How can I find out what the z-wave route is for a device?
I would like to know too but I don't think it is exposed in HE.
It is not exposed in HE.
There are third party methods but they are complicated relative to the result. You might then even have to run that result through yet another third party's tool to get a cute drawing.
I just started to convert an unused Z-wave stick to a Zniffer device in hopes that I could add it to the system to see what is going on with my Zwave mesh. I don't know what I would see with the Zniffer but since I had a couple of spares, I thought I would have a look. I don't have problems but I do miss HomeAssistant for the ability to gather a neighbors and hops list.
Theoretically you can join a ZStick to the Hubitat network and then use HA for those tools.
Does a Zstick become a secondary controller? I have wondered about a second hub and the possibility of Zwave controller shift. Is that possible? Has anyone done this ??
For the my post, yes:
Hubitat doesn't have controller shift support. At least so far....
Hubitat doesn't need it by virtue of Link to Hub and the soon to be released (Community created:) HubConnect.
It's far better in my mind, to have dual Hubs and not dual controllers.. in the sense that a pair of controller sticks is on one network (radio) and dual hubs offers dual networks and dual radios for double the communications. A pair of controller sticks is just one radio. Only the Primary stick does anything, the 2nd will help with Join or Exclude... so maybe a few packets per month, average?
Don't the Link to hub and HubConnect only "join" devices on one hub to another rather than all devices are known and controllable from either as can be the case in a secondaries role?
ZWave spec itself uses the words "primary" and "Secondary". I wish they hadn't because the vast quantity of people with ZWave in their Home have TOTALLY different expectations of those words.
Most people USING ZWave want redundancy and those words in the spec are as far from that as possible.
Yes, a ZWave secondary controller is allowed to send commands to any device on the network, and the ack goes back to the sending controller. However, that means all other controllers have no clue that a device is in a different state.
Link to Hub and HubConnect allow the exchange of attributes at layers above the radio level commands. They link the HUBs not the radios.
With controller shift you can have some sense of redundancy. It isn't a simple process as I recall and it can fail. I don't know about the Hubitat C4 sticks, but I could and did backup my Aeon Zstick and could restore it to a backup stick should one go bad. I don't think the nightly backup with HE includes, the Zigbee/Zwave pairing data does it? I have the C5 hub so I would guess I am out of luck. I would absolutely get a second hub if it could become a backup device.
As you're pointing out.. there's layers of issues to contend with.
You can use your HA to join an Aeon ZStick and get the DB transferred.. aka backed up. But even controller shifting that using HA's tools won't help because it's not node1. (Or whatever Node your existing Hub is using.) Then you have to do a repair to get the devices to send their status to the new controller.
I do understand those issues. I have done it before and it wasn't easy.
So I could fire up HomeAssistant and put the Aeon Zstick into pairing mode and join the HE Zwave network?
Not via HomeAssistant, but yes, I've done that 30 times or more. (I use OZWCP on a Debian box.)
Could you give me a very brief list of what you did. I don't necessarily need step by step. I have been a Linux user for 25 years and did use OZWCP early on with HomeAssistant so I can probably pick my way through.
