Hello everyone,
I searched around a bit but didnt find if anyone did something to what i am trying to accomplish. My Uncle is building a 7000 sq home 3 floors and wants to do a full smart home setup (mostly lighting). I was wondering if you guys think smartthings hub would work on a large scale like this. I dont think the 232 device limit will be the issue , more the distance between light switches and the 4 max hop to base. I was thinking of using multiple hubs but then we have the issue of not being able to setup automation’s from one senor say controlling a switch on another hub.
I am wondering if i put the hub as much as possible in the middle of the home would it be able to cover the entire house?
any suggestions or ideas will be greatly appreciated.
There are other people who have had even larger homes, it just depends on the details. See the following two threads:
FAQ: Create an all-around z-wave presence in a 4,000 sq ft home?
My concern is more whether smartThings itself is a reliable enough platform For what your uncle will expect. And I would say the answer typically is no at the current time. The more devices, the more points of vulnerability. And as smartthings staff have said many times, their typical customer has 15 or fewer devices and never uses any custom code. People keep running into various limits just in the app itself as far as how many items it will display, how many rooms it will allow for, etc. which show they aren’t really designing for very large systems.
It would help a lot if we knew what country the home is in. That does affect device availability.
I would probably consider zigbee rather than Z wave for a very large home, but that’s just my own preference. 
The home is in USA.
If not smartthings then what would u recommend?
For a home that size, control4.
Or if you really only need lighting, maybe Lutron HomeWorks QS, which is intended for large high end homes.
http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/3682773_RA2_HWQS_comparison.pdf
Target market: large, high-end residential applications, although you can use this system in any size application if the product family best meets the needs of that application.
Coverage: RF coverage for up to 50,000 sq. ft. of space with control of up to 10,000 zones.
The cost of a quality, reliable smart home implementation for systems of this type is typically 10% of the cost of the home plus an annual maintenance fee. So I don’t know if that’s the kind of budget your uncle was expecting, but it is generally what you need to pay to get a reliable system for a home of that size.
What are your thoughts on using maybe 2 hubs and just using action-tiles to view everything. I know that its not possible to setup automation’s from 1 hubs device to the other but since this is mostly going to be just light switches that he wants to turn on and off from his mobile device or computer i think linking both hubs to action tile will accomplish this ease.
thoughts?
and as always thank you very much for all the help you have given me on this forum (you rock!)
If your uncle was asking, and he was intrigued by Home Automation and willing to do all of the maintenance and troubleshooting and dealing with the instabilities and changes, and had a technical background and enjoyed programming, I might consider a multiple ST hub set up.
But I just wouldn’t recommend it as something for someone else, particularly someone who probably expects high-quality and reliability in their home systems.
Even more so because it’s for lighting. The first time you turn on the switch at the bottom of the stairs and the lights don’t come on, it’s a disaster.
Lighting has to be pretty near bulletproof, particularly in a large home. I just don’t think smartthings is up to it for anyone other than a hobbyist who will find the various challenges interesting in and of themselves.
JMO
I agree with you and also would love to get your input on other hubs out there. If ST isnt as reliable as you would want it to be, are there any hubs that you think are more reliable then ST? say hubitat ?
There are two different questions here.
The first is are there other low-cost DIY hubs that are more reliable than SmartThings. And I would say sure, there are several (although they probably will not support as complex logic or as many different devices as smartthings does). Those have all been discussed many times in the forum.
But the second question is what kind of system is appropriate for a high end 7000 square-foot home. And none of the low-cost DIY hubs are going to match that requirement. Even if they are very reliable, they probably won’t cover that space without a lot of weird patching which then introduces new vulnerabilities.
I’m assuming this home is fairly expensive and not just a supersize log cabin in the Montana mountains somewhere. (That usually what “villa“ implies.)
There are plenty of systems which are designed for those kinds of high-end houses, but they aren’t in the same category as the low-cost DIY hubs. We’re back to Lutron Homeworks or control4 or Crestron. All very good systems, all designed for homes of that size. But not inexpensive and generally professionally installed and maintained.
It’s like pretty much every other system you would be putting in a home that size. If you need air-conditioning for a 7000 square-foot villa, you don’t go to Home Depot and buy 25 window air conditioners, whether they are smart or not. 
well said 