To Hub or not to Hub?

What is a home automation hub?

A home automation hub is not a networking hub. While networking hubs are outdated, a home automation hub allows different types of devices to communicate, translating protocols like Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet. 

Hubs recognize home automation devices, provide a common user interface, and provide routines for home automation.

Home automation hubs

There are many home automation hubs. Some of the more common hubs are: SmartThings, Wink, Hubitat, OpenHab, Lutron Caseta, Hass.io, Apple Home, Control4, and so on.

Control4 is used by most home automation professional installers. It sets the gold standard for others to try and match or beat. The common complaint on the web about Control4 is every change requires an expenive service call from an installer.

My Experience with Hubs

Initially, I tried several hubs with these basic requirements:

• Maintenance free: minimal setup time and no monthly maintenance.

• Automatic device recognition: new devices on my LAN must be automatically configured

• Verbal control: The hub must allow verbal control for a "Star Trek"-like experience

• Complex automation: The hub must enable complex and automated actions.

I couldn't find a hub that met these requirements. Most of those tested failed on the Maintenance Free requirement.

Conclusion: Hubs are not necessary

After experimenting, I concluded that a hub is not required for home automation. For me, it was more of a hindrance. Instead, voice assistants like Amazon Echo, while not traditional hubs, are essential components of my system.

Examples of assistants are: Amazon Echo, Google Assistant (Google Home Hub, Google Nest Hub), Raspberry Pi (google assistant, JARVIS, mycroft, etc.)

Do you need a hub?

No, I use Amazon Echo and the Alexa App as my hub.

Wi-Fi Only

Since I am a DIYer and managed software development for AT&T B2B Wi-Fi, initially I choose to use only Wi-Fi enabled devices. 

This eliminated the need for one ore more hubs to do protocol conversion (bluetooth, zigbee, z-wave, Lutron clear connect, Apple, ...).

There are plenty of devices that use Wi-Fi. I have not run into anything I cannot do yet with just Wi-Fi.

Since I wrote the sentences above, I have added some z-wave controllers that communicate to Amazon Echo over Wi-Fi. These can extend the battery life of smart shades and smart door locks.

Many of my home automation devices are connected on a 2.4GHZ network. This lower speed network is fine for most home automation devices. It penetrates walls and carries a long distance.

In my last house, I had a second access point to the second floor of my home. In June 2022, I moved to a three story house (2 plus basement). I have one power-over-ethernet (PoE) Acess Point (AP) for each floor. Each AP has 2 radios, one for slow speed Wi-Fi and one for high-speed. I positioned the APs to get maximum coverage in the house and in the yard.

Automation

Both Amazon Echo and Google Home Assitant offer many automation routines

Node Red, IFTTT and other utilities provide as good if not better automation than most hubs  

So what to use?

I use my Smart Phone to set up and configure most home automation devices

I use Amazon Echo as my home assistant. I try to keep the names short and easy to remember. 

Improvement: It would be ideal to say,  "Turn off the light", and echo is context sensitive and knows to turn off the light in the room where the echo heard the command.