I just joined Hubitat and bought an open box unit that arrived today. Coming from a decently complicated ST network that got hosed pretty bad when they killed the groovy connections, so i have a fair bit of general smart home background and want to make sure my new system is as stable as possible.
My new Hubitat still had the setup of the original purchaser in it (not much, but he did set some basic items up). Just wondering if I should be doing a factory reset to it before I get into my setup or if that will cause more problems? Since I'm new i don't even really know what to look for with regards to existing settings that can trip me up. Initial poking didnt show me where a full reset was, but i did see some warnings that a factory reset might not be a great idea. Please help so i can get off on the right foot!
Hello, did you intentionally buy a used hub, or were you sent one by mistake? If you intentionally bought one, you might want to be sure that any apps like Alexa, Life 360, or similar integrations were shut off on that side of things. You can't unhook some or much of that from Hubitat side of things, and some of those integrations will continue to try and ping the Hubitat.
I am not aware of an all-inclusive list of what things cannot be removed without the other person's help.
I would go through and see what integrations are there before doing anything else. As noted above, deal with that first. Then you can do a soft reset, and reset the Zigbee and Z-wave radios.
It was an amazon open box item, definitely still registered to someone else (their email is in the registration), had their name, location and some other stuff still on it. I buy open box stuff all the time and usually just do a reset if it needs it. Was surprised to see warnings about full reset on this unit when i looked to see how to do it.
It does not appear to have anything of substance on it, the original user set it up in July and made a room, but I don't even see any devices attached to it (not that i really know where to look yet but i haven't found anything). Only had the basic rules app installed, and looking at the history logs he didn't really do to much before he gave up. Looked like maybe he had a switch installed but im not seeing it in the devices list (I have added my Life 360 info which i use for a bit of stuff and that's all that's there.)
I buy the Amazon warehouse stuff all the time also, get great deals on routers and other electronics that way.
I would wait for support as I am not sure how they will proceed. You will for sure eventually want to update the firmware to current, and then do a soft reset and reset both radios (same as a full reset but they removed that option in current firmware). BUT that does not de-register it from the old user, support would have to do that. Its sort of like the iCloud lock on an iPhone, only the prior user or Apple can remove it.
You’ll need @support_team to remove the registration, so you can register it with your email.
In the meanwhile, join the owners group so that you can communicate by PM with support when they see your post here. They’ll probably need to see a photo of your Amazon receipt.
Thanks guys. And anxiously awaiting them to register it to me. I did update it first thing (it prompted me to do that) and aside from that all I have done so far was add life 360. Looks like this is going to be a steeper learning curve than ST was. I'm and engineer but not a coder, and i did manage to figure out how to add groovy programs on ST and didn't break anything lol. Just hope the WAF is as good as it was on ST, but I think it's definitely going to take some adjusting.
It's a much better WAF. HE just works and the tools available are so much better than anything native to ST. I used webCoRE on ST and was able to easily move everything over without webCoRE. This was back in 2020 and the tools are better today. The only time something doesn't work at my house anymore is when I go in and muck something up. Good luck and welcome to the "local" club.
ST refugee as well. It is an adjustment for sure. It look me a while to adjust to the realization that my hub would be in the same state when I got up in the morning as when I went to bed the night before because no one was making cloud changes that shut me down. Not that I don't have issues but they are almost invariably, as @oldcomputerwiz points out, my own doing. (Except that damned Alexa cloud... grrr...)
