I just purchased a new C7 hub to replace my C5 and plan to reuse my C5 in the garage which is about 100' from the house. I haven't yet received the C7 so I am doing research.
I am going to purchase Hub Protect so I can "seamlessly" (nice word, rarely works) switch out my C5 with the new C7. Research tells me that HP will save all my setting, apps and Z-Wave devices and transfer them to the new C7 through a cloud backup. All zigbee devices will have to be reset for the C7 but will be recognized.
My main concern is installing the old C5 in the garage after a full reset. Should I reconnect all the zigbee devices to my new C7, even the ones in the garage. Or wait till I get the old C5 set up in the garage and then connect the devices to it. I have about 20 devices, lights, etc in the garage now and they work great.
How does the Hub Mesh work? Can I just tell each hub which device to connect?
As you can see, I am not sure what to do. I have read a lot of topics on these subjects, but none really answer all my questions.
If your existing devices in the garage work just fine with the C5 in the house, what is prompting you to move the old C5 to the garage? (At 100' I'm kinda surprised they do work, but great if they do!) Why not just migrate from the C5 to the C7 and be done with it?
However... if you do decide you want the C5 in the garage I think it does make sense to have garage devices connected to the C5 and house devices connected to the c7. And yes, on hub A you tell it which devices to share, and on hub B you create local devices to match the shared ones from A. And vice-versa. But the only reason you really need to share in both directions is if you are running automation from both hubs. An easier way might be to run all of your automation on the hub in the house even if the devices are paired to the hub in the garage. Makes it easier to manage.
Thanks for the reply. I think you are right. Just connect the C7 to all the devices and see if they work. If all is well at that point, just use the C5 for a backup.
I have 4 hubs working as a single system in my home.
Each hub has an 'area' of the house and 'owns' the devices within. Automation is run on the hub with the most devices named in the automation OR on Node-Red.
There's no right way or wrong, but there are different ways 
to interconnect hubs.
You'd substitute Hub Mesh where I use HubConnect
What? No Hue or Bond hub? Surely a lost opportunity.
no.. I'm not a fan of bulbs... not that that was always true.. my junk pile of smart devices includes all the bulbs I needed to learn that lesson. Some were just bad engineering... (GE, I'm looking at you) and so on.. nothing others haven't learned faster than me. But today, bulbs ONLY go in table and floor lamps where I can disable or remove the on/off switch. Which is only two places. I did, recently, buy a Lifx bulb and its a good bulb, but I have yet to find a permanent place for it.
I went with Hampton Bay Fan Controllers and they are pretty 'delicate' but at the moment they work fine, so Bond has no permanent home here either. 
And pull-chain closet lights where I can remove the chain.
Oh...that's clever. Evil, but clever. 
Only bulbs I have are in:
- Four table lamps where we're using Picos to control them - much more convenient than the lamp control up on the neck
- Two connected ceiling lights in the office where there's just no room in a very crowded box to add a smart switch
- In wall lamps in two bedrooms where I wired the lamps "on" in the box, and installed a pico on the box so I get Pico buttons to control the wall light and the ceiling fans in the room (via Bond) from the same switch.
Exactly.. that's the entire issue with bulbs... the extra steps needed to make their smartness permanent.
For table and floor lamps, I simply unscrew the knob in the neck.. and toss it in a drawer. I've been in that drawer looking for other small parts and haven't noticed those knobs... can't imagine where they went BUT, I really want to see the look on my wife's face after I'm gone and she's trying to revert to manual.
Why didn't I think of that... collecting them now
I have successfully migrated a C5 to a C7. Do I need to reset my C5 Hub to reuse it in the garage?
I wired in a Zigbee relay into the fixture itself and left the chain, that way I can manually toggle if needed. Moved the chain out of the way however so as not to be inadvertently triggered..
