Has anyone tried that?? For some reason I have written in my notes that you can't use a shelf spare C7 to restore a hub protect backup, and that you had to get the replacement from Hubitat themselves...
But maybe I wrote it down wrong. And I definitely have not tried it myself.
And I guess that is OT from the external antenna discussion anyway - sorry.
I have several hubs enrolled in Hub Protect. They all offer the option to restore backups from any of the other hubs enrolled in Hub Protect. However, if you only have one hub enrolled in Hub Protect, I expect that you would need to get the replacement from Hubitat.
Good point.
Maybe another way to say it would be - your 'spare' hub would also have to have hub protect on it before it would be able to restore a hub protect backup... At least I think that is true - I have multiple hubs in protect, I should go look. 
Sorry - wasn't trying to be off topic, but I also don't want someone thinking they have a quick restore ability, and then need it and not have it.
I have. It works.
You've done a protect restore to a shelf spare that was NOT covered by protect (which is how I interpreted what the other poster was planning to do)? I didn't think that was possible,
Of course you can do protect backup restores to other protect covered hubs. But that is a bit different than just having a "shelf spare" to restore to, without knowing the shelf spare has to have a protect plan too.
I'm pretty sure that's correct. When I first migrated, I went back and forth between my C-5 and C-7. And, as far as I remember, only one of them (the C-7) was covered by Hub Protect. I am about to do this again later this week, so will either confirm this or find out that HP is required for the backup recipient hub.
Confirmed. I have a C-5 that is not protected and a C-7 that is. I just verified that I can migrate a backup from the C-7 to the C-5.
OK, then I was wrong! Thanks for correcting me, I was definitely off base here.
Anyway, the group can feel free to (continue to) ignore me and get back to discussing external antennae.
Here's my Hub Protect subscription (only HubitatS is protected).
Here's what that Backup and Restore on HubitatM looks like:
Yeah, I see the migrate button on my 1 C7 that does not have hub protect, too. Have't clicked all the way through it to see what happens though. lol
Glad to be wrong on this one.
And Z-Wave devices can migrate - but Zigbee have to be rejoined (to their old selves - just a little more effort to keep in mind - esp if you have 56 of them like I do)
Correct. Which is why I carry Hub Protect on only my zwave Hubitat. If my zigbee Hubitat dies, I’ll just restore a local backup to a new hub and rejoin the zigbee devices.
Returning to the External Antenna portion of this topic...
I modified two of my C-7's to use an external antenna. One is my Development hub and I did it to be certain I had the skills. I did and moved on to one of my Production hubs. It also went smoothly and works fine. However, it's made no significant improvement in my connections. I was very good before the mod and I'm very good after. I went from 24 Direct connects to 25 Direct. 7 devices remain a single hop away. Speed was improved because I now have 18 devices at 100k while before it was at 16.
Not a huge improvement for the investment. But then again, there's been zero downside.
How long have you waited? Mine only went up a little bit in the first 24 hours. A week later now and it's jumped from 49 up to 83, even just in the last day it went up from 79 to 83.
48 hrs, but one more moved to DIRECT since that previous post. I'm now showing 26.
Yes.
I purchased the bill of materials exactly.
I did because I want to participate in the comparison. "Is it an improvement that is worth the $$?" If we try 10 different paths, I suspect we'd get 10 different answers AND not be able to determine if the difference is the path or just that every path has 10 different answers.
It's strange indeed that Hubs don't have visible antenna yet most WiFi routers do. It's purely convention I suspect. Competition to be sexy small is a strong force.
I've found that people with strong zwave mesh to begin with it takes longer to get them to connect directly. Devices don't generally like to change their routes until the route fails. Sometimes you can force a route update by running a repair but sometimes they're still stubborn. Building materials can have an outsized effect on this as well depending on reflections and interference. I killed power to a few circuits on devices with the breaker box to get some of the last hold outs to direct connect. The ones behind my fireplace though wont direct connect no matter what though. It's just the angle from the hub and the metal shroud and glass inside the fireplace that causes this issue. It's not a big deal but it would be nice to see them all direct connect.
FWIW in my household setup, I'd rather add a repeater device like a plug in module to broaden the "range"/reach of the Z-Wave mesh, than increase the RF being blasted out by an external antenna.
There are certainly situations that would require a repeater. But I can't imagine why you would "rather" do it that way. Each "hop" on a repeater is adding network traffic, and increasing packet collisions on the already very slow Z-Wave network. Remember, Z-wave bandwidth is only a tiny fraction of a normal WiFi network. The more devices that connect, direct, the less the network congestion.
Download the Hubitat app
