About to send the Hubitat back, can you help me salvage?

Thanks so much for the reply. I will try a few more things but maybe I'm not as much of a tweaker as I thought or wished I was!

I would say im not much of a tweaker, I only really had alexa and a bunch of skills with her. But it got to the point that I wanted schedules and motion lighting and other more powerful automations.

I literally stand on the backs of these guys smarts and ask ALOT of dumb questions, but there is always someone here willing to give me the time of day to help me get it right. Typically cause I haven't read the whole thread and wonder why it doesnt work.

HE takes a while, but once you get a bunch of small things working the rest gets a lot easier. I just took it slow, bit by bit, device by device until it started to click.
Hang in there bud, its worth it.

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Keep in mind that you should hit the CONFIGURE button on the device detail page any time you change drivers. Many users forget this.

Personally I think the system should do that automatically when switching drivers, but I do recognize there are edge cases where users don't want that to happen.

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As others have stated above you really need to exclude the device correctly. I have 120 devices ranging between zwave, Zigbee and WiFi. Zwave is a PITA because most times you think you excluded correctly but really you didn’t.

My steps for ensuring zwave success in HE:

  1. Open three browser tabs - one in devices, one in logs and one in zwave settings
  2. Go to zwave settings tab and hit exclude
  3. Switch to logs tab
  4. Follow manufacturer exclude directions
  5. Watch the logs. If you see “Home” pop up in the header list then click on it and make sure the list says “device excluded.” If not repeat steps 2-5
  6. Click zwave settings tab. AFTER zwave exclusion is finished (30 seconds).
  7. Go to devices tab. Click pair device, zwave device
  8. Follow manufacturers instructions to add device to hub
  9. If device found but stays on initializing then first WAIT until discovery hits zero. Hit restart for discovery and then turn device on/off. 99% of time this sends the final waked up command to HE and then device is added. If not, refresh page and try steps 8-9 again. IF STILL not working (now we have to go extreme which is rare) reboot HE and go through steps 1-8 again.

To ensure Zigbee success:

  1. Follow manufacturers process to reset device
  2. Open tab to devices
  3. Discover devices, Zigbee
  4. Follow manufacturers directions to pair device
  5. If device found but stays on initializing then first WAIT until discovery hits zero. Hit restart for discovery and then turn device on/off. Should initialize correctly then.
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I would have predicted this to be the other way around, ie the GE 12724 is plain-old z-wave and notorious for not reporting status reliably without polling, and the WS-200+ is z-wave plus with a built in driver, so it should work great on all aspects. I dont have one, just speculating. I would just swap out any and all z-wave non-plus devices for plus. Also make sure you have powered z-wave+ devices within easy range of the hub to ensure a good mesh.

Actually it is just like what you expect. But only for devices new out of the box. But for devices previously included in a ST mesh it's a different story because ST is (apparently) not so great at excluding them. And if you don't know that it could all just end up in a "pain in the ass show".

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I imagine quite a few hubitat users have a Homeseer WD200 or WD100 switch in their setup. What extra steps are needed to make a dashboard tile work? Seems silly that just basically adding it as a dimmer won't even get you the most basic functions working. I'm not trying to get the multitap functions on the dashboard yet, which I don't expect will ever work...

@justin.tan, you can link your ST and HE hubs together to make your transition smooth. Also, ST is a straight out of the box solution. There is a reason that there are so many here and most of them jumped from ST. Turning off your ST hub will help with pairing and I had the exact problem you had because ST didn't let go of my GE Light switches. Also keep in mind that you want to create a strong mesh. I've found that pairing things where they are going to be located is important. Also, try pairing your powered things first to create that mesh. Battery operated things don't repeat. Start close to the hub and work away. Probably not a good idea to do too much at once. I transitioned slowly because I could connect the hubs. This was a godsend. I was able to link rules from He to control things on ST. That was what kept me moving forward. Stay away from rebooting all the time. The hub will straighten out your mesh as you add things, but it will take a bit of time. Not days or anything, but add a few things then wait until tomorrow before you hit it too hard. I feel like you had a rocky start, but remember the community. We .. the people here ... are a unique bunch. I've NEVER had anyone be a shit here. It's refreshing. And welcoming. The further down the rabbit hole you go, the more you'll be hooked. Your first network didn't happen over night. Don't rush this. Connect the hubs and slowly move things over.

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@justin.tan

I don't think the GE issue is just a Smartthings problem. My Wink didn't "let go" of the GE nicely either.

