Can I temporarily add a 2nd Aeotec Smart Home Hub V3 Hub to my system?
Here is why I want to do this. I have purchased a backup / spare Aeotec V3 Hub. Prior to purchasing, the seller advised they are "highly confident” that the units they are selling do not have the old firmware that will prevent them from being updated. (Because of a certificate that expired on March 2nd, 2025.) they tell me if it doesn’t work, I can return it within 30 days.
Soooo, I have never had more than one hub. I understand that some people do. My plan was to add this 2nd Aeotec Smart Home Hub V3 to my network and see if it will work, and even perhaps update the firmware to the latest version. Once satisfied, I would remove it from my system and store it in a safe place.
I’m taking these additional precautions because Z-Wave is an absolute requirement for me.
You certainly can. You can either add it to the same SmartThings Location as your existing hub or you could create a new Location and add it to that. If you are planning on just unplugging it and putting it in a drawer it is probably best on the same Location. Just bear in mind the SmartThings app won’t let you forget you have an offline hub.
Well if it does work you are getting the latest firmware whether you like it or not. Personally I would keep it installed but empty, and if you intend using Matter over Thread devices on your main hub I would probably unify the thread network so you have more than one Thread Border Router available. This would mean if the wheels dropped off your main hub you could immediately ‘hub replace’ it and be back in business inside about five minutes.
You could also create a hub group with the two hubs which effectively does the same thing as the above, but allows for an optional automatic failover to the standby hub if problems are detected, and also an automatic switch back if you like the idea of a particular hub running the show. The standby hub would also route Zigbee and Z-Wave for you, though that I’m not convinced that is a good thing in practice. Personally I prefer the manual approach.
My “spare” ST v2 hubs sit on a power strip & I power ‘em up occasionally when new updates are available. If I don’t end up putting one/both back in service & choose to sell them, at least they will have up-to-date software…
Snap. I may not keep them plugged in but I do power up my two spare ST V2 hubs every few months to get the latest firmware. I only intended to buy one spare (it didn’t have a welcome code) but the eBay seller had a second one for sale for less than $10 so I bought it in case a friend or neighbour wanted to set up SmartThings.
Yes, I do that with my V2 hubs. They stack nicely and are powered by a three-port USB charger so they don’t take up much room. They also have their welcome codes written in permanent marker inside the battery compartment …
I think I would leave it plugged in for a couple of days and then unplug it. Perhaps it would last longer not being powered. I’m not really sure. It’s the pairing and un-pairing of a 2nd V3 I’m a little fuzzy on.
I think if I power up a 2nd V3 and go to my SmartThings’s iPhone app it’ll probably ask me about the unit. Then, I have to figure out how to find the firmware version that is on this backup V3.
Once satisfied, I’m wondering if I can simply unplug it so it would be “ready to go” once a year for me to get the firmware up-to-date. For all I know, when you get new firmware, the certificate for that expires two weeks later.
If you go through the whole install process without an error it will have downloaded the latest firmware. You can look in the detail page for the hub in the app and there is an Information page accessible in the overflow/options menu.
You can certainly do that if you want to. In a similar situation I used to just plug the hub in a day or two after every firmware update cycle had finished rather than once a year.
Hopefully that won’t happen again, and if they think it has gone unnoticed that they failed to suitably acknowledge this was a massive screw up, let alone apologise for it, then they’d be very wrong.
Thank you for all the great advice. I don’t know what I would do without the terrific people on this forum. I just noticed the section where I can show my appreciation with a heart symbol and also the checkbox “solution” I’ll try and do better with that.
