Sold a C8, but it misbehaved for its new owner!

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1

Hey everyone,

I sold my C8 after migrating to a C8 Pro, hoping to add another happy person to the Hubitat crew. However, when the new owner received the hub, they couldn't get it set up. The problem didn't seem to be one of their own making. Sadly they've opted to return the unit, but I'd really like to access the hive mind here as to why this issue would have occurred.

I'd originally migrated from a C7 to the C8 over a year ago, then migrated from the C8 to the C8 Pro this week. No issues occurred at all with the migrations. Once I'd completed the most recent migration I followed the instructions to deregister the C8 from my account and wipe it using the Diagnostics tool on port 8081 using Advanced > Full reset. Once that was done it was gone from my.hubitat.com and it booted to the welcome screen. All good, I thought.

When the buyer received the unit it wouldn't get an IP address from their internal network. After a lot of to-and-fro, I managed to get them to find it using the MAC address, which showed it with an IP in the range of my internal network. They weren't willing to continue troubleshooting past this point, so it'll be on its way back to me.

Why on earth would a hub that has been fully reset retain the IP of a previous network? The box was set to DHCP before the reset, so it's not even as though a static IP had been configured in the past.

My only guess is that the buyer's DHCP server wasn't working on their router, but then I don't understand how the rest of their devices were staying connected, nor why the C8 still had in IP in the range I use.

I shall update this once the C8 is back using a test router, because I'm more puzzled than irritated at this stage.

Speculation appreciated! :laughing:

2

Somehow it set on static. If it was on DHCP and the dhcp server on the users network wasn't working (doubtful) it would have a 169.x address.

3

Could have just had them push the network reset button on the bottom. It is weird though.

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I thought that, but the address it was stuck with wasn't the address it originally ran with on my network. So far as I can tell it was the last random address handed to it by my router over DHCP. When it was on my network it was never set with a static address; instead my router was configured to simply give it the same address each time it queried, but that was reallocated to the C8 Pro.

How it could then have been set as a static IP I have no idea, because the UI was never accessed. After the full reset I checked that it was at the initial setup screen, turned it off and boxed it up.

I guess the only other thing I could have done was perform the full reset, then whip the network cable out while it was resetting so it had no chance to acquire a new address. But that would leave me with no means of checking the reset had been successful.

All very weird.

5

There's a network reset button on the bottom? :joy:

I never knew. I've let the buyer know, but it may already be in the post to me by now.

6

It's the only round hole out of all the square ones. Using a toothpick or paper clip, press and hold it for at least 7 seconds

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