Does replacing zigbee or z-wave stick require re-pairing all devices?

Yesterday there was a new version of z-wave add-on released, and apparently it broke my z-wave integration. I created an issue at HA GitHub and made various attempts to fix it (re-inserting Aeotec USB stick, restarting the add-on, rebooting the system). Nothing helped. I hope I will manage to fix it in a softway that doesn’t include any hardware changes, but since everything fails now, I even want to try a different z-wave stick (which I will need to buy then). But what happens with the device setup if the coordinator hardware is replaced (either Zigbee or Z-Wave USB stick)? Will devices that were bound using the old stick manage to work with the replacment, or they will all need to be re-paired with the new coordinator? I want to better understand the consequences of the coordinator replacement.

Devices are stored on the stick, so without backup and restore of the stick, re-pair is needed.

1 Like

I have backups that I manage using HA Google Backup add-on. I checked its content and it has backups for zigbee2qmtt and Z-Wave JS add-on. Do you know if such backups also include the content of the USB sticks, so it should be possible to restore them after replacing the stick?

No they don’t (sure for ZWave) For Zigbee2MQTT, if your current adapter is a CC2652, there is a backup, but if your adapter is a ezsp or conbee, there is none.

With Z-Wave* JS UI you can make a backup of your Zwave stick, and with zigpy tools for Zigbee

1 Like

Thank you for a great reply. My Zigbee adapter is Conbee, so I will need zigpy tools apparently.

And as far as I understand, I should consider migrating from Z-Wave JS to Z-Wave JS UI. It looks like it has richer functionality.