C-5 hub died. Z-wave question about hubitat protect

So I contacted support once the hub died, was offered a discount on a replacement which I thought was nice of them. They mentioned hubitat protection to me which was news to me.

I received my C-7 replacement and have been researching how to migrate the z-wave network over. It seems the protection plan has this as a tool but not available beyond a paywall. I was a bit pissed off to hear that because restoring a network is such a pain and honestly it's fundamental to a products success for repeat customers. I was ready to just try something else at this point if i wasn't offered anything. Hub was only 14 months old. Anyway, this isn't what this post is about. /blowoffsteam

My question is,

I have a local backup of my dead hub(12-12-2020), i currently migrated the backup to the new c-7. If I activate Hubitat protection, would I be able to upload the 2020 backup to the cloud and migrate my Z-wave network or I have to start from scratch and rebuild the network?

Thank you

Your local backup does not include the zwave radio database backup.

As far as I understand you needed to have the protect plan in place before your hub died to have the cloud backup with radio database included.

That said, uploading your backup you can follow the migration guide.

Zigbee is pretty easy from there - just re-discover and everything is back in place.

Zwave you have to re-include and then do the DNI dance but it works.

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Thanks Steve for getting back to me with a response.

I started trying to get my Zigbee stuff back up and have had no luck. The hampton bay zigbee fan will not reset. I turned off all zigbee stuff near by thinking maybe it's meshing off the old network. So frustrating.

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There is no old mesh. That died with the dead hub. :smiley: Hampton Bay Fan Controller (HBFC) will want to be the LAST Zigbee device you recover. It almost always wants a repeater very close and if those aren't active first, you will reach frustration with the HBFC soon.

Every device has it's own 'dance' to go into pairing mode... You put the Hub into Zigbee Discovery then do the dance on a device. The Hub will respond with "Found a previously paired device" and just drop it into all the existing uses.

At this time, all of your Zigbee devices are in "a panic" trying to find their controller... which no longer exists. They need to be told "This is your new controller" via the pairing method above. All Zigbee devices have a unique hard coded Node number burned into them at the factory, they simply need to know which Home Network to use. You tell them that via pairing. Since the Hub DB has the hard coded Node number already, it's super simple to tie them together during pairing... and the Hub does that every time.

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Hmm, i've repaired this fan in the past and the lights have flashed 3x. my hub is literally 10 feet from the fan. I can't get the light to flash. I also have a zigbee sylvania smart switch next to the hub. I tried to pair that with no luck. Is there a procedure for that?

The hub in zigbee discovery finds nothing. I wonder if this hub was a refurb or something. Didn't come in a box, no power brick. Maybe it's borked?

Have you done a factory reset on the fan or the light bulb?

i followed the directions to factory reset the fan but it doesn't want to reset or indicate a reset with 3 flashes. I see others have had this problem as well. You would think they would make the reset a simple process like hold the power button down on the remote

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I'm going to leave the power disconnected for a while and attempt it again. It should go into reset mode even without a hub right?

Yes.

That isn't the hub's fault. If you can't get the light to reset, the hub cannot and will not pair to this.

These HBFC are very picky about the timing and sequence to reset.

ok i was able to get the smart plug to connect after powering down the hub and turning it back on. Is it normal for the notification icon to prompt that the zigbee radio was not enabled at start up? It went away.

I was able to factory reset two zigbee light bulbs but they haven't paired yet. I'm going to leave them unplugged(off) for 10 minutes. I had the switch unplugged over night and it connected right away without having to do anything after booting up the hub. Before it wasn't discoverable.

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The radios, like any other computer, can get stuck. They do NOT react to a reboot. To get them to start up again, a power cycle is needed. It's highly suggested you not use the micro USB connector for this... it is suggested you do a shutdown via the menu, then unplug the wall wart... or at least the other end of the USB cable.

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ok so i hooked up the hub to a battery and a long ethernet cable, moved it around. it paired right away with each device. It was literally farther away from the fan...I guess the fan doesn't flash 3x unless it's trying to pair. so all zigbee back up now.

Thanks for the assistance.

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Man, I owe you a beer. I "lost" my zwave settings the other day, and rebooting the hubitat didn't help. Thought I was gonna have to nuke everything and start over with setting up 30 zwave devices.

Then I found your post, did a full shut down, and voila, everything's working perfectly.

Thank you! Saved me HOURS of work...

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As is mentioned a hundred times around here, try to avoid using the hub end of the power cord to cycle power. That microUSB is fragile. Hubitat's latest hubs have some hot glue added for extra support but I'm going to treat that improvement as simply extending the number of times before failure :slight_smile: Use the other end of the cord to power cycle... the BIG end :smiley:

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