ET-WV523 successfully onboarded, but SmartThings Hub portion cannot be enabled – any chance to recover it?

Devices & Integrations
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Hi everyone, and especially @nayelyz,

I would really appreciate some help with a Samsung SmartThings Wifi ET-WV523.

I managed to buy this unit very cheaply and my intention was to give it to a friend who is just starting with SmartThings. I personally still use a SmartThings Hub V2 and I am perfectly happy with it, so I am not trying to replace my own hub with the ET-WV523.

I thought the ET-WV523 would be a particularly nice solution for my friend because it could provide both his Wi-Fi network and a SmartThings Zigbee/Z-Wave hub in a single device.

I understand that by 2026 standards its Wi-Fi capabilities are quite dated and I certainly don’t expect it to compete with a modern Wi-Fi 6/7 router. However, without the SmartThings Hub functionality it essentially becomes just an old and rather unremarkable Wi-Fi router, which defeats the main reason I bought it.

The good news is that I managed to solve the original 36-302 onboarding problem. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi portion now works correctly, but the SmartThings Hub portion does not appear to get provisioned.

How I solved the 36-302 problem

The ET-WV523 originally had old Wi-Fi firmware and standalone onboarding always failed at exactly 69% with error 36-302.

I managed to recover it by adding the ET-WV523 as a Sub node to a working Samsung Connect Home ET-WV521.

The ET-WV521 then offered a firmware update for the ET-WV523. The update completed successfully and the WV523 is now running:

Wi-Fi firmware: WV523XXU2AXG1

After the update, I removed the WV523 from the mesh, performed a factory reset and onboarded it again using the SmartThings Wifi for Vodafone device profile.

This time the setup completed successfully. I also changed its network mode from Bridge to Standalone (Modo autónomo).

The ET-WV523 is now ONLINE and working correctly as a Wi-Fi router in SmartThings.

What SmartThings Advanced shows

In SmartThings Advanced the device appears as:

Device name: SmartThings Wifi
Device profile: IM-WifiHub-002
Status: ONLINE

Interestingly, its device profile contains a separate smartthings-hub component.

Under Attributes I can see:

Component: smartthings-hub
Capability: samsungim.sthubeui
Attribute: hubEui
Value: a valid Hub EUI is reported

(I can provide the full Hub EUI privately to SmartThings Support.)

There is also:

Attribute: hubOnboardingStatus

but its value remains empty.

And:

Component: smartthings-hub
Capability: switch
Attribute: switch
Value: off

So the Wi-Fi device appears to know the EUI of its built-in SmartThings Hub hardware, but the Hub portion itself never completes onboarding.

I tried enabling the Hub through SmartThings Advanced

SmartThings Advanced exposes the following commands for the smartthings-hub component:

smartthings-hub → switch → off

smartthings-hub → switch → on

I therefore manually executed:

smartthings-hub → switch → on

SmartThings Advanced responds:

“Ran command ‘on’ successfully.”

I tried this several times and waited several minutes.

However:

switch remains off

and:

hubOnboardingStatus remains empty.

There are also no Events generated by these attempts.

The ET-WV523 does not appear as a Hub

This is probably the most important part.

When I open the Hubs section in SmartThings Advanced, I can see only my one V2 existing SmartThings hub in.

The ET-WV523 does not appear there as a Hub at all.

I also verified this functionally.

I disconnected my existing SmartThings Hub V2 from power and attempted to discover a Zigbee device.

Instead of using the ET-WV523, SmartThings reports that my V2 Hub is offline and searches only using the phone. The app explains that a Hub is required to discover Zigbee/Z-Wave devices.

So although the ET-WV523 is ONLINE as a SmartThings Wifi device and exposes both its smartthings-hub component and a valid hubEui, SmartThings does not recognise it as an available Zigbee/Z-Wave Hub.

Is there any chance of recovering the SmartThings Hub portion?

This is what I would really like to find out.

The hardware clearly appears to expose the SmartThings Hub component and its EUI to SmartThings, and the device profile still contains the commands required to enable it.

This makes me wonder whether the problem is not with the hardware itself, but rather with backend provisioning of the SmartThings Hub portion.

Is there any chance at all of provisioning/reactivating the SmartThings Hub functionality on this ET-WV523, so that it can once again operate as both a Wi-Fi router and a Zigbee/Z-Wave SmartThings Hub?

@nayelyz, if possible, could you please check whether the Hub portion associated with this ET-WV523 can still be provisioned/activated on the SmartThings backend, or perhaps escalate the case to the engineering team?

I would prefer not to factory-reset the ET-WV523 again, because after quite a lot of effort I finally have the Wi-Fi portion successfully registered, ONLINE and running WV523XXU2AXG1.

I can provide the full Hub EUI, Device ID, serial number, exact timestamps, SmartThings app logs and any other information privately if required.

I know this is an old device, but it would be a shame to use perfectly functional SmartThings Zigbee/Z-Wave hardware merely as an outdated Wi-Fi router if there is still a way to provision its Hub portion.

Thank you very much for any help!

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ST Staff are no longer monitoring the forum. @nayelyz is no longer around - gone! same for @Itati - gone! You can try reaching out to ST Customer Support directly. Be advised, they have stopped supporting the ET-WV series. They no longer provide firmware updates so they would not have all the functionality that supported hubs have if you are able to get it connected.

best advice - get rid of it and get a newer V3 (new ones only available for a few more months) or V4 hub.

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One search here in this forum would have saved you a lot of time:

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@jkp @Andreas_Roedl Thanks to both of you for your replies!

@jkp - wait, really? SmartThings staff no longer monitor the Community forum at all? I honestly had no idea. That’s a real shame, and definitely not what I expected. I knew the ET-WV series was discontinued and no longer receiving firmware updates, but I didn’t realize the official SmartThings presence here was gone as well.

@Andreas_Roedl - I actually did see that thread before posting mine. :slight_smile: I was just hoping that, despite what happened there, there might still be some way to resurrect the Hub functionality, especially since I managed to get these units onboarded and working perfectly fine as a mesh.

Apparently not, though. So I guess I’m now the proud owner of three rather mediocre SmartThings WiFi routers with no SmartThings Hub functionality. :sweat_smile: Maybe I’ll manage to resell them cheaply to someone who just needs a basic mesh Wi-Fi system.

At least I tried! Thanks again to both of you for clearing this up.