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.

@toggledbits are external Zwave controllers supported via USB? that could be another route, as in the old Vera days.

@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.

@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.

After all these years, no NAK/CAN is a joy to see

yep, parameters for reactions will definitely improve my job here, specially when speaking of thermostats/HVAC in general. Thanks as always for your support, Patrick!

That's one case:

I want to send the ON/OFF command again, until every device in the group is ON/OFF. I have a count just to avoid an infinite loop.

It works, but it's not ideal to send a command to a device already on (or off) - because I want to avoid unnecessary traffic. There's no way to filter the group devices. I know I could write a script and do it, but the point here is to avoid a script if possible.

devices_status = false,
counter = counter + 1,
finalStatus = true,

each id in getEntity('groups>ac_casa1').attributes.sys_group.members: do
  v = bool(getEntity( id )?.attributes?.power_switch?.state),
  #print("!!!!!!DEBUG" + getEntity( id ).name + " - " + v + " - " + devices_status + " - " + finalStatus),
  devices_status = (v == finalStatus) && devices_status
done

EDIT: also, there's no way to delay in code, so I need 2 scripts anyway, to send on/off and then set the mode. Thanks.

yes. I know about DynamicGroupsController and I'm using it in other situations (dead zwave devices, battery low, etc). Problem is that this list is dynamic, ie based on other external conditions (are guest over? is christmas? etc). I tried, but I'm back at code, unfortunately.

EDIT: anyway, if I want to send the command, let's say, only to on devices in a group, I have to use code. Correct me if I'm wrong, unless I create two separated groups (one with on and one with off devices), but this seems messy.

I have a couple of situation where I'm using code to iterate over an array (ie: climate entities, lights) to operate them in group, and repeat until every one has done what it needs to do.

It will be very cool to have a For Each command that could iterate visually on the array, so I could continue to define it visually. Pseudo UI, so it's easier to explain:

I'm ok with devices being of type Entity[], loaded via a script block, or with Dynamic Groups (but, in my specific case, this list is know at runtime only).

I know it's not trivial, but one may dream Thanks @toggledbits !

@toggledbits nope. Unfortunately, the problems on one of my system I mentioned in my DMs are still there. It's better for sure, but I have lots of timeout while in VPN.

It's probably related to the network in general, but since it's a beach house, I'll try to resolve it at spring time. I'll probably invest in some better network gear and call it a day. My problems are quite similar, but my main obstacle is the structure load, that goes in timeout and forces me to reload the page until it loads.

@gwp1 I think you could just rename it

I started with Vera Edge, then Plus, and eventually moved my Z-Wave network to Z-Wave.me UZB. Recently, I wanted to experiment with Z-Wave Long Range, so I needed a new controller. I had Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 on my radar for a while, and I pulled the trigger thanks to Black Friday offers. It was the least complicated migration ever: back up the old, unplug it, stop ZWaveJS, plug in the new controller, and restore the backup—done in a breeze.

I let the mesh adapt for a couple of days, and the result is impressive: 80% of my devices are now reporting directly to the controller. The Z-Wave network feels crazy fast. My setup includes about 70 devices, and I struggled a lot with Vera. I had missing reports on UZB as well, even if sporadic. In the first days of use, this new setup seems definitely better, and its range is phenomenal. More on that later.

Since I was at it, I moved my ZigBee network from Hue Bridge (only lights) to Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 and ZigBee2MQTT, because I wanted to add more ZigBee devices to my network. It seems that all the little weird devices are ZigBee now—I bought a couple of temp/humidity sensors and a ThirdReality Night Light. I'm using it to turn red if the alarm is armed, and as a white night light in the hallway when not armed: very nice to automate with Reactor via Home Assistant.

The ZigBee mesh is still small at 10 devices, but it will eventually improve.

Here's a pic of the two antennas: ZWA-2 on the left, ZBT-2 in the center, and a 33cl bottle of water on the right for comparison.

The ZWA-2 is huge. No wonder it's able to span across three floors and reach the garden with no hops. Mind you, my house is concrete and glass, so not the best in terms of signal. Highly recommended if you want a very powerful Z-Wave antenna, with support for Long Range as well.

so:

alarm(10), true

should fire every 10 secs? It's not working for me, maybe I have something wrong in the expression.

EDIT: ok, setting it as pulsing every X secs indefinitely did the trick. amazing!

Sorry to write here without trying, but I’m flying today.

Am I correct if i say that script action with alarm() makes it possible to execute a reaction in a given interval, lets say 15 seconds or 3.5 minutes?

That sounds amazing, since I’ve used weird tricks, including a custom controller, just to do this.

Oh, I have a the medium one at our beach house and I like it. The xl is another league, but the medium one is the perfect one for cozy rooms.

I have a scene controller where I basically "commented" (aka disabled) actions because I was testing new things.

When pressing the button, every group is executed. The first is correct, the others two not. Removing them is obviously working.

newscene is a simple variable getting getEntity( "mqtt>shelly_masterbedroom_scenecontroller_2" ).attributes.button.state.

I'm not sure if this is new, but I think it's not expected.

@toggledbits is alarm() a new thing? What's the best example to understand its use? IE: A global variable named christmas_time, that will be updated every hour/day with dateparts()? Thanks.

Thanks! I managed to get the 4 buttons, a nice feature for the wife.

Unfortunately, it's not POE, but it was easy for me to pull a cable. It has a relay, but I'm not using it ATM.

In the coming weeks I'll mount the second one on the second floor. The custom firmware has both MQTT and HTTP APIs, so it's easy to synchronize them.

Here we go. This wall is still original, so height is temporary. Since it's concrete, I'll address this later and I'll move it lower.

Our house is very bright, so the photos are not good, but in person it's OK.

I don't know if you guys are into dashboards, but I am.

For a second home I tried the Shelly Wall Display 2, and while not so big, it worked well over the summer.

Since we're remodeling our house, I just swapped my old Fire Tablet (with its own problems) with two new Shelly Wall Display XL. I just removed the standard firmware, and I added mine (https://github.com/dbochicchio/ShellyElevate), forked from https://github.com/RapierXbox/ShellyElevate

I just managed to support buttons (this thing has 4 of them) and it's all auto-discovered by Home Assistant and accessible via Reactor.

I also have a new build in the works with support for buttons inside HA.
I added a bonus Javascript interface sending events (screen/screensaver status, buttons, motion) to automatically drive the dashboard (all doing in HTML+Javascript and monitoring Reactor's variable).

This specifical thing excluded, go get one of them, the device has a decent CPU for HA dashboards and blends wonderfully in the decor.