IQ Panel 4 not connecting to Smartthings hub as a secondary Z-wave controller

Good luck! So far things are working fine, with a few caveats:

  1. Once finished including devices with PC Controller, it’s imperative that you make NVM backups. During testing, I was able to switch back and forth between PC controller and HA without issue. But about a week later I went to go add a few more devices and it seemed that the IQ Panel could no longer properly talk to the primary controller. I eventually restored the latest backup and things were back to normal… which tells me that ZWaveJS must have changed/broke something somehow on the USB stick. Also don’t be tempted to try re-including the IQ Panel to the primary thinking it could fix things (like a normal end-point may)… from my initial testing it seems the IQ Panel internally clears itself first, and ends up pairing again as a new device.
  2. How well you can keep device states in sync is going to be questionable. This isn’t an issue with either the IQ Panel or HA or any other controller… just a reality of the Z-Wave protocol. If your end-points support multiple lifeline group associations, that’ll usually keep both controllers in sync for events originated at the end-point (e.g manually triggering a switch). But most devices don’t “echo” their state. So for example if you trigger a switch from HA, the IQ panel may never know about it and assume it’s still on. Some surprising exceptions include the Alarm.com thermostats (requires changing a Z-Wave configuration setting), and my kwikset door lock. At least in HA, you can setup some periodic polling of devices to help with this.
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