so we all know that zwave devices can have more than one controller. This is how some of the alarm panels etc integrate with smartthings. I was reading how the new harmony hub controls wink , and it turns out it actually ignores the hub and links directly into the zwave network. Is it possible to do that with smartthings, and have all zwave devices on the same mesh?
Two separate questions here.
First, the easy one: the harmony home hub does not have a Z wave radio. So I’m not sure what you were reading about it, but if you can give us a link, we can try to figure out what it was actually describing. Unless you were reading about the harmony hub extender, which is a Z wave device, but that’s a whole different set up.
Second, the one that has been answered a number of times before: while the official zwave standard definitely allows for one primary controller and multiple secondary controllers on the same Z wave network, SmartThings was designed from the beginning as a multiprotocol cloud-based platform, and it just does not play well with others in either the primary or the secondary role.
In fact, you can’t even add a second SmartThings hub to the same “location,” obviously a very different architecture than Vera, where adding a second Vera hub is the recommended solution for a number of use cases.
SmartThings is certified at the basic level, but does not include a number of advanced control and management command sets, such as controller shift and controller replicate. It also provides no mapping tools at all.
In fact, the company goes so far as to specifically advise against ever adding it as a secondary:
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/204392790-Z-Wave-general-info
SmartThings strongly discourages adding the Hub to another Z-Wave network. We cannot offer support for disconnected Z-Wave devices or the inability to add devices through the Hub as a result of including the Hub into another Z-Wave network.
So the harmony hub itself is not a Z wave controller, and even if it were, it would not work well with smartthings on the same Z wave network.
What specifically were you trying to accomplish? Maybe we can come up with a different way for you that gets a similar end result.
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That’s not entirely true @JDRoberts… There is a Harmony Home Hub Extender device that IS a Z-Wave and Zigbee controller… I have one.
It is currently joined to my Smartthings mesh and devices joined to it (right now a zwave appliance module controlling a DragonTech Bluetooth module plugged into my receiver) are also visible and controllable in Smartthings…
The reason I have this setup is I have two different Harmony hubs in my home and control one in Alexa directly through the skill and the other through ST integration to Alexa…
The one I control directly wouldn’t include the Z-Wave device in a Harmony activity unless it was directly connected to the Harmony Hub through the Hub Extender.
Complicated, but it works…
Nathan
Nathan,
JD actually did note that that the extender was a Z-Wave device.
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my ultimate goal is to give as much local control as possible to my setup, Harmony gives local control to whatever is connected directly to it. I also have a hue hub. If i were to upgrade to a smartthings v2 hub, would i have local control of hue hubs with the smart lighting app, or does it expect the bulbs to be connected directly? As a side note, i actually left out a word. I was asking about the extender.