Moving from Windows Virtualbox to bare metal and 800 series Z wave stick

Installation
1

Hello,
I am currently running Home Assistant on an Intel NUC with Windows and VirtualBox. I need to re-deploy the NUC for another purpose so I was planning to purchase another mini PC and install Home Assistant bare metal just for simplicity sake. I’ve read the documentation and feel confident that I can make that change without issues.

In addition, I thought since I’m going to be making a fresh install it might be a good time to upgrade the Z wave stick from the Aeotec Gen 5 to the Zooz 800 series stick. I’ve been having issues with my z wave network and switches not updating their status correctly over the last few months so I thought this change might help.

I understand that upgrading from the Aeotec Gen 5 to the Zooz 800 will be a manual process and I have about 60 z-wave devices. Below I have outlined my general process, does this seem correct? Or is there a better way to go about this change?

  1. Exclude all of my z-wave devices from my current NUC and Gen 5 stick.
  2. Make a backup of the system after all the exclusions and shut down home assistant on the old NUC.
  3. Install home assistant operating system on the new mini PC.
  4. Install my backup file of home assistant on the new PC.
  5. Once the system is back up and running, install the Zooz 800 series stick and start adding all my z-wave devices to the new install.

Does this sound like the correct process?

Thank you,
Mark

2

My opinion. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

See if JsUI can do the backup restore to an 800 stick and if it can’t I wouldn’t go.

Why. Do you have any current issues? Do you NEED zwLR? If neither of those are true I don’t see ahtag you’re buying yourself.

(note I’m running on that very same stick and have a identical spare. I’ll look at moving to an 800 IF I need any zwLR.)

3

Like I said the main motivation to switch to the 800 was to see if it helped with the issue of light entities not reporting their state correctly. Perhaps playing with the location of my z wave stick and moving off the virtual machine will help. Thanks for the input.

4

I’ve not fould the 800 to be any better at reporting state. It’s the last link in the chain. And sometimes it gets worse. (*cough, 700 sticks.)

I don’t know about anything in the 800 sticks that will fix a signal issue if you have issues in your repeating mesh. Just good ZWave network basics do that.

5

Your steps seem reasonable and similar to how I upgraded my environment.

Minor considerations:

Bare metal on the new systems is totally fine (and recommended by some folks), but since you’re familiar with operating in a VM environment, you might consider Proxmox. There is a great community guide that steps you through the full process of installing HAOS within a Proxmox VM. It’s minimal overhead and provides nice backup capability.

You don’t actually need to exclude all your devices up front. You could do steps 2-4 to bring up the new system, and then move the z-wave devices over one or a few at a time. A bit more reassuring to get some feedback that things are working as expected.

For step 5, to build the most reliable mesh, start with the devices that are closest to your controller and then work your way out. (This is advice I think I first saw from @NathanCu.)

Good luck!

1 Like
6

Thanks everyone for the feedback, think I’ll just stick with the Gen 5 stick for now. I did go ahead and install a usb extension cable and early returns seem to be good.

I was considering Proxmox as much for the challenge as anything else. I won’t be running any other programs on the new mini PC so that’s why I was planning to just go bare metal for now.