Migrating from Hub v. C-3 to C-5

Is it possible to migrate my configurations from rev C-3 to C-5 if I do a backup and restore? What is the difference between the two revs anyway, other than form factor?

Unfortunately there is no migration tool yet, HE staff hinted they intend to create one. So you will have to go through the setup again. I did this last Thanksgiving moving from a C3 to a C4. Now I plan to split my system to zwave on one hub and zigbee on another with a coordinator hub.

This is actually my single biggest concern/fear with Hubitat.

If I have a complete hub (if C5) or stick (if C4) failure I'm screwed and in for many, many hours of rebuilding things.

You can perform a backup and restore of the database, and then re-pair all of the Zigbee devices which will just pop back into place. However, Z-wave devices will need to be excluded from the original hub and then paired as new devices on the new hub. Then every automation that uses those z-wave devices will need to be updated to use the newly paired devices. You can then Force Remove the original Z-wave devices.

Unless you’re having an hardware issue, there really is no reason to “upgrade” and the new C5 has the same specs as the C4. It just has internal radios and is smaller.

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Also, the C3 and C4 were the same except the logo on top, if I recall correctly.

You can continue to use your radio stick if you want on a C-5 hub. In that case, backup and restore would move your system. The devices are tied to the stick. You would need a micro USB OTG cable to use the external radio stick.

But, there is no reason to do this. Same cpu, memory, storage. No point in moving to C-5 from earlier hub. My house (and development work) uses an older C-3 era hub.

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Actually, that was one of the differences: the C3 was a plain box (mine had a hand-painted hub number on the bottom, but I'm not sure how long they kept that up), but the C4 got the fancy Hubitat logo on top. :slight_smile:

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True but ST is the same and broken promises on the migration tool. I have confidence in HE on creating such a utility.

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I'm optimistic, but not confident. I certainly believe them when they say they will look into it though!

Any progress y'all want to share on a migration tool? @bravenel or @chuck.schwer ? Still a possibility in the future?

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If the hardware is the same, and it's only moving the radio internally, then I don't really need to migrate. I wasn't sure if the C5 had more processing/memory, in which case, I'd use that as the master and just pair less important devices to the C3 as a slave.

In any case, sounds like it's not a simple migration nor is there a reason to migrate, so I won't worry about it. But folks did bring up a good point. If my C3 dies, then I'd have to re-pair my devices with the latest rev as a replacement. Hopefully my hub won't fail, but if it does, hopefully there will be an easy replacement ability in the future.

Actually, if the C3 stick doesn't die, you could seamlessly migrate to the latest hub using the Y cable Bruce mentioned. But I agree with you: unless your hub is in plain sight and you think the C5 is prettier (applies to one of my hubs and I do), there's no reason to change. :slight_smile:

And hopefully we'll have native migration tools at some point (Zigbee isn't too bad as-is and Z-Wave is doable with third party utilities, but not without some effort).

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I'm really enjoying the mobile app notification with the much faster response of the Hubitat hub vs. the ST hub. With my Konnected setup, I get door open/close notifications almost right away! In the middle of migrating my Xiaomi devices now, but getting suck with my Yale locks. It's not completely pairing with my hub. Plus, when I try to exclude to re-pair, it won't remove itself with Hubitat's general exclusion. Only with ST's general exclusion. Strange.

The only thing I can't do now is trigger a chime on my sirens when the door opens. It seems to trigger the chimes very delayed and in series rather than in parallel.

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After migrating from SmartThings over to Hubitat I can't see how a migration tool could ever automate a conversion, Especially with zwave. At least zigbee devices hold their unique ID so that part may be possible but I can't imagine putting a pile of devices in a room and putting the hub into discover mode. Its hard enough getting one device paired at a time. The only possible way I could see a migration tool working is matching the device labels somehow. Of course there still would remain the problem of all the broken apps.

I see a problem with the entire home automation industry because once you purchase a hub, whatever brand that is, upgrading that hardware or replacing a failed hub translates to many hours, days, or perhaps weeks trying to restore operation. I sat on the SmartThings fence for years. I got my Kickstarter hub v1 in 2015, can't remember the year now, and never considered upgrading to v2 or v3 because of the labor involved in doing so, unless there were features so spectacular that I just had to have it. Heck!, replacing a critical sensor that is used in many automation's can be a real pain in the ass. I don't know if there is a solution but at least having the Hubitat running local and under my control lessens the chance of of another rug being pulled out from under me.

This is still on our list. We are laying some of the foundation for it now. No promises on timing.

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I would be interested in a failover solution. Maybe have two hubs that physically share a Z-Wave/ZigBee interface and if one goes down the other takes over?

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Actually, it is very possible. Wink was able to migrate users from their v1 hub to their v2 hub automagically (except for directly paired Lutron devices.)

Doesn’t sound like a problem with the whole home automation industry, as much a problem with Z-Wave. Don’t know why people that go full into it, like it so much. Has few redeeming qualities I can find. To each their own.

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Other than the fact it has a very long range, works flawlessly once the mesh is made, is on bands that have less competing interference, and has a well defined protocol with easy to develop drivers? Those seem like pretty good reasons to me...

That said, zigbee has some very compelling pluses too... I guess if one was better in EVERY way, we would all be using that, right?

Zwave 700 builds on many of the existing strengths of zwave, while moving to a modern development language and platform making devices much easier to program at the hardware level. This makes zwave 700 devices cheaper to make than zwave 500, and has other neat benefits like 10 year battery life on some devices due to the microprocessor change (although I never expect to see that. I would be happy w/5 year :smile: ).

So zwave isn't going away any time soon.

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. . , has a very wide range of available devices in so many categories, happily tries other neighbors for a way back home.

Any update when enabling full backups and restorations via the C-5 device? This would include any attached zwave and zigbee device. It needs to be seamless for easy restoration.