I’m getting ready to help a friend setup smart lighting in his hotel that is about 6 story’s with about 250 rooms in total. I was wondering what you guys think would be the best way to go about deploying this setup?
1 smartthings hub for each floor? or can 1 hub handle that many floors? if multiple hubs should be used, can they be linked together?
im guessing i am going to pass the 250 zwave limit , i could use some zigbee in there but the choices for light switches and outlets is limited for zigbee.
any advice would be appreciated.
In a word: DON’T
You are absolutely begging for problems. And you will get them.
If you absolutely insist going ahead with this folly, place devices in COMMON areas only. ST is notorious for outages… Can you imagine the absolute nightmare you will have on your hands if things do not function in guest rooms!!!
J
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Yep. I had the exact same first reaction. Just don’t. 
There are several other smart lighting systems which would be much more appropriate for commercial use, particularly for paying guests.
And remember that right at this very moment smartthings is in a huge state of flux: new app, new hubs, new platform. There’s no telling what features they are going to remove or add over the next year or so. I would definitely wait until the system stabilizes before betting a business on it.
JMO
The other thing that concerns me is that even if everything is “stable“ smart things can and does push out hub updates that can be neither denied nor delayed. So you can be pretty sure that at least once or twice a month, with no predicting when, nothing will work for at least a few minutes and maybe for a couple of hours.
I spend most of my life in one of two rooms and I am reliant on home automation, so I’m very sensitive to these kinds of issues. If your personal experience is more typical and you are out of your house for much of the day, you just may not have experience of the frequency of smartthings outages. But for a hotel, again, it could be really bad for business.
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Bug:_First_Reports
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Well i agree with you to some extent.
This is going to be more like for the owner to turn off the lights when guests check out and dont turn off their lights for example in the rooms. it wont be that much for a full automation system, like turn on at this time or tun off at a specific time. Since the light switches work no matter if there is smartthings connection or not , i dont see what the issue would be if the system is down and guests want to control their room lights?
I could be missing something here!
so as far as basic functions like say the front desk person checks xyz guest out and uses smartthings(actiontiles) to see if said guest left lights on in that room then to go ahead and click to turn them off. what you guys think about that ?
Also what other smart lighting systems are u referring to that would be more appropriate for commercial use?
and thank u so much for your comment. i appreciate any and all help i can get on this.
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Leviton makes a very nice zigbee-based automation platform specifically for the “small commercial” market such as restaurants, small office buildings, bed and breakfasts, etc I would definitely look at that.
https://www.leviton.com/en/products/brands/lumina-gateway
Philips and Osram/Sylvania also make one for this market, but both are just lights.
https://www.osram.com/ds/installer/ds_installer_lighting_via_app.jsp
Control4 and Lutron also offer full featured systems, but both are aimed more at high end facilities, I think they would cost a lot more than the Leviton, and probably be overkill based on how you described your project. But do take a look at them, they may give you some additional ideas. The Lutron one comes in two different packages, one that is basic and one that is more high-end, and just looking at the differences between the two might also spark some ideas.
https://www.control4.com/solutions/smart-hotel
http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/SingleRoomControls/myRoom/Overview.aspx
thank u so much i i will check that out right now.
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I highly recommend @JDRoberts’ post. I’ve been with ST from the very beginning, and there’s no way on the face of this earth I would use ST for what you want to do.
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i just sent the better part of my morning learning about vive/lutron , seems like they have good setups for commercial use but boy their precises are high.
but again thank u all for your help in making me decide on a course of action.
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FWIW, I agree with all of the above. ST is probably appealing due its low cost, but after using it for 3+ years, my opinion is that it’s just not robust/reliable enough for basically any commercial application.
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Honestly i have been using ST now for a little over 2 years with a little over 60 devices /switches/plugs/outlets/sensors and so on and have had almost 99% uptime. I can see how on a big project, commercial wise it would not be a smart thing to deploy but i guess it depends on the person/client what they want to achieve with this. As long as the person is presented with the correct options and drawbacks then all should be well.
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NO NO NO… please no, Smartthings is a home DIY project for people who like to tinker
Save your sanity and do not use ST
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well… they might work without ST connection… they might not… depends on what devices you setup.
The bigger problem would be when the lights turn off or on (or begin flashing randomly) at the wrong time when guests are in the rooms. ST really isn’t the right tool for this application.
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Ok what would you recommend I use to automate lights and create senses?
Did you look at lumina from Leviton? Don’t go by the retail prices, sign up as an installer and you’ll get wholesale prices.
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