Has anyone's HUB died and you had to start over? HOW?

Devices & Integrations
1

So, 7:15 this morning I get a message my HUB is offline. No lights. Chatted with support, and they are sending me a new hub. I am just sick. How in the world do I start over. Everything is tied to the original Hub… all the apps, all the devices… I am really sick sick sick. Please someone tell me it won’t be a nightmare.

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2

I can’t. You will need to exclude all Z-Wave devices, and reset all Zigbees. Then pair them all back, one by one, and then set up all your SmartApps/custom DTHs from scratch.

Welcome to SmartThings!

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3

So does this mean I have lost Rule Machine???

4

No… you will continue to have all that you had in the way of SmartApps and Device Types within the IDE; they will simply need to be reassigned to everything once you put the pieces back together.

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5

ok… I was going to cry…

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Just out of curiosity, how do other platforms handle failures? Wink, Homeseer, Etc.?? I wonder if this is an industry problem. I know zWave and zigbee have to be repaired, but what about configurations?

7

The only other system I’ve reconfigured was Indigo. In it’s case all triggers, actions and action groups remain, and you just reassign the devices to them.

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8

Well that is certainly an improvement. Device repairing is annoying, but you don’t have to remember much and it’s repetitive, redoing rules, apps is a nightmare. I dread the day I have to do it.

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9

It varies a lot. It’s just up to each manufacturer whether they provide a backup method for the account level information and a means of applying that to a new hub. Some do, some don’t.

10

The problem is the feature isn’t sexy and they can’t really market it. You’ll never see on the side of the box “great recovery process if your hub dies”. Apple finally perfected it with iCloud because they realized it will help customers upgrade to newer models. This isn’t as much of a need in the iOT market yet. It’s important to us though.

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11

Support just told me my v1 hub is starting to have issues…and no ETA on that darned migration tool of course. I have my v2 in the box ready to step in I guess.

168 devices to move over.

So.

Painful.

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I pretty much had to redo everything but it was very early into my install.

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You might still shed some tears, the code will be there but your rules need to be rebuilt! Just so you know. I would build a new location, copy and paste the apps and device handlers. Then from new location use general exclusion for each of your zwave devices and reset your zigbee from each device. When all your devices are on the new location, delete the old. Don’t waste time to delete devices from old location. Good luck, oh and don’t forget to run zwave repair when you add your devices. And rebuild your zigbee at the end by unplugging your new hub for at least 15 min (including taking out batteries).

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14

Hi @jgirvine,

I just had that happen a couple months ago, and I had 250+ devices to move. That was not a fun experience, but manageable.

First thing to know is that you will not lose your smartapps or custom DH’s. You will have to manually move devices. Here’s my experience:

In my case my old hub was still online and excluding devices was easier. In your situation, you’ll have to perform a General Exclusion via the app for each zwave device (zigbee will be a lot easier to move). Just make sure when excluding your zwave device that nobody else in your house is using a zwave device, like a switch, that toggling causes it to be included/excluded from a hub. Using a minimote to exclude zwave devices can also be done.

When referencing the post I linked above, I think many of my steps apply to you and can help with your migration. I also included some lessons learned, with the most important one being patience.

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