Week-old Hubitat seemingly won't turn on

Hi all,

It's been a long while since being on a forum, so I apologize if I'm not following proper etiquette. There are older similar threads, but I wasn't sure if it was okay to necro them.

As the title suggests, I recently bought a C7 hubitat to start my home automation journey. Up until now, I've only ever used wifi devices (e.g. amazon echo, phillips hue, wifi plugs), but I have a new house and want to do it right.

I was able to set up the C7 hub, register it, and got it ready to begin trying things out. I was able install an Inovelli black series dimmer switch. I played around with the color of the dimmer LED and change some dimmer settings within the hubitat controls, which was fun. I went to then install the second Inovelli dimmer switch. When I tried to pair the device, the hubitat connection was gone and wouldn't load. I went upstairs to check on it and the light was off.

Since then, I've tried:

  1. plugging the C7 into different outlets (originally was plugged into a surge protector)
  2. using different micro-USB cables I have on hand
  3. tried different adapters with various electrical specs.

I've also tried different plugs with different cables and adapters. None of these happened to cause the hub to spark back to life. I have emailed support, but wanted to see if you all had any thoughts in the meantime.

Since it feels like I've regressed tech-wise since my IT help desk days over 10 years ago, I can imagine there is some obvious error I am making or something I am missing.

I love how busy this forum is and how it seems super friendly. Thanks ahead of time for any advice you all have.

I'm fairly new as well, but it sounds like a dead unit to me. I've read some posts about the power port on the HE being a bit weak and it can get damaged easily if you are not careful with it. Someone in the forum will probably tag someone important from Hubitat Staff to come in here and help ya out. I would do it but I don't know who those people are and I'm not real sure I could figure out how to tag them if I did know who those important people were. :slight_smile: (I can do smiley faces tho)

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tagging @bobbyD

:smiley:

And I do smily faces too.

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Thanks @csteele @waffles :handshake:

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As the others have said, looks like it has died. Any USB adapter with at least 1A output (or higher) should work.

Just one word of caution. When you receive the replacement, put it on a UPS. When you need to remove power from the Hubitat, do not unplug it from the microUSB connector end. Those connectors are sometimes fragile.

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Fantastic recommendation for the UPS, thanks. I'm not sure why I haven't used one for my existing modem/router/hubs. That seems especially important for the hubitat. (edit: I ordered an APC BE600M1 - I hope that should be good enough for networking/hub needs)

I can say that the only action that microUSB connector got, before the device seemingly died, was the original plug in. Obviously, I have since swapped it out a time or two, but I have been fairly careful since I saw previous posts mention that the connector was fragile.

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It's a surface mount connector and given the length most Micro USB cable strain reliefs are, those tiny pads of solder don't stand a chance against downward leverage on the cable.

Screen Shot 2021-06-18 at 10.20.00 AM

They are common enough that you'd have similar issues with many other devices in the home... :smiley: My kids have headphones with the same connector -- destroyed by them now.

In other words it's not more fragile in a Hub vs in a pair of headphones. It's all of the surface mount Micro USB connectors are more fragile than other connectors.

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Not to gunk up the thread on the topic, but it is interesting that the unit may have died from a connector issue when it went from working to not working without the unit being touched. Maybe one of my darn dogs bumped it.

I would not rate it as likely.

It's more like an internal component died BUT we can't do much about that. :smiley: We (the community) can caution about the connector. :slight_smile:

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I run mine off a PoE switch, with a PoE to micro USB adapter to supply Ethernet and power.

If I need to restart or turn off the device, I can do this through the switch interface.

I have the PoE switch on a UPS that also holds up my network stack and internet connection.

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I apologize. I'm a bit of a dunce. What is the benefit of using the PoE switch?

And just to make sure I understand, you use something like this to connect the hub to the PoE switch? The hub is not plugged into the UPS directly, but obviously stays powered during a power outage since it's connected to the PoE switch, which is connected to the UPS.

Right now, I use a basic switch to get network access to both the hubitat and hue hub. Would I benefit from swapping out my current switch for a PoE switch + PoE to miscUSB adapter?

Edit: Also, I think I noticed a warning in the manual about not to use PoE with the hub. I didn't really know what that necessarily meant at the time. I assume the adapter solves whatever problem the manual is warning about?

The intent is to say "Don't plug a POE ethernet cable directly into the Hub." Yes, the POE adapter solves that problem but so does using a modern POE switch. I think it would be pretty hard to purchase a new in box POE switch that didn't put power on any cable without being signaled to do so. In other words, once upon a time, POE power was on the ethernet wires at all times. That burned up more than a few things and so there's now a means for the powered end device to signal how much power it needs.. default none. :smiley:

There's no hidden benefit. It's all about the number of wires that go from here to there. If you put your hub in the center of a home, perhaps there's no power there. POE solves that by putting it all on one wire, easier to pull and not particularly dangerous vs 110vac.

What he said.

And yes, that is the exact adapter I used.

I have my Hue hub running off PoE too…same concept.

As long as it’s 803.2af/at/bt compliant, right?

Passive PoE could still fry a hub (but prob isn’t nearly as common, as you said).

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