I usually know what I am going to do with something BEFORE I buy it. Not this time. The Hub Whisperer whispered SALE, BIG SALE, BUY NOW into my ear and I succumbed to his high intensity timeshare-like sales pitch. Now I am sitting here under the glare of it's relentless, unblinking green eye wondering what the heck to do with it.
What do I use to connect it to my original hub? Hub Link, Link2Hub, Hub Connect, oh my! Once connected, what then?
I run pretty simple automations and I don't seem to be having any performance issues. My 60+ devices are nearly all Zigbee. I have 2 EcoBee thermostats, 30 WEMO devices and Konnect alarm boards using WiFI, but I think that is it. I could see separating those over to the second one, but not sure of the advantage.
I have integrated Google Home for voice commands via Google/Next speakers (I hate it), so that might be a candidate, I guess.
Anywho, I am hoping you bright Hubitatites (Elevators?) out there can provide me with a plan. Something that will help me feel fulfilled and less guilty each time my wife and that second hub glare at me.
use HubMesh to mirror all your physical devices to he new hub and then create a dashboard for them.
Start clicking on the buttons and giggle madly every time it works from either hub.
Then, start planning... Upstairs / Downstairs... which has the fewest devices? Move them to the new hub and then use HubMesh to mirror them back to the original hub.
That should take care of the rest of today.. ask again tomorrow and I'll have more suggestions
Exactly what I am in the process of doing. Have acquired 2 more C-7's recently, to add to the one I already had for lighting rules. Planning to have the existing Lighting C-7 operate my only HE Zigbee channel, alongside my Hue bridge and Conbee2 stick, with C-7 2 and 3 providing LAN and cloud integrations respectively. Still working out where I will host the dashboards.... Aim is for my old C-4 to become a dev hub.
I can see where I can share devices on my original hub with the new hub. If I want to separate the devices, how would I go about moving the WiFi stuff over to the new hub, then share them with the original? Is there a device migration approach I should be using? Ditto on the automations involving the WiFi devices. Do I move those over too?
Not aware of a preferred strategy for moving WiFi devices as there isn’t a mesh to worry about. Moving the automations is really a personal choice, but my preference, whenever possible, is to have the automations on the same hub as the device.
You essentially have to do this manually as far as I am aware, and that is what I am doing. Depending on the devices and the drivers involved, some may allow for you to have them setup on more than one HE hub at a time, but you should check up on that first.
I would also make use of the "In Use By" section at the bottom of each device page to understand what apps / automations you need to consider and update when moving each device. For some things you may want / need to put a virtual device in place of the real device while you are moving it.
Also take the opportunity to re-assess your automations, particularly any that may require any significant attention as you migrate devices. Are there better apps or rules out there that could do things better since you originally set them up....
Run discovery on new hub
WEMO Connect should then show all of the WEMO devices on the new hub.
If the above works, then I will see if the automations will run without having to recreate them on the new hub. Over time, recreate the automations on the new hub.
Many people take years to realize that HE is just a ponzi scheme in disguise.
I have two hubs, haven't really made a lot of use of the second one yet, as I've been too lazy to go through moving devices between hubs (either go Zigbee/Z-Wave, or sort by location in the house, haven't decided yet). For now I've been using it if I have a device that is behaving a little oddly - I can move it to the second hub and share it back via Hub Mesh, and see if being on a less busy hub helps or not.
You are just in denial... it's an addiction of course. Strongly urge everyone to check their local listings for the next meeting time of HE Anonymous....
no judgment of course... hey, we've all been there..
I noticed something that might be helpful for anyone else doing this. I have a group for two smart bulbs. I shared the two smart bulbs but forgot to share the group. The group is motion triggered. When motion detected the group is turned on. When motion inactive it turns the group off. I could not get it to work until I mesh enabled the group and created the "device" under settings on the mesh page. Once I did, the automation worked flawlessly. It shows up as a group on the origin hub, but as a device on the new hub. Odd behavior.
No that makes sense - a group is essentially a meta-virtual device - it shows up as a device and has events etc just like a real device. Its behavior is controlled via the predefined nature of the group of selected devices using the groups and scenes app.
Since it IS a device you would share the group via hub mesh just like any other device. You don't need to share the individual bulbs in the group, just the group. I do this on my cloud/network HE hub to expose only certain devices/groups with Alexa...
