For anyone following along or experiencing similar challenges, I wanted to share my ongoing experience with migrating from a C8 to C8 Pro and see if others have found solutions.
Current Issues
I've been working on this migration for over almost three months now and have encountered several persistent problems:
Z-Wave table population: Initially, the Z-Wave tables wouldn't populate at all, despite devices appearing correctly on the devices page
Device connectivity: When the tables finally did populate, devices either wouldn't connect properly or became unresponsive after connection
Hardware replacement: The original hub was replaced under warranty, but the issues have continued
Recent Developments
I've been collaborating with support to troubleshoot these issues, though communication has been slow recently. Last night, I attempted a full factory reset on the replacement hub, but encountered a new problem - the hub is throwing an error and refusing to reset completely.
Considering Alternative Approaches
My original plan was to do a "nuclear" approach: fully reset the new hub, exclude all devices from the old C8, and rebuild the entire Z-Wave mesh from scratch on the C8 Pro. However, with the reset issue, I'm now exploring other options.
One possibility I'm considering is adding all devices to a Zooz stick connected to Home Assistant and bridging them back to Hubitat. This might be a simpler path forward at this point.
Looking for Input
Has anyone else successfully completed a C8 to C8 Pro migration after encountering similar Z-Wave issues? I'd appreciate any insights or alternative approaches that have worked for others in similar situations.
Are both hubs on the same Gateway (ZIP / Zwave JS) when you attempt migration? I believe a new C8 Pro will now default the Zwave JS with the current platform, unless hey have backed that change out. I know supposedly those migrations issues were fixed but honestly I would still want to be on ZIP with both hubs.
Also I believe there is a known issue if you updated the old hub to the Z-Wave 7.22 firmware when it was available, and the new hub is still on 7.18. They pulled the 7.22 update option so I don't think you can update to it anymore.
Its highly likely both of those situations have already been looked at and addressed by support.
Thanks for the suggestions! You've touched on some key points that I should clarify:
Yes, both hubs were running on ZIP Gateway. At one point, support provided me with a specific endpoint to manually trigger a Z-Wave update on the C8 Pro, since it wasn't detecting the update automatically. Unfortunately, that approach didn't resolve the connectivity issues.
The current C8 Pro arrived about 3 weeks ago (this is actually the replacement unit). When I first attempted the migration to this unit, I was initially optimistic - both the devices page and Z-Wave tables populated properly, which was an improvement over previous attempts.
However, the devices never fully reconnected to the new mesh. The few that did manage to connect remained unresponsive. Interestingly, I noticed a pattern: the only devices that successfully reconnected were battery-powered devices. None of the mains-powered devices ever established proper connectivity.
Even after allowing several days for the Z-Wave mesh to stabilize, the connected devices remained unresponsive.
It's been nearly 3 months since I first started this migration process. During this time, my system has been operating at half functionality at best, and even that has been unreliable.
I'm now leaning toward completely rebuilding the Z-Wave mesh from scratch, but I'm blocked by the C8 Pro's inability to perform a factory reset - it's throwing errors and won't complete the reset process.
I should mention that my original C8 Z-Wave network was working reliably before introducing the C8 Pro into the equation, so I don't believe this is necessarily an inherent Z-Wave issue.
Has anyone else encountered similar patterns with battery vs. mains-powered device connectivity during migration? I'm curious if this points to a specific type of issue.
I upgraded 4 C-8s to 4 C-8Pro this year. Three of them have ZWave, one has no Z-radios enabled.. so it doesn't count towards your question
All of the migrations went well, bordering on exceptional. This really isn't a direct answer to your question since you want a start of "migration didn't work". I never had that situation despite 4 attempts to encounter an issue.
The current C8Pro is actually the 2nd replacement (and the most promising of the two) but still not working. The original C8 Pro, the 2nd (warranty replacment) and now third (also warranty replacement) all seem to have the same or similar issues. The only issue I can come up with is that the source C8 does not produce "migration ready" back-ups, meaning its not listed under migration ready . It doest produce a cloud back up, and I have been told numerous times that does not mater, they are the same thing. If thats the case that also eliminates that hypothesis.
You said you had an endpoint to trigger the z-wave radio update. But you did not actually say if your old hub was running 7.22, and/or if you did in fact update the newest Pro hub to 7.22 before attempting any migrations? I believe if you ever tried to load a 7.22 backup onto a 7.18 radio it will cause problems. I think that's the main reason the 7.22 update was pulled. I may have read somewhere there was some checking put in place to prevent future issues also, so it may block you from even doing it now?
Thats the gateway (ZIP) version, I don't think that is relevant.
The Zwave version is deciphered and presented in the Hub Info driver if you have that, or you can check the raw endpoint data via /hub/zwaveVersion. When on ZIP that endpoint gives you radio FW and the gateway version, its a little tricky to read. But you will either see all '7' '18', or you will see a '7' '22' in there.
@lcw731 I will PM you the JS endpoints, they were only revealed in beta, not public.
Since I couldnt full reset the hub , and could not re-do restoring a back up , I figured I would just simply try and turn the radios back on, switch to Zwave JS and see what happend. I did this at about 5:00 lastnight. As of 04:00 this is what I have. Not that very little is actually responding.
Going to check the actual Z-wave radio version on both hubs? What you checked before was the ZIP Gateway version which is not relevant here.
Hopefully when migrating you do not have any of the radios you want to use turned off? That would probably lead to issues. Also turning the radio "off" on Hubitat does not actually power it off, it just blocks the hub from talking to it. So if you have both hubs powered on with the same z-wave network ID (due to restoring) its going to cause a problem, even if one has the radio "off". This is why the instructions I believe say to power the old hub off.
Before I started the migration, after I did the cloud backup, I shut the old hub down, so it was offline when the migration happened. That being said. I have had the Pro on line with the radios shut dowb after the questionable migraton for a couple so that hubitat could look at the logs if they needed to. I guess that could have been contributing to the old hub becoming unstable.e.
Here are my zurrent Z-wave details as of this afternoon, this is about 24 hours out
I’m in this same boat. I have a paper weight C8Pro for a few months now. I’ve opened tickets, engaged with @bobbyD via PM, initially I got some feedback, provided access to the C8Pro for them to pull the logs and then silence. I’ve sent a few messages that got no reaction.
This is really frustrating.
Latest 115 Beta. But I've tried all manners of combinations of platform versions. The C8Pro was enlisted in the Beta as well by BobbyD as part of the troubleshooting we did initially, before they went radio silence on this. Today I tried again, between same Beta versions, with ZwaveJS on and off, downgraded platforms to non-beta, etc. Zwave table comes up empty every time.
If you have any spare Z-wave devices around I would try excluding/including one to the hub you are having issues with. If it cannot even exclude/include a device the radio might be dead.
Thx for the suggestion, should have tried it before. I had two Shelly Shutters brand new with me and tried to add them, No joy, they won't add to the new C8Pro, the hub doesn't even see them.
New warranty claim filed., this one has to go.
