Primary and Secondary Controllers with SmartThings and "other"

Update: I ended up getting a free SmartThings Hub and Motion Sensor from my power company which arrived yesterday. Had some initial bumps and bruises but eventually got the Z-wave network up and running with the ST Hub as Primary and 2Gig as secondary. I think the setup will work great. One of the things I was worried about was having to remove and add the 2Gig controller every time new devices were added. It turns out that you just need to do a network rediscover on the panel and everything comes up.

I really only care about the locks with regards to the security system and they work as they did before. Other than some exterior lights, most will be controlled via smartthings.

Unrelated but I was also pleasantly surprised that the new Smartthings Motion detector also includes temperature readouts.

wow, sweet! what power company! i love free… free anything really :smile:

Bounce Energy. Are you in Texas?

I got a much lower rate, free Smartthings and get 3% cash back on autopay after 12 months.

nah, I’m in PA. good to see some discount and free…especially free tech!

I am trying to setup a GE 45600 Remote as a secondary controller. I would like to leave it on the coffee to control lights instead of having to always use my cell phone to simply turn on a few lights. Can some please provide step by step instructions on how to pair the remote with the ST Hub? This would be very helpful for many other as I have seen this same question in several places. Thanks is advance.

After some more digging, I found the answer in the following thread:

I have successfully been able to pair my GE 45600 with the ST Hub. Thanks Community!

Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. I have an existing 2Gig system with 1 ZWave Kwikset lock. Now with the Smartthings hub, I’d like to figure out to add the 2Gig as a secondary controller.

So do I understand correctly that your locks are now on the ST hub and not the 2Gig? What’s the process when you’re arming the 2Gig with respect to the ST hub?

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They almost operate independently of each other. Smartthings can lock your locks just as the 2gig can. I typically don’t lock the locks from smartthings though. I have a rule on alarm.com to lock my doors when the system is armed. The locks themselves can also be set to autolock in 30 seconds.

Excellent. Ok, so here’s where I am. I’ve removed the lock from the 2Gig. I’ve added it to Smartthings. I then added the 2Gig as a secondary controller to the Smartthings.

I can see “Secure Keypad door lock unknown manufacturer” under the Door Locks Section.

I can control the locks from the Smartthings app, but I can’t control from 2Gig or Alarm.com.

Thoughts? Ideally I want to do exactly what you’re doing, be able to control with both but primarily with Alarm.com.

I want to use the smartthings to automatically lock the door based on certain times of day.

Also, are you able to have multiple codes for users on Alarm.com? That’s what I had, definitely would like that functionality.

Thanks!

I am also curious about this. I tried the same last night, I removed everything from the 2gig panel, added to smartthings, then set the 2gig as the secondary controller. I ran into the same issue, my locks couldn’t be controlled by the 2gig or alarm.com. Wondering how others have done it, if it works?

Me too, I’m still stuck. I can’t get the 2Gig / Alarm.com to see the actual lock and be able to control it.

As of last night, my lock is no longer controllable within the SmartThings App. I can see it’s status updating, but I can’t lock/unlock it any longer.

I haven’t had time to figure out what happened there yet.

I’d love it if someone could list the step by step for pairing the 2Gig so that it sees the lock.

@johnessey

Any chance you can expand on how you got your 2Gig to be the secondary controller while still seeing the Zwave lock as well as seeing it in Alarm.com? All I seem to be able to see is the unknown Zwave device. I’ve deleted the 2Gig from the ST Hub, reset it from the 2Gig panel and the run “Learn Controller” again.

Question, when you added it to the ST Hub, you didn’t need to do anything special, right? There wasn’t a Pairing mode or Join mode for the ST Hub to be in, correct? I just pressed the + and selected Connect New Device.

Any guidance would be super appreciated!

I finally had a chance to do some testing with mine today. No good results though.
My 2gig panel is on firmware 1.9.2 - I ordered a cable from the states, and will try upgrading the firmware on that panel to see if that helps. Probably be a week or two before it arrives here.
I added my devices to the Smartthings hub, and then added my 2gig as a secondary controller. I tested with the smartthings right by the 2gig to ensure the data transfers and it links up okay. Under the advanced, and all devices, I can see everything links, and gets an ID, but, the locks show as unknown lock, and have no id number.
Reading other forums, I know the locks use a secure inclusion, and old posts indicate they can’t link up to more than one controller. So, not really sure. I couldn’t get my locks, or my thermostat to link properly on the 2gig as secondary.
I’ll try the new 2gig firmware (1.10.1) when the cable comes and see if that makes any difference. Other than that, I’m out of ideas. I even tried adding the locks into the 2gig, and making smartthings as the secondary, but, I couldn’t get the 2gig to take smartthings as a secondary.

