Can't get Arduino Shield to Pair

General Discussion
1

I’m just beginning development with an Arduino shield. When I first started with it, I was able to pair it to my hub and all was well. After working with it for a while, I wanted to change it’s Type, so I went to the website control panel (https://graph.api.smartthings.com/device/list) and made the change. I then went into the application iPhone app and did a Remove of the shield Thing I had there. Kind of surprisingly, this removed it from the web based list of devices too.

Now I’m trying to re-pair the device and it won’t show up. I go into the “Conect a Device” section on the app, and press the “Switch” button on the shield, but no pairing takes place.

Any hints for a newb on what I could be doing wrong?

2

You might have to get the shield to set too.

  1. Power up the shield.
  2. Hold the “switch” button down for 6 seconds minimum.
  3. Put hub into pairing mode “search for devices”
  4. press the “switch” button for less than 1 second.
  5. Should pair.

If the above does not work, power off shield, unplug the hub for 10 seconds, plug back in and then do 1-5 after you have a green light on the hub.

That should do it. Let us know.
Twack

3

OK, power cycling the hub and hitting the reset button on the shield did it. Just power cycling the hub with and without pushing the Switch button did not work. That was painful! I won’t be removing that device again if I can avoid it.

Thanks for pointing out the need to reboot the hub.

A background question - is the mobile app communicating directly to the hub, or does all communication go through the online service? Is it the app that’s directly telling the hub to go into search mode when you hit the “+” button?

4

@brucekjones,

The phone app communicates to the SmartThings cloud application. You can think of the phone app as a display of your personal cloud instance of the SmartThings application. So, you can turn your phone off and the cloud app and your devices are still running, communicating and doing what they were programmed to do. The SmartThings cloud application communicates to your devices through the hub. It essentially acts like a router to those devices. If you turn off the hub, your devices are still running, but they do not get or send any information to the SmartThings cloud app.

Hope that explains it. You can also look on the SmartThings blogs and documentation for more information.


and
https://support.smartthings.com/home

Twack

5

Hi, I’m also having trouble pairing my Arduino ThingShield. At what point did you hit the reset button on the ThingShield? Where does that fit in with the 5 steps twack posted? Thanks.

6

OK, so resurrecting a one year old thread, so sorry in advance if I should have started a new one.

I can’t pair either of my two new shields. I held the switch button for well over 6 seconds, put the hub in pairing mode, hit the switch for less than a second. The app just “spins” for minutes. It’s right next to the hub just in case it needs to be close.

Rebooted, reset, etc.

Is there anything else I can try? There doesn’t seem to be a way to know if the shield is in pairing mode. I thought it was the big blue LED but that doesn’t seem to have any meaning.

7

Is your hub away from your WiFi router? If not, try separating the two devices while your are pairing the ThingShield.

8

Hi Dan. Thanks for the quick response. Yes, it’s away from the router and I even turned off the router’s radio for good measure. I didn’t realize until just now that the shield is a ZigBee and not Z-Wave radio. I’m embarrassed because it makes perfect sense, considering all the licensing stuff required with Z-Wave.

If I had thought about it for a minute, I could have saved us all a lot of hassle. I’ve never been able to pair any ZigBee device to my hub. Either the 2.4 band is ultra congested or the hub’s radio doesn’t work. Either way, I’ve avoided ZigBee completely (or so I thought! :confused:).

I’ll see if I can still get a return on the shields. Thanks!

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