I'm at a bit of a loss. I have just installed a new Hubitat (my old one was damaged) and am trying to move everything to the new one. I have successfully (I think) excluded the devices (I have a lot of them) from the old hub they were on (back in the day, it was a Smart Things). I still had the old ST lying around, so Excluding was relatively simple. Now I try running Include, but nothing is showing up. Anything I am missing?
Thanks,
Tim Cantrell
What devices are you trying? Zigbee devices don't have to be excluded you can just reset them when you have the new hub in Zigbee pairing mode and they will connect, although they may need to be closer if you don't have many Zigbee repeaters. Z-Wave devices need to be excluded from one hub or another (they can even be excluded by the new hub) before they can be joined when the new hub is in Z-Wave join mode. After you start the searching on the hub you press the up paddle on a GE switch or the config button 3 times on an Inovelli, they each have their own join method to lookup.
I wish Z-Wave was as straight forward as Zigbee, where you just need to get the thing to reset and it is almost guaranteed it’s going to join if it’s compatible.
Z-Wave is so different among devices, even within the same manufacturer. It’s a matter of finding what part of the one foot you’re supposed to balance on while you hold a Volkswagen Beatle on a pole from your nose. Then twirl a plate with one hand while pressing a button with the other.
HE can exclude too. It is called General Exclusion and any Z-Wave certified hub has to be able to do it.
Try exclude again, factory reset, power cycle the device for 30sec, and include.
When prompted for security by S2 devices, uncheck everything unless it’s a lock or garage door opener. You don’t need security on the other devices and you’ll be happier when it comes time to update the firmware on one of them if you don’t have security enabled.
Sorry, should have put this in my first post. I'm talking about z-wave switches (GE/Jasco).
I've tried Exclude again and reset the devices again. As these are in wall switches, there's no such thing as recycling the power.
Older GE switches (don’t know the age of yours) need power cut at the breaker to turn off the Z-Wave radio
These might help too
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Join_and_Reset_Instructions#GE.2FJasco
The GE switches have an air-gap switch (little plastic pullout tab) to turn off power to the switch without having to turn off the circuit breaker. If these GE switches aren't Z-Wave Plus you should think about replacing them but if they are newer ones with Z-Wave Plus they work great, the only problem I have with them is if I put the hub into exclusion mode to remove a device and someone else turns on a light that switch excludes. Either Z-Wave or Z-Wave Plus should join fine though. Have you checked the Z-Wave radio in the Settings->Z-Wave Settings page? If it is already enabled you could try disabling then a few seconds later enable it again, that basically resets the Z-Wave radio on the hub.
Actually the Z-Wave radio is still powered when you disable. So that might work, but if it doesn’t, try rebooting the hub.
Obviously the switch you need to try joining first is the one closest to the hub. Then work outward, away from the hub so each subsequent switch can find a neighbor to route through if it cannot communicate adequately with the hub on its own.
I've rebooted the hub and Excluded switch #1. It gave me a success message (I used my old SmartThing to do this). I've pulled out the AirGap. These used to be on another Hubitat (the one that got damaged). Still no luck joining.
Anything else to try?
Did you cut power at the panel? I have not seen mention of which GE/Jasco switches these are. The older (pre-plus) switches do not power down the Z-Wave radio when you pull the Air-Gap. You have to cut power at the breaker.
You can also do the exclusion from HE. There's no need to do it from ST. You may need to exclude a couple of time before they will include. Doing a general exclusion from HE will also confirm if the hub is communicating with the device. Do the exclusion from the Discover page, rather than the Z-Wave details page, so you get feedback without needed to look in the logs.
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