Weeks ago I got into my ST app and noticed that I was missing the majority of my, roughly, 130 devices. Of the devices that remained 90% of those did not work. I could not do anything on most of the devices that remained. I would have to close the app then re-open it if I tapped on a device. I uninstalled the app and reinstalled the app but nothing changed. Within a day or two I received an email from ST stating they were installing an update on the back end and realized it was causing issues with some people’s environments so they backed out the update. I was told they were able to restore most environments except a small number. I was one of those that could not be restored and I would have to redo my entire setup.
I started a support ticket and was told by them that someone was doing some cleanup on the backend and that caused issues on some people’s setup but they were unable to recover mine. I don’t know why I was told two different stories as to what happened but at the end of the day my environment was still trashed. My hub was the ST’s v2 hub so I decided if I had to start over from scratch, I would start witih a newer hub so I bought the Aeotec ST hub and started to add my devices back.
Most devices were missing and the other few didn’t work, nor did any automation, routines, pretty much nothing worked properly. So, after starting to add devices back I started having some issues and all I get from support is uninstall the app, put your hub in zwave exclusion mode which doesn’t make sense on the new hub and all of those devices were deleted off of my old hub.
I’m hoping I might get better help in the community than what ST support is providing. My current issues are:
Added all my Aeotec minimotes but now all the black minimotes went offline and my white minimotes all still work.
I was able to add all of my WEMO outlets (after it added 4 then the remaining 6 two weeks later) but I still cannot add any of the WEMO switches, they just do not show up.
I cannot get any of my GE/Jasco two way/three way zwave switches added nor can I get the GE ceiling fan switches added
Philips HUE bulbs are randomly showing offline. Sometimes I can control one offline and sometimes I cannot.
All of my virtual devices were deleted. Is there a new/better way to add them back or do I add them through the IDE?
I setup a good morning scene just to do some basic on/off and mode change but that has been un-reliable at best. I have a small set of lighting automations setup but still need to add a lot more. The automations I have are less than reliable.
I had to redo everything years ago when I upgraded from the v1 hub to the v2 hub which took a whiile but I didn’t have any issues getting everything to work on the new hub.
The app upgrades just started to fix several frustrations I was having and for the most part everything was working pretty good, until this happened.
If anyone could provide any help or point me in a direction (other than ST support) I would greatly appreciate it.
For zwave devices, make sure you EXCLUDE them before re-including. In the app, go to your Hub tile, Options, Zwave Exclude.
Zigbee devices can be re-joined, but sometimes may require them to be factory reset first using some sequence of button holds/presses on the device. You’ll need to look up each device to see if they provide a factory reset procedure.
Virtuals there are several options. SmartThings has their own that you can add thru the Labs feature in the app. There are also several community provided ones (vEdge is popular, check on the forum for details).
Scenes still require the cloud. Instead you could use a local virtual momentary device as a “scene trigger”. Tie any of your actions to it.
I’m so sorry you’re going through all of that. I’m sure it’s very frustrating.
Let’s start with just one simple thing.
Zwave devices are assigned a “network ID“ when they join to a new zwave network. At that point they are unavailable to join any other networks until that network ID is reset.
Because the people designing the Z wave specifications wanted to make sure that devices couldn’t be knocked off the network by accident, the normal parameter reset procedure doesn’t clear the network ID. The only thing that will clear the network ID is a “Z wave exclude“ which tells the device it’s leaving its current network permanently.
So, in your case, you need all of your zwave devices to leave the network that was established by your old V2 hub so they will then be ready to join the network that will be established by your new aeotec hub.
The zwave designers understood that you might no longer have the original hub. Maybe the hub itself failed, maybe you replaced it, maybe you purchased the end device used. Sometimes you even get a brand new device shipped from the factory that still has the network ID from a test network and you have to exclude that.
So the good news is that any certified zwave controller, including your new aeotec hub, can issue what is called a “general exclude” and tell any zwave device close enough to hear it, that it should clear the old network ID. Once that is done, you can then include it to the new hub.
When the hub issues the general exclusion command, there will be something that you have to do on the device to get the device to accept it. Usually that’s a physical tap pattern. It can be different for every device, so you’re just going to have to look it up in the user manual for that device to find out how to put it into “network mode“ or “exclusion mode.
So the first step for any Z wave device that won’t add is to perform a general exclusion on it. After that you can try including it to the new hub.
I have not needed to do that if an Edge driver overrides via fingerprint (at least with Zwave). I have existing Groovy device handlers with their fingerprints still active and an Edge driver with the same fingerprint and the Edge driver takes precedence when joining. This behaviour started sometime last year during the migration phases, I believe about the time that you couldn’t edit existing custom handlers anymore.
Doesn’t hurt to remove them of course if you’re starting over. I have some devices still waiting for migration and some manually migrated so I’ve left them in place.
Thank you for your response but I have an iPhone and their labs section only has 4, sad, simple features and the virtual devices are not part of it. When it comes to the app ST seems to only care about Samsung phones and anything new the iPhones as sadly left for last or forgotten about.
Thank you JD for your further expanded info for the zwave exclude. I’ll have to find the manuals for my GE or other light/fan switches.
Any thoughts on why I cannot add (only) my WEMO switches? The outlets added without issue after a few failed attempts but still cannot add the switches.
I have a couple IP ST outlets that go through the whole process to add but at the end it says registering with your Samsung account then it fails every time at that point.
The issues I’m having this go around are getting just as frustrating as what ST did to my original setup.
There have been some problems with the new Wemo edge Driver since it was first released. Last I heard only the beta version was working, but I don’t know for sure what the current status is. Try asking in the following thread.
Here is what the iPhone Labs look like. Awefully nice to know they are limiting what we can do by not giving me an option to create a virtual switch. Plus I don’t have a dark mode option in my app. It’s nice to know that after all these years ST sucks just as just much as before.
