I'm looking for advice on the best way of swapping out a bunch of old GE zwave dimmers to new inovelli REDS ( assuming they ever come in stock ).
What I have been doing is below. I know there must be an easier way without editing my rules, but I've been burned by ghost devices before and am a little gun shy.
Remove old device from any rules/apps
Exclude old device
Include new device
Fix all my rules
Now I know there must be an easier way to do this so I don't have to edit all my rules. Maybe just swap the device and use the replace function? I do have a z-stick I've used to remove and diagnose problems so I can use that to make my life easier if needed.
Assuming you have a C7 hub you could try to do a zwave replace - sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. I've never gotten it to work if the new device uses a different security level (unencrypted to S2, for instance), but have used it successfully a few times on unencrypted to unencrypted replacements (different manufacturers of devices).
Rather than totally deleting the device from my rules, I just create a proxy virtual device as a placeholder. Call mine temporary in the name, but I’ve seen other people also label it DELETE in all caps, so they easily see it.
Sometimes is a little bit more helpful than just deleting the device which can’t always be done without breaking the rule structure.
I’m guessing you know this, but you can look at bottom of the device details and there will be links to all the rules it’s contained in. So you can just click those, quickly go to the rule, and add the proxy device temporarily.
