Moving devices between hubs on same location

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

Ever since I’ve been using two hubs on the same location (and indeed even before that), I’ve been convinced that it was not possible to use the IDE to change the hub a device was installed on. It just didn’t work. I actually needed to delete the device from one hub and pair it to the other (not necessarily in that order) and fix up all the automations for the new device which was really tedious. I thought that until about ten minutes ago …

I was sitting in the garden and saw I had created virtual switches on the wrong hub a while back and I idly changed the hub in the IDE and it worked. Then I tried it with a Zigbee device. That changed too. OK it didn’t actually communicate because the Zigbee pairing was wrong. So I paired it to the correct hub and it worked. No need to change anything else as it was the same device.

Thinking about it, the migration tool does essentially the same thing - it does the ST side of things but still needs you to pair the devices again.

How on earth have I never noticed this before? It speeds up migrating devices no end. No deletion of devices, no reauthorising devices and replacing tiles in ActionTiles, no reauthorising devices and editing pistons in webCoRE. It is a game changer.

1 Like
2

For zigbee, I can see that because each device has its own device ID that it reports to the hub at the time of pairing. That’s not going to change.

But for zwave devices, it is the hub that assigns the device ID and tells it to the device when it is joined. So you won’t know the device ID until the pairing is complete. And it might be a different device ID than the one it had on the previous hub.

So I’d be curious if that method worked for Zwave devices as well.

3

I can’t answer that one. My Z-Wave+ devices have all been sold on eBay and the Z-Wave ones have long since gone to the recycling centre.

I could see why it is possible with virtual devices and Zigbee, but I am sure it never used to work.

1 Like
4

The game seems to have changed back again. Changing the hub on a virtual switch is now giving me an error. Changing the hub on a Zigbee device seems to be working but the device pairs as a different device. Scratching my head over this one.

Update: One day on, and I was again able to move an Ikea Button between two hubs simply by changing the hub in the IDE and pairing again. Unusually, I needed to use Scan Nearby.