Ok, so I moved a couple of months ago (11/2020) from a house with a V1 hub. I deleted everything I had in my ST app and removed the hub and cleared out the web GUI of everything including the hub. I am in an apartment for 11 months and will be moving to my permanent home then. I set up my new V3 hub in the apartment , mostly for security, and I have only about 20 devices, which will grow to about 50 when I move again.
My question is, when I move, can I just move all my devices to the new house and plug in the hub, or will I have to rebuild the network again because of how the z-wave and zig-bee devices communicate with each other. I understand they talk to each other and have a memory, so if you move them, the devices may not know how to talk to the hub.
As always, the first rule of home automation applies: “the model number matters.“ Meaning it may work a little differently for one device versus another depending on the specific models involved.
In general, as long as the devices have a similar physical proximity to what they had before, that is they are all in range of the same other devices, you shouldn’t have to reset anything. Just put it on power and it should work.
If you do have any devices which are now having difficulty routing, for Z wave devices, you just run a “Z wave repair.“ That’s the utility which should be under the hub information in the app.
For the zigbee devices, it’s even easier. Unplug the hub for at least 20 minutes well leaving all of the others Zigbee Devices on Power. When you plug the hub back in, the other devices will all rebuild their most efficient routes.
Be patient: in both cases it may take a day or two until everything sorts itself out, but that should be all you have to do.
If you do have devices which for one reason or another or out of range of your primary network, as long as they are within range of something that repeats of the same protocol it should eventually sort itself out. If necessary, you can remove a device from the network and add it back again, but honestly for the case you describe you shouldn’t have to.
You might want to read the following just so you have a little more of an idea of what’s going on. Start with post 11 in that thread, read it, then go up to the top of the thread and read the whole thing. The following link will take you right to post 11. But that’s just a few more interested in the details, if it was working fine for you at your old house, it should work at the new house as long as the physical distances haven’t changed too much.