Ugh… I’m totally unclear as to how others are doing this. I don’t want the 2Gig to do anything else other than let me manage the lock and lock codes from the Alarm.com website and not have to do it though ST.

@bostonalex

So I currently am only able to lock/unlock my 910’s directly from the 2Gig Panel, as I do not have any web interface options enabled for the locks. My panel is ‘unlocked’. I’m not sure about the firmware of my panel either, but I can find out. On my 2Gig, the locks show up as Black and Decker (weird).

My 2Gig controller was in place before I had SmartThings (just used a few GE Outlets). When I got my kickstarted SmartThings I then removed all the devices from the 2Gig, set up SmartThings and then paired all my Outlets to SmartThings. I then paired my 2Gig to SmartThings (it shows up as a ‘controller’), but does not indicate if it’s primary or secondary (in theory, pairing it to my SmartThings should make it secondary).

A few months later I added my first 910 to SmartThings. I had a ton of issues due to my lack of proper physical installation of the lock (jamb issues, etc.). Once I fixed those issues I was able to pair the lock to SmartThings (at one point I thought the lock was broken, but was assured it was an installation issue) and control the lock without much fuss.

One thing I noticed over time is that once I add a compatible z-wave device to SmartThings, it shows up on the 2Gig, usually accurate with the vendor information, but not always (using the name of my lock as one example). I also had an odd z-wave outlet that would not work with 2Gig, but paired to SmartThings the 2Gig sees it, and controls it just fine…

I guess, I’m not really able to tell you much more about what goes on via Alarm.com. I am under the impression (based on my other installs) that what I see on the 2Gig is then presented to me in Alarm.com provided you pay for that level of access. In short, if it works on the 2Gig panel, then it should work on the website. My locks work from the 2Gig and from SmartThings, but I dont see the locks on Alarm.com (almost up from my contract too).

Sorry for the lag, I’ll try and post a bit more if necessary.

Thanks for the reply!

My Kwikset 910 does show up as a Black and Decker on the 2Gig panel as well.

Something I hadn’t tried would be to add the lock to the ST hub after pairing the 2Gig. When I’ve tried it, the lock has always already been paired to the ST hub.

I like you had the 2Gig prior to the ST but I only ever had the 1 lock. Let me go try out removing the lock and then re-pairing the 2Gig to the ST hub and the the lock. I’ll report back…

Ok, the plot thickens… You got me closer with that last tip!

Ok, Removed the lock from ST.
Added the 2Gig to ST hub as a secondary.
Added the 910 to ST Hub
Initially, I didn’t see it, but after a few min the 2Gig sees the Black and Decker lock again!

That’s the good news… The bad news appears to be that there is a security binding problem on the 2Gig and it wants me to remove the device and re-add it. I’m not sure that will clear up my problem. I’ll keep at it.

on the security binding thing, do you mean it sees it as a ‘bad’ z-wave device and wants to remove it? I have that with my AEON sensors, only due to the 2Gig not knowing what they actually are. Not sure if that’s what you mean…

Just curious if you unlocked your 2Gig during the 48 hour window, or if you own it outright (therefore it should be ‘unlocked’).

You can rescan your z-wave network from the 2Gig to speed up the discovery process of new devices added to your primary hub.

That’s exactly what I meant.

WHOA… ok, it looks like we’re up now. So the security keys thing wasn’t working when I added the lock to the ST hub.

So I removed the lock and added it directly to the 2Gig. Took 3-4 min, but the ST saw it as an unconfigured device, so I just added it. 3-4 min later, all is well.

So the steps were:
remove lock if installed.
pair 2gig to ST hub
wait 4-5 min
Add Lock to 2Gig panel
Wait 4-5 min
Open ST App on device and add newly found lock.
Wait 4-5 for everything to sync up and get happy.

That’s it. Finally! Thanks for the bit about adding AFTER pairing the panel. Brilliant.

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Awesome. Glad it worked out… just needed a bit of banter, right :wink:

Cheers.