Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 & ZBT-2
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Now on my Christmas wish list...
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@therealdb I just bought and installed the ZWA-2. You are right, the setup was easiest thing I've done in ages. Of concern was the fact that ZWJS-UI in Home Assistant shows the correct name, etc. but somehow references my old Zooz details.
Very odd.
But it seems to be performing fine - I'm slowly moving things over to it from my Hubitat C7 which seems not able to keep itself together of late. Huge delays, switches literally stuttering, etc.
@gwp1 I have C-8, but now considering to buy ZWA-2. I think it could speed up the migration if ZWA-2 is added as a secondary controller to Hubitat and then promoted to primary? And after that ZWA-2 is plugged into Home Assistant
Using MSR on Docker (Synology NAS), having InfluxDB, Grafana & Home Assistant, Hubitat C-8, Zigbee2MQTT
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@gwp1 I have C-8, but now considering to buy ZWA-2. I think it could speed up the migration if ZWA-2 is added as a secondary controller to Hubitat and then promoted to primary? And after that ZWA-2 is plugged into Home Assistant
@tunnus if you could install ZwaveJS on your c8, just backup the nvm, take the file and restore it on your final controller. Easier than you’d think. Secondary controllers promoted to primary are always a mess in my experience.
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On a mission to automate everything. -
@tunnus if you could install ZwaveJS on your c8, just backup the nvm, take the file and restore it on your final controller. Easier than you’d think. Secondary controllers promoted to primary are always a mess in my experience.
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@therealdb I guess only C-8 pro supports z-wave JS
@tunnus I see there's a beta for C8. The point is to just take a NVM backup in the format supported by ZwaveJS. after that, it's a breeze to restore it on a new controller, if you have a minimum SDK/fw version, as mentioned in the ZWA release notes.
It's wort a try, if you have lots of Zwave devices and unpair/repair them is out of question for you.
I'm still on my original ZWave network I built in a previous house 10+ years ago - and that's a testament to the enormous flexibility that Zwave offered me in the last decade. -
Just on a lark, I took a little distraction trip on the Elevation downloadable (local/manual) backup files. It turns out, the backup files are compressed and encrypted, and I found all the resources for undoing all of that, but it's not productive to do it because the files don't have a copy of the NVM data on them, which is a bummer. The C7 to C8 upgrade process apparently worked because it used cloud-based backup and offered additional "Migrate radio" options for Z-Wave and ZigBee, which presumably pushed the additional radio data up to the cloud specifically for that process; no local option. So no win to be had from the backup files, it appears.
Author of Multi-system Reactor and Reactor, DelayLight, Switchboard, and about a dozen other plugins that run on Vera and openLuup.
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Just on a lark, I took a little distraction trip on the Elevation downloadable (local/manual) backup files. It turns out, the backup files are compressed and encrypted, and I found all the resources for undoing all of that, but it's not productive to do it because the files don't have a copy of the NVM data on them, which is a bummer. The C7 to C8 upgrade process apparently worked because it used cloud-based backup and offered additional "Migrate radio" options for Z-Wave and ZigBee, which presumably pushed the additional radio data up to the cloud specifically for that process; no local option. So no win to be had from the backup files, it appears.
@toggledbits are external Zwave controllers supported via USB? that could be another route, as in the old Vera days.
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On a mission to automate everything. -
@toggledbits are external Zwave controllers supported via USB? that could be another route, as in the old Vera days.
@therealdb said in Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 & ZBT-2:
are external Zwave controllers supported via USB?
Not an expert here, since I've never really embraced my C7 as a core of my home, but based on a little digging apparently not. The predecessor SmartThings hubs did, but as of the C7, the hub lacks the drivers to support an external Z-Wave stick, only its own internal chip. I'm sure C8 is even more entrenched.
Like many of us, I have a hundred+ Z-Wave devices in my home. If there's an upside to a piecewise migration, it's that it isn't Vera. Pairing was always a slow, anxiety-inducing activity on Vera... one device... maybe pairs... Luup restart (90 seconds or more before system is stable enough to proceed)... maybe bricks the Vera... if not, two identical devices end up with different configuration/capability... horrible. When I moved one level of my house to a USB stick last year, I could almost pair devices as quickly as I could walk up to them. You can tell me if the ZWA-2 experience is similar (can you walk it around self-powered or with a USB battery pack and pair devices?). It's not as easy as a migration, but there's always something to be said for starting with a clean slate, and as long as the process is smooth and I get to keep my hair and sanity by the end of it, I'll put up with the time it takes to get there.
Going forward, thinking to what may follow, I assume that you can back up the NVM on the ZWA-2?
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Well, taking a backup inside ZWaveJS is a breeze - and yes, it's very easy to backup (or restore) the NVM on the ZWA-2. In fact, I just restored a backup from UZB to ZWA-2 and I was good to go.
I think you'll never need to move it around the house, because the antenna is huge. No problems in pairing devices either, but that was the case with UZB before and I think it's a ZWave JS prerogative in general. It was just plug&play for me, but I understand that if you have to change your logic to match new device IDs it may make sense to start from scratch - time permitting.
