Earlier this week my V3 Samsung branded hub failed. The power supply was putting out 0 volts so I got a replacement, but the hub was DEAD.
So I ordered the same hub as a replacement, added it to my home, and DID NOT MAKE A HUB PAIR even though setup hit me with a huge prompt to do so.
Once the new hub was added I went to the settings of the failed hub and saw the Replace Hub option had appeared. My understanding is the prompt only appears when you add a new hub that is available as a replacement.
I selected the Replace Hub, clicked through the screens, and after 3-5 minutes everything was active on the new hub.
It took another 5-10 minutes for all the devices to become live on the new hub.
After that everything justā¦worked. Like, perfectly. I didnāt have to do anything, troubleshoot anything, reboot anything, rewrite any routines, reestablish any integrations. Nothing, nada.
Based on years and years of dealing with home automation and integration I figured this would be an hours long process followed by days/weeks/months of troubleshooting, ghosts in the machine, etc.
Nope, it just worked as expected. Bravo to whomever did the Replace Hub work, it was easy and flawless for me.
I know this is a couple of months old, but I used only used hub replace for the first time this week to replace a V2 hub with a V3. While messing around with the CLI this evening I discovered that smartthings edge:channels:enrollments was not listing anything for the replacement hub, although smartthings edge:drivers:installed did correctly identify the channels the drivers were installed from.
I was under the impression that the enrolment in a channel (with the exception of the default channel) was necessary for drivers to be automatically updated, and indeed unenrolling from a channel could be used to prevent updates.
Yes the drivers are fine. My concern is purely over updates. Iāve always understood that hubs had to be enrolled in channels to be able to receive updated drivers. Otherwise what is the purpose of the enrolment?
Yes, thatās my understanding as well. Iāll ask the engineering team more details about this because before the Hub replacement that command showed all the channels where the Hub was enrolled correctly, right?
Yes, that is right. With the exception of the various unused LAN drivers installed by default from the default channel, all my drivers are manually installed from enrolled channels (the beta channel for stock drivers, my own channel for my VIRTUAL device driver, and Toddās channel for a LAN Monitor driver - thatās about it).
Unfortunately with hub replacement being a hopefully rare event I have to make do with a sample size of one.
Obviously it isnāt a big deal for me as I just enrolled the hub retrospectively. However if it does happen for other people it could perhaps be more of a concern.
Just connect the new hub and start the hub replace. That way you are working with fresh data from the working hub rather than a backup. Also the working hub will be factory reset.
Ah, I see you already answered the question while I was typing.
The 2015/V2 model hubs are not backed up. You can use a working V2 hub as the source for a Hub Replace. If your V2 hub fails then thereās no ability to resurrect your configuration as there is no backup information.
Hub Replace provides an upgrade path for some older hubs that are not supported by Hub Groups, such as Samsung Connect Home, SmartThings Wi-Fi, and Samsung SmartThings Hub 2015 (Hub v2).
Hub v2 absolutely can be replaced with a newer hub even when offline (I just tested to make sure). Any hub that can be replaced (ie can be a source hub) will periodically generate a replace image and upload it. When going through the applicationās replace screens youāll see grey text informing you that the hub is offline and that a previously uploaded image is being used (along with when it was generated).
The article I linked implies that Hub Backup is only for members of Hub Groups. It then states that the older hubs cannot participate in Hub Groups.
Iāve got a very stable, fairly small SmartThings configuration using a V2 hub and including a significant number of Z-wave devices. Iām mildly concerned about depending on a 10 year old device so plotting my way forward.
I havenāt read the article lately but if that is what it says then it sounds correct. However āhub backupā (more specifically āauto hub backupā in the case of a failover) is what they call the process where they promote a Secondary hub in a Group to be the Primary. It wouldnāt be very high on my list of things to call it. If anything it is a ārestoreā.
You are correct in that reading. The v2 hubs canāt be added to hub groups but can still take part in replace operations. Some confusion is understandable as that marketing announcement calls the new feature āHub Backupā but you may see the term backup used in the app to refer to the data file that the hub generates and uploads.
On an unrelated note, some folks are seeing an option to āgive devices to someone elseā that I donāt have. Is this only available to 2018/V3 hubs?
