Has anyone tried using Hub Groups? If so, what was your experience? Did you see a real benefit?
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Interested in this as well…
for me the network more stable , device fast response after making group of 3 hubs , I recommend all hubs are upgraded to latest firmware first before make a group
Just remember that once you place a hub into a hub group, it will no longer be able to participate in a hub migration or recovery. I’m not sure why that is, I’m assuming it’s because the automatic backups work differently. But at least at the time of this writing, there are some trade-offs to consider. 
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I have a SmartThings v3 hub, two SmartThings Stations and a Samsung HW-Q990C soundbar with integrated hub. All in the same hub group with the v3 as primary.
I haven’t noticed any difference in performance compared to when I only had the v3 hub; but, so far, it hasn’t presented any problems either.
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But in the hypothetical case of a total failure of a primary hub, what would you lose? I’m still not clear on how this works but maybe nothing would be lost as everything (rules /routines…also devices?) would be assumed by the secondary hub?
That’s how I understood it would work.
My concern would be with the capacity of the Zigbee mesh. There could have been up to 64 devices using the primary.
Would it still be possible to continue having multiple hubs in one location, in parallel so to speak, with the new “Multi hub Group”?
Maybe the roadmap here with Hub Groups is towards a future “ideal Matter” scenario.
I notice LG for example is incorporating Matter hubs into it’s TVs and fridges in a similar way to Samsung, but of course they don’t have an old client base using Zigbee…
Hi,
I am starting my SmartThings journey in our holiday apartment where 2 Samsung TVs each have a SmartThings hub, and one of them has a Zigbee dongle attached. However, it is not possible to create a Hub Group between them. It advises that a connection cannot be made for hubs dependent on a router.
I am slowly adding Zigbee and Matter devices to these hubs.
What type of Smartthings hub would I need to establish a hub - and what benefit would I see as a result?
PS Given the relatively small size of the apartment I definitely like the idea of one device having multiple functions i.e. doing more than just being a hub.
Hello,
I have installed the second Aeotec V3 hub in addition to the same one and created a Hub Group. In accordance with Hubs information, both use the same Thread network (which is expected), though when I turn off primary hub, secondary does not take over control over a Thread device. The only viable option I see to restore functionality is to manually set secondary hub as a primary, though I do not dare to try this option as I see a risk to lose all Zigbee connections.
Is it intended behavior and creating hub group does not add automatic redundancy to the system?
I don’t have a hub group but your descriptions are in line with how I expect things to work.
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From what I understand, in hub group, secondary hubs simply act as range extenders. So if primary hub does not work, so do others.
That’s quite a waste of potential, in my opinion. Two hubs that can take over the network in case another one is out, makes the whole system immensely more robust. And I can understand that it is not easy to achieve for Zigbee devices, as system was designed with one hub in mind, but Thread is another story. Anyway, I hope it will be implemented with further updates. Will keep an eye on that.
Matter has some interesting possibilities for increasing robustness as not only can you have the same device on multiple ST hubs in different ST Locations, but you can have the same device on multiple ST hubs in the same ST Location.
You may even be able to the same device under multiple names on the same hub. I can’t remember if I tried that or not.
For me the appeal of a Hub Group at the moment is actually on the Zigbee range extension side of things. I have a lot of Tradfri outlets which are now increasingly failing, and ideally I would like to be moving away from Zigbee when replacing them so something needs to replace their routing capacity for the end devices. Unfortunately hub groups don’t handle V2 hubs and why only one hub group per Location?
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I added new v3 hub to another v3 that I had, made hub group and installed drivers to the secondary new one. But still don’t see any devices under the secondary hub.
Also tried to delete a device and search again, although it near the new hub, it connected to the primary one.
How can I assign devices with the secondary hub?
You have to take the hub out of the hub group and let it run as its own primary.
When you put hubs into a hub group, only the primary owns devices and when adding devices, it will use the edge drivers on the primary hub. The secondary hubs mostly act as repeaters for it.
If you want your different hubs to own different devices and use different edge drivers, don’t put them in a hub group together.
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I succeeded today to do that.
But I don’t see the rssi levels to be such better when I use another hub in group.
Unless things have changed, the RSSI values that SmartThings reports are only for the last hop into the hub. So the report isn’t all that useful. You can make a lot of changes to your network and it will never change the value that you see for the RSSI Even though the mesh strength has improved significantly.
Unfortunately, SmartThings just doesn’t give us any tools to do a full map. 
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I’ve added a second V3 hub to try to combat an issue where some matter devices at the far end of the house kept going offline.
Strangely when they are offline they could still be controlled through home assistant having previously been shared with that.
Now with the new hub added to a group the same devices, which now have a hub within 3 meters of them, still go offline. They all report as connected to the original hub (althought from reading this thread it seems like that is correct behaviour). The second hub shows as connected to the primary.
If the group will only ever report that devices are connected to the primary, how do we actually know that the secondaries are doing anything?
Matter devices are either WiFi or Thread.
- If they are WiFi, an extra hub is pointless since what matters is the WiFi access points (your WiFi router, mesh, whatever).
- For Thread, it’s also pointless because Thread is already a mesh protocol so it will connect to the best Thread device available, which could be the hub or a nearby Thread light, switch or plug. What you see in SmartThings is not where it is connected from the wireless point of view but who is the Matter controller.
Strangely when they are offline they could still be controlled through home assistant having previously been shared with that
If HA is using Matter too and it always works that means the problem is not the wireless network, be it WiFi or Thread, so it’s not a signal or range issue.