Smart Home Hubs 101 - The Ultimate Guide

The ultimate guide to Smart Home Hubs is here! Whether you want to understand how a smart home hub works, what a smart home hub is, whether or not you should buy a smart home hub, and how to organize both your home and your automations when using a smart home hub, this is the ultimate guide to smart home hubs and the smart home platforms you'll be looking into.

I'll also guide you through which smart home hub to buy, and how to locate your smart home hub in your home. We'll talk about interference, the smart home protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, WiFi, and Bluetooth, plus I'll give you the best practices with hubs.

This is as much detail as I can give you about hubs, and the future of hubs (or Matter controllers and the Matter smart home protocol)

My 3 most recommended hubs:

Timecodes for Today's Video:
00:00 - Smart Home Hubs 101
1:19 - What is a Smart Home Hub
3:06 - What Does a Smart Home Hub Do?
10:53 - Should You Get a Smart Home Hub?
15:51 - Organizing Your Smart Home Hub Automations
28:02 - Can you use multiple Smart Home Hubs?
36:56 - The Best Practices With Smart Home Hubs
42:28 - How to Locate Your Smart Home Hub
47:06 - How Matter Changes Smart Home Hubs
51:32 - 17 of the Best Smart Home Hubs
51:50 - Flic
52:47 - SwitchBot
54:28 - Aqara
55:42 - YoLink
57:35 - Philips Hue
59:11 - Lutron
1:00:27 - Homey
1:01:29 - HomeSeer
1:02:32 - Google Nest
1:03:49 - Apple HomeKit
1:05:59 - Amazon Alexa
1:07:46 - Ring
1:09:00 - Tuya
1:10:02 - Ikea
1:10:47 - Hubitat
1:12:25 - Home Assistant
1:15:07 - SmartThings
1:17:47 - Put it all Together

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Thanks for watching, and Don't Hate, Automate.

Brian

[michaelmaliga]

This should become an annual review with updates on which hubs got better over the year plus what is new or what actually went by the wayside since the last video.

[HughD]

Whew! You outdid yourself again, Brian. You had some of the best explanations of hubs, protocols, and devices I've seen. You obviously put a lot of work into it and it shows. You'll get a few comments from fans of this system or that saying you didn't cover their favorites enough, but you managed the time well and somehow got about everything covered. Awhile back it was fashionable in the smart home community to be anti-hub, but they serve an essential function and are actually quite useful if chosen wisely. Thanks again, Brian. Great job!

[Scribbby]

Very insightful video about Smart Home technology. I was able to watch all of it through, in one sitting. A superb guide for anyone who wants to get into Smart Home.
I plan on using Home Assistant as my go-to hub for the flexibility alone.
I love having the ability to code and fully customize everything to my liking.

[darkshippo]

It all began with Philips Hue, then IKEA Trådfri, a short session with RPi3+conbee. Then I had Homey Pro and now finally HA in a VM on a NUC. Your video made it all simple. If you only have a few bulbs and switches, then Philips Hue is perfect.

[vba]

Wow! So much unfo stuffed into 1 video. I have a feeling I wasted lot of time searching for different videos on these topics. I just had to find this one! Thanks a lot for this :)

[Verzula]

I'll be honest I just bought a house and I've been looking for info on what everything is and how everything works, and by God you're so amazing. I absolutely love how you explain things and your tone and voice and explanations are amazing!

[digiryde]

This is a great synopsis. Thank you.

Personally, if it involves "cloud" then it is a no go for me. Using cloud means a few things. Two of them you are going to lose control of your house from time to time as the Internet Connection to the "cloud" based service is going to fail. Cloud services come and go. We have seen that happen many times, even in the "Smart Home" market.

Also, having to use a cloud connection increases the chances of being hacked as well as a dependence on a service provider what may (and many have) force you to update when you really do not want to due to feature loss or connectivity loss.

The Matter standard may help, or it may not, depending on what the device providers choose to do and how they choose to implement the standard (think USB confusion). Over the years, I have learned to be wary of industry standards implementations.

