Migrate ConBee II/deConz -> SkyConnect/ZHA

Hello,

I just received my SkyConnect in the mail the other day, and I was wondering anyone had any experience migrating from a ConBee II using deConz to the SkyConnect using ZHA?

Has the community generated any sort of best practices? Any perils or pitfalls I should be aware of?

Hi demoore,

i think so, i found this page:

https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/migrate-conbee/#step-start-the-automatic-backup

Theres a lot of work in step 30 :-/

  • All migrated devices have new entity IDs. This means you will need to manually reconfigure automations and dashboard cards.
  • The names that you manually assigned to your devices won’t have been migrated. You will have to rename the devices again.

Oh - neat! Thanks!

The last time I looked at the SkyConnect docs, there wasn’t a documented migration path from ConBee/deConz.

The migration from deConz to ZHA seems to have gone well - I was able to control all of my devices… now, the problem I’m having is that the migration from the ConBee radio to the SkyConnect radio doesn’t seem to have been as successful - I am unable to control my devices. Does it take time after the radio migraton for the devices to reconnect to the ZigBee network?

I have the issue: No luck with migrating from Conbee to SkyConnect. One big mess, turns out even the Conbee database was after several tries corrupt so ended up installing ZHA from scratch again and adding ALL the devices again via the pair mode…

Not even close to the procedure they claim on the internet page for SkyConnect.

I did end up getting the migration to work… but I’m not sure how, exactly.

Immediately before all of my devices started working, I deleted one of my devices from ZHA, then re-added it. And then all of my devices started working in ZHA…

Thanks for your reply, unfortunately that did not work for me.
I had to add each and everyone from scratch again and redo ALL of the automations.

So this whole smooth migrate from Deconz to SkyConnect described in the skyconnect.homeassistant.io did not work for me at all. Really frustrating and time consuming. Not end user friendly in this case.

If someone, perhaps some smart bud, could just point out what I did wrong.

I have written a related community guide for best practices to avoid interference and optimizing for better range/coverage which is very relative to this regardless of which Zigbee Coordinator, so recommend that you read and follow this → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage

Not that long, should be about 1-hour at most, but note that not all devices might connect automatically.

If you have already waiting for more than 1-hours then the general recommendation is then to perform a power cycle of devices. It is usually battery-powered devices that will give you problems which will be resolved by simply by removing and replacing the battery.

If some devices are still giving you issues then then it might be interference issue so try manually re-pairing those devices in the ZHA integration after following this → https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-zigbee-interference-avoidance-and-network-range-coverage-optimization/515752

Seamless migration only works if you were already using the ZHA integration with your ConBee/RaspBee, as then you are migrating only changing the Zigbee Coordinator and not actually replacing the whole Zigbee gateway application → https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/migrate-zigbee-zha-only/

There is no seamless migration from another Zigbee gateway application like deCONZ/Phoscon, as it does not migrate and deCONZ/Phoscon database or deCONZ/Phoscon integration the which contains all metadata aboout devices and entities, so going from is not meant to be a seamless migration, as it says so at the top there → https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/migrate-conbee/

Note: this procedure only helps migrate basic network settings to your Home Assistant SkyConnect, customizations like device names will be lost and automations will need to be updated. Most powered devices like lightbulbs will be re-discovered over time (you can speed this up by rebooting the device) but your battery-powered devices may need to be re-joined to the network for the migration to complete. There is currently no migration path to migrate all settings and devices.

That is, you have to understand that this set up a completely new Zigbee network with the old name so is only a partial migration that is meant to make it a little easier since you do not need to run around your house and manually factory reset all your devices individually before manually putting them into pairing-mode one-by-one in order to join each and every device you got.

Hence that step 31 is needed since you migrated to a completely different Zigbee gateway application:

Reconfigure automations and dashboards

All migrated devices have new entity IDs. This means you will need to manually reconfigure automations and dashboard cards.

The names that you manually assigned to your devices won’t have been migrated. You will have to rename the devices again.