Best way to upgrade from VERY old version

Installation
1

Ive read a load of threads, but none really answer what im hoping to achieve

Im currently running on a Pi4, from SD card

Home Assistant 2021.1.5
Frontend version: 20201229.1 - latest

I have assorted bulbs, sockets, an 8266 CO2 sensor and a few WLED 8266 on wifi
i have a few zigbee sockets
i have door sensors, motion sensors, on zigbee, running between sonoff (alexitt) and ZHA through a 2nd tasmota sonoff hub
bulbs are controlled by battery zigbee switches (tuya quad scene switches, running via a blueprint)
most of the wifi stuff is connected via tuya integration

i also have life360 for tracking, and quite a few ‘custom’ screens setup on a tablet for control, and tracking

What i want to do, is update everything

I have a 2nd Pi4, with an SSD and the recommended SSD adaptor, i have the new sonoff 3.0 usb zigbee dongle, and want to transfer everything from the older, mostly cloud based setup, to the newer stuff, and make as much as possible work local

My existing setup backs up to google drive every day, so i have a ‘current’ backup, that contains my existing automations and configurations

what would be the best way to proceed? I dont mind having to link everything back up, but its the automations and custom dashboards (that i cannot even remember how some were created lol) that id like to be able to somehow transfer in if possible

if its not possible, is there a way of running 2 instances of HA on one network, and transferring things over one at a time?

sorry for so many questions

2

I recently upgraded HA, and for a short time had two instances of HA running.

I installed HA on another Pi, and started it up. I use the Pi’s ip address to access HA, so I found the new ip address for the 2nd HA instance, and then put that in the browser to interface to the 2nd HA.
Make sense? Something like 192.168.1.50:8123

I don’t use automations, I run node red and use that instead. I also made new dashboards so didn’t transfer those either, so can’t help you on best way to move that stuff.

I used Samba to find the files in the old version that I wanted to move over to the new version, my yaml files.

3

options from my point of view:
1- try to read through all the release notes, and try to find if anything would affect you.
2- just update and see what works and what doesn’t.
3- start a new install and do a selective restore on a recent backup

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4

I would make a backup, store that so you can always go back and then just see what works and what does not. From there try to fix things one by one and document what you have done. If you have the backup and you get tired or you need to get all back up and running quickly, then you can always go back to the backup and try later, reapplying those documented fixes and then continue until you are done.

the other alternative is to start from scratch. Take the latest install RPI4 64 bit version and start implementing those things you have. Many could probably be copied over like automations, etc.

5

One more comment. Obviously a lot more work to start from scratch, I avoided it for a long time. In my case, upgrade wouldn’t work. I tried many times, didn’t do anything. Was running unsupported version so it was understandable.
Spent a long weekend rebuilding HA. But was very happy I did it after it was done. Not as bad as I feared, and deleted a bunch of stuff I didn’t use anymore. Since I was a long time user, had accumulated a bunch of junk over the years, this let me start fresh and made me clean my HA installation up.

Randy

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6

So, I’m now all up to date, and upgraded hardware.
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I followed a youtube video to get the pi4 to boot from ssd, then installed HA, and tried to restore a backup, which failed. Formatted ssd and reinstalled. And tried partial restore. While this sort of worked, it only restored a few addons (duckdns, ssh and Google backup) so I was pretty much starting from fresh.
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I had 2 separate home assistants running on my network, the old and the new, so, I slowly started just copying and installing things. Every time I had something setup and working, I created a backup, before starting on the next bit.
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I encountered numerous errors where sensors or devices names had changed, or were read differently in the newer HA, but, working through the error logs, managed to get everything setup either the same as, or better, than on the old version.
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I’m also now nearly totally local. All my zigbee stuff is totally local, instead of via ewelink, and all my WiFi bulbs and sockets (which I intend to replace with zigbee) are localtuya
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Probably took me about 6 hours total

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