Hubitat as secondary controller to VeraSecure

I have a Hubitat device that controls the lights in my theatre room with Plex. Works great. I use a VeraSecure device for everything else in the house. Can Hubitat be used as a secondary controller to VeraSecure so that I can get access to the other devices if needed? If so, please describe how to do so or point me to a useful link that gives instructions.

I'm guessing this won't work very well (Z-Wave certification requires hubs to be able to be a secondary controller, but most of them don't really like being secondary controllers--and you'll likely find oddities like device states not geting sent to both as they happen). But if you want to try, the technical term for what you're looking for on the Hubitat side (to add it as a secondary while your primary is in inclusion mode) is "learn mode," which you can see (likely begrudglingly, also probably a certification requirement) documented here:

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Z-Wave_Manual#Z-Wave_Learn_Mode

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Well, this says it all, right at the top:

NOTE: As of Hubitat Elevation platform release 2.2.5, the hub cannot be utilized as secondary controller for the purpose of migrating devices from a primary controller to Hubitat Elevation.

So, I would guess what I want to do won't work. It is not a big deal but it sure would have been nice if that capability was there.

I did not take this to mean that it can't be used at all, just that if your intent is to "migrate"--in which case your long term goal is likely to promote Hubitat to primary--then it won't work. I did not interpret it to to mean use as any secondary controller. But again, most hubs don't really "like" to be used in that way even if spec requires it, and I've never tried. :smiley:

My intent is not to migrate away from VeraSecure as VeraSecure allows me to use the 2GIG sensors (door and motion) to trigger lights. Hubitat and many others, if not all, cannot connect to 2GIG sensors. I just want to allow Hubitat control the lights as well as VeraSecure. I suppose it might be possible at some point to use the VeraSecure as a secondary to the Hubitat. Time will tell what I actually do. For now, it is much simpler to try to have the Hubitat be a secondary.

Maybe. I've wanted to use HE as a secondary z-wave controller to my alarm panel's controller (which must remain the primary for it to work correctly). Up until recently it didn't work.

However, as of 2.2.9.something, it does work. Probably something got fixed in the z-wave code that was also affecting secondary controller functionality. It's probably still not "officially" supported, but give it a try and see what happens. It's working good for me so far.

Put your primary controller in inclusion mode first, then press the button in the HE mobile app. Didn't work for me if I pressed the mobile app button first.

Press the Tools | Z-Wave Tools | Learn Mode | Start Learn Mode?

Yes.

For this I highly recommend using Reactor (Multi-Hub), although it must run on an always-on platform and may not fully satisfy your requirement that one controller act as Secondary.

That's a nice surprise...

If it's important to you and the secondary route doesn't work I believe Vera has an MQTT app and you could use MQTT on HE to achieve this.

You can probably achieve this via webhooks to Plex too - maybe even with this app or an adaption

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Everything works with plex with webhooks. That's why I bought Hubitat. I'll research mqtt. I do not see it as a Hubitat built-in or a Vera built-in so it must be on github.

Did you get Hubitat working as a secondary controller with a Vera primary controller?

Reactor works great for what I need to do. It does not setup anything as secondary. It does not even require touching the devices. A configuration file is put into place for both controllers. Then Reactor just brings in references to the devices on each controller and you can create rules to react to the extra events that you want to control. Very nice and easy. It does require a persistent service running on another computer to do this but that is easy for me as I just used the Plex computer to do it and set Reactor to run as a service.

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Agreed. MSR running on a Synology NAS under Docker app. Reactor is amazing stuff!

???

I mean the 2gig sensors don't use zwave or zigbee. Verasecure has the necessary radio for them.

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You can definitely link Vera and Hubitat together.

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You can do this if you implement Node Red on a separate machine and use the logic of Node Red to run both hub platforms, but this is a big deep rabbit hole to go down. I did this a few years back, but the VeraSecure was still more problems than it was worth. So I ended up just using the USB port of the VeraSecure for it's 4 hour backup battery capability to act as a UPS for my 3 Hubitat hubs, until the back up battery also failed, which led to me pitching the VeraSecure in the trash once and for all.

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