Zigbee2mqtt with ConBee2 backup preparation

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Hi there,
recently I started my journey into home automations and after initial excitement with a lot of not so thought-out decisions I started my preparation for the worst. As I have a lot of zigbee wall stickers working as switches (I hardwired smart bulbs) and few in-wall switches are hard to get to then fatal crash in zigbee network will leave me with at least few lights not working and presumably very angry wife.

A lot of people reports issues with SD cards becoming suddenly unavailable due to a lot of writes. I tried to lower the possibility of that: I bought ups for pi, modified Recorder settings and I’m backup up snapshots daily to cloud. All this is not enough if after failure and restore from backup my zigbee network will be down (I want to avoid repairing).

So here goes my questions:
Do I need to perform repairing of my devices:
a) after restoring everything from snapshot (in case of SD card fail)?
b) after changing my ConBee 2 stick to another one (in case first one will fail)?
c) after updating ConBee 2 firmware (I noticed I had firmware from may 2019)?
d) after switching host and restoring from snapshot (in case of raspberry pi failure)?

I know those may sound as newbie questions but I have never restored backup in HassOS and I want to be prepared in case it will be necessary.

Zigbee2mqtt documentation (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/FAQ.html#what-does-and-does-not-require-repairing-of-all-devices) doesn’t say anything about ConBee 2 (as this is work in progress).

Note: I do know that I can mitigate SD card failure with replacing it with SSD but support for that will come with HassOS 5 and I want only stable releases on my home devices.

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a) No
b) Yes, devices can only be paired to one stick. You can’t have a second stick to swap out when the first one fails.
c) No, but update the stick :slight_smile:
d) No

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I don’t know about the conbee2, but if you use zigbee2mqtt with a CC2531 or CC2530, you can swap sticks without repairing in case one fails. Swapping a CC26xx for another works too without repairing. Swapping a CC2531 for a CC26xx or vice versa requires repairing.

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Today I performed little test and I was able to replace stick with new one with updated firmware (I want to have two sticks in case one will fail). So you can safely replace one ConBee 2 stick with another one and repairing is not needed.

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How did you do this? I thought that’s not possible with the conbee, the zigbee devices are only paired to one stick.

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Using Zwave, the device information is on the stick. For Zigbee however, particularly Zigbee2Mqtt, the device information is in the database (/opt/zigbee2mqtt/data/ if using a bare metal install)

So now it is confirmed it works with the Conbee2 too. As long as it is the same type coordinator, you can swap sticks.

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After purchasing second stick flow is as simple as:

  1. Stop z2m
  2. Replace sticks
  3. Start z2m

@francisp wrote good explanation

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How do you do that, I just did a test and tried to restore a full snapshot to a clean hassio, everything wasn’t working. Mqtt had issues starting, z2m is still stuck on the Loading, please wait. screen…
Right now i can’t even get anything to run even after uninstalling n installing the addons again.

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@intositeme
Today I was migrating from 32GB microSD card into brand new 128GB one (in assumption that bigger card will have longer lifespan).
I had clean card and I burdned there HaasOS using official guide. I also selected option to upload snapshot during onboarding.

After fixing issue with mqtt (previously created user was lost and I had to configure it again) everything was working. Up until that z2m reported issues with connection to mqtt server.

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I couldn’t restore a saved snapshot. Ended up reinstall the addons from scratch.

Suspect the restore function is not working right and causing some errors behind the scene.