Simple Question how can i see the value of the current Zwave Network Security Key?, is this exposed somewhere? i need to add this to my secondary controller so it can participate with the security Options
@duncan can you assist here?
That is not currently possible, and we don’t have plans to add it (for security reasons, because all our UI is cloud based). When a security-enabled controller is added to the hub’s network, the hub shares the network security key with it via standard Z-Wave secure inclusion. If your secondary controller doesn’t have the key you may need to exclude and re-add it to SmartThings as a secure controller.
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ok thanks for the feedback
For anyone else in this position, i have discovered what the security key is with Zensys Tools you can see the key when joining the controller as a secondary and then you can input the key directly in Openhab and you can then control locks fine from your secondary controller.
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Just saw this post and was going to mention Zensys Tools. The security key is exposed through Zensys Tools with an Aeon Stick when adding the Aeon Stick as a secondary controller. Been using the key with secondary controller software for some time. You beat me to it. 
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Is the key only exposed at join, or can I get it by sending a command class from Zensys?
I did see it when I setup the Z-stick in Zensys but never noted- now I’ve configured (a lot of) secondary network device ID associations in openHAB so I want to avoid resetting Z-stick and losing Smartthngs device ID if I can!
Also, seen a post stating that I’d need to set an association in Smartthing to openHAB before Fibaro motion sensors (V3.2) will work…is there a handler with this option scripted, or anyone help with the text to add to either Cyril or Stewart B’s device handler?
I have both Aeon Multisensor 6 and Fibaro that haven’t has device types found in openHAB- presumably due to this
If your OpenHab setup is using openzwave then your network key can be found in the config xml (OpenHab 2.0 has, I believe, three ways of connecting to a z-wave network, I am assuming you are using the openzwave module).
If the z-wave controller is a Aeotec/Aeon USB controller, then the key might be stored in the controller. They have a utility that will let you pull the value out of the USB controller.
Other options?
Just buy a second z-wave controller and join it to the network via zensys. The network key will be provided on join.
As to your question about issuing commands in order to get the key out of the controller?
The “application layer” does not provide a means to pull the key from the controller (I think). That being said, if you start issuing serial commands at a USB controller you might be able to do it, it depends on the controller.
You are very likely to screw up your network in the process though.
As to your second question, many z-wave devices can have multiple associations. What this means that you can just add the Smartthings device to a group association on the device and most things will work just fine. In some cases a device will only talk to one controller. If you run into that you will need to look at the multi-assocation support in your main controller (multi-association, not multi-instance).
The Smartthings controller at some point in recent months started behaving itself as a secondary controller, and began to work relibly as a secondary controller. I am finding that something in the most recent firmware has broken that capability, but I have not figured out exactly what went wrong.
Have fun.
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Thanks.
I bit the bullet and re-ran the Aeon Z-stick gen 5 setup, now see the key in Zensys under “SecurityManager.SetKey”
I only have two z-wave options in openHAB 2- I used the Z-wave handler by Chris Jackson which worked very well, the Z-wave.me “Zway” handler I never tried. Didn’t see an openZ-wave handler in the prebuilt package I pulled for my Qnap NAS. Asked the question about secure operation on openHAB forum and Chris Jackson replied that this doesn’t work in current version- it is in latest Beta. So for now I’ve decided to wait until I get a dedicated machine- probably a raspberry PI so I can run a pre-built build. I’m probably going to look at Home Assistant or Dometicz- at least until openHAB moves on a bit.
Interested in what you or others have found the easiest out of openHAB/ Home Assistant/ Domoticz to setup with Smartthings. I’m avoiding openHAB 1 as although I can do text, it’s a bit too texty for me… 
Interesting what you said about SmartThings working as a secondary. Most seem to think that SIC/ SUC isn’t supported, but I found a thread where Tyler clearly said it supports SIC/ SUC.
I’m not sure if it’s the z-stick or SmartThings but I got this error in Zensys when I was joining the Z-stick to the existing SmartThings Network I got this error in Zensys-Tools:-
“Exception: CmdZWaveEnableSuc is not implemented in the Z-Wave Device”
When you said SmartThings could be secondary, did you mean as SIC/ SUC or just paired to a Z-stick network?
The lack of control I have over SmartThings updates is one of the reasons I’m looking at alternatives, as well as:-
- unhappy that the offline capability is so low. Almost none of my devices or SmartApps support offline
- very slow response, particularly motion detectors triggering lights.
- I’d really like to have a controller cluster to provide some resilience
- ability for complex logic. I had this in SmartThings with rules machine until that went, I know there’s CUBE but not looked at it. Coming from Homevision I’m used to being able to having flexible if-then-else with AND/ OR, etc without having to mess about too much.
openHAB 2 was so nearly there, but just missing the secure the I think I need for Fibaro/ Aeon gen 5 motion sensors.
@Chrisgla I have tried absolutely everything on the market. I have finally settled on Homeseer. It’s been rock solid for me. All works offline and I just don’t need to mess with it and it just works. And it’s very very quick for motion detection.
They offer a 30 day trial. However you won’t really appreciate it unless you commit to it fully by re-pairing your devices. But they also offer a 30 day money back guarantee to extend your trial of the software essentially to 60.days. and you will need maybe 100 dollars of plugins as well if you have hue and other devices
It’s bloody expensive but I can’t recommend it enough. But you need to forget about trying to use ST as a secondary controller. I just bit the bullet and re-paired everything. I only use ST for the odd Zigbee device I have and my tado heating. I have a method of controlling Smarthings that is more lightweight than MQTT as I couldn’t be doing with setting up the broker for the small number of devices
Thanks Stuart. I know Homeseer is very mature- nearly bought it about 15 years ago. Did you buy a pre-built Hometroller or roll your own?
