I am updating my HA Pi from 3 to 4 to connect an SSD reliably. I am currently using an older Aeotec Gen 5 Z-Wave stick, which doesn’t work on the Pi 4 (it’s the old model that has some kind of a power problem), so I thought about moving straight to the Z-Stick 7.
I was wondering what the best way is to migrate the settings of the old stick to the new one? Can I just back up the config and restore it to the 7, or does that only work with the same model?
You can use a USB hub for the Pi 4 and Gen5.
If the Gen5 is firmware v1.2 (1.02) you can perform an NVM backup and then restore to the 7 to migrate. F/w < 1.2 is not compatible, but there is a f/w upgrade.
Great, thanks much!
I am on v1.0, so I will update first. I am using the normal Z-Wave integration. Should I also migrate to Z-Wave JS UI?
Thats a personal choice but i personality prefer the tools in JsUI to the builtin JS…
Be very careful many folks have bricked gen5 sticks. I’d recommend getting a spare gen 5 stick, upgrade that to 1.2 and then use the Aeotec backup/restore tools to backup the NVM from your existing stick to the new one. I just did this today to migrate from 1.1 to 1.2 on one of my systems. This way if you brick the stick you still have the existing one. It took about 6 tries to update the firmware.
Just downloaded the firmware update files from Aeotec but I can’t see which file is the actual firmware that I would upload in Home Assistant. I don’t have a Windows machine and Aeotec only offers their updater for Windows. Any great tips?
You need a windows machine to do it, Borrow a friends laptop and get that 2nd stick.
If only Z-Wave were a little more user-friendly. Borrowed a Windows Laptop earlier today, but the COM port wasn’t recognized, and after trying various iterations for over an hour, I gave up with the update process. Who designs these things? I love tinkering, but things like updating a hardware device should be a piece of cake.
Did you install the drivers?
The Aeotec software didn’t work. kept getting error messages.
Asking about the Windows drivers it says to install. You installed those to see the COM port?
Same experience here updating my Gen 5 stick, took about 10 retries until it finally worked.
Anything in particular that you did different when it finally worked? Port settings maybe?
I remember struggling with the correct driver, they are providing 3 different types, I tried them all and restarted in between, the last one worked on a windows 10 machine.
In the documentation it’s called " Method 3: Different drivers"
I just did 3 days ago on windows 11.
First, the stick did show up as a comm port without installing drivers. It was using the default Microsoft driver. Look in device manager / ports
But the utility to update the driver did not work.
So I did option 1 and this did not work and the device was still on the Microsoft driver, do then I did option 2 and that put the stick on the sigma designs driver.
The utility then tried to update but failed quickly and caused the stick to disconnect. I did a reboot and the same thing happened again. Eventually it switch over to COM5 from COM4. And after 3 more attempts it finally updated the stick.
Yeah, Option 3 eventually worked, after it didn’t for many times. Thanks!
I was unable to migrate my stick to the new 1.2 firmware so I could not do backup and restore.
However by following the steps in this video I was able to migrate from the very old Gen5 (which was not possible to update to 1.2) to the Gen7
Update Zwave Gen5 1.0 to 1.2(1.02) version - Aug 2025
Above solutions, like the above YouTube Silicion Simplicity Studiov5 as of August 2025 doesn’t work! I dived in myself to get this working proper, here it is:
You need a Windows 10/11 laptop and the Gen5 stick out of the Home Assistant instance.
Step 1: backup current setup, mesh, via Zstick Gen5 backup tool, see website: Z-Stick Gen5 Backup Software : Aeotec Help Desk for the correct steps.
Version should be 3.95 when Gen5 stick is first inserted.
How to backup the current setup, see this website: How to use Z-Stick Gen5 backup software (Backup, and Restore). : Aeotec Help Desk
Step 2: update drivers so it can be used to migrate the network to the Gen 7 stick. See the website: Z-Stick Gen5+ V1.02 firmware update : Aeotec Help Desk,
first download the drivers under step: 1. Download firmware update and drivers here
Unzip these and update drivers via Device manager in Windows 10/11 - select own drivers - turn off digital signed - select driver update folder select the driver and follow the steps; so it will be Sigma Design Zwave tool driver.
So you now have the correct driver installed, now you need to update the device to 1.2(1.02) version.
Unplug and plug back in the Zwave stick.
Step 3: Then start the DFU of Zwave stick Gen 5, click on update. It will now update the software to the correct 1.2(1.02) version.
The DFU software will state “Update operation completed successfully”, so now you know the version has been correct updated.
Hit OK then shut down the software DFU, unplug USB stick, wait for 10 sec plug back in and reopen the program just to verify it still works.
Step 4: Now back to the backup software, see Step 1 and write the EEPROM.bin you earlier created. When the USB stick plugged in, you should see the version of stick: 6.07 (left top corner)
Step 5: Plug the USB stick in Home Assistant, reboot Home Assistant and check if version and mesh is working proper under 1.2(1.02) firmware.
Now you can migrate to Gen 7 stick via the Zwave JS integration. It will first backup the current network, then you unplug the old Gen5 stick and plug in the Gen 7 stick. After it it will restore on this new Gen 7 stick the network, check if it works, or else just reboot the Home Assistant instance.