Can I Use Multiple Louvolite One Touch Home Hub Units to Control Blinds in Large Properties?
We discovered a neat feature of the Louvolite One Touch Home Hub system today. If you want to control electric blinds by App, Alexa, Control4 or Google Home in larger property, this is a great tip for you.
First of all, let's re-cap, for those of you who aren't familiar with One Touch blinds or Louvolite's One Touch Home Hub.
We offer battery operated roller blinds using Louvolite One Toucn Motors in our electric roller blinds section. These can be controlled by handset, or using a separate device called One Touch Home Hub - this nifty unit connects to your router and allows you to control the blinds from a clever mobile app.
Not only this, but the hub can also be connected up with Alexa allowing voice control. Google Home and (for real smart home buffs) Control4 can also be connected.
We received an enquiry from a customer who had already purchased a One Touch Home hub from our website along with multiple blinds. The hub was located at one end a larger property and the blinds were spread throughout the property in different rooms.
The customer discovered that the Home Hub would not reach the blinds located at the far end of his property on the first floor. So he contacted us for advice, having noticed that there was a facility within the menu, under "Smart Controllers" to "Add Multiple Hubs".
So I contacted Louvolite and asked the question - Can a customer control multiple hubs from a single app?
The answer is yes!
Once you have your second hub, all you need to do is go to the menu and select "Smart Controllers", then "Add Multiple Devices" and add the second hub.
And the good news is that once you have done this, the set up and user experience is pretty seamless:
1) You do not need to add the blinds to the second hub - because the blinds are stored to the account not the hub.
2) There is no need to toggle between hubs within the app. The app automatically sends the control signal to both hubs, so that if one hub cannot reach the blind, the other will.
I was also interested to find out when exactly this "multiple hub" scenario should come into play - is there range limit on a hub, beyond which a second hub would be required? The answer to this is a bit more vague unfortunately - the range is 35m-250m. Lots of different factors come into play in determining whether a single or multiple hubs will be required - such as wall material and density, number of walls, along with other wireless devices diluting signal strength.
I should qualify the above by saying that we have only ever received a single enquiry from a customer who found that the range of a single hub was insufficient for their property. So I expect in most cases this should not be required. My advice would be to buy a single hub first and then consider a second hub only if you have issues with range. I would also try moving the first hub to a more central location in your property first, remembering that the hub doesn't need to connected by wire to your router, it can be connected by WIFI only.
I hope this is useful to you all. Remember, at newblinds.co.uk, we offer battery operated roller blinds using Louvolite One Toucn Motors to buy online in our Electric Roller Blinds section and the One Touch Home Hub can be found in our Electric Blinds Accessories section