Hello. i am new to Hubitat and home automation so I may ask some dumb questions at times. I recently purchased a home that was setup with Hubitat but the seller took the Hubitat hub with them when they left. It took me a while but I finally got my hub connected and am now starting to learn how to set it up. Since all devices were set up before, I'm not sure how to proceed with the whole thing. I've tried excluding a few devices, outlet, Jasco/ GE 12721, but have had no luck. Keep getting must do factory reset. Any help is appreciated.
You need to understand the mesh building process. You are unlikely to be successful when there's a great distance between hub and device. Figure out the place where the hub will be permanently located, ideally in the Center of the collection of devices. Then find the AC powered device closest. Look it up on the internet and find the "dance steps" to put it into Include/Exclude. Put the hub into Exclude and do the dance steps. You should see a message "Unknown device excluded" and that's what success looks like
If you can't exclude a device, then including won't work either. I always start by excluding because you cannot create Ghosts in the device table that way.
As @csteele said, you have to do a general exclude of each zwave device to the new hub, but signals have to be able to "reach" with a non existent mesh - chicken and egg.
Some devices also have a "full reset" that will wipe out any old hub information.
You'll need to look up the manual for each device to find the button pressing/mouth holding sequence to get the device into a reset or exclude sequence as needed. Model numbers matter, so you may need to remove faceplates to get specifics. Take photos for later reference. I often print out the configuration (inclusion/exclusion) processes for later reference.
Any plug in device (portable) would be the best to start with vs hardwired, as you can bring those devices closer to the hub. Otherwise start with the closest device to the hub. The C7 isn't known as having the best Zwave antenna, so sometimes this can be challenging.
Also note these are Zwave (non plus) devices. Original zwave implementation had fairly limited range, and could not do "network wide" inclusion/exclusion (meaning, they can't include/exclude thru other devices in the mesh - it has to be within range of the hub). @aaiyar is the expert when it comes to original zwave devices. Others like myself ditched them long ago and only use zwave plus devices.
Half my 60 zwave devices are 300-series. Three are 100-series. But theyβre all things like sensors and button controllers, so I donβt need to poll.
I realize you are referring to the old hub but wanted to reinforce the point that one should never remove a Z-Wave device from their "working" hub without excluding first or they will run into potential mesh issues which can be a pain to resolve.
On a side note if thinking about slowly migrating things over then the above would apply to the old hub as well. The way I've done this pre-migration service (and for non HE hubs) has been to set up a skeleton framework of new repeaters in an outward pattern on the new hub first then working inwards exclude each device farthest from the old hub and pairing it on the new hub. This way I could keep the functionality of the old while implementing the new. If I ran into trouble I could always back out with less of a hassle. ymmv of course..