Do you know if HS supports the SmartThings Zigbee Motion/ Multisensors?
Doing a troll it looks like HS do 50% discount at times- Black Friday, etc… so I might have to wait a while!
Google’s obviously watching me…
25% off HS3/ Pro at Homeseer. making USD $ 449.97 for Pro (about ÂŁ360) or USD $ 187.47 for HS3 (about ÂŁ150).
Much more affordable than a Hometroller for a little more work…
Not sure I need the Pro and the full version runs on PI 3 (just) so got me thinking…
Coupon code GRM-HS3-25 if anyone’s interested.
@Chrisgla I rolled my own controller, i had an old Acer Revo RL80 NetTop which is a low powered PC, its running Win10 Pro and i am using a Aeon Zstick, allthough i had ZME UZB1 i thought that the Zstick would be better because i could take to devices and pair. in real life though that doesn’t pan out because Homeseer still needs to be close enough especially to the locks when you import into homeseer from the Zstick. in hindsight it would have been better to use the other controller as you can backup the Zwave network directly from Homeseer, which you cannot do with the Zstick.
that was the code i used as google watched me also, i did buy the pro though as i do thing HSTouch will make the utopian solution once i have had time to create a customised dashboard for my tablets, but at the moment i use Imperihome and the related plugin at the moment which is an extremely good alternative and is far easier to set up but is also far less configurable.
I have not used the Pi or Linux versions, all though be warned that not all plugins work on the linux platform. there is still bags of room for improvement for Homeseer, its not perfect by any stretch and is rather clunky, but for reliability and performance it just blows everything out of the water
oh and as for ST Zigbee Devices like motion\contact sensors & Plugs these will not work directly with homeseer, i do however have a solution in place to leave these connected to ST and to run a two way sync between Homeseer and ST using web requests this works well unless of course ST has an outage, but i only have 7 of these devices so its not the end of the world for me.
if you want to use my solution for doing this, just PM me and i will share the code.
A secondary controller in a Z-wave network can perform any function but inclusion.
A secondary controller can switch lights, poll devices, etc…
If you have a controller in your network acting as a SIS then you can multiple controllers handle/perform inclusion. When you are setting up a network this can be handy if you have a bunch devices which can be included that do not use network security (i.e. during setup they do not require the network key). Truth be told, you can force a network key on most devices after they have been included (I’m not sure if this is by design though).
The Smartthings controller is good widget for bridging different types of networks in a flexible manner. I personally do not find HomeSeer to be very flexible, but that may just be because I have not spent that much time hacking it. I find that HomeSeer is better tool for setting up a Z-wave network. For determining what the state of device is? The Z-way server’s expert tool is hands down the best tool for device debugging.
OpenHab should be able to create a secure network, the openzwave library powers “Open Z-wave Control Panel” and it can create secure networks.
The downside of having a Smartthings controller act as a secondary is that you will need to replicate the devices into Graph either by hand or some other self written script. It would be nice if Samsung fixed the Smartthings controller to handle replication, but replicating devices is not that big of a deal. Adding devices is not a constant chore of any sort.
I would not get hung up on SUC/SIS capabilities, these features only matter when you are adding devices to the network or joining a controller to the network (this is not an absolute truth though, a controller can learn a network).
Having a controller act as a SIS may be more trouble then its worth. What I have observed that you can easily with partitioned networks once you introduce a SIS (fixing split brain problems in a z-wave network is a lot of effort).
If you are looking for disaster recovery, any secondary controller can be forced into being a primary controller. It is possibly more work then what is required to just setup the network from scratch.
As far designing a network? Multi-association controllers can broaden functionality.
In theory Bridge Controllers can map network devices across geographical distances by creating virtual nodes.
There are a bunch of features that are not exposed in a coherent manner by any of the current z-wave controller vendors.
Thanks for all the replies. Fortunately (but annoyingly) I’ve got to the root of many of my long term problems- partly by these discussions/ tech support calls to SmartThings and looking around.
My zigbee devices are finally all working ( apart from dead hardware), these all failed two weeks ago and have been very unreliable for a few months. Latency is really only issue now
Going to carry on playing with openHAB/ Home Assistant as secondaries for now, in process of setup using mqtt.
Will give it a few months and see if things continue to improve. It’s annoying , as SmartThings really is around 95% of what I need…but isn’t that the way?
Again, thanks for the contributions…
I. May need to look at z-way and Homeseer again…
Chris
@BrianAker I have messed around with secondary controllers quite a bit, but the utopia of having multiple controller being able to access and control devices all devices flawlessly is to be honest a pipe dream, i agree that a secondary controller can control any function but its only guaranteed in Association Group 1. eg allt he devices i have that use association groups 2 - 5 are not 100% guaranteed at all, i only have a maybe 60% success rate getting devices to report back to two controllers in these groups as there are restrictions on a lot of devices where they only will report back to a single controller. so if the secondary controller cant get data back from these groups then effectively it makes your secondary controller have so many caveats of what it cannot do.
its fine a lot of the time to actuate devices which is why minimotes etc… work fine, but to have a fully fledged controller try and work in a secondary capacity for HA it just wont fulfil your needs
I have come to the hard conclusion unless you are wanting to transfer your network to another controller you need to steer clear of wanting to use a secondary controller especially when you reach a point that to get your network back to working again after your attempts you need to modify by hand the association groups again to get them reporting to a single controller. i have also seen delays if zwave statuses when a secondary controller is in the mix.
As for homeseer not being flexible, i agree its not as simple as SmartThings to expand functionality especially around adding new Zwave Device Support. but its easily the most flexible amongst the competitiors and uses VB or C# .net which is a language i feel very comfortable with. so its pretty decent.