I am working on upgrading my Hubitat hub from the C3 to the C7. I am using the manual migration process (backup C3, restore to C7, exclude/include devices again, adjust DNI’s, etc). That is all going great. I cannot seem to get SharpTools to recognize the new hub though. It’s still showing status of the previous hub (which is now powered off) and devices. When I go in to manage connections and try to relink the hub it gives me an error “Hub is not responding, please verify it is running and connected to the Internet”.
Has anyone successfully moved SharpTools to a new Hubitat hub? Using the backup/restore migration method? Any advice?
“Hub is not responding” is a message from the Hubitat servers and means that your hub can’t be accessed.
The most common solution for this is to reboot the hub, wait several minutes for things to calm down after booting back up, then try reauthorizing the new hub again starting from the SharpTools.io User Page.
I am able to get to the hubs cloud dashboard and control things.
I can go to Hubitat Portal, see my new hub (it is the only one listed), click the hub and then Cloud Dashboard Menu. It loads and controls things fine. After doing that I went back into SharpTools, clicked manage connections, clicked Hubitat (I only see the option for location “Home” though I did change my new hubs location to “Home-new” to troubleshoot this), Click home, click Select, wait and get the error message I mentioned.
If I click the 3 dots on the account page next to “Home” under Authorized Locations and then click Show Advanced, should the Location ID match the “Hub ID” in Hubitat under Settings > Details? If so, these don’t match.
Yes, the “Location ID” in Sharptools (when viewing the location’s advanced details), should match the Hub ID reported by Hubitat once the hub is successfully authorized. If you are getting an error each time, then the new hub likely hasn’t been authorized yet though.
You mentioned that portal.hubitat.com is showing only the one new hub? Did you (or the Hubitat team) remove your old hub from your account? Otherwise I would have expected to see both hubs on that page:
Are you able to complete the authorization of any other services like Alexa, Google Home, or IFTTT? Since you’re able to use the Cloud Dashboard menu, it almost sounds like the Hubitat Cloud Relay can talk to your hub, but for some reason the Hubitat authorization servers can’t.
The old hub is powered off. Perhaps it doesn’t show up in that portal if it is offline and not responding?
I’ll reach out to Hubitat Support as well and see if they can assist.
So far it has been pretty straight forward once I had the process down.
Backup old hub
Boot new hub and restore backup
In the new hub replace all ZWave device DNI’s with X### ( where ### is the original DNI)
In the new hub, exclude devices from the closest to the hub to those farther away, 1 at a time while also including them after the exclusion
When you include the new device, adjust the DNI to RF### (where ### is the new DNI)
Go to the original device (that you named X###) and give it whatever the new DNI was given in the new hub (before the rename in step 5); whatever the ### is in RF### without RF.
Delete the new device that you renamed to RF### in step 5
Move to the next closest device
As you do this your automations will start working again after step 6.
For Zigbee devices, just factory reset them using whatever procedure they call for, then join them to the new hub. They join right up, are recognized and start working right away.
Then figure out things like getting Sharptools and such working again.
Why did you decide to upgrade? What will you get from C7 that you didn’t have in C3?
I have lot of ZWave devices, and 18 Zigbee devices to hunt down and reset. Many of them are moisture detectors under sinks - requiring me to get down on hands and knees to find!
C7 is supposed to get hub protection service at some point (add-on subscription) that can backup your settings and devices to Hubitat servers and can be restored on a new/different hub. It’s based on a newer/better ZWave chip and supports S2 security (prior to C7 supported S0 which is apparently more chatty). Other than that it’s functionally the exact same as my C3, I just figured I’d move to the C7 as my C3 is getting a bit aged.
I’m getting a C7 delivered hopefully before the end of the week.
Assuming a successful backup from the C5 and restore to the C7 of all non-Zwave devices (I only have 3 z-wave locks on the hub right now but many non z-wave / non-zigbee devices) - would Sharptools dashboards once authorized to the new hub, function seamlessly on the C7 given the full backup / restore process or would all Sharptools dashboards need to be rebuilt tile by tile from scratch due to this move?
This can make or break my migration plans so appreciate any direction on how to move without recreating all dashboards and tiles.
Unfortunately you will need to rebuild the dashboards/rules because each device authorized to SharpTools is tight with the hub’s location id and device id. Therefore, all devices restored on your C7 will be recognized as “new” devices under the C7 location.
-EDIT-
I need to look into the Hubitat backup/restore process a bit more and if the process somehow magically restores the location id from the old hub to the new hub. If the location id stays the same, there will be no changes needed for your dashboards then… but if the location id is different like I suspect, you’ll have to make updates to your dashboards.
Yes, the Location ID and Device IDs must exactly match as that’s what’s used for uniquely identifying the devices.
I put a message out to the Hubitat team asking for confirmation as to what happens with a manual backup and restore from one hub to another. I think James’ suspicion that the Hub ID / Location ID is tied to the hub hardware and the new hub would have a new Location ID is correct, but wanted to get confirmation.
The Hubitat team confirmed that the Location ID (Hub ID) is effectively tied to the hardware. So when you restore a backup from one hub onto another, the Location ID / Hub ID is still going to be different between the two physical hubs.
That means that from the SharpTools side of things, all of the devices are going to be seen as new devices since the Location ID is different.
Thanks so much. I suspect it will be in a while. Receiving the C7 in a few days does not mean I get to play with it immediately. Have to find time when wife and kids have enough distractions to invest the time in validating the setup first before I choose to deploy it.
Anyways really appreaciate the responsiveness and willingness to help.
