Issue Adding Devices - What am I doing wrong? [Solved]

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

Let me start by saying that I am embarrassed to ask for help because I fear the problem exists between the keyboard and chair. I am new to smart home devices so I bought a few plugs and Sengled lights and the Elements hub/bridge/controller??? So, I got all the lights to show-up in the Smart Life app. So then I got the plugs to show up in kazi. So far everything works and I get the skills loaded for Alexa. Everything works. Then I realized that maybe I should use the Smart Things hub I bought. I went through the hub set up and firmware update etc. The hub says its working but when I go to add a device and step through the device pairing process, the hub never finds it.

So, I think maybe that once one hub gets a hold on something, it will not release it if another hub is trying to connect to it. I’m thinking I have to remove everything from the Sengled hub before I can add them to the SmartThings hub. Am I going in the right direction?

2

Yes, once a device is paired to a z-wave/zigbee hub that is who it wants to talk to.
You will need to un-pair the devices and then re-pair them to the ST hub.

3

With the Smartthings hub, you won’t need the Element hub. If you want offload the hub, I just ran across a post where someone was looking to purchase an Element hub. :slight_smile:

4

That was me…and you might need a hub if you start approaching the 32 ZigBee device limit on the SmartThings hub (as is my case, and the reason I’m looking for a hub)

5

Thanks for the help. I pulled everything of the Sengled hub and brought it into the SmartThings hub. Now I need to figure out how to add my smoke and carbon dioxide alarm.

6

Which one?

7

It really doesn’t communicate more than I’m ok and I discovered that it shows up on the hub. It’s a ZCOMBO-G from First Alert. I’m a bit disappointed that it only reports an “ok” status. I was hoping for at least a battery life readout. It would have also been nice if it could ring our phones. I guess I need to spend a lot more than $40 for those features. I needed a new alarm anyway.

8

To get around this problem is to get some Zigbee repeaters such as a pocket outlet. I mentioned this in another post.

9

Is your zcombo paired to SmartThings? Or another hub?

The zcombo, as a z-wave device, has no capabilities beyond a plain old smoke/CO detector unless it’s paired to a z-wave controller (like the ST hub).

I have two of them paired with my ST hub, and they do report battery status.

And if the zcombo is paired with a ST hub, you can definitely receive an alert on your phone when it detects an alarm condition. Because SmartThings can notify you, it’s not the zcombo itself that would do that.