Homeseer and Home Assistant - Migration and/or co-existence?

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Coming from HS4, with a host of WS200+ LED status enabled switches and other Z-Wave devices, integrations and plug-ins, I am at a decision point whether to keep HS4, migrate all to HA (already have a VM running), or use HA as a front-end and let HS continue to manage Z-Wave but move other integrations to HA, or some yet-to-be identified alternative.

If only for transition, I like the idea of using HA as a front-end to HS controlling Z-Wave. This way, I don’t have to move all the Z-Wave devices to HA right away and make sure HA is in fact the ultimate destination. I am not at all familiar with YAML but it seems like HA has matured to the point where a lot can be done using the GUI. Is this true?

I found the following resources:

mcsMQTT
marthoc

Questions:

  1. Is it true that the HS Z-Wave stick does not work with HA?

  2. Is the preferred Z-Wave for HA Aeotec Z-Stick 7 or Zooz 700, which is better?

  3. Aside from MQTT or marthoc, is there another way to expose the HS Z-Wave devices to HA’s discovery protocol? On the surface, mcsMQTT seems very capable, but complex to set up. Any recommendations?

  4. I’ve read that HS is more stable, while HA can experience breaking releases. On the surface, HA looks more modern and better integrated. Why would I consider staying with HS? What am I missing?
    I am looking to move because HS has always seemed clunky and dated, and lacks the integration that HA has. When I looked years ago, I was not willing to dig into YAML and do a lot of scripting just to run my home. Please provide inputs.

  5. For HA, it seems like Echo and Google Home integration requires paid cloud, which is fine. The workaround seems like a bit of work. I currently use Cloud Flare for remote, but willing to switch to the HA cloud service. Are there alternatives that I am not aware of?

  6. Any way to make scripting/YAML a bit easier for a non-developer?

I’d appreciate any information!

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Not sure, I have read where folks have gotten the Z-NET to work with HA.

  1. Is the preferred Z-Wave for HA Aeotec Z-Stick 7 or Zooz 700, which is better?

I’m running a Zooz ZST10 700 stick. It works, however HA (zwave.js) z-wave integration is not yet on the same level as HS z-wave IMO, but it’s now darn close.

  1. Aside from MQTT or marthoc, is there another way to expose the HS Z-Wave devices to HA’s discovery protocol? On the surface, mcsMQTT seems very capable, but complex to set up. Any recommendations?

If you think mcsMQTT is complex to start receiving raw messages, then you are in for a world of hurt getting raw MQTT topics setup in HA. Search for ‘Home Assistant MQTT Discovery Requirements’.

  1. I’ve read that HS is more stable, while HA can experience breaking releases. On the surface, HA looks more modern and better integrated. Why would I consider staying with HS? What am I missing?
    I am looking to move because HS has always seemed clunky and dated, and lacks the integration that HA has. When I looked years ago, I was not willing to dig into YAML and do a lot of scripting just to run my home. Please provide inputs.

I started with HS in ~2016, and moved to HA in late 2021. HS is indeed more stable IMO, by quite a bit at this point. It was once said Home Assistant is a project, while Home Seer is a product. It’s funny, I use HS to make sure HA stays running. (HS has not had to recover HA since my move to VMWare (see below))

So I do believe the manor in which one runs HA can make a BIG difference. For example, I started with VirtualBox for the first few months and experienced very little stability as compared to HS on Windows. It was suggested that I move to VMWare Player, and that move alone has increased my stability immensely (No real crashes now).

All that said, there are, IMO way more benefits to HA that I decided several months ago to move EVERYTHING over, Z-Wave, Zigbee, everything to HA and I’m not looking back… IMO, if you’re going to move to HA, you should move everything, it’s a much better experience.

  1. For HA, it seems like Echo and Google Home integration requires paid cloud, which is fine. The workaround seems like a bit of work. I currently use Cloud Flare for remote, but willing to switch to the HA cloud service. Are there alternatives that I am not aware of?
  2. Any way to make scripting/YAML a bit easier for a non-developer?

I use HA’s paid service, just because it’s SO easy (and to support the HA Team). BUT I’ve seen many different ways to make it work.

I’d appreciate any information!

Like you, I have no interest in learning how to write YAML and or Templates and such. Thank goodness the HA Dev team has made great strides to bring things into the UI. That said, it’s still not as intuitive has HS… yet.

I have found HA’s event engine is just ridiculously powerful, especially if you’re willing to learn a little of the basics of YAML, Templates and such.

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Some of my experience having moved from HS4 about a year ago.

The move is quite simple, and can be performed in stages if you want. My first step was to move the zwave stick to zwavejs2mqtt, along with all the zwave nodes. This is now a remarkably stable piece of software, and as good, if not better than the zwave plugin for HS4. It means that you can then have the devices in HA, HS or both, and define automation in either system.

