I'm having a rather torrid time moving my z wave network from ST to Hubitat.
I'm on my 2nd attempt, having reset the z wave on the first go to get rid of a ghost device that just wouldn't go.
I'm finding it very painful trying to migrate my 50 odd Fibaro dimmers and switches.
They seem to exclude fairly readily, but are very slow to include.
I am waiting plenty of time between includes (days sometimes)
Is it possible that the Z wave network that exists between the remaining devices hooked up to the ST hub could be messing things up? I've tried switching the ST hub off, but that will not guarantee radio silence I guess.
I am finding that some are joining with security "S0" and others with "none" - it feels like they all ought to be the same, and given that I've got an S7 hub, I guess they all ought to be S0.
I'm also finding that I'm getting ones that part join - they appear in the Z wave details, but not in the Devices list. When this happens, if I click "Discover" sometimes they recover, but sometimes the Z Wave network reports it's busy in the logs, and the only way to recover it is to do a full power cycle, disconnecting the power.
One tip seems to be to move the Hubitat hub close to the device (though at the moment I'm working on the devices that are pretty close anyway - like 5 metres max).
Is this a good idea? (It's a bit of effort!) Will the mesh cope with the hub location changing during this process (everything will join with a one hop route and then have to sort itself out after?)
I will admit that my confidence in Hubitat is now a little shaky - please help me get it back!
Unless you have devices flooding the Z-Wave frequency, that shouldn’t be an issue. Unless you have a device to see the noise on the Z-Wave frequency (Like a Z-Wave toolbox), there is no way to know if a device is doing this. The best way I have found to ensure it is not a problem is to power down all devices for a minute - I have done this in the past by shutting down my main breaker. (I would recommend your hub is already powered down or on a UPS if you do this.)
You only want to use S0 for locks - Some devices will require a special pairing to turn off S0 (The Z-Wave specs do not allow Hubitat to give you the option to disable S0 when it is offered). S2 is okay and preferable to S0, but again - of little use other than for security devices (like locks). No security is the preferred option.
Z-Wave Plus devices will do this automatically. Older 300 series devices will need a “repair”.
Be sure to start pairing devices closer to the hub first, then move out further. Also, you want to use Z-Wave plus devices as much as possible. Older Z-Wave (300 series) devices are likely to cause some issues.
Also note that there are some devices that do not play nice with the 700 series Z-Wave and therefore should be avoided on the Hubitat C7 hub.
Thanks Sebastien.
Pretty much all of my stuff is Zwave+ I think.
The hub is C7.
I would love to use no security (these are lights!!) but I don't have the choice as the hub is 700 series I believe.
I do want to use the same for all ideally (I must for ones where I'm using association groups I think).
Is there a sure fire way to force "none"?
Unfortunately, forcing “none” only work if it has the ability to use S2 - this is dictated by the Z-Wave spec for 700 devices and required for certification.
However, some devices (like the Inovelli bulbs) have a firmware update that allows for pairing without security. Some devices have a special step that allow for the same.
I'm adding notes here in case they help anyone in a similar position, as I'm beginning to learn some things... many to do with Fibaro, but some general pointers too.
First - I have elected to plug my HE in to a USB power pack and hook it on to a 25m LAN cable so I can take it to the devices.
I think this helps - I've been getting it within 1/2metre of each device.
It does mean that the mesh is very malformed, but when left with the hub back in it's central location over night, so far it has recovered. "Repair" s don't seem to help with this, time does.
I start with an exclusion, even if I've factory reset the device, as this proves the comms faster - if the HE hasn't picked up the exclusion within 10 secs, it's not going to.
I then do the inclusion - for my fibaros this takes around 30 to 40 seconds for them to show as initialising, and then anything from 20 to at least 90 seconds to pop up with the box for the name.
Some Fibaro specific stuff - the triple click to get them in to exclude/include needs to be pretty rapid. But it can be "more than 3" clicks, so I just very rapidly click the button 10 or 15 times.
If (as I had on some lights) you've used the inbuilt function to swap S1 & S2, once you've excluded the device the buttons revert back, so the button you triple clicked to exclude the device is not the one you need to include it (my 11yo daughter spotted that one!).
The Fibaro dimmers go through a calibration cycle on exclude, and won't therefore respond to an include triple click until that has finished, which is around 30 secs after the lights go out.
I have a couple of devices that refuse to pair "S0" no matter how many times I exclude & re-include. Luckily, so far, these have not been ones where I use "Associations" which require them all to have the same security level (understandably).
I'm sure I've got other painful lessons to learn on the way, but that's what I've got so far.
I do this with all devices, even new ones and most of the time an unknown device is excluded. Knock on wood, I have never had a ghost with any of 40 ZWave devices. I don't know if that is why but I'm going to keep doing it.