I have just moved from SmartThings to Hubitat and I am loving it. The local control was key for me and the rest just flowed.
But seeing that people are talking about having 2 or even 3 hubs - why?
What is the benefit of more than one hub and what are the limits of the HE hub?
Thanks
For me the theory (not entirely proven yet) was that my older C4 hub was freezing up about one a week. I really don't have that many devices, mostly bulbs, a few zooz plugs and motion sensors and a lock. I plan on adding more in the near future but wanted to get a handle on this freezing. I use the original C-4 hub to run the apps and act as a server, and have a C7 where all my devices live, in theory splitting the processing between 2 hubs. I actually have a 3rd hub that's not really being used currently. I had intended to use that the way I use the C4, but decided to stick with the C4. Eventually ill find something to do with it. in the mean time its not hurting any thing.
2 hubs = more coverage. I started with 2 hubs initially. One to cover the south side of my house and another to cover the north side of my house. Once "HubConnect" came out I added a 3rd hub just to handle all the logic involved in my automations, no devices are attached to it.
There is some argument to made about reducing overhead and speeding up response times by having multiple hubs. People have done this either by location or by "type" (Z-Wave/Zigbee).
I have 2 C-4's and a C-5.
For the C-4's I had one for our upstairs devices and the other was for our downstairs/basement/exterior. I really like that I could shutdown one and not affect the other. Also if one dies it's much less work to replace. My C-5 is for cloud and misc services like Alexa / Lutron etc. Originally I used HubConnect to relay information to all the hubs but now use Node-RED.
However my current project is to migrate everything over to a new C-7. The main reason I'm doing this is I am recommending HE to my clients and want to mirror the proposed installation for the most part - I figure it can help with demonstration and troubleshooting purposes. It is also my understanding that the hub should be able to handle a large number of devices and extended ranges and I want to see how this works out in real life. I'm also considering deviating slightly from the plan maybe adding a C-5 hub for just zigbee devices since the zb radios are the same in both the C-5 & C-7.
Lots of ongoing testing and experimentation.. I guess at the end of the day I do recommend multiple hubs especially for larger installations.
I do it to spread the load and make sure community apps do not harm (so down) my "main" hub (not that they do just my wish)
hub 1 - 90% of devices, few stock apps, hub connect
hub 2 - Couple bad repeating strip lights (don't want on main hub), lots of community apps/drivers, dashboards, hub connect
So I have a C-7 and I have 126 devices, 11 Apps (one being WebCoRe which has 19 postons on it). I have just moved from ST to HE for local control ... I have just started so does this mean that I will soon notice slowing down of activities that will require an additional Hub?
I have C7 ... it appears to cope with my 126 devices and 11 apps ... do people have multiple 'old' hubs and the C7 spec is faster ?
The only difference in the C-7 is a different z-wave chip and z-wave stack.
Also I think pre-C5 the jvm was 64bit vs 32bit. This means potentially more overhead on the C-4/C-3's even though the hardware is similar across all hubs (ZW radios notwithstanding).
100% correct. I forgot about that.
there was no such thing as backups on ST, but there is here. So in theory, should my hub go down with the devices connected (as the sticks are external - C4) I can restore a DB I keep on my NAS, and be up and running again fairly easy.
I have 133 devices, 16 apps and 41 webcore pistons on my c7.
If I got a second c7 could I install webcore on that and just restore all pistons from a webcore backup and they will work? Would there be any significant benefit in doing this. Hub Watchdog is starting to indicate some possible slowdowns.
Thanks in advance.
I originally got a C-5 and now have a C-5 and C-7. I still use my C-5 for devices n such and have basically turned my C-7 into a test hub. When I was testing user apps, Echo Speaks KILLED my response on my C-5. I've since disabled it and use another TTS app though, but it sucked to only have one hub to test and have everything bogged down.
Eventually I'll move everything over to the C-7 (or if the hub protect comes out to make that transition easier), but for now one production, and one test
You can backup/restore the whole hub if you like. All apps and automations and devices. I did this with a second C5 to make the coordinator hub to run all the automations and just cleaned up the devices.
Now if I could just figure out why hubconnect drops so much...
While I've since gone to a 2 hub setup, ES never killed my C5 that I moved to (from Wink) over a year ago.
Zigbee bulbs are notoriously bad at repeating non-bulb traffic. I have my Zigbee bulbs on a dedicated hub.
While we shouldn't have to, it seems the hubs get bogged down easily, and sometimes it helps to split the load between multiple.
For me, I use the radios on the C5, and all quick-response automations. Lighting, door knocks, etc. I use my older C4 with the radio removed to handle things like endpoints, Chromecast Integration, follow me setups, and all 'complex' automations.
Though I would argue that if my hubs are sharing most of the devices via hubconnect that it's probably creating a lot of overhead, and a single, more-powerful hub would be better overall. If they released a "beast mode" hub, I'd probably pick that up.
I have 6 hubs 1 C-4 2 C-5s 1 C-7 and 2 Smartthings hubs to spread the load out
C-4=Coordinator Hub All routines get run from here,Hubconnect
C-5=Apps and Zwave devices
C-7=Security hub,Zigbee devices
Smartthings Hub=20 Lightify Smart+ bulbs
The other hubs are for separate home. If HE ever develops a more beefier hub i’ll drop down to 1 but until then6 it is.
One of the reasons that I have moved to Hubitat is as I was fed up of having to use multiple apps and devices and this is a one stop shop ... the thought os splitting over several hubs for load balancing does not sound fun. To they work together or do you have one hub for x and one for y. I have a lot of my WebCore pistons working together (i.e. Sonos comes on when lights come on) so I don't want them on different devices. At the moment everything seems to run fast enough on the single C7 ... anyone any idea when they start to become noticable 'bogged down' and so that I can plan when I need to do the split and load balance ?
Search the forums there are many threads discussing multiple hubs.. The short answer is for some of us we find it very useful to divide and conquer whether it be by location (2 hubs separate area of the house) like I've done or by function - z-wave devices on one, zigbee devices on another maybe cloud/dev apps on a third. It definitely helps in reducing overhead and extending range. Many use HubConnect to easily share/control devices between hubs and others use external systems like Node-RED, MQTT etc..