Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I haven't investigated hubs. I keep seeing "no hub required"; I don't know the potential advantage of a hub and it seems like more of a commitment to the technology than I want to make right now.
Thanks!
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Here's some extemporaneous musings:
"no hub required" means that the device uses WiFi, so it can connect to your network and be directly controlled by stuff like Alexa or smart phone apps and such.
Hub-connected devices might use Z-Wave or Zigbee (very low power mesh networking systems) or LE Bluetooth and maybe others.
So in theory, having hub allows you to choose a wide variety of devices that could be cheaper/simpler/lower power/easier to distribute through the home/have less WiFi interference.
Plus you manage everything through the hub regardless of who makes the devices or what technology it uses, rather than needing a different management tool for each make of WiFi device.
In practice, however, as more and more Wifi devices become available, and as Wifi performance improves and gets cheaper and more efficient, perhaps the importance of hub system is reduced?
Add the fact that you very well may end up with most Wifi device from a single company, like TP-Link, and the management complexity will probably be not too bad.
That being said, some hubs can be had pretty cheaply and you can resell it all on eBay if you don't like it next year.