Hi. HomeSeer recently announced they were going to start charging a yearly fee for certain features. This prompted me to reconsider HomeAssistant. When I compared the two platforms 8-10 years ago HA couldn’t compete with HS. However, after setting up an instance of HA a few days ago, I have to say the tides have turned an HA has significantly evolved past HS and I don’t think HS can ever catch back up at this point.
With all that said, I’ve rather easily been able to add my small Zigbee network, and several other devices (including ones I could never add to HS). The only thing left to migrate are my z-wave devices. I’ considering a few options and was hoping someone could steer me in the right direction. The options I see are:
Leave the Z-Wave network alone and use the Homeseer integration to access devices
Find a way to move the Z-Wave stick from HS to HA entact (I saw a post where others that had done this with some success).
Remove all devices and rebuild the Z-Wave network
Buy a new Z-wave stick (mine is 8-10 years old) and move devices from the old network to the new one.
How many Z-Wave devices do you have? If that number isn’t huge, building a new network with a new stick is what I did when I moved over from HS, and I’m quite happy with the results.
Assuming your existing Z-Wave network performs well, if you don’t plan to physically move your Z-Wave controller I would simply turn off HomeSeer and add the controller to Home Assistant. Home Assistant will import all your Z-Wave devices automatically. You will need to know the security keys from HomeSeer and translate them to the format Home Assistant needs. If you are using HS4 and have S2 devices, the S2 key is encrypted so you will need to extract the unencrypted format before shutting down HS4. Print out the Z-wave node number table from HomeSeer as well so you know which node is which as the names won’t come over to Home Assistant.
Depending on how many Z-Wave devices you have and how many are battery powered it could take a day or so for everything to populate. You can speed things up by waking up battery devices and re-interviewing them.
Be sure to use the Z-Wave-JS-UI Addon and not the Z-Wave-JS Addon. Your only choice for Integration is Z-Wave-JS (yes, similar names but different software). You need to add your existing keys to the settings in Z-Wave-JS-UI.
Home Assistant doesn’t make any changes to your Z-Wave controller so you can switch back and forth if need be. You can only have one software connect at a time, obviously.
I moved over 2 years ago from HS3. No regrets. Home Assistant has better documentation and a better forum platform by far, not including the many helpful forum members. Just double check any posts over a year old as things change quickly.
I probably have about 30-40 devices through out the house. It wouldn’t be terrible to remove them and add them back if I need to.
Firs, I think I’m going to look into finding the keys in HomeSeer and see what the lever of effort is in comparison to recreating the network. I don’t plan on ever going back to HomeSeer so I don’t know that I need the option to switch between HS and HA.
I’ve already noticed a lot of previous HomeSeer users here. I expect there to be a lot more given the current state of frustration in the HomeSeer forums.
If you do take one of the “build a new Z-wave network” options, the recommendation is to start by adding devices that are close to your controller stick, and then moving your way out. This will help build the most robust mesh z-wave network as you go.
I tried using Z-Wave-JS-UI and adding the keys I got from HomeSeer. However, it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. What I see when I connect to Z-Wave-JS-UI via my browser is below. Does anyone have an idea what may be happening?
How long ago did you move the controller over? Are nodes 4,5,6 mains powered or battery? What does the debug log show for Z-Wave-JS-UI?
Battery powered devices will have to go through a wake-up interval before they are completely updated unless you wake them and re-interview them manually.
I moved it over about 30 minutes ago. I’m not entirely clear what nodes 4 and 5 are when I check HomeSeer, but node 6 is a main powered light switch.
In general, most of my zwave devices are main powered. The only battery operated devices are my door lock and door sensors. Currently every device I have is showing as unknown.
You didn’t mention the log file. I would recommend reviewing that as you progress. Assuming the log shows no errors, open the hamburger menu, open general settings (The purple icon below) and select Re-interview nodes. This should update the mains powered nodes immediately, and the battery powered nodes as they wake up.
hi,
After 15 years of HS, i moved from hs to ha recently. Nearly everything is fine, a lot of technologies are suported and working well, even my car, but i am still not able to see my z-wave devices in ha. i am using Z-wave JS-UI, and i see all devices in the z-wave interface but have found no way to get these devices in HA.
I followed the wikis and all i could read about Z-vave JS and z-wave JS-UI.
It is all very confusing to me.
Maybe you can set me on the right track ?
You controller doesn’t appear to be communicating with the nodes. Are you sure you converted the keys correctly? Are the controller and nodes still in the same physical places?
I’d move the controller back to HomeSeer and see if everything works. If so, you have a configuration problem in Z-Wave-JS-UI.
I think you are right about the controller not communicating. I’ve followed all the steps to convert the keys (add a 0 before any single characters and remove the dashes). I also haven’t moved any of my devices or the location of the controller.
Currently, the controller is connected back to HomeSeer and everything works. Outside the keys, any suggestions on what I should look for in the configuration settings?
About 3 weeks ago I moved one of my systems from Homeseer to HA, I have only about 30 zwave devices (switches are mostly UPB), I bought a HA Green box, a new Zooz long range 800 controller stick and excluded each zwave device individually from Homeseer and Included them into HA Z-wave JS-UI . This made for a nice clean install and the new stick is much faster/longer in range than my older HS smart stick. You might want to get the new controller stick and start from scratch.
You have both the Z-Wave-JS and Z-Wave-JS-UI Addons installed, which is widely discussed as not supported. Read the docs again and remove the Z-Wave-JS Addon.
You didn’t post anything from the Z-Wave-JS integration, which leads me to believe maybe you don’t have the integration installed, which would match the symptoms you describe. Review the Home Assistant docs and make sure you have a good understanding of the basic concepts. This block diagram may be helpful Z-NET Integration with HA - #78 by mterry63 it’s not entirely the same for your setup but the HAOS block is the same.
When you select the Devices and Services menu option, does Z-Wave show up in the list of integrations?
