I have a bunch of working GE switches, but they are old, and don't notify on state change properly,
so I took a chance and bought a bunch of inovelli switches to replace them. That was todays job,
but I'm stuck on step 1
I decided I would exclude the first switch, and replace the first switch as a trial.
Problem is, I cannot get the first switch to exclude. Put c7 hub in exclude, toggle switch, no luck..
Reboot c7, toggle switch, no luck. Beat on toggle switch like a madman..., no luck. (-:
Switch still works perfectly from the hub.
Any Ideas? I'm been impressed with the hubitat functionality over other hub,
but I really really hope someone at hubitat is burning the late
night oil working on the z-wave stack in this thing.
I understand I can exclude the device using my old smartthings hub, but How do I do a "force exclude" in hubitat, and am I going to be left with yet another ghost device in the zwave radio table I'm going to have to break out the uzb7 stick to do surgery with ?
BTW, Im sorry if I sound frustrated, but everytime I touch zwave on this device, I feel like I'm walking through a minefield. I appreciate the help
When you go to the device and select delete, it will first attempt to exclude it. After about 30 seconds, it will give up and give you the option to « Force » remove it. That will remove it from Hubitat, but not the z-wave mesh. If you can remove it from the mesh using your ST hub or UZB stick afterwards (or before, the order doesn’t make a difference as far as I have seen in this case). That will remove it from the mesh and eventually, Hubitat will see that it is gone. (Not sure of the details on how that works, but I find that doing a reboot will typically pick-up nodes that have been removed or added via another device.)
With the C7 hub, you can also see the status of all your z-wave devices in the Z-Wave details screen:
That Z-Wave screen will also allow you to see and remove any ghosts nodes you have... and you want them gone! I have many Z-Wave devices and have had major mesh issues until I was able to remove them all. Most could be removed from that screen, but for one of them I had to buy a UZB stick. It did the trick.
Simplest/"safest" approach is to get the hub closer to the switch for the exclude, if that's possible. Long ethernet cable is a big help in some cases.
If not, what @Sebastien lays out should work. I have used my SmartThings hub to exclude devices when I could not get HE to exclude them due to connection/distance issues. The remove option he's referring to is on the switches Device page at the very bottom. I think that excluding the device from ST first, and then using the Device page force remove would be the best order.
As a last ditch effort I just replaced a couple of GE switches, and on the first one I got overzealous and replaced the switch before I had removed it from the hub.
Doing a force remove after the exclude timed out did not seem to cause me any issues. So you could try just removing power letting them time out and remove.
Step 1 was to bring out the smarthings hub and exclude the GE switch.
It excluded first try with a first tap on the switch.
Step 2. Did a force remove as described on the hubitat. Force remove made device
disappear but of course, I was left with a ghost zwave device in my table. Sigh.
Step 3. Bring out the zstick, pair it with my hub, and do a remove with the pc
controller. What'ya know.. the GE device is finally gone.
Step 4. Remove and install new switch.
Step 5. Did a boneheaded move and actually tried to use smartstart.
yeah, that was a disaster. Now have a inovelli partially registered
with s2 security. If anything I have learned from this group, is don't
use s2 security on the s7.
Step 6. fight again to de-register the inovelli switch. Amazingly on 3rd attempt
it excluded the proper way on the hubitat hub. (oh yeah.. reboot required)
Step 7. Register the inovelli switch using the tried and true tap the config button 3 times method. Worked like a charm. Made sure to deselect all security.
I now have a working inovelli switch. I now tremble in fear as I realize that I have 4 more of
these to do. Wish me luck.
As long as there isn't power to the old switch you can do a force remove. That shouldn't harm the database or cause ghosting. That way you don't even have to run the exclude.
I have managed to do 3 out of the 5 switches before my patience ran out (-: Fortunately, the next 2 actually excluded properly on the hubitat, so they were much easier.
