I’m currently running Home Assistant with a Nortek HUSBZB-1 dongle and I’d like to replace it with an Aeotec Z-Stick 10 Pro. From what I’ve read, the Zigbee migration seems straightforward since I can back up the current dongle and restore it to the new one.
What I’m struggling to understand is the Z-Wave migration. Since the Nortek doesn’t support backups, I’m worried about losing all the automations and dashboards tied to my Z-Wave devices. I’ve seen mentions of removing the old dongle, adding the new one, and re-including devices one by one while keeping the same names so everything continues to work—but I’m not clear on the exact steps. Specifically, I’m unsure what needs to be deleted or re-added in Home Assistant to make this process smooth.
I apologize if this has been asked before, but I haven’t been able to find a clear guide. With about 10 Zigbee devices and over 40 Z-Wave devices, I’d like to avoid starting without a solid plan.
Has anyone gone through this migration and can share a reliable step-by-step approach?
Start with that. I did that a little differently-- used the aeotec 500 series software to backup/restore the Nortek stick to a Zooz 500 series stick. I then used the Z-Wave JS UI addon in Home Assistant to backup the NVM from the 500 stick, and restore it to an 800 series stick. This worked great- no need to re-include anything.
I had no zigbee stuff at the time. That would be a totally different process using the home assistant tools to migrate zigbee sticks. I suggest doing zigbee first, because once z-wave is done you don’t want to plug in the nortek stick again.
Thanks for the link! I read about this fix but I don’t have good tools and I’m concerned I will screw it up and make it worse. Not that I’m looking forward to manually re-include all my devices, but I think that’s my safest option.
Skip the whole second half of that link that needs tools, that’s talking about upgrading the nortek which you don’t want to do. I didn’t do that. The only part of that procedure you need is the first half involving the Aeotec utility.
Instead do this:
Use home assistant to migrate your zigbee stuff to a new controller. The built in tools should work for that.
From my link, get the Aeotec utility.
Use the Aeotec utility to backup the Nortek Z-Wave component NVM.
Use the Aeotec utility to restore the Nortek’s NVM to your spare 500 series stick
Put the 500 series stick back in HA. It should pick up and control your devices without re-inclusion.
Use HA’s tools (or z-wave JS UI) to backup/restore transfer the 500 series stick’s NVM to your new z-stick 10 pro (800 series).
That’s basically the same thing I did. No screws or soldering required.
Instead use the aeotec program it linked to backup the stick.
Get any normal 500 series zwave stick, and use the aeotec program to restore
So, I had an Aeotec Gen5 stick that I never used and in my “infinite wisdom” I decided to throw it away when I bought a Zooz 800 series stick a couple of months ago. I’m checking online and it looks like the Aeotec Gen5 is no longer available, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this. It looks like this only works with Aeotec Gen5.
I used a Zooz 500 series stick. Promise it’s not limited to Aeotec sticks
That doesn’t mean we’re out of cake on this plan. There’s a few websites and tools that can convert an NVM backup from binary to JSON and back. Maybe try doing a backup with one of those and see if the converter will load it?
You can find them on ebay for about $25 otherwise just search for ‘usb z-wave stick’ and you’ll find some of the old ‘Gen5’ aeotec ones.
So, it actually worked pretty well! I was got the Aeotec Gen5 stick, made the transferred the network, then went to Home Assistant, made a backup, and migrated it to my new Aeotec Z-Stick 10 Plus.
Everything worked fine, except for one device, which I have not been able to re-include (I can exclude it, but not include it). The only other thing I did is I had a couple of S2 capable devices that I decided to exclude and include, but that was all.
Correct. The only ‘gotcha’ is Z-Wave JS UI may not be able to back up the husbzb-1 z-wave mesh. That’s what the rest of the stuff in this thread was talking about, finding a way to make the upgrade happen. You can use the Aeotec utility to back up husbzb-1 to a 500 series stick, then use z-wave js ui to back up the 500 stick to zwa-2.
Hello, I am in the same boat moving from Nortek to Z-Stick 10 Pro. However, I am not sure how but I see the Z-Wave_JS_0.26.0_2025-10-04_19.32_33.tar backup in my Synology from 2025 since then I have not added new devices. Can I use this backup to restore to Z-Stick 10 pro w/o using 500 series stick?
hey! So i got the aeotec gen 5 zwave stick and was able transfer my husbzb-1 to it and get it working in home assistant. I was then able to back up the nvm in zwave js UI.
However, when I try to restore the nvm to my new zwa-2, I get the following error:
" Error while calling restoreNVM:
Failed to convert NVM to target format: Did not find a matching NVM 500 parser implementation!
Make sure that the NVM data belongs to a controller with Z-Wave SDK 6.61 or higher. (ZW0280)"
I take that is because my husbzb stick is so old. Before restoring the nvm in zwave js UI, there is a checkboz to skip the compatibility test. Should I try checking that?
Make sure your Aeotec stick is updated to the latest firmware version. That shouldn’t erase the NVM. Z-Wave JS UI might be able to do this as an ‘otw update’.
Thanks!