Starting with home automation would certainly put you in a dilemma whether or not you need a hub or bridge for the smart devices to function correctly. However, there’s not a methodology or rule of thumb to determine the definite answer if you really need a smart home hub.
But it’s completely okay if you aren’t sure yet because you’d be if you understand this:
It depends, If all the devices at your home have WiFi functionality and can potentially communicate with your home network directly, so you probably don’t necessarily need a smart hub.
Moreover, if you have a smart speaker like the Amazon Echo or Google Home or other devices like security systems or mesh WiFi routers that can adequately replicate the “hub-like” functionalities and able serve the same purpose, then it’s unlikely to feel the need for a hub.
But wait; there’s a greater chance that you may still need a hub. You want to know why? I have covered it all below.
How smart hubs work?
Before understanding the actual need of a smart hub for your home, you must first get clear on how smart hubs technically work. Because that would lead you to understand why for home automation a hub seems to be indispensable or if you can possibly circumvent this prevalent need by any means.
By consolidating the capabilities of controlling the myriad smart devices in your house, a hub helps you making the automation more straightforward than ever. It keeps you away from the hassle of switching and juggling between different apps to manage each gadget, and rather offer you the comfort to access every device that’s connected in your house through one dedicated app.
Since quite a lot of devices at your home might communicate using different protocols that are not internet-based or even protocols that are proprietary and linked together with distinct administration tools, a smart hub is something that ‘translates’ the essentials and result in connectivity for all of these different wireless standards.
You can initiate commands either locally or remotely for the devices connected to your home Internet network, by simply using your smartphone. With a hub, you can effortlessly set different modes, scenes, or routines that in turn, would allow you to make simultaneous controls over an array of devices.
Why don’t some devices with WiFi make sense?
While devices that support WiFi or Bluetooth (not often considerable) tends to overcome the need for a smart home hub, it is still not an ideal or perfect in every case.
WiFi is a high-bandwidth network that’s power-intensive thus only recommendable or works well for the applications where you’re transmitting a lot of data, throughout your house. If you compare WiFi to other wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, ZigBee or Z-wave, you will notice, WiFi transmission uses far more power than these. Although it quite depends on the particular utility.
Using WiFi network protocol isn’t the best option unless you are sending a large amount of data over long distances or processing any data-heavy activities. Logically, if you know that your device is merely sending a few bytes worth of data (which often counts as negligible,) so why to waste loads of power on each transmission?
This is where despite having a device that operates on WiFi, you might voluntarily want to incorporate a hub which uses multi-protocol controller.
Smart speakers vs. smart home hub
Majorly the non-compatibility of the smart home devices with each other and not being able to communicate over the same wireless standard, led to the indispensable need of a hub. But now with the smart speakers holding the pace, the trajectory of the smart home has fundamentally changed.
Read also: Do I need a hub for smart bulbs?
Technical advancements to the home automation that includes partner programs like Works with Nest and Friends of Hue and cloud-based platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and other popular assistants have significantly expanded the compatibility of wireless systems.
However, smart speakers can perform many of the same tasks as a hub does, but still, a smart hub couldn’t be replaceable entirely. Digital assistants technically work like controllers, and certainly could not act or provide services as full-fledged smart hubs.
Noticeably, for most of the users, this gap doesn’t raise any concern; hence, they choose to go with a hubless smart home. If you think this works for you, then why not go with the intuition?
An overview of hubless smart home
Without a hub, you couldn’t probably reap all the benefits of an efficiently operated home automation. It’s just not only about making use of WiFi network over other wireless network protocols, but it’s far more than that.
A smart hub can automate and process a lot of things at your convenience and provides you the flexibility to customizing the device’s behavior and even add sophisticated capabilities the manufacturer didn’t provide by default.
Although as I have mentioned before, there isn’t any rule but instead ideal situations that allow a homeowner to have a hub that too more of his or her choice. The smart home aficionado, one who wants more fine-grained control over a wide range of devices without getting onto any intricacies of home automation, would better off choosing a hub to process with.
Wrapping up
Lastly, there would be two choices you think of a hub – either the smart devices you have at your home mandatorily needs a hub to function because most likely they won’t support WiFi connectivity or you wish to have one because you don’t want to contemplate over figuring and matching out the compatibilities of different devices protocol.
Hence, the choice is yours.
