As of today, I have completed my migration from SmartThings which I used as the hub of two different homes over the last 8 years! I’ve been a Home Assistant user for the last couple of years but up until now, it used to be a secondary hub with SmartThings running my ZigBee and Z-Wave networks as well as most of my core automations. There were many reasons to switch but it was the last one on this list that finally pushed me over the edge:
Internet outages making my smart home useless
SmartThings outages doing the same
Slow and clunky mobile app
Deprecation of the original groovy platform that powered webCoRE and most of my critical automations
Overall, the migration went pretty smoothly and it only took me about a week with a couple of hours spent per day moving ZigBee and Z-Wave devices over as well as updating/recreating my automations.
The only painful part of the whole process (and the reason why I’m posting in this topic) was the migration of my Z-Wave network. It was so tedious that I almost gave up on several occasions. Here are some of the major issues I hit and had to deal with:
Before I could start re-creating the network, I had to update the firmware on my Aeotec 700 series stick which took a very long time (and failed on Windows so I had to do it on one of my Raspberry Pi’s)
On countless occasions, Z-Wave JS got stuck searching for devices and the only way I could fix it was by restarting the Add-on (and waiting a while for it to come back up again); on a few occasions, I even had to completely reboot my Home Assistant Yellow device
On many occasions, the Z-Wave devices I paired dropped off the network and couldn’t be remotely controlled even after trying to re-interview and heal them; the only solution I found was to remove and re-pair them (which was a pain because I had often put the switch covers back on blocking access to the DSK codes)
Some of my Z-Wave devices are a lot less functional when paired in Home Assistant that they were in SmartThings; for example, my GoControl garage door controller doesn’t expose an open/close sensor, setting up codes on my Z-Wave locks has been a nightmare, etc.
Given how well most everything in Home Assistant works and the praise I had heard for Z-Wave JS, I was honestly very surprised by how painful this part of the migration was; especially when compared with the super smooth process of moving my Zigbee devices over.
I’m starting this thread mostly to understand if I had a one-off experience here others have run into these issues too? Should I be worried about the long term stability of my Z-Wave network? Is there something I could have done better (e.g. used Zwave2Mqtt or a different Z-Wave stick)?
I only started using ZWaveJS a few months ago and so far have a handful of devices. I’ve noticed how ZWaveJS doesn’t see some capabilities of some nodes. For example, it doesn’t send swipe gestures of a scene controller, only taps and holds. Apparently there’s a way to work around this by using custom configs, but I haven’t gotten that far.
In your opinion, which one between ZWave and Zigbee is better from the point of view of signal reception and reliability?
The first thing I would have done is used the Z-Wave PC Controller Software. It’s made by the people that make Z-Wave so it supports all the Z-Wave features and has a few nice to haves.
Normally when you exclude a device it’s done one at a time. With this software you can exclude multiple devices at once as well as add multiple devices at once which is a timesaver.
If want to get the most out of your devices I would switch to Z-WavejsUI. It has a provisioning list that you can use to store your DSK codes. It also supports associations.
@odwide, I don’t think I’ve had my networks running in Home Assistant long enough to tell the differences in stability yet. In SmartThings, a few Zigbee devices (e.g. smart vents) would occasionally drop off the network unless there was a Zigbee repeater in the same room as them). However, just based on the ease of setup and pairing, I would say Zigbee is way way better! I’ve personally started looking at Zigbee devices for my future needs (e.g. Aqara contact sensors, Inovelli Blue switches, etc.). For being owned and defined by a single company, it’s surprising how bad the Z-Wave experience still is. Silicon Labs have full control of the chipset in every device so why don’t they all work perfectly together?!
Thanks for the tips, @cornellrwilliams! Wish I knew about the multiple exclusion option; half the times the ZWaveJS got hung was during exclusion process.
I would update your software first. The latest driver version is 10.11.1. Its supposed to fix a bug that prevented including nodes using S2 security. Update and see if that fixes the issue.
Thanks for the tip, @cornellrwilliams! How do I go updating the driver? I don’t see any available updates for my Home Assistant OS, Core, or the Z-Wave JS add-on itself.
Yes, all your Zigbee and Z-Wave devices need to be unpaired from SmartThings and re-paired with Home Assistant. This is by far the most time consuming part of the mugration. You can link Home Assistant to SmartThings and operate the devices that way; however, that’s at best a temporary stopgap solution. It’s not fast or reliable enough to really let you appreciate the benefits of switching to Home Assistant.
Funny I went through the same issues you did when I was setting up my ZWave devices in Home Assistant in March. Supposedly there was an issue with 700 series devices at the time. What ultimately fixed it was updating the firmware on the ZooZ 700 stick. I am now on a Zooz 800 LR which works flawlessly.
You don’t have to exclude all your devices. I made a video explaining how to migrate from Any hub to home assistant without having to exclude any of your devices. The best part is that this method is non destructive so if you decide you want to revert back you can. Plus you can also use these steps to run multiple controllers in the same network.
That’s awesome! Thank you.
This is a really well-made tutorial.
However, for someone like me who is not familiar with the foundations of Z-Wave, it seems a bit complicated to follow.
But I will try to watch it multiple times to grasp what is going on here and then try migrating.
Could I possibly pay you to remotely assist or share my screen in a conference call so you could guide me through this process?
