Plugging a Z-Wave stick into the USB port on the Smartthings Hub?

Hello,

I recently got my Smartthings Hub, and one thing that I didn’t realize was that Z-Wave works in different bands in different countries. (I had been using mainly Wi-Fi devices, and didn’t learn much about Z-Wave before buying it.) I live in Australia and I would like to try to stay on the legal side and use Australian Z-Wave things, (at least for now, since I also bought some Australian Z-Wave devices!) and was wondering if it is possible to plug an Aeotec Z-Wave dongle into the hub and let the hub to control it somehow?

I believe that port (along with Bluetooth connectivity) is non-operational at this time! I could be incorrect in the non USA models.

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Unfortunately, no. First, at present the USB dongles on the back of the hub don’t work at all, for anything. :disappointed_relieved: And second, you can’t add a secondary controller of a different zwave frequency. So your SmartThings account wouldn’t recognize it anyway.

Your SmartThings hub can only work with Z wave devices of the exact same frequency as the hub.

If you got an aeotec Z wave stick on the Australian frequency, you can stick it into a laptop and use it with the indigo Z wave controller software with your Australian Z wave devices, but you won’t have any integration with SmartThings. And it doesn’t work with any zigbee devices, but it’s a good solution for Z wave.

Homeseer and Zipato both make Z wave control modules on the Australian frequency, but both are significantly more expensive and technically more complex to operate than SmartThings or Indigo.

Whoa. I didn’t know that.

I was actually trying to get ST working with Home Assistant and have ST control the Z-Wave devices hooked up to HASS for the past few days before posting this. But I couldn’t even get HASS working reliably in the first place! It won’t start after reboots and I have reinstalled Hassbian/Raspbian for a couple of times without improvements.

I use Google Home extensively, which is another problem that limits my options. I was looking at Homeseer, but the price is kind of putting me off as well.