Migrating from Deconz to Zigbee2MQTT on a Conbee II

Configuration Zigbee
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#1

I’ve been using Deconz on a Conbee II for the last few years now, no huge issues but I do feel like there’s not really been any groundbreaking changes and feel it is lacking a little in comparison to ZHA and Z2M so I’m finally going to bite the bullet and migrate my 70+ devices over. I’m ideally looking for a better management interface, the ability to do OTAU without stepping back 20 years and a larger device compatibility list (looking at you Hive heating).

Before doing so I just wanted to check, there’s no easy way of doing this right? Every device is going to be manually repaired to the new software, but same stick. I’ll of course backup HA and Phoscon before starting.

My second question is on the hardware, would I notice much of a reliability improvement with the Sonoff 3.0 dongle instead of the Conbee? It would make migrating easier as I could just do a bit at a time but I don’t want to waste money if there’s not much benefit after the migration as I’ll just be chucking the old stick in the draw. I do rarely find 1 out of 6 spotlights might not turn on in a room at the moment until I retry but I’m not sure if that’s anything to do with the Conbee or the meh ikea Tradfri GU10 bulbs. If there’s a known performance benefit, I’ll get a new stick to just aide the migration too.

Any tips to make the migration as least destructive to my dashboards and automations in terms of entity ids too?

Edit: I didn’t really realise how cheap the Sonoff P 3.0 dongle was… at £10 I think I’ll just get one ordered and slowly do it to avoid the headache!

#2

My experience says yes. ConBee is buggy like crazy.

#3

I have moved from ZHA/ConbeeII to a Z2M/Sonoff and is super happy.

To my knowledge you have to re-pair, even there are some threads on backup and restore of zigbee networks. You might look into this.

As you suggest, run both. I did this, migrating over a period having both zigbee networks running at the same time, moving parts of the devices at a time. I believe this is a good strategy, as you can easier change the related dashboards and automations along the way, not having to make everything updated at once. Will also give some time to get used to Z2M and the new features.

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#4

Good to hear it all went well. I think you can restore networks if the chips are the same between dongles, sadly in this case they’re not. I’m not in a rush so ordered a Sonoff stick from Aliexpress in the end, bargain at £12. Should massively reduce the stress of having the gf complain none of the lights are working all weekend at least!

#5

Totally agree with your strategy. If you stick with the same software (ZHA or Z2M) you can in fact use open coordinator backup to move to different hardware.

I looked into it but finally just repaired all devices one by one. Since you are using different software this is probably the less risky version. :slight_smile:

If you can do it, I would suggest using Z2M.

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#6

I’m moving from deconz on the Conbee to Z2M so no backup migration route sadly :frowning:

Most of my devices are Tradfri GU10 spotlights, generally 4 - 6 per room. I’ve not tried but hopefully I can power toggle a room at a time to put them all into pairing mode rather than having to get each bulb out from the fitting and pair individually :frowning: Otherwise it’ll be a weekends job with many coffees to hand!

#7

I’m trying to do the same
Moving (conbee2) from deconz to zigbee2mqtt
However i dont have a sonoff 3.0 dongle and not really going that route since now HA have their own stick wich includes matter but is not zigbee2mqtt ready yet

#8

4+ months later and I can report I’m very happy with the change. I prefer using Z2M, especially the fact I can now properly update certain device firmwares. Deconz always said it supported that but it was absolutely awful in reality, I had loads waiting to be updated once they moved over.

The new setup also seems a bit more reliable and all bulbs work as they should now, previously I’d maybe have one out of a group of 4 occasionally stay on/off when I toggled the group.

I got a Sonoff stick for a tenner on AliExpress so that was a bargain, it was the time spent migrating that was the worst part. Personally I don’t think I’m going to benefit from Matter, especially not for a good 5+ years yet so it didn’t cross my mind.

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