I’m still new with the HE ecosystem/community. I am a transplant from ST and still learning the finer details with HE and automation overall. Almost all of my devices are on HE, I only have a couple of things that is still on ST (Bose Sound Touch) I use it for announcements. Thus, I’m going to apologize for the long message here.
With all that said, I have a C5 and all my devices are on that hub. I have decided to get the C7 because of the S2 Z-wave capabilities (which I will get into later). I have a couple of questions about migrating; or would an additional hub be the better solution. (The ST Hub I’m not worried about).
Migration from C5 to C7:
How do I get everything from C5 to C7? What is that process? Does it bring everything over from one device to the other device. (Note: I did a slow migration ST to HE and took my time with it) I’m trying to avoid being in a constant migration process. Let me know if that makes sense. I haven’t even open C7 yet, I’m looking for detailed information and documentation to move this over completely with as little fiddling as possible.
Additional Hub (C5 and C7):
What would be the benefits from adding a hub? Which should be primary or secondary? Do you use two separate radio or function/load reasons? What are the pluses (pros) to this; the negatives (cons) or other considerations?
S2 Z-wave Question:
Weather I move or “migrate” hubs those S2 devices to the C7 hub, I’m assuming I will have to remove all the devices that support S2 and add them back into the Z-Wave network. Would that be correct? This would only be for the S2 devices to communicate with the S2 protocol.
Which leads me to my second question. From what I understand is you can mix S0 and S2 in the same network. However, it doesn’t buy “anymore” security for the S0 devices. S2 wouldn’t have any less security unless it falls back to S0. Thus, mixing S2 and S0 in the same network would be OK and Only the S0 devices would be vulnerable. Would that be correct?
I’m sorry for all of the questions. I’m just trying to figure out what is the best way to move forward, secure what I have, and plan for the future.
You'd use HubConnect and you'd actually have a 3 hub system, two Hubitat and one SmartThings, if you wanted to go that far. You could use the C-7 for only your S2 devices, rather similarly to what you're doing with ST and Bose SoundTouch, I think. In this scenario, the words 'primary' and 'secondary' aren't used. You'd have a Server hub and Remote Client Hub(s).
Look at the pic at the top of this topic:
HubConnect "mirror's" devices from one hub to another. You select a set of devices on one Hub and they are reflected onto the other hub. Using that drawing, of 4 hubs, one could select devices on "Upstairs Hub" and reflect them to 'Coordinator" and from there, reflect them to either ST or "Downstairs" or both. By that, I hope to show that the 'mirroring' is bidirectional. You 'mirror' a REAL device to the other hubs where they function exactly like the real device. In my situation, I have all the devices on "Downstairs" and "Upstairs" mirrored to Coordinator, where I can use them in Dashboards and send them on to Apple via Homebridge.
I'm biased in favor of HubConnect, but I like the idea of parallelism -- which is probably why we all have multi-core CPUs in our various electronic devices. Some people choose to have all real devices on a Hub, and then run Apps on another. Let the Z-Radios keep their queue's empty and the Z-meshes will be as fast as possible. Others, put the automation on the same hub as the devices, but no extra automation, just the minimum... the idea being, if one hub fails, then the total system is affected by the one. Extra Automation would go on the 'coordinator hub' in this architecture. The best part is, there's probably no wrong way to organize them.
@csteele Thank you for that advice. In that methodology, c5 would run the automation and the all the S0 devices (assuming I'm not going to "move anything") and I could have the S2 devices (C7) (which I would have to move) being replicated back C5 without any automation on the C7. Do I have that right?
I did try that application Hub Connect with ST and C5 when I first had it. But I wasn't successful with it. I wasn't able to get things to work right. Thus, I had leveraged IFTTT to work around it. It did work out well. Effort yes, but I didn't feel I had to pull it all over, and provided me with a lot of control and allowed me to revisit rules that needed to be cleaned or modified for HE.
As far as mixing up the Z-Wave protocols any issues with that?
I don't know of any ZWave protocol that can be 'mixed up' -- but maybe you mean having multiple ZWave meshes in one home?? If that's the question, no, no problem, I have 5 ZWave radios/meshes running right now and no problem that I can detect. The RF protocol deals with that by listening before transmitting.
no-encryption, S0 network wide encryption (one key) and S2, key per device.
In a nutshell, you want to avoid S0 wherever you can. It uses 3x the packets on the mesh as S2 or no encryption. However, beyond the 3x burden for the devices that use it, you are welcome to mix and match. I know there are people that wish to avoid no-encryption, but barrier devices (locks and GDO) insist on secure join and so most meshes will have encryption available, thus most are mixed already. S2 just makes it better by allowing, in so many cases to eliminate the 3x burden.
In this scenario, the words 'primary' and 'secondary' aren't used. You'd have a Server hub and Remote Client Hub(s).
