Performing “Replace” on z-wave device

Devices & Integrations
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1

Hoping someone can give me advice or confirmation that this will work before attempting it.

I’m replacing some of my existing z-wave switches with newer ones and want to put the old ones elsewhere in the house that still have regular switches.

I don’t want to reconfigure all of my lighting integrations/smartapps so I want to verify if the steps I outline below will work correctly.

  1. Cut power at the breaker to Old Switch location.
  2. Install New Switch in location of Old Switch. Use Smartthings Classic app to perform “replace” of Old Switch with New Switch (from my understanding, the “replace” function only works if the device being replaced is unresponsive, hence the need to cut power to it at the breaker first and not exclude the Old Switch until the “Replace” has been done through the app).
  3. Place Old Switch in it’s new location elsewhere in the house
  4. Perform “General Device Exclusion” on Old Switch
  5. Begin inclusion process and add Old Switch as a new device

My main question is will the device exclusion of Old Switch create issues for New Switch because of the Device ID being the same?

Thanks in advance!

2

Problems, yes.

There’ve been changes in the Z wave platform as far as how general exclusion now works with SmartThings, and I’m not sure exactly what will happen if you try what you’re describing.

@Kianoosh_Karami will know.

3

It may. See this post, you’re almost there. Just make sure your hub is powered down when you exclude your old switch.

4

JD,
I am back again. Given my previous conversation, I will be replacing a number of my z-wave devices with z-wave plus devices. I was wondering if you would comment on my proposed method:

  1. go to exclude (in the new application) and tell the system which device I will be excluding (taping on the device)
  2. Look for the application to acknowledge the device has been excluded
  3. turn off the power to the device being exclude
  4. replace the device
  5. turn the power to the device back on
  6. then what? go to add? Is there an option to “replace” at this point?

Thanks for helping what my scope of work will be to replace devices.
Todd

5

OK, I know this is not the answer you want to hear, but I personally would not use a zwave replace utility to Replace a Z wave classic model with a Z wave plus model.

There are a lot of network differences between the two generations and in particular zwave plus devices Use a lifeline Association group which the zwave classic did not.

So if you use the replace utility, I don’t think the new switch is going to be set up correctly to take advantage of the Z wave plus features.

I could be mistaken on all that, but that’s just my own feeling. I don’t think a zwave plus model is a “replacement“ for a Z wave classic model in the way the utility was designed.

@Kianoosh_Karami might be able to say more in that regard.

6

Also, for the sake of argument, let’s say that you are going to replace a zwave classic with another device of exactly the same model.

Even in that case, the protocol you list won’t work.

Once you’ve excluded a device it is no longer available to “replace“ using the zwave replace utility.

You can physically remove it and physically install the new device and then run the “replace“ utility and that would be fine.

But once you “exclude“ the old device then you can’t use the replace utility for it because the device is no longer matched to the old network ID.

7

THANK YOU for your advise. It is no big deal. I have to open the box, remove and replace the hard wired device anyway. I will do a couple at a time…exclude a device or three, disconnect the device, install a new device (a new PLUS device) and add it back into the network. The object is the garage so I will start with those devices that will offer the best route to get back to the garage.

I do want to confirm, one more time, that as I get to the edge of the z-wave mesh network, in those places where the hub can not directly reach the new device, the request will be transmitted back to the hub and a new network iD will be issued via the mesh??

Thanks for all of your incite.
Todd

8

As long as there is a path back to the hub that only includes zwave plus devices, then yes, that’s how it supposed to work.

Z wave classic devices can’t carry the new ID messages to the new device.

9

How about this 1 or 2 below:

Create a virtual switch that will be the temporary home for the configured smart lighting apps that you want to save from the zwave switch that is being removed and replaced.

In the SmartThings app, go to the zwave switch you are going to remove.

Go to the list of smart apps for the zwave switch that is going away.

Then one by one move the smart apps to this virtual switch until no smart apps are listed for the real zwave switch that you are removing:

Exclude the device that is going away.

Include the new zwave plus switch.

Move all smartapps from the virtual switch to the newly included switch.

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2)

Lastly, SmartThings seems to now allow a zwave device to be excluded without first removing all smart app references to that Zwave device that is being removed.

After removal/exclusion of the zwave device the smart apps are still there, but references to the zwave device have been replaced with the word null.

When you install the new zwave device, go to each smart app, find where is says null, and insert the new zwave device