My zwave stick, an 500 based one, moved easily. I don’t know about the HS stick.

I run HA in a Linux based docker container. Very simple to do, and rock solid. If I am not tinkering with it, it stays up for months at a time. I am now able to integrate devices into HA that were not possible with HS4, and I no longer pay for integration after integration.

I don’t pay for the Google stuff from Nabu Casa, but do have a nora subscription, which allows me to create nodered flows that link Google devices with HA. Very simple to do, and if you get the hang of it, can be used for your other automation, rather than YAML. That said, the new automation UI is easily as good as HS automation editor.

In short, there is no longer any reason to stay with HomeSeer, unless you want to of course.

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@ServiceXp Thanks for your detailed reply and sharing your experiences. It’s interesting to know about MQTT with HA. I thought that once HS MQTT is setup, HA would just auto discover without much fuss. This is causing me to rethink whether I want to do MQTT at all. I might just have to bite the bullet and move all the Z-Wave devices over to HA. I was hoping I can try out HA without having to move the Z-Wave devices… I read your post from Jan and bump from Oct. Is MQTT/HA integration still difficult?

I’m currently running HA in VB and it’s been reliable. Were you running the same version of HA but VMWare was just more reliable?

I decided to also give Node-RED a try to see if it can make automation easier.

Again, many thanks for your reply!

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@adwuk thank you for sharing your experience. Regarding the Z-Wave stick, are you saying that you simply moved the stick from HS to HA with all the nodes without having to exclude and re-include all the nodes? Also, how would I have the devices in HA, HS, or both?

I did look into Nora. Nice service. I guess if I wanted both Echo and Google, I’ll just go with Naub. Node-RED is looking good, so I will give that a try.

My hope is that I can migrate from HS to HA without too much fuss. I ordered an Aeotec 700-series stick. The biggest concern (pain) will be having to exclude all the Z-Wave devices from the HA stick and include them into the Aeotec.

Good to know that HA has matured enough to replace HA.

Cheers.

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Thanks for your detailed reply and sharing your experiences. It’s interesting to know about MQTT with HA. I thought that once HS MQTT is setup, HA would just auto discover without much fuss. This is causing me to rethink whether I want to do MQTT at all. I might just have to bite the bullet and move all the Z-Wave devices over to HA. I was hoping I can try out HA without having to move the Z-Wave devices… I read your post from Jan and bump from Oct. Is MQTT/HA integration still difficult?

You can use the HomeSeer integration as a stop-gap for testing, but yes IMO you’ll want to eventually move everything over to HA for the best experience.

I’m currently running HA in VB and it’s been reliable. Were you running the same version of HA but VMWare was just more reliable?

It was with various versions of both HA and VBox. If you do a Forum and GitHub search I think you’ll find a much higher issue rate with Virtual Box.

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So my stick is a Sigma Designs quickstick combo, and I moved it to zwavejs2mqtt (now called z-wave js ui). That allowed me to run both HS3/4 and HA in parallel, both using the same MQTT broker. I didn’t have to exclude/include the devices as I hadn’t added any devices in secure mode. The security keys aren’t the easiest to find in HS3/4 if I remember correctly.

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I agree with the posts above – there’s definitely a bit of effort involved in the transition from HS to HA, but it is well worth it. I used HS for years and think it’s a fine product. But the incredible flexibility, power, and most especially the large, active, and supportive community here with HA are amazing.

For me, Node Red is awesome for the development and support of my automations. This is definitely not intended to be a statement that Node Red is “better” than Automations. I truly believe it’s a matter of how your brain works… and for me NR is easier to grok.

I started on a Pi4, and it was fine while I was learning and experimenting. But within a few months I repurposed an old Dell laptop, installed Proxmox (after a learning curve for that), and installed HA there following the scripts found on this forum. You might check that out as an alternative to Virtual Box.

For the transition, I did it by moving a few devices and their associated automations over from HS. Learned the new terminology and ways of thinking (not better or worse – just different). And then moved the rest of the devices and their associated Node Red automation logic over.

There’s a lot of tinkering for the first few months as you adjust and improve, but folks who don’t enjoy that probably aren’t deeply into an enthusiast home automation product like HA - or HS.

An early addition to your HA system should be Home Assistant Google Drive Backup.

Enjoy the journey, and let us know how it’s going for you!

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Thank you for your reply and information. I am backing up to OneDrive for now and it seems to work well. I am definitely seeing pros/cons between HA and HS. For me, HS is not all cons and HA is not all pros. I do like the unified and improved UI between web and phones, however, the HS MyQ integration with Google Home seems to work much better (being able to control using the GH app) whereas the HA MyQ with GH does not have any controls. I’ll try voice tomorrow.