Should be receiving my HE hub tomorrow, looking forward to getting started. I have 107 devices in ST. 49 zwave repeaters, 10 zwave battery powered devices, 4 minimotes, 14 zigbee battery powered devices, and the rest are cloud or virtual devices.
Do zwave devices retain their mappings or routings or whatever it's called when they are excluded from a controller? I was thinking about moving all of my physical devices at once, but I'm not sure if the mesh will need to be rebuilt slowly per this thread or if they retain their previous settings.
If they retain their routings, I was thinking I could replace everything in ST with virtual devices, exclude the physical devices from ST, add to HE, then tie the virtual devices in ST to the physical devices on HE using one of the migration apps, leaving the automations in ST (mostly via webCoRE) intact until I can rewrite everything using RM.
If they don't retain their routings I'll have to think of a different plan.
They retain nothing with an Exclude. You start all over.
I moved my whole house in a day but I have a lot of 3rd party tools to help me (or at least delude myself into thinking I'm being helped.)
You're off on the wrong imaginary foot if you get my meaning. You're trying to save the poor hub the "weight" of all those packets.
They weigh nothing. Just plan out your migration... knowing that with each Excluded device, your ST mesh is degraded. Migrate a room full then another. If you can stand the outage, shut off ST during the migration. Lots of people like ST's Exclusion... it's friendly. But a well aimed Aeon Z-Stick is better !!
If you do it that way, migrate the powered devices first, letting the battery powered ones pair when there's a good mesh available at the end.
I have several Aeon Z-Sticks and I'd put it into Exclude mode (orange blinking) and do the dance with everything in that room... including battery devices. Once everything was excluded, and you could tell by the way the orange light blinks, I would Include them via the Hubitat Hub. (But not the battery ones.) After a couple rooms, I'd have a device or two that didn't pair. I'd go read the manual for that device and note what I'd done wrong.. Then I'd swing through again, including the battery devices.. which in my case are motion sensors and recessed door sensors. Very easy "wake up & pair" process.
You can exclude them from st first, but if you have a z stick there is really no need, reset them with the stick, or factory reset them. Then pair them with HE
For zigbee, exclude from st, or simply factory reset those as well.
In other words you can abandon them in place in ST, this also serves as a reference to device names and app configurations.
I'm in the same situation as destructure00, waiting for my HE hub.
i have a Aeon z-stick, can someone explain or create a procedure to do the exclusion/reset with an Aeon z-stick.
thanks
Thanks for the insights. Minimotes have the exclude capability as well (I have 4 of them), will it accomplish the same thing as the Z-Stick? I could move 2 of the 4 over to HE...that would give me 2 to use for exclusion from ST and 2 to use for inclusion to HE.
My only purpose in replacing the physical devices in ST with virtual is to keep the webCoRE pistons intact until I can replicate them in Rule Machine. I guess I'll start playing around when the hub arrives this evening. The handful of zigbee devices I have are all battery powered, so no mesh to worry about there. I'll probably start with a couple of those to get comfortable with the process before moving on to the zwave devices that will affect the mesh strength.
@destructure00 Zigbee has it's own mesh. So you will need to worry about it. I am not a Zigbee user, although I do have 2-3 devices. Mostly I read about the need to have Zigbee repeaters in each area Zigbee (battery) devices exist, and even more emphatically for fan controllers.
For ZWave, yes, Minimote does the Exclude too. I like the light patterns of the ZStick better, more certain the Exclude has completed. But really, any controller can Exclude. You can even use your brand new shiney Hubitat hub to exclude. Because for Exclude, the process means to wipe out the "home network number."
For Minimote, push the button to enter Exclude mode. For ZStick, press and hold the button til the light goes orange. Then for your chosen ZWave device, follow the manufacturer's process to be receptive to Exclude. The Minimote or ZStick will blink in their individual styles to show Exclude occurred. On the ZStick, it remains in Exclude mode and you can move on to the next device that needs excluding. I usually do a whole room or area. Minimote has to be put back into Exclude each time... one button push... so hardly a decider between Minimote or ZStick.
