Where is Z-Wave info stored (can I pull stick?)

Configuration
1

I am running hass.io on a pi, and have a Nortek USB stick plugged in. It is working fine.

But I want to experiment with using a Pi as a Z-Wave server, and run HA in a VM instead, better performance, snapshots are easier, etc. Emphasis is this is an experiment, as the Pi is working reasonably well.

I can easily save my current Pi config, actually have a second Pi sitting around.

But what happens with the USB stick. If I pull it and use it in a new Pi…

Do I have to associate all Z-wave devices again, or is there a way to move the configuration?

Do I LOSE the state of the current association in some fashion by doing this, essentially breaking what I have now?

Fundamental aspect I think is this: Is any part of the configuration, node ID’s, etc. stored in the stick? Or is it all inside HA somewhere?

Thanks,

Linwood

2

All of the pairing info is stored on the stick.

All of the customization stuff is stored in HA in the .storage/core.xxx files and in the zwcfg_xxxxx file. the zwcfg file gets created from the info on the stick but you can copy over that existing file from the old setup and it should bring in the same info to the new HA setup.

And I’m not sure what is the possibility of bringing in your .storage files. Try it and see if it works. If not you haven’t lost anything since it’s just experimental and you have backups of your production setup.

3

All the .storage info is included in a full snapshot so it should be transferable to the new pi if restoring that way.

The mount location of your USB stick may change after the move. Take note of what is in the zwave config usb_path: now and after everything is up and running go to Hassio Side Menu / System Page / Host System Box / Hardware button and check the location is the same. Adjust in the zwave config usb_path: if necessary.

4

@finity and @tom_l, thank you. going to give it a try now and see what happens.

5

So if the association list is stored in the zwave stick, is there any way to back it up?

Let’s say the stick dies and I replace it with the same type, I would need to (a) reset each zwave device to defaults, (b) associate it with the new stick, and © … rename each one (since they may get new node numbers?) with the name I had given them in HA?

Is there a backup I can do which would obviate that need, or is that just the price of a stick failure (which I would hope would be rare)?

Linwood

6

As far as I know there is no backup utility for the Nortek USB stick.

There is a backup program for the Aeotec Z Stick Gen 5 and I use that for my z stick but it won’t work for the Nortek stick. I’ve tried…

7

As a general followup and thank you – I spent the weekend using the Nortek stick in a whole variety of ways, on a rPi as a server, on Virtual Box to run VM’s, in various attempts to get it to work with HyperV.

Everything worked perfectly in terms of it maintaining association no matter where I moved, and moving the /config folder with it (mostly) worked fine.

I should note every time I restored the home-assistant_v2.db from a snapshot folder to another machine (rPi to intel in all cases) it failed to run with a corruption error. Deleting it got that VM going fine, but there’s something wrong there, but the (I think) entity registry and other text files worked fine to preserve zwave device names, and everything came up perfectly in the new VM’s.

On the other hand I failed miserable to find a VM solution I liked, but that’s another story (if interested read about it here)

So thank you @finity and @tom_l

Linwood