The easiest way I found to fix the GE was to do a power off reset. Pull the tab on the switch (under the toggle or paddle) for a few seconds before you attempt to do an inclusion. I couldn't pair any of them in Hubitat unless I did this. My Inovelli didn't act like this, nor did my Zooz. That is why I think it is a GE problem.

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I've never been able to get to the bottom of the GE unjoin "issue". I have unpaired and paired (literally) >300 GE switches and dimmers. They unpair fine with HE, ST, Home Assistant, Homeseer, and my Aeotec Zstick...

In turn, they pair fine on ST, Homeseer, Home Assistant, etc...

Now, for HE... I have had a general zwave pairing problems in HE for ~6 months (that is not GE device related at all) in which it takes usually 3-5 tries and multiple hub reboots for me to successfully pair anything zwave. But I don't hear a lot of people screaming about it, so I haven't bothered discussing it w/Hubitat. Oh, and it is the same on 2 different HE hubs for me...

Not the end of the world, as eventually it will pair, and I move on with my life. If I were pairing new devices every day, that routine would be super annoying. But I don't.

April is 100% correct. These posts from new users continue to pop up. Accounts of how users have many devices connected to ST working "flawlessly", but none of these users went out and bought 40 devices, as an example, and connected them all to ST at once. If they had, they would encounter a very different experience, not unlike what they are now experiencing with HE.

It's like going to university for four years, working a job for 10, and then calling the new person just starting out, an idiot because they are not established. You have to build slowly. Your devices need to become steady on their feet before they can run, otherwise they're going to fall.

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Thanks everyone! Took your advice, restarted going from inside out and things are working better. Still only have a few devices included, but now at least my tiles work (sort of, have some quirks where the dimmer slider doesn't stay on the value I set it to, it reverts back to the previous value even though the light actually dims appropriately).

Gonna play with Rule Machine now to make sure I like it and can do what I want. Sort of feels clunky to me, I like how webCore was almost like programming and laid out that way, felt more intuitive to me.

So far the best thing about HE is the community!

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Rule Machine is "different". It's not WebCoRE for sure, but it gets the job done. It's always difficult trying to use a new interface, but you'll start to understand it. If you're trying to do something, take a look, but don't spend your time fighting with something when you can throw your idea out to the community and get it worked out. And don't try to be all independent with it either. We're here to help. Not to judge, so please throw things out to the community. We use these problems to teach and to learn, and you will too. If you have your motion sensors placed to account for latency in ST, be prepared to relocate them. And, now that you have your focus on, I think you're going to enjoy this ride. Don't forget about the ability to use hub link. If something isn't quite there yet, you can keep it in ST until it is and use it from HE. Now that you have your focus on -> welcome to the rabbit hole. We'll see you on the other side.

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Just my 2 cents here.... but as the zigbee/zwave mesh gets stronger and more stable things will settle down. Patience is the key here as HE is all hands on unlike the spoon feeding ST that does nothing to educate the end user. Eventually you will become a pro at adding devices and helping new users.

BTW the only devices you have to pair within 1-2 feet of the hub are door locks because of the secure pairing that is required.... its the zwave/zigbee version of SSL. You will need to repair the zwave if its a zwave lock AFTER you mount it at its location. Zigbee will re-route automatically.

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A great tool for getting used to moving things over is hubconnect. It's better than hublink.
It will take some 15 minutes to get it going but once you do the integration with smartthings is almost seamless. With hubconnect you can move devices over slowly and not lose any functionality.

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Thanks for the tip Rxich,

I tried to install Hubconnect this evening. Followed the instructions to a T. In my smartthings app I added the Connection Key, got the "Connected!" message. Then went checked a bunch of lights in the ST app to synchronize to the server Hubitat. After that the instructions end. Where do I find these synchronized devices in Hubitat? Do they show up under devices? Under the App?

Ah ha! Forgot the drivers, lol! I knew I was going to forget that part when I skipped over it. So far so good, I wish there was an easy "refresh" button to resync devices. I had to just toggle devices on and off in the ST side of the app to send a refresh.

Will start playing with the devices see if things still work. Thanks!

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Great, the devices should react & report almost realtime-0.5 seconds for me, outside of the usual ST delays. The hubconnect thread has a ton of great info. I usually will search the thread for my issue, like put in "delay" and see what others have discovered.
Have fun !

It's nice to see that your hubitat experience is turning positive. I can almost sense your excitement in the journey now. When you move things over, don't forget to start migrating your rules as well. This can be something that will fill your time as you can move a rule and leave the equipment. Then replace the equipment in the rule as you move it over. Good luck!

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