I’m going to guess the little box has wifi support and probably bluetooth as well. Can we atleast get an update to enable wifi to make it possible to walk around with the little box doing includes?
I have a nice battery pack that I use for my raspberry pi when I want to move it around and it would make an ideal setup to be able to have wifi on the Hubitat and plug in my battery pack and walk around with it.
I just walked around my house with a 100ft Ethernet cable and 50ft extension cord tonight doing includes. It was a pain trying to get some of my low power inclusion devices to join.
I was looking around to see if I could find my 5V USB-to-barrel adapter to plug into a large USB battery, but ended up just going the extension cord route since I was going to have to lug an ethernet cable around anyway!
I feel the pain… I’m going in strategic areas and trying to build up a buffer mesh of every other, to couple of devices… kinda build the bridge as I go type thing.
Nice. I found that as I was bringing the hub around with me to various parts of the house, some of the devices would temporarily show an unknown status or drop off. Once I powered it all down, put the hub in it’s final location, and turned it back on I walked around the house with my phone controlling various switches and making sure they were all controllable and reporting statuses correctly.
I forgot to include one outlet which was hidden away behind a table, so I ended up having to pull out my extension cord and ethernet cable one more time!
This kinda scares me a bit.
I connected my hub last night, but haven’t added any devices but was under the impression that since both Z-Wave and (especially) Zigbee are mesh networks and many devices act as repeaters I would start with the devices closest to the Habitat and work my way outward one device at a time.
Am I wrong in this?
Standard Z-Wave (i.e. not Z-Wave Plus) devices need to be paired close to the hub since they will use a low power link during the inclusion (to enhance security) and aren’t capable of pairing through repeaters. That said, I had no issues pairing a GE Z-Wave paddle switch in place in my garage with my ST hub 20 feet away. Z-Wave plus devices supposedly can be paired through through another Z-Wave plus repeater.
For Zigbee based on what I read on this discssion ti.com, close proximity to the hub is not a hard requirement during pairing but is recommended because of the amount of data transfer that occurs during the pairing process and the specifics of the devices rf design:
https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless_connectivity/zigbee_6lowpan_802-15-4_mac/f/158/p/431755/1550354
Can we use it as WIFI access point sometimes in future?
There are no plans to enable this as a WiFi access point.
Is there at least plans to enable WiFi to connect to the network? Not as an access point for clients, but as a client itself? Sometimes it makes sense to place the Smart Home hub somewhere else in your house than where the internet router is (e.g. for better placement in relation to your smart devices). I had wished my ST hub had WiFi at times for just that reason.
Right now, no plans to enable WiFi.
OK, I take it that there is a WiFi and BT chip in the device then? So, it could be enabled at a later time if there is enough requests for it?
I could imagine that both WiFi and BT would be interesting features to differentiate against the ST hub. Like I said, the ability to choose placement of the hub other than directly at the internet router would make the solution much more flexible. Especially with the possibility of interference with ZigBee and the 2.4Ghz of the router.
And BT could expand device support to those devices that use BT instead of ZigBee and Z-Wave.
Do we have a place where people can vote for feature requests to help the team prioritize things? I know there is a forum where feature requests can be publicized, but what about community voting to capture the real need for things?
I personally feel that for reliability, wired networks are better. Less to troubleshoot when there are issues. Also, you do not have to place the Hubitat with your router. Ethernet cables come in different lengths. 
There’s also been success by one Hubitat owner using a powered usb extension cable to distance the zigbee/zwave stick from the Hubitat.
Yeah, I understand that. But, I’m not talking about placing it a few meters away from the router. What I mean is the ability to place the hub in a different room or even a different level. Some have their internet router in the basement and use WiFi repeaters for connectivity in the house. Especially in Europe where houses are built with concrete, it is important to be able to place this type of device at a central location. And sometime cables hanging around is a nuisance.
You could get a pair of powerline adapters and relocate it that way, or if you’ve got wifi repeaters they usually have an ethernet port as well.
Yeah, I have some of those. But, why look for every possibility to avoid activating WiFi on the device? If somebody doesn’t have Powerline or repeaters with a LAN connection (those are more expensive than simple repeaters), then they wouldn’t want to spend an additional $100 for such to attach their hub to it.
It was just a simple request to enable WiFi on the hub. For every reason you find to not do it, there will be a reason to do it. It’s not as if the request is totally irrational.
I’m just offering suggestions of ways to relocate it now. You can ask for wifi, and you might get it, eventually, but I wouldn’t plan your build on it being added in soon, if at all. There’s a lot more support issues with having a wifi connected device, especially since it needs to be hard-wired initially for setup anyway.
I can manage without WiFi. Was just suggesting adding it to expand functionality.
That’s a different use. The OP is about walking around for Z-Wave “includes”, not daily use. Wi-Fi is generally unreliable and I personally don’t want it. Europe is not going to benefit from it significantly. Their walls are Wi-Fi blockers.
I do recall seeing, I think on the ST forum, a person who found a 5 V powered AP and connected a battery pack to it to walk around for z-Wave includes. Even posted a picture of it and the model, but I can’t for the life of me find it again.
Do you really want the most critical part of your HA implementation to be WiFi linked ?
Way down on my priority list of feature requests.
This? TL-WR802N | 300Mbps Wireless N Nano Router | TP-Link
Also, a USB to typeM (5.5mm outer, 2.1mm inner barrel connector with positive center) cable works for the Hubitat. I’m using a Startech cable for mine. Your source has to have 2.0A or higher on the usb port for it to work though.
Download the Hubitat app
