Choice is yours of course. Just sharing an experienced opinion.
I find repeaters to be unreliable. I've found them to be more pain than gain.
..based on the feedback I purchased my second hub. I had my doubts that one would be adequate so I feel comfortable that two will do the trick and I can add another if required in the future..
thanks for all the feedback..