My questions are about the coordination between the ST Hub (in my case, V2) and the ST Station. I have both installed.
New device installs ask if I want to install on the Hub or Station. Do I need to put the device’s driver on both the hub and station or only on the one where the device was installed?
Do the Hub and Station work in parallel or is the Station an extension of the Hub?
Does an update on only the Hub or Station compromise the capability of the other device?
They work in parallel. Neither one knows anything about the other, they aren’t on the same network, their devices don’t repeat for devices connected to the other one, and there’s no network protocol level integration.
Instead, they are both connected to your same cloudbased smartthings account if you set them up that way. So they both show up in the smartthings app. And if you defined them as being in the same , “location” you can use devices from each in the same routine, but if you do that, that routine will run in the cloud instead of running locally.
You need to download the edge driver for any device that you will connect to one of them to that hub/station. But it doesn’t need to be on the other one. Again, these are actually two independent Zigbee networks, and are unaware of each other at the network protocol level.
@Automated_House has been running both for awhile and may have more to add.
@joshua_lyon , is there anything in particular that people need to know if they are using sharptools with both an Aeotec hub and a smartthings station?
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that if both are in the same smartthings “location“ devices from both can be used in the same sharptools rule. And if they are in different locations, sharptools can still handle it (which the official smartthings routines cannot), but that configuration requires the premium tier. But like I said, I might be wrong on that.
Not that I can think of. As you mentioned, from the SharpTools side of things, devices get sync’ed over per “location”.
If the Hub and Station were setup as two different locations, that’s fine too. You would proceed through the authorization process a second time in SharpTools to authorize your second location… at which point would would be able to see all the devices from both locations and you could mix-and-match them in dashboards or rules.
Running rules across different locations is covered under the free tier of SharpTools. If you need to use some of the more advanced rule features like Variables, Expressions, HTTP Triggers, and HTTP Actions, accessing those features would require premium.
I think JD covered it. One thing i’ve recently discovered is LAN devices will show up on both hubs whenever you run discovery since SmartThings pre-installs their drivers. AFAIK there is no way to stop them from being discovered on a certain hub. So I have duplicate devices for my Sonos speakers since I have two hubs.
Without wishing to ‘set the cat amongst the pigeons’, I can’t think of a reason why to have a hub and a station. When I heard the station did not have zwave I was not interested.
If you have a V2 hub, it doesn’t have Thread. The Station does. So that’s one reason people might consider having both.
Another reason is if you have a Galaxy phone. The Station has a bunch of nifty features specifically for Galaxy users. Not only is it a nice phone charger, but it has a “find my Galaxy phone” button which is getting good reviews.
So different things will work for different people, but I can see the attraction for some.
