FAQ: Hub limitations on Number of Devices?

Does the ST Hub, V2 have a limitation to how many devices can be used?

Any zwave controller has a hard stop at 232 devices, so that will apply for your Z wave devices.

Wi-Fi devices don’t have a protocol specific limit within SmartThings, but most routers do have a limit on how many they can handle. Many WiFi routers are limited to 30, and that includes all of your Wi-Fi Devices including tablets, phones, game consoles, streaming TV boxes, etc. as well as your IOT devices. A lot of other WiFi routers are limited to 100. So that’s just something to be aware of if you’re thinking about buying Wi-Fi lightbulbs and pocket sockets.

Theoretically, a zigbee network can handle many thousand devices, so then it’s just a question of SmartThings-specific issues.

In the past, community members have reported problems when they went past 100 items of one device class, like 100 light switches or 100 sensors, or when they went past a total of 300 devices regardless of protocol. I don’t know what the current limits are in these regards. @johnconstantelo seems to hit the limits before anyone else, so he may know what the current situation is. :sunglasses:

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I am nowhere near that limit.

Thanks!

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I have 222 with Zwave, Zigbee and Wifi. No issues over here.

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Thanks?

Hi @MNA1966, I’ll be over 300 devices shortly, and as @JDRoberts stated, and I have hit limits. Some have been limits in the mobile app, some due to the hub, and some self inflicted.

ST has made changes to the mobile app to allow well more than 300 (I may find out one day), so I think you’ll be ok for a while. There use to be a zigbee limit due to a hub firmware issue, but that has been resolved too.

ST claims 1000’s of devices, but that’s marketing… Zwave has a maximum number of devices that the protocol can support - 232 devices. ZigBee can support thousands of devices.

I have about a 50/50 mix of zwave and zigbee, along with a few wifi devices.

What you’ll eventually run in to with more and more devices is interference and mesh performance issues if you don’t carefully plan your environment.

For Zigbee, repeaters are your friends. I have 1 Iris wall plug in every room, even if nothing is plugged into it. I also have my router on the opposite end of the house from my ST hub, and made sure both were not on the same channel. All my zwave devices are house powered, and they act as repeaters. All good there too.

Where things can get really ugly, which can make debugging performance issues difficult or make devices seem unresponsive, are devices that are very “chatty”, or that can be configured to be chatty. A perfect example of self inflicted limits I just experienced are energy meter devices.

Those devices can be configured to send data from every second, or at every watt change, to once a month. That may not be too bad if you have just a few, but if you have a lot like I do, and they all get configured to report a lot of data every few seconds - you will wreak havoc on your mesh network. Been there - and done that.

Hope that helps.

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Very helpful! Thanks!

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Yeah, I don’t say this too often, but personally I would never put an energy monitoring device on a mesh network. They’re just conflicting paradigms. I know they’re popular, but it’s just not what mesh is intended for. :sunglasses:

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Yeah, but I have 2 daughters that think their stuff in the bathroom or bedrooms should never get unplugged or turned off, or coffee machines that need to warm coffee all day until it evaporates and reconstitutes itself to Nescafe powder…

When I become an empty-nester is when I’ll be able to get rid of some of my energy monitoring devices!

:slight_smile:

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I’m not saying don’t do energy monitoring, I’m just saying do it with a star topology device like a Wi-Fi pocket socket. Hammer and wrench, you need both tools. :sunglasses:

https://www.ihomeaudio.com/iSP8W/