Moving House. How?

Hi guys, im looking for some opinions/advice here...

I'm currently renting a place, pending the build of our new place. Fingers crossed that should be completed mid-September :crossed_fingers:

Whilst renting, I've acquired 2 x HE - I wanted to try out Hub Mesh with the anticipation of (probably) running a ground/first floor set up in the new house. The current rental place is single storey.

I've also acquired some motion/temp/lux sensors, smart plugs, together with a handful of LED strips and a single Lifx bulb. I also have a Linktap water valve/meter connected via a RPi running MQTT.

My aim has been to play around, learning HE, Rule Machine (and more recently Room Lighting) and just get some ideas of what I want to do in the new place.

Thats the background. My question is, what's the best way to go about the move, Hubitat-wise?

So should I start again, just using what I've learned, to build from scratch? If yes, how much "scratch" should I go back to? Keep the sensors (mostly Zigbee) defined and write new rules? Keep the rules and adapt to the new house?

My initial thoughts are that the houses are too different (2-bed single storey rental, vs 4-bed 2-storey new place) to try and carry over much of the automation other than Presence.

But I'm interested in peoples opinions/experiences, especially from those that have done a similar move

I'd just take things that are easy to move and set it back up. Then build from there as your use-cases shift/mature. If I were to move right now, I'd be starting over. However, that's mostly because the foundation of my smart home are the switches throughout the house that aren't worth the time (to me anyways) to replace so I could take them with me.

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That sounds right to me.

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What are you using for your automations? Full disclosure: I am not very familiar with Rule Machine. You will have new stuff, certainly, but only reinvent then wheel where you have to.

Our new house and property are superficially quite different than our old, but most of the fundaments are the same. I use webCoRE and probably half of my automations (pistons) are some variation of motion + mode + lighting. This is super portable by updating device variables (and maybe tuning timing variables).

Wife's closet light? Exact same automation. Our attic fan? Slight tweak of the automation that we used for our garage exhaust fan at the old house. And so on.

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Start from scratch. Reset all devices and wipe both zigbee and z-wave radios. Follow the how-to's on building solid z-wave and zigbee meshes. Start from the inside out with mains powered devices first then battery ones. (This will establish your repeaters first) and the mesh will conform to your new house instead of trying to use old routes from your rental.

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As I mentioned, its mostly Rule Machine. Obviously both houses "standard" rooms such as kitchen, living room, etc. But even here, the layout is quite different, which is why I'm veering towards the clean sheet approach

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Excellent point, which I hadn't really considered! There's no benefit in trying to shoehorn the old mesh into the new place. Thanks for convincing me, Rick :+1:

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Nope, however there is also no harm in a bit of both. You could back up the hubs and update any firmware, then wipe the radio and restore the backup.

Now you built your mesh from scratch but when the automation is the same you use app swap to replace your old devices in the apps with your nice newly joined devices. Then delete the old now no longer connected to anything device from HE.

Your back up and running with your happy automation but with a solid new mesh.

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Make sure nothing is "permanently mounted" in your rental apartment. In most places anything permanently mounted is considered an upgrade and becomes the property of the landlord.

Although using a dual hub system with hub mesh can work, it might not be necessary depending upon how your new home is laid out. I have a home with a main floor, upper floor and basement. I have only one Hubitat and use repeaters/range extenders to transmit signals to all floors. My hub is centrally located on the main floor. All but a few of my devices are connected directly with the hub. Unless your floors are made of concrete, the signals will penetrate the floors as easily as walls. Concrete and metal are obstacles that can create problems. Metal HVAC ductwork is especially troublesome. Also in bathrooms, large mirrors can be problematic.

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I'm in the UK, so thats not relevant, but in any case I have nothing permanently attached :+1:

Fair point on the hub mesh. It's more for logical separation, rather than that I anticipate problems with signal transmission