Zooz 800 to ZWA-2 Migration

Configuration Z-Wave
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Trying to migrate from the Zooz800 to the ZWA-2 in order to take advantage of the larger antenna and support for POE via the ESP module. Does anyone know if its possible to do this migration without having to re-pair every device?

I tried searching the forum but all I’ve found is it might not be possible since the ZWA-2 is 700-series and going backward might not be possibleEDIT: The docs for the ZWA-2 indicate its 800 series so this isn’t related. Didn’t find any other details so wanted to see what the forum thinks.

Thanks in advance

2

For reference I am using Zwave JS UI and when I backup and restore the NVM the restore fails with error:

2025-11-08 23:48:44.151 INFO Z-WAVE: Controller status: Convert NVM progress: 100%
2025-11-08 23:48:44.203 CNTRLR   Turning RF on...
2025-11-08 23:48:44.214 CNTRLR   Failed to convert NVM to target format: The source NVM has an unsupported form
                                 at, which cannot be restored on a 700-series NVM! (ZW0280)
2025-11-08 23:48:44.215 INFO Z-WAVE: Failed to convert NVM to target format: The source NVM has an unsupported format, which cannot be restored on a 700-series NVM! (ZW0280) restoreNVM undefined
2025-11-08 23:48:56.095 INFO Z-WAVE: Removing user callbacks
2025-11-08 23:49:02.541 INFO APP: ::ffff:127.0.0.1 GET /health/zwave 301 162 - 0.923 ms

I also tried restoring from Z Wave JS but no luck. Really trying to avoid the scale of repairing the whole network. I’ve also directly connected the ZWA-2 to my Home Assistant hardware (removed the POE entirely) and get the same error.

3

Try upgrading the Zooz firmware.

4

Hey freshcoast, going through those steps now as I found the post about the older SDK versions,taking notes as I go but I can’t even get the darn Zooz firmware update to take. Will post back here if I get it figured out

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So the update for the Zooz ZST39 to SDK v7.23.2 fails with an abort:

2025-11-09 00:37:14.300 CNTRLR   Beginning firmware upload
2025-11-09 00:37:14.348 CNTRLR   OTW update was aborted by the bootloader. file error 0x18
2025-11-09 00:37:14.349 CNTRLR   Leaving bootloader...
2025-11-09 00:37:14.513 CNTRLR   querying Serial API capabilities...

However i was able to update to 7.22.1 by grabbing firmware 1.5. However even on 1.5 I get the incompatible error from the ZWA-2 when uploading firmware. So I am assuming I need to align the SDKs, and ZWA-2 is currently on schema 7.23.1. Will be reaching out to Zooz as well to get into on this failure to update

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I was able to get it by using the PC Controller software to create an NVM Backup of the Zooz ZST39 and then restore it to the ZWA-2 (again using PC Controller).

Link for reference GitHub - Z-Wave-Alliance/z-wave-pc-controller: The Z-Wave PC Controller that can help test Z-Wave and Z-Wave devices. Maintained by OSWG.

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But why do (would) you change from Zooz 800 to ZWA-2 ?

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I did this back when the ZWA-2 was released and there are very specific instructions on how to do the upgrade. https://support.nabucasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/29529265751965-Migrating-an-existing-Z-Wave-network-to-Home-Assistant-Connect-ZWA-2

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These steps did not work for me I had to use the tool I mentioned about to take the backup and restore it. Seems like there’s something weird about the way Zooz does the nvm backup

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FYI, restoring NVM like that can brick your controller. I would not do that myself.

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  1. Because I want to
  2. Support for POE which is an end goal of my deployment
  3. Larger antenna should (hopefully) get better signal strength and be less susceptible to interference
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12

Specifically with SimplicityStudio or just in general?

I had found a few threads that were reporting this same behavior with ZST39s that started on earlier firmware, even if updated.

Ref Recommendation on NVM backup of ZST39 with older firmware. · zwave-js/zwave-js · Discussion #7533 · GitHub

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In the general case, PC controller is unsafe to restore NVM from different SDKs and different hardware products. It doesn’t do any kind of compatibility conversion between source and destination NVM formats.

Z-Wave JS is safe because it implements conversion between the formats.

This is why no one is able to convert from a 500-series or 700-series to newer 800-series with PC Controller and why everyone uses Z-Wave JS to do it.

In the discussion you linked to, the suggestion was to make the backup with PC Controller and then see if Z-Wave JS could convert it. Not to restore with PC Controller.

It just may be the case that the SDK you converted to and from, and the hardware, are alike so there was no problem.

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Thanks for the info. I had found another thread where someone else had had success so I wasn’t going in completely blind, if I find that thread I will link it here.

I could not get the NVM files backed up from the PC Controller to load into the binary/hex checker as I wanted to see if there was something that would show why the NVMs were so not aligned in Zwav JS UI.

Regardless it seems to only be an issue on older Zooz sticks, the newer ones which ship with newer firmware don’t use the older schema from what i had found. Maybe I just got lucky, but I’ll take it lol

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I understand. With 65 Zwave devices I do have an excellent mesh network, so I do not need the larger antenna and my Yellow Box (with Zwave dongle) is connected by ethernet cable.

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I just completed this migration. I have 110 zwave devices. About a year ago, I migrated from a Zooz 800 usb stick to the Zooz Zac93 800 series dev board in a poe setup from TubesZB. I did so without re-pairing and had very little trouble. Three days ago I migrated from the TubesZB setup to the new ZWA-2 with the waveshare poe board with no trouble at all. I did not have to re-pair any devices. I have one or 2 500 series devices on my network and then probably 60% 700 series with the rest being 800 series. I followed the HA documentation and had no hiccups.

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