Will a zigbee repeater on smartthings assist a device on Hubitat
No. ZigBee repeaters send the signal to the if controlling hub.
Think of them more as "forwarding" the data.
Many thanks, more money to be spent then 
Or just save money and get rid of ST, and move the zigbee devices to HE...
Actually, they send it to the next link the chain, which might be another repeater as well. There is a limit to the number of "hops" a signal can take but a repeater doesn't need to be in direct contact with the controller to work effectively. It only has to be in range of another repeater and able to get the message there within the maximum number of hops allowed, which I believe is 4 but don't quote me on that one.
4 for zwave, 15 for zigbee.
4 might not sound like a lot for zwave.... But if it is taking more than 4 hops in a residential install you must have one big ■■■ house (or really poor hub placement) considering each hop can effectively go 50-75ft in practice. 
@Ryan780:
Yeah, my mistake on wording. It should have said "... on to the controlling hub." not "... to the if controlling hub."
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No biggie....just wanted to clarify. 
@JasonJoel 15?!? Wow, I didn't know that. THAT is one big house. 
I guess 15 could be a really long driveway... or a complicated office building/warehouse/factory... but yeah, 15 jumps seems like a lot. It probably was chosen for the ZigBee standard more as a latency limit from the repeats rather than programming.
Latency and how much memory is allocated to the routing table. These devices have little memory to spare, so can't afford to commit a ton of memory to routing tables.
There’s no limit to the number of hops a Zigbee network can make. Did you mean something else?
There isn't at the protocol level, but most implementations DO have a limit. ST is 15, for instance.
Or at least that was what was posted on the ST forums by the devs... That was a few years ago though, so maybe it changed?
Regardless, it is so high of a limit no one will care.
I did not know ST had a limit. I don’t think HE imposes one. It’s all academic though. You’re absolutely correct that in most installations, you’ll never have to worry about it.
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Yeah. I have industrial 802.15.4 networks (granted not specifically zigbee - but same discussion) that have many more than 15 hops. The protocol is pretty robust.
Certainly for home use, any of the hubs support more hops than you could reasonably need on zigbee.
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