z-wave, controllers, slave, etc?

[wkearney99]

I've got a mishmash of automation gear, Lutron, SmartThings, Wink, Vera, Homeseer, Philips, Fibaro, Aeon, Wemo, Leviton, Samsung, Iris, Blink, well.. you name it and I've probably got one lurking around here.
 
I'm interested in consolidating a bit, but I'm unclear on how z-wave and master and slave controllers function... and whether any of the hubs tolerate interacting with each other.

I'm still interested in fiddling around with different gear, but I've had pretty decent luck relying on a Homeseer 3 Pro setup on a PC for managing "stuff that needs to stay working".  It's been worth the money I spent for it.  But it's UI is clunky and it's event system is challenging to use (at best). 

Meanwhile I discovered my SmartThings hub has been hammering away issuing millions of bogus DNS queries for Lord knows how long, which I tracked down to a long-removed 1st gen Hue hub.  While solving this riddle I noticed the ST system was no longer properly monitoring various leak sensors I've got around the house.  The were inexplicably "offline".  Power cycling them by removing/replacing their batteries brought them back (all of which still show better than 44% battery life).  I'm debating just taking them out of the ST setup and moving them elsewhere.
 
A number of the gizmos use z-wave.  Before I move them en masse to my HS3 setup (which is just NOT having it with a Aeon S2 z-wave stick I had lying around) I want to get a better handle on how z-wave systems share devices.

Presumably some hub setups are more flexible than others, right?  Which ones tolerate, or better yet refuse to, work with other hubs?  If I have to choose one to be the master, which one should it be?

 

[pete_c]

I'm unclear on how z-wave and master and slave controllers function.
 
Personally tried it and didn't like it.  Best to just install two controllers and connect them to Homeseer if you want a larger RF footprint.  Here with the attic POE mounted RPi could cover the entire home and outside berms just fine. (brick exterior).
 
Here DIY'd a ZNet device and it is POE connected in the attic.  It is an RPi with a ZWave dot me GPIO card.  Works fine by itself with Homeseer.
 
That said I have used the Homeseer ZWave tools to replicate the ZWave network to the Leviton VRCOP and Samsung Hub.  Never tried the Almond + hub replication.
 
That said each of the ZWave controllers see the other ZWave controllers (well in Homeseer) but I cannot monitor status between controllers.
 
IE:  If I send an on command to one node connected to HS3 I do not see the status on the VRCOP or the Samsung hub.
 
Rich did mention that I can configure the Homeseer 3 Zwave connected hubs to talk to the nodes connected to Homeseer but it would create a management nightmare. 
 
The ZWave nodes configured here are more for tinkering while main lighting is UPB controlled.
 
Not that I want to watch but I do get the best view of ZWave communications with Homeseer.  I do not really see much with the Samsung Hub or Leviton VRCOP or Almond Plus.  (with the Almond plus though I can log in to it and see a live syslog of what is going on).

 

[vc1234]

I'm unclear on how z-wave and master and slave controllers function... and whether any of the hubs tolerate interacting with each other.

 
Both controllers function more or less independently, the topology is maintained in the primary controller and has to be replicated to the secondary.  The secondary controller cannot include any devices, "replication" is manual, security devices such as locks are pain to replicate.
 
For example, I had this idea of getting rid of the Leviton RF stick as the primary controller and using the Aeon one instead.  I failed miserably. 
 
I tried HomeSeer (trial), a Wink hub, OpenZwave, a Sigma Designs zwave utility, perhaps something else.  None of it worked, the farthest I could get was with the SD utility which crashed trying to replicate locks, but at least it managed to copy them in the insecure mode.
 
I did not want to re-create my small zwave network from scratch with the Aeon as the primary controller because (a) it would change device numbering in Elk; (b) I'd need a software controller such as HomeSeer or OpenZwave because you cannot include secure devices without help from software; (c)  I was not sure the Aeon stick would  be able to replicate locks to VRC0P (the secondary). Pretty little gain for a lot of pain. So I decided to stay with the Leviton stick as the primary.
 
If you have devices that provide unsolicited data, e.g. thermostats, some dimmers, etc, you can associate the devices to several controllers.  The device status change initiated by one controller does not get communicated to other controllers, so they would not know about a dimmer status.
 
Pretty awful, to sum up,  as almost everything else in the zwave land, but that's the "best" comprehensive wireless HA protocol we have today since alternatives are even worse although for different reasons.

 

[wkearney99]

Thankfully I'm in a position where I'm willing to 'start from scratch' with the z-wave devices.  I don't have enough of them, or anything complicated enough, to make it a chore to re-do everything from scratch. 

I don't currently make use of any automated locks.  So that won't be an immediate problem. 
 
I'm guessing/worrying the hardest part will be getting the various devices to 'unregister' or otherwise be forgotten by the existing SmartThings hub.  
 

 

[vc1234]

I'm guessing/worrying the hardest part will be getting the various devices to 'unregister' or otherwise be forgotten by the existing SmartThings hub.  
 

Well, "exclusion" is pretty easy because any controller can exclude a device that used to be included even with a "foreign" controller, but yes it has to be done.
 
I use zensys tools utility ( http://www.axialcontrol.com/zensys-tools.zip ) to do that, among other things, but I am pretty sure the portable Aeon stick can exclude without any software.

 

[Roadie]

I moved a ZWave network from a ST hub. It was relatively painless. I excluded everything from the ST before starting to re-include everything.