Please Help Me With Planning a Transition to the new Aeotec Hub? :-)

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Would you please give me whatever advice you’re willing to share, and/or help me think this through…as it relates to best practices/ideas for doing what it seems like I’m trying to accomplish?

TL;DR:

  • I have the new Aeotec ST Hub.
  • I also still have a gigantic HA infrastructure (which I built on my original Gen1 ST Hub) in my original/old/extant ST account.
  • I’d like to leave the old system as-is, and leave it sit there, not using it or anything, for now, while I work on getting the new hub up and running as a temporary, lesser/stand-in HA system to use until I am ready to get back to figuring out how to deal with everything in my old system, and migrate whatever I can.

MORE DETAILS: (for those who like reading lots of words lol)

I am planning the roll-out of my new [Aeotec] SmartThings hub (Thanks to Samsung for the deal to replace my Gen1 hub).

I still have all kinds of stuff in my original SmartThings system, but haven’t even been using it at all for like a year, because of…well…being off on other projects (sometimes just figuring out where/if I’m going to sleep tonight), etc.

I definitely want to get back to everything that is still viable, and access, use, modify, migrate, or whatever as much as I can from my old system (GOBS and GOBS of simulated devices created to work with GOBS and GOBS of stuff in webCoRE, Echo Speaks, and other stuff) at some point, but I just don’t have it in me to get that deep into that whole project right now.

However, I am in a situation where I would very much like to have at least some semblance of a SmartThings HA system up and running in order to put a few relatively simple (haha, ‘simple’ for me) automations in place.

What I would like to do is leave everything as-is in my original/extant setup, and bring this new hub online as a completely separate entity (I’m open to being convinced of a different way of doing this, too).

When I started poking around, it seemed like I may not be able to even have a second Samsung account…let alone have two different Samsung accounts on my same, single Samsung smartphone (Galaxy S20).

So, if I were to create a second Samsung account, I’d have to use that one to get to my new hub, and completely change (big hassle) which Samsung account I’m using on my phone (which is NOT just for SmartThings stuff).

Would you please give me whatever advice you’re willing to share, and/or help me think this through…as it relates to best practices/ideas for doing what it seems like I’m trying to accomplish?

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I’m sure you’ll get lots of suggestions, and I believe you are right that Samsung phones will not allow you to have two active Samsung accounts at the same time because so much of what the phone does is tied to an account. But other people will know the details on that.

I’m just curious: does it not work for you to just add an additional location to your account with the new hub in it?

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Something I wish I had thought to have done is to create a Samsung account with a completely impersonal e-mail address and used that to create my SmartThings location. That would ideally require a spare phone or tablet capable of running the latest ST mobile app and set up with the account to be used from time to time. I would then have invited my day to day Samsung account as a Member of that Location. That way I would not be quite so plumbed into my system.

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@JDRoberts
Ya…see…that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. lol
No. There’s no reason it wouldn’t work. lol I just didn’t think of that.
It’s funny, because, of course I knew of that as a potential solution for this sort of situation at some point, but my brain just didn’t go there.
Thanks again, man…and for being respectful and gentle as always.

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@orangebucket
I think I need to reread your comments again tomorrow when I’m more fresh for the day.
It sounds like some really good ideas. I just need to process them again after some rest.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts.

UPDATE:

OK, this sounds smart.

So…with it configured like that, would the account that is invited as member have full control?

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I am also interested in mapping out my transition to the Aeotec V3 from G1. I do not have that many devices but I don’t have the time to dedicate all at once. My preference would be to migrate devices in small groups.

I expect to create an impersonal email address as suggested by orangebucket. Will the zwave devices be confused by two different zwave networks close by?

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No, that should be fine. I’ve had as many as 4 zwave networks in my own 3 BR 1800 sq ft house at one time, and zwave is used in some hotels as well as being popular with apartment dwellers in Europe with one hub per unit. I wouldn’t expect any problems and haven’t heard of any relative to smartthings migrations. Or people who, for example, run both smartthings and Hubitat or both smartthings and ring security. It’s theoretically possible, but just doesn’t happen very much.

What’s more common is that in moving things over people leave insufficient repeaters for one or both networks. So that’s the planning you have to do.