So I figured that I could use a zwave stick as a secondary controller, plugged into a laptop, walk to a "far-away-from-hub" device, press Add in the studio and the device will be included.
The stick is of course paired with hubitat as a secondary controller at the moment of that inclusion. Now I see that new device paired with the stick in the studio on the laptop. But when I refresh zwave details on the hubitat, this node - 110 is nowhere to be found. I presume there's some kinda update needs to be transmitted from the stick to hubitat for the latter to see this new node? I tried Send Node Info and Update, but to no avail. Any tips? Thank you.
Shut down the hub for 10+ seconds and reboot it. That should make the node show up. It may not be attached to a device, you may need to press a discover button on it to get it to add the device entry. Pairing via a secondary controller can be tricky.
well, they both showed up, and of course there's a discover button, which does nothing when pressed - the page reloads. What's next?
Is this device battery-powered/sleepy? If so, you'll need to wake it up for the "Discover" to work. If it's mains-powered, unplugging it and plugging it back in can't hurt, I suppose, though it shouldn't be necessary.
Umm yeah, same damn locks 
Waking it up, pressing discover and nothing.
Locks are FLiRS (wakeable from sleep within a short time of receiving a command), so that shouldn't be necessary for them. But since they are locks and therefore secure: I wonder if the S2 (or even S0 if that's what you have) might be messing something up.
If you wanted to try again, you'd have better luck with the hub close to the device for sure. But it should be noted that without repeaters in range in between, you'll have bad luck either way. Modern Z-Wave devices should be able to pair through the mesh (look for "NWI" or "network-wide inclusion" in the specs, or it's been required for some time now--I think all Z-Wave Plus). Classic Z-Wave (300 and older) won't do this, and some old locks are even pickier and need to be right next to the hub/controller to pair securely with "whisper mode." Outside of that: if your device can't pair in place (and it sounds like yours won't), it's unlikely to work in place, either.
So, that could also be the cause of this problem, and neither approach will fix that. But if you think it should work with your network as-is, I'm not sure how to fix the issue at hand aside from the ideas that have been suggested above...
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Please note that use of secondary controllers has not been tested by our engineers, as it is not a required functionalty for the Z-Wave certification. We have seen reports of secondary controllers causing the Z-Wave radio to stop working, thus use of secondary controllers is not supported. As @bertabcd1234 suggested above, direct inclusion is your best approach. Also, keep in mind that having had issues with secondary controller, you may need to reset your Z-Wave radio, if you experience any problems with your Z-Wave radio after excluding the secondary controller.
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This happened to me when I included a device using a secondary controller. I was able to make it work though. After including the device, it failed to show up in Hubitat. So I manually added a new device, gave it the proper device driver (in my case it was a generic Z-Wave switch) and then I manually input the ZWave node number on the device page where it says "Device Network ID". Remember you must use the hexadecimal version of the node number here. After this, everything worked fine.
I will add a note that I have experienced some VERY WEIRD behavior when my ZWave stick is included on my Hubitat network for awhile. Probably has something to do with BobbyD's warning. So now, I only leave the ZWave stick included for individual tasks and then I exclude it right away when I'm done.
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I think that might be the source of the problem. I am not totally sure how it works but the pairing controller I think has to pass some sort of security info back to the main controller. Even just using the USB to force some S0 devices as no security was a trick to get them to talk to the hub properly. After the node was created with no security I ended up resetting the devices and then using the zwave replace to pair them directly to the hub, since the security was already set they stuck on none.
yeah i was kinda hoping not to drag the damn hub all around the house
oh well
I don't know why you'd need to honestly. If you can't pair the device in it's location with the hub also in it's location, then it won't work after you move them back. That just means you're out of range from any other repeater devices on your ZWave mesh. I never have to move my hub to pair a device, even on the other side of the house.
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because locks seem to be f'd, speaking technically, they can't pair through repeaters but they can work through them.
Mine had no problem at all..... I recently installed a Yale Assure2 Z-Wave version. It's possible that it somehow directly paired with the hub, but I kinda doubt it given it's physical distance from Hubitat and the presence of many repeaters in the area. Either way, I've always been told (on this forum and other places when I was researching) never to move things around when pairing. Pair it in it's final installation location, if it fails to pair then install a repeater in between the two devices first and then try again. I've always followed this logic and it has not failed me yet. I have a C5 hub, so S2 is not a thing for me. Perhaps S2 throws some wrench into the mix that I'm not aware of when pairing locks, but my lock gave no fits at all.
This seems to be a Z-Wave thing only. In many circumstances, the opposite is highly recommended for Zigbee devices (pair it near the hub and then move to installation spot after successful addition to the network)
anyway, moot point, not connecting the locks to hubitat due to the whole zwave f'up. gonna go the wifi route and be done with it.
