Not Very Impressed So Far (as a secondary controller)

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OP is disappointed he or she can’t use Hubitat as a secondary controller with ST rather than migrate devices directly.

But @JasonJoel summarized the problem, pretty well, and it’s not really one that lies at Hubitat’s feet, if anything:

OP’s use case seems like an edge one.

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I think OP latched onto that concept as a way to migrate based on his reading of the definitions of the standard from the owner of the standard, Silicon Labs. I get the impression that OP's functional use case is just to find the least painful route to transition from ST to HE - the best tools and techniques. I jumped on OP about the secondary controller route but unless one was quite familiar with this environment, it's not an illogical place to start or approach to take.

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I did a transition similar to OP's last fall and it's been a much bigger project than I originally envisioned. Everything Zigbee came over just fine. But the Z-Wave stuff has been frustrating and time consuming. I suspect this is because I have some older and poorly implemented Z-Wave devices, but they weren't a problem on ST and they've caused a lot of grief in HE.

My advice after going through this is plan on replacing Z-Wave devices that cause problems. You'll know about them from the beginning because they'll be difficult to exclude from your ST mesh and difficult to include in HE. After you spend hours doing that they'll just continue to cause grief. I've had to replace probably 20% of my Z-Wave devices (none of my Zigbee). Battery powered sensors seem to be the worst, but I've had problems with several plug-in switches too. Before buying replacements, spend some time reading on this forum what people are having luck with.

Seeing how the ST platform is imploding, I'm glad I'm off of it. The Hubitat world feels less mature to me and has some rough edges, but it also feels much more open and malleable. And this active user community helps a lot. It's going to take more work and money than I expected, but I'm ending up with a home automation system I think I'll like more.

Good Luck!

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@dnickel: I don't think you understood my original post...I want to use the Hubitat hub as a secondary z-wave controller...exclusion is easy...simplest was for me is to just reset the z-wave device.

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@marktheknife: The use case is not an edge one. As I stated in my original post, I simply do not want to migrate 54 Z-wave devices and 14 Zigbee devices from a working setup to (in my mind) an unproven platform...regardless of the people who like it

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@Rxich: Thank you for your comment, but if you look at my original post, with 54 Z-wave devices in my network...I know how to build one up. My current network is very stable and functional...just not sure about the future of SmartThings (which is working just fine at the moment)

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@erktrek: I totally understand this issue. Assuming I can get the Hubitat as a secondary Z-wave controller...the next step will be to look for a "z wave tweaker" which would let me set group 1 lifeline with both the primary Z-wave controller address and the Hubitat Z-wave address.

If I cannot find a "z wave tweaker", I would simply setup a polling routine using Rule Machine or WebCore (which I use now in SmartThings).

I would prefer to be able to set the lifeline as the response would be quicker.

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I’m just going to rip the bandaid off. HE will NOT function as a secondary controller in the way you are describing, and no amount of talking about how you think it should work differently will change that fact. So your choices are, like it or not, either buy in to migrating the devices off of ST or go looking for another solution that won’t work the way you want it to either.

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Most devices only accept 1 node id as the lifeline

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@thebearmay: The Hubitat documentation says otherwise: Hubitat Learn Mode. Now why would you publish this in your documentation when you don't support it? Why give me a "bandaid" and not let me use it? Why give me a radio dial in my car and not let me change the channel? Heck, even the "evil" SmartThings hub works as a secondary Z-wave controller.

@bcopeland: This has not been my experience. My Z-wave devices (all Z-Wave plus) accept up to 4 I think (GE/Jasco switches, Kwikset lock, etc.)

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@ksgnow2010 - I migrated from Smartthings to hubitat. It took a long time over many many weekends to fully do it, but during the transfer I was able to keep everything working by using Hub Connect to link devices between ST & Hubitat.

I know from experience how long it takes to do it (I have nearly 150 devices and so so many rules). I also had devices that were installed into the house in a way that made them almost completely inaccessible and in some cases I nearly gave up trying to move them.

But... oh my god is it worth it. Forget about this idea of using hubitat as a secondary controller in ST - its a no go. Just go through the pain of moving... there is no shortcuts. On the other side is a hub that actually works, is super fast, and can connect with practically everything... just do it!

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Great...now I can't reset the Z-Wave network in Hubitat.

I type in "reset" and hit the reset button, confirm, get the "z-wave network has been reset" message ... all previous data doesn't show ... I reboot the hub, and the last "Learn Mode" data is present, and happily giving me z-wave stats.

Sigh...

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You need to power down the hub for about 30 seconds to clear the Zwave stack.

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You need to shut down the hub cleanly to red light, remove power (at the wall, not at the fragile micro USB, which can break its solder joints to the PC board, power up after 30 sec.) That’s the only way to reboot the Z-Wave radio. Reboot hub doesn’t do it.

Edit: well, looks like @thebearmay types faster than I do.

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I didn’t go into the level of detail you did....:sunglasses:

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I understand that you're frustrated that Hubitat provides instructions for pairing your Hubitat as a secondary controller which don't appear to work well, but nobody here will suggest that this is a good way to manage a migration. You are much better off setting up HubConnect or Hublink which will allow you to control devices connected to your Smartthings Hub while gradually excluding and repairing devices to Hubitat.

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Fair point, or just take the plunge and migrate them en masse at one time. When I moved to Hubitat, I paired around 80 z-wave devices on the same day.

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Probably faster to do it this way than trying to find a solution to do it any other way.

I had a similar number of devices and did it all in a day. I actually had more if I include my zigbee.

Prep in advance made it easy though. Understanding how to exclude/include devices prevented me from having to search for instructions. I also had a z-stick that I walked around with which made excluding devices much easier and faster.

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I moved a lot of devices at the beginning, but I left all my non-plus Z Wave devices on SmartThings and integrated them with Hubconnect. Then I gradually replaced them with new Z-Wave Plus devices and ditched the non-plus devices entirely.

@ksgnow2010 says he doesn't want to do it all in one shot, so if he's sure of that, HubConnect is a good way to make the transition gradually.

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