I’ve written lots of articles about Switchbot and their hubs in here.To date the best has been HUB 2 – nice little hub with temperature and humidity display – BUT it’s a bit flimsy and tends to fall over easily.I have two of them.
Enter HUB 3.For starters, Hub3 is much more substancial than Hub2 – comes with the same USB lead with inline sensor (good idea) – and comes with power supply (standard plug-in-the-wall USB-C).And it’s black.
I just opened the box, put the unit on the table, clipping the 2 parts together after connecting the USB-C power input, turned it on, told the Switchbot APP to add HUB3 and voila – done (it does that thanks to an initial Bluetooth connection to the phone – common practice).I’m looking now at the lead photo I just put up – and I can see a background on the display not visible when actually viewing – that clarifies the display type – LCD, not OLED.Sorry about the dust – this is real-world southern Spain in summer – not a sterile photo studio.
I got the usual reminder that only 2.4Ghz WiFi is supported (I guess that will continue until people start using the very latest ESP32 with 5Ghz support – not that 5Ghz is needed here).Seconds later the hub was connected.Almost immediately an upgrade notice appeared.
I did that and in no time – “upgraded successfully”.V13.8.9 All very easy up to now, I’ve not even opened the manual or looked at the various stickers which come with Hub3.In the App I see the temperature and Humidity as well as room light level 2 (no idea what the scale is yet and they’ve just changed it in the upgrade apparently).
The Device is showing the same info.The APP says I’ve not added any IR remote controls yet and I’ve no plans to.The display brightness on the device seems to be dependend on ambient light levels as it changes as I move around the hub.
APP – displayed data… I’m going to add in weather as the hub display looks a little empty right now.That was easy.It asked me what I wanted to use as the source for temperature – I selected the hub.
I’ve no idea why right now the temperature at the very top is different to the main temperature reading.I’ll get there.The hub has a centre control that rotates, an on-off button, a home button, a back button and something that looks like a connection button (lightning) – all very subtle and neat.
To do more, i have to add devices to the hub – my various Switchbot devices are already attached to my Hub2 hubs so I’ll have to think about that – but first – breakfast… Lets for a second compare the look of both Hub2 and Hub3… Hub3 has a built-in speaker – can replace any number of IR controllers and has motion and light sensors .The display can also show the date and time.In all this is a major development from the Hub2 devices – rock solid on a desk.
Well suited to anywhere in the home.Shortly I’ll show it connecting to the new smart lock from Switchbot and other devices.This is interesting.
I took a look at Home Assistant and because I have the Switchbit integration in there – Hub3 magically appeared… humidity, luminance, light level, temperature… AND MOVEMENT when I went near the device..actually when the unit was pointing in my direction, the movement sensor triggered from around a metre away – that was unexpected… great.