[gnospanker]

Another great video Brian! My main hub is Smartthings V2, with Home Assistant as secondary. I thought eventually I'd move completely to HA but wow, after 18 months, I just haven't gotten as comfortable with HA as I have come to be with Smartthings. Maybe someday I'll make the full switch but it, as you said, it seems like Smartthings is headed in the right direction to remain viable/relevant/modern/etc. It's amazing that this box I bought in 2016, and haven't put any $ into since (monthly or HW upgrade), is still working well. This next month will be a big test for Smartthings to see how many people they keep happy or disturb enough that they'll move to HA or Hubitat. I also have to ask, "What is Samsung's goal with this?" Without charging a subscription (currently), and not making $$ off of the sale of hardware (other than TVs/Fridges/etc.) why do they want to continue to develop? This is probably a small drop in the bucket for a company as big as Samsung I guess. Oh well, I guess I'll stay tuned and see how it all plays out. Thanks for keeping us informed!

[loganfisher]

Even if Home Assistant someday gets sold, you can just indefinitely stay on the last stable release. Some cloud-based integrations would then probably break over time, but you would never lose your local control abilities.

[frostythebeerman]

Hi Brian ! I'm watching this now ! Wow, only about 1/2 way in and this is GOOD ! .... if YOU are a beginner like me, make sure to watch this video. ✅ Thank you Brian for suggesting it.

[AnonymousMiner]

Using home assistant for the first time. I am an electric vehicle technician (so I understand networks and sensors etc mildly well) I have done some very minor coding in the past and used API’s. I am having a wonderful time with home assistant so far but I also feel like I’m swimming in the deep end and gotta be careful 😂

[EsotericArctos]

When I first started in Home Automation, one of the important things was to make "modes". Home mode, Away mode, Movie mode, Night mode. They were the 4 of the key modes I use to have, even before I moved to Home Assistant. Several numbers of years later, those stay, just with slightly more sophisticated automations.
With that said, my main aim is for things to do what is expected now, rather than experimenting. I want an automation to make sense, but I also want that button/switch on the wall to work as expected every time, even if the hub is controlling everything, even the switch on the wall. Things need to be transparent and not in your face. :)
On the Home Assistant being sold off thing. This is not likely. Nabu Casa is a company of paid employees that develop Home Assistant and have done for some time.
Also, if you want to dig just a little bit, you can get full remote access to Home Assistant without Nabu Casa subscription. It's not basic sure, but it is also not totally rocket science. Sort of in between :). I guess Home Assistant is more in the realms of the integrator systems, but with more openness. Think C-bus or Control 4 but keeping control of the system and being able to write your own automations without calling a service guy in.

[bragi]

Primary Hubs: SmartThings & Hubitat
Secondary Hubs: Ring, Alexa

I have 2 of the SmartThings mesh hubs. These work great but I quickly ran in to their automation limit so I also had to incorporate Hubitat to allow me to have the level of complexity along with the number of automations I wanted for my smart home. It works well for the most part but I'm feeling some anxiety with the transition to Edge drivers.

[ypark]

Yo link is amazing. Hope they keep ability to integrate. The temp sensor is the only one I found that will work in my garage freezer due to materials and distance. And we use an outdoor sensor at a distance from the front door. Another unique ability.

[neverman]

Loving the Mass Effect t-shirt 👕. What a great franchise.

[RapKrider]

What a great Monday! I have discovered your channel! Can you offer the script? Many people need to read to maintain the thread of thought in spoken words, especially second language speakers/listeners that cannot process so much new content delivered so quickly. (I know that the glory of a video is that the user can stop, start wherever, replay, but the written word is still a useful tool. This video is over an hour long and could be broken into chapters. (The video is chapter-friendly!)
The graphics are SO useful.

[jordanc]

How would you configure a "mode" in a household that uses both Philips Hue hubs and also a Home Assistant server? What "configuration item" would you use to create a "Mode" in?

[BrandonDoyleMN]

All the hubs are belong to Brian.

Great video!

[raymondbailey]

WOW! Great video. Just got 4 Tuya 4 gang switches and a hub. After watching this video I'm starting to worry about integration with my Phillips hue lights attached to my Echo 4 hub.

[RonnoNL]

Thank you for a great and very informative video!
I have two units of Homey Pro in my house. The first one arrived in 2016. I got addicted to it, creating flows and discovering new ideas via the Homey Community. It also has an NFC scanner. In 2019 I got myself another Homey Pro and since 2 months this one has Advanced flows capability. See 1:00:45 in the video for a preview of Advanced flows.