Notice that at no time in the above did I mention adding the ZStick or the Minimote to the Hubitat's home network. That's because it isn't necessary for the Exclude process.
Yes, of course you can add them to Hubitat's network and even perform Includes with them, but it isn't required, and certainly isn't required to start the migration.
I tend to leave battery devices to the end or middle-end and that means the Minimotes and ZSticks too. Usually at that end of the migration, I have some stubborn devices or 3 and the Minimote/ZStick lend a hand in Inclusion.
Including the Minimote or ZStick is pretty simple too. Begin with Hubitat in Exclude mode and exclude the Minimote and/or ZStick. Then Include them via Hubitat's Discover ZWave.
According to the directions of the z-stick it just says put it in exclude mode, go to a device and hit the devices button....and then assume just be near that device with the z-stick?
Does the Z-stick have to be first included on the ST hub to be able to do this?
Why not just use your ST app.
When I moved across to HE from ST I selected exclusion mode in the app and then put the device in configuration mode (most of my devices were 3 quick button presses) and they excluded immediately.
Just a thought.
I did too many automatons too fast.
I had a week or so with nothing working.
Pick 1 group of things that work together at a time.
Make sure they really really work, and then move on.
For example the front door and it's contact sensor, just get that working well. Or maybe a group of lights.
To clarify my comment about zigbee devices...I know they also use a mesh network, but ALL of my zigbee devices are battery powered. I have no mains powered devices, so no repeaters. If I understand correctly, this means my zigbee network is essentially hub-and-spoke instead of a mesh, which implies that there is no mesh to worry about. That's what I was referring to.
Heads up though.. there's a lot of posts here that suggest Zigbee repeaters significantly improve reliability. Too many that sound like: "My hub is in the same room, but now after adding the repeater, all my drop offs have gone away."
Just sayin'... maybe if you had a peanut plug handly..
Logic dictates ( ) that they aren't needed. But on a practical level, it seems they help.
I had a real hard time reaching zigbee devices where SmartThings was able to reach them with Hubitat. I broke down and bought a Sylvania plug-in module to control a lamp that I already had a 433mhz switch controlling. I'm slowly replacing my custom 433mhz switches since z-wave and zigbee switches are finally coming down in price.
So then I can safely assume that means the is the same for the Smartthings hub also. So Z-Stick doesn't have to be added to anything to exclude. Which is making me understand this process better. If SOME controller is sending the zwave exclude and a device is "triggered" (by whatever means for that device to go into exclude mode) then it will just drop off the network it's in. Hopefully I understand this correctly.
Clearly going to have to play with a few devices once the new HUB shows up in a few days.
Include is, of course, a much more complicated process. That must be done by the Primary Controller.. Hubitat in this discussion.
Secondary Controllers are possible. Both MiniMote and ZStick are secondary controllers. (Secondary in the ZWave spec sense. Which is not close at all to what a Human thinks of as secondary. )
The Primary Controller in a ZWave network is usually also assigned the roles of SUC and SIS. Hubitat does.
The SIS role allows secondary controllers to be part of the Include by handing out unique Node IDs when a Secondary requests it. This means (not so obviously) that the hand held controllers like Minimote and ZStick need to communicate with BOTH the primary hub and the device to be included. You can't, for example, try and include a device a long way from the hub, fail and then hope that by using a Minimote or ZStick, to include it.
I agree with @csteele and @keithcroshaw. Get yourself at least one or two good, solid Zigbee repeater device(s). I have about 4-5 Lowes Iris Smart Outlets (3210-L) spread throughout my house. Dramatic improvement in Zigbee reliability.
It's better to leave them as is in ST so you can see all of the apps they are in. It's very easy to exclude a Z-Wave device. Any device that offers Z-Wave Exclude will do it. This includes Minimote, Z-Stick, or the Hubitat hub. Z-Wave Exclude is non-discriminatory --> it doesn't care what controller the device is connected to, it excludes it so it can be added to a new controller.
