Can we atleast know why more hubs can’t be added in one smartthings mesh?
Matter-Over-Thread supports it, I think ZigBee does too, not sure about Z-Wave but I don’t see why a redundant can’t act as a repeater/extender for a ‘main’ hub by copying the settings. @SmartThings
Google and Apple do seem to be ahead in this regard by allowing us to add external border routers and bridges to their networks
I’m a little confused by your question for multiple reasons. Just to get some things out of the way…
the independent third-party standards for matter over thread and for zwave do allow for multiple hubs per network. The Zigbee profile that smartthings uses does not.
smartthings has already announced last month that they are going to allow you to combine multiple smartthings hubs in one network, but no details yet except that the initial rollout will be for the smartthings station model and apply to thread. It’s part of their new “hub everywhere“ initiative.
“copying the settings” isn’t how a repeater works in a mesh network, so I’m not sure what the idea of that is. The existing Wi-Fi mesh lines from Samsung, including the one with Plume, do allow the subhubs to act as zwave and Zigbee repeaters, but they don’t do it by copying the settings. They are just added as another “thing“ device to the network. They don’t have hub functions in that role for zwave or Zigbee.
——
So my confusion comes because Samsung has already announced that they are going to do this, but not necessarily for every protocol or every model, and only a few details are available.
I was under the impression that they were doing it for smartthings stations and that was it. The copying the settings thing was a throwaway comment, I’m not saying that’s the perfect solution. Just confused why this Multi-Hub/Smartthings Mesh feature wasn’t a thing already.
Also when you say ‘the ZigBee profile that Samsung uses’ does that mean it’s not a controller limitation and that they could change it in an update?
Not from a practical sense, because although they could change the hub/coordinator to a different profile, then it would stop working with all of the end devices that it currently works with since the two have to use the same profile to communicate.
Control4 has multiple zigbee hubs on one network, but it uses its own profile to make that happen. That’s why you will see companies put out two versions of the same zigbee device, one C4 that works with control4, and one that works with zigbee 3.0.
It’s definitely also going to include the hubs that are built into the Samsung smart refrigerators, smart television, and the new Samsung smart sound bars. They’ve been using those as examples in their press interviews.
But all of those are very similar to the station in their networking profiles. Zigbee and Thread, but no zwave. And so far they’ve only been giving examples for thread.