I’m about to try to move my Aeotec Z-Stig Gen5 from my Windows server running HomeSeer to Home Assistant.
As of December 2020 what is the smartest way of doing this? I have no information about Z-Wave devices in HA whatsoever. Is it then possible to import the devices to HA based on the information stored about the current Z-Wave network stored in the Z-Stick?
“Many devices only send capabilities information at the time you add them, so if you add them outside of Home Assistant this information will be missing.”
I really hope that doesn’t mean that I have to wipe the Z-Stick and re-add every single device to get all the devices’ capabilities included in HA…
I wiped mine and stared fresh. It was over 60 devices but it gave me the opportunity to take inventory and clean things up. Look at the new MQTT based OpenZWave integration as the older one that comes with Home AssistantI think is going to be deprecated.
Welcome to Home Assistant! What made you switch from HomeSeer? I was on HomeSeer for years but switched over due to the botched HS4 launch.
I’ve just migrated my ZWave network from Domoticz to Home Assistant, and I used an Aeotec Gen5 USB stick on Domoticz. Because I am using Home Assistant OS on an RPi4, I bought an Aeotec Gen5+ USB stick (the older stick can’t be directly plugged into an RPi4).
I’m using the QT OpenZwave (Beta) plus the Mosquitto MQTT Add-on with Home Assistant.
I migrated the network configuration held on the old Gen5 to the Gen5+ using the Aeotec backup/restore tool for Windows:
The ZWave network migrated without issue to the new stick using the Aeotec backup/restore tool.
I saw that in the ozw-admin tool, all the mains-connected devices were queried, and configured correctly in the new HA installation, with one exception.
I have a Steinel IS140-2 mains-powered motion sensor. Although the node was present, it was listed as unknown. I power-cycled the sensor, and then used HA to refresh the node, and all details appeared.
I also have battery-powered Heiman smoke detectors. These nodes first appeared as unknown in HA, but over the course of a day or two, the nodes got refreshed as the devices briefly woke up and their details were filled in.
Why use the MQTT addon? From this video here it seems like you could just add the OpenZWave Beta addon directly…? What’s the benefit of using the MQTT addon?
I haven’t decided that I’m going to switch yet. I want to test Home Assistant before shutting down HomeSeer. I’ve been using HomeSeer for almost three years now, I think, because back then I found HA too fiddly (combined with me having a small kid and not having time for all the configuration hassle). But I’m told the UI has come a long way, so I wanted to try it out.
The reason I’m considering switching is that the development goes so much faster with HA than with HS. And it already has integrated various things that I really miss in HS, like easily available history on every device.
Why did you switch from HS to HA? And how do you think it went?
I switched as I did not feel HomeSeer HS4 had a future. The upgrade to HS4 did not look promising and to me the only real innovation was the new ui which I did not like.
I started my Home Assistant journey using manual yaml files but now I just use the ui for all automations. It is very reliable. One thing that did help me was wiping the pc that I was using and installing Proxmox. This let me use the well supported Home Assistant virtual machine, “supervised” install.
For the ui I’m using this,
Which is far easier to maintain that HomeSeer HSTouch that I was using. I don’t miss HSTouch Designer at all. That was a real dog and HomeSeer had not upgraded it in years. That was probably the main reason i fell out of love for HomeSeer.
I have this sensor also and it is coming to the zwavemqtt fine but the motion sensor schould work as normal motion detection also do you have this working because mine do not detect normal motion and I mean motion detect person also I daylight.
I am. But am looking at migrating to HA. I have been using Homeseer for about 10 years, and we built a new house 2 years ago, and made sure it was very automation friendly. In addition to the hardware, I probably have spent about $400 on plugins etc… In general,. it works fairly reliably.
I recently made the HS4 conversion, and like you, the UI in underwhelming. However, I hardly ever use the UI. I don’t need a fancy remote control - I want reliable automation of functions, and it does decently in that domain. The problem recently has been with the google Home automation, and we have probably a dozen hubs in various rooms, and tons of Chromecast devices. Finally the engineers are making progress on fixing it, but it’s been slow, and tech support unhelpful.
So I started to look at HA, and I am shocked at how much support for devices is here. From my Lutron QS system, to thermador home connect, to nuheat thermostats, and even SNMP support to control my APC PDU outlets. It’s pretty amazing.
4 things are in the way for me to move:
Zwave support. I have 5 Andersen Patio doors with built Yale Assure locks, as well as a dome valve that controls the gas to the BBQ (so I don’t forget and leave the grill on overnight!). There are a number of Zwave packages in HA, and I guess zwave.JS is the one to use now. One question, is existing smartstick+ hardware supported, and do I have to reinitialize all the zwave devices from scratch, or can it read the state from the stick and build all the devices? Is it reliable?
The automation and scripts setup is much harder to understand compared to Homeseer’s events setup. I am a pretty decent engineer in networking, and am very comfortable in both linux and windows systems, but being used to homeseer, there is quite a lerning curve to deal with.
Trying to filter devices on the overview and get just the zigbee or HVAC devices showing is very complicated. I have tried playing around with dashboard edits, but there is a learning curve too…
I have multiple VLANs in the house to segments things, deal with kid filters, security cameras, IOT zones, and AV stuff, plus all the Chromecasts and Google homes. Homeseer handles multiple interfaces well, so I didn’t have to make routing work, because I could multihome Homeseer and use the windows firewall to add additional control. It doesn’t appear that HA can support that, so that makes my network configuration much more complicated. Not a showstopper, but more work to do.
