Two Locations

Devices & Integrations
1

I have a house and a shop. The shop is about 400 feet away from the house. I just bought a bridge to bring the TCPIP network together on a single subnet.

The goal is to put a motion sensor and two door contacts on the second smartthings hub and then add that second hub to the mobile app. I am also assuming that I can support multiple hubs under the same mobile app so that when I arm my system that both buildings will arm, or I can arm just one and not the other.

Do I just need to purchase another smartthings hub and put that on the LAN in the Shop? I assume that I want to route the two networks on separate subnets, then to have them on the same Subnet.

Thoughts?

2

If you’re referring to IP subnet, I don’t think there is any reason to need more than one.

The Z-Wave and ZigBee networks, however, will be distinct, as the hubs currently do not have any cooperation between them.

Unfortunately, handling of multiple-Locations under one SmartThings Account is rather limited at this time.

3

Since unfortunately a “z-wave remote bridge” does not seem to exist (and neither does a Zigbee one), you have no other (and no cheaper !) solution than a 2nd hub.
You can set this 2nd hub within the same Location, and Devices on both Hubs can be assigned to the same “Room”.
The same SmartApp can control Devices on both hubs.

4

So you’ve confirmed that one Location can have “many” Hubs?

I read, from time to time, that there was an undocumented restriction of one Hub per Location. I hope that’s not true, but I would not be surprised…

5

OK, I bought another hub and it is another location altogether, so I can arm either location just fine.

What would be great is if an action at one location happened, I could trigger an event at the other location, but I do not see how to do that.

I would also like to be able to arm or disarm both at the same time. As it sits I have to access each location one at a time to allow me to set the alarm or disarm.

6

Did you figure out how to do this? I had two v1 hubs in one location. Worked great.
I could control any device connected to either hub.

I upgraded to two v2 hubs. I have to have one v2 hub per location.
Automations cannot span locations.

7

Wow, this was possible with v1?

8

  • The SmartThings data model clearly allows a many-to-1 relationship between Hub and Location; i.e., a Location may contain 0, 1, or many Hubs.

  • SmartApp instances, however, 1:1 with Location. i.e., They can and could always only run in one Location at a time.

  • Since Hub V2 provides the ability for a SmartApp to run “locally” on the Hub; the data model was broken.

Location → SmartApp → Hubs (Location → Hubs transitively)

had to change to

Location → SmartApp - Hub (Location - Hub transitively).

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9

With the v1 hub, I could go in with the IDE and edit the location for the hub,
so that there were 2 hubs in the same location.

That feature seems to be gone now.

Also, there is no way in the mobile app to add a second hub to the location.

You mention:
“The SmartThings data model clearly allows a many-to-1 relationship between Hub and Location; i.e., a Location may contain 0, 1, or many Hubs.”

How do you add a second hub to a location?
Thanks.

10

Yes. See below. You could edit the hub’s location. Now you can only edit the hub’s name.

11

I don’t know.

I just know that the data model supports it. That doesn’t mean they have provided an API into the database.

12

Hi all. In the very early days of Smartthings I added two v1.0 hubs to a single location to try to extend the range of my network. It worked well until Smartthings began to mature their platform and running two hubs under one location was no longer supported. It began to cause a number of issues, primarily with the dashboard integration of Smart Home Monitor.

Since then I have been using a combination of powered zigbee and zwave devices to create a more reliable mesh network and moved to a single hub : single location. Smartthings seems to be much “happier” now that I have done that.

I’m now going to migrate away from the V1.0 hubs to a single V2.0 Hub - although from what I read the term migration is a misnomer as it’s really “remove all your devices, delete all your apps and start over from scratch with the new hub” sort of migration :wink:

13

Couple of months ago. You could use virtual devices between hub v1 and hub v2. Not anymore. They removed the option for location in IDE. I now have a V1 hub staying empty while the v2 hub is getting very crowded.

14

I used to have 12 Hubs within the same Location, to augment the range of my SmartThings ZWave network.
I achieved that when it was yet possible within the IDE to change the Location of a Hub after its initial configuration.
Then SmartThings unilaterally decided to remove this possibility, and it was a MAJOR REGRESSION for me.
AFAIK, there is because of that restriction no more easy way to extend the geographical coverage of your ZWave/ZigBee network beyond the paltry 50-100 meters or so you can achieve in a building.

I understand this single Location / multiple Hubs combination may create some unwanted behavior, especially when using v2 Hubs, but SmartThings should reinstate this possibility, which obviously is VERY USEFUL to all people with range issue.
It could be some “hidden feature”, with as many dire warnings as SmartThings wishes, but removing this feature in a sneaky way was definitely not the way to reward early adopters who relied on this feature :frowning:

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15

When did you first notice the change?

It is my belief that this change was required for the implementation of Hub V2; since:

(a) A SmartApp instance must belong to a specific Location.
(b) A SmartApp cannot be associated with Things from more than one Location.
(c) Hub V2 runs a small number of SmartApps “locally” (e.g., Smart Lighting). Therefore, for the SmartThings Platform to push and execute a particular SmartApp on a particular Hub, there can only be one Hub per Location.

– in theory.

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