After some considerable effort I now have all of my heatit devices using the edge drivers! I am just writing a few words about my experience in case it makes things easier for others. There were several times along the way where I was ready to ditch smart things altogether, Samsung have done a really bad job of this transition. Also it seems to be more challenging to complete things such as inclusion with ST than it is with other hubs. Not robust enough.
The way samsung have set things up, if you have groovy DTH drivers from before, that match the device signature, then smartthings will always chose these as a priority over any of the new edge drivers that you may have subscribed to. This is a real problem because you cannot incrementally try out the new driver and back out of it if you have problems. Thereās no going back.
- The groovy IDE no longer allows editing so that you could adjust the signature to some dummy value
- The groovy IDE will not let you delete a DTH if it is in use somewhere else, even if it is at another location
- Maybe its possible to disable a DTH somehow (publish/unpublish?) but I didnt try that.
- I have 2 locations, 2 ST hubs - 2 hours apart by car/boat with similar setups using heatit thermostats, so excluding devices to be able to remove DTH, and install new edge drivers is brutal
Roughly speaking I have a similar setup x2 with some z-trm2fx and ztrm3 for controlling floor heating, and at each location I have a Temp2 acting as a room thermostat controlling heater(s), either through a fibaro wall plug to a ādumbā heater or through a PID controller (node red setup in Home assistant) with a MILL Wifi heater
Here are the steps I had to take:
- Remove (delete) all heatit devices using the groovy IDE, or exclude using the ST APP if you can. ( cant be at both locations at the same time to do a proper exclude all over)
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Delete all relevant DTH using the groovy IDE (this does not exclude them so a factory reset is needed)
- factory reset the ztrm2/3 that were deleted since they werenāt excluded.
- re-include the devices that were deleted/excluded. If you have subscribed to the heatit driver channel then you should get a new driver, but sometimes not Check by looking at the 3-vertical.dot menu for the device in the ST app and see if it says āDriversā
- I had to reset one HUB to factory defaults to be able to later include a TEMP2 device.
Since I would have a situation where nothing was externally accessible I did this operation after setting the heaters in a āstableā setting while I was physically at the other place. Only manual control physically āon siteā would be possible for the duration.
Then I went round and factory reset the ztrm3, and the Temp2, and was able to include them fairly straightforwardly. I switched to the ā(DEV)ā drivers that I found in the (beta) channel for the ztrm3 as these are providing the current temperature capability. Its risky I know but currently giving the best result for me. It also means that the current temperature is shown in the ST app dashboard, rather than just the setpoint. It also means the thermostat is working better with google nest. climate devices in Home assistant still not working but I think that is due to lack of support in Home assistant.
I struggled to get associations to work on the TEMP2, probably because I didnt really understand what was needed in the ST settings for the device to make it work. I gave up and used āRoutinesā in ST to control the fibaro wall plug. I would like to know better how to use on/off associations from TEMP2 to switch the wall plug.
When I got home I had a bit more trouble. As I said earlier I needed to factory reset the hub before I could include the Temp2, and in addition I had to reset-include-repeat one pesky ztrm3 several times before it was included properly - it seemed to not finish the inclusion process properly. I moved the hub to the bathroom so that it was close to the problem device but still had to fight a couple more rounds before it was done.
For now, all is working, but one of my ztrmfx seems to be offline and will probably need powering off/on to find the hub again when I am there. This seems to happen now and again. I do hope I have now reached a level of stability so that I can forget about ST for a while. My next little project is to see if the Home Assistant google nest integration will also find the ST thermostats so that I can use them from HA. I had one try last week but need to try that again.