Network Shift Between Z-Wave Controllers

Just checked the api; this is perfectly doable.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I have shifted z-wave network controllers successfully a few times, by using Homeseer's HS3 STD "Backup this Interface" and "Restore a network to this Interface" Actions, which appear when you have your z-wave network controller (or Interface, in Homeseer's HS3 parlance) selected in it's z-wave management page.

While I had no trouble backing up from a few different controllers,, I was only able to restore to the following:

- Homeseer Z-NET;
- HomeseerSmartstick+;

Restoring to the above controllers was very straightforward, for obvious reasons.

- z-wave.me RAZberry;
- z-wave.me UZB.

Restoring to the last two controllers above involved additional steps, because it seems that Homeseer's HS3 current z-wave plugin (version 3.0.2 at the time of this post) does not support current firmwares (5.27 and 5.37 respectively) of the afore mentioned z-wave.me devices.

The extra steps I used are listed in the following homeseer forum post; https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/homeseer-products-services/homeseer-z-wave-products/z-net/1279258-upgrade-to-z-net-unable-to-restore-backup?p=1379555#post1379555

I also tried restoring to Aeotec's z-stick gen5, but Homeseer doesn't seem to allow this operation as the "Restore a network to this Interface" action is not available when you have that interface selected. YMMV.

On a side note, it would be really nice if Indigo itself would allow us to backup and restore z-wave controllers data at will. If Homeseer can do it, I'm quite sure Matt and/or Jay can also pull it off...

Cesar

Adding to my own post above, I have now come to wonder if the method described in the Homeseer forum post I linked above would also work on the Z-Stick, since I've read it's very similar hardware wise to the UZB... Whenever I get some spare time, I intend to investigate this possibility and report back here.

Update July 6, 2020 3:09PM: Yes, it also works on the Z-Stick Gen5.

...

I have tested restoring a backup of the Gen5 to the UZB and it worked. As far as I can tell the resulting stick had all the properties of the doner stick .

Cheers
Wilhelm

Great news. I think I need to switch from Gen5 to a UZB and I have 180+ nodes in my network.
Are you using the Aeotec backup software for that (backup and restore)?

Best regards, L

Yes I did.
Unfortunately it doesn't run well on a Parallels VM. On my machine it produces read-errors frequently and then aborts, so if that is your setup as well, just try until it succeeds.
BTW the resulting file contains 512 KB of data. But in fact the memory of the stick ist just 64 KB in size, so I normally cut it to that size so that the upload is much faster.

Hope this helps

Great!

Is there any benefit from switching to the UZB? Is the firmware in the UZB replaced with Gen5 fw in the process producing a Gen5 w/ UZB hardware?

No, the firmware on the UZB stays the same.
Its's just a means to transfer the setup/network to an UZB stick.

Nice, I’ll give it a try!
Thanks!

It did work great from Gen5+ to UZB but tonight I tried to restore the settings from UZB to my gen5+ and when the gen5+ was reloaded in Indigo it had no (0) nodes in it ???
I will re-do the backup from UZB and then restore to my gen5+ again when I have the time.
Indigo reports my Z-stick to be a Z-Stick Gen5+ (ZW090), I thought it var a gen5 only, could this be the problem?

Been there, done that..

Please check all posts from post #58 on, at the following link:

https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/light ... -old/page4

It seems to be a known problem. If you also have a Homeseer license (as I do), there is a fix I personally tested and verified to work.
YMMV.

Cesar

The backup was corrupted, after redoing the backup/restore it worked!

Woke up this morning to discover that my Aeotec Z-stick gen5 has "forgotten" about 40 of my z-wave devices. Trying to follow this thread I am wondering if it is worthwhile to try to re-include these devices to the Gen5, or wipe my whole network and put up a different Z-Wave controller, one that DOES support backup in a straight-forward manner.

So, what is "best current practice" for this? If not Z-stick Gen5, then what?

I am not looking forward to the pain of resetting every z-wave device and then re-including them.

Well, after a day of re-adding my device to my Z-stick, my network is back up again. Very strange.

So, I think I need to get a backup Z-stick and clone the existing Z-stick, just in case. Has anyone done this? If so, are you willing to share?

Thanks.

There's loads of discussions on the forums about creating z-stick backups. Paste this into your favorite Google search box:

backup z-stick site:forums.indigodomo.com

Thank you for that pointer. I asked here because I thought there might be some Indigo-specific issues.