Move from OpenZWave to Zwave JS

I noticed that I got “depreciated” in my OpenZWave dashboard on HomeAssistant. Though the official documentation did not provide an easy migration, thus I messed a bit around a bit. I was not able to perform a clean migration and had some problems with devices, so I decided to start the integration from scratch.

Phase I – Basic Installation

I decided to move in two phases. In the first section, we will do the basic installation and make sure we don’t have to include everything all over again

  1. The first step is to Z-Wave JS to MQTT – Navigate to [Configuration] and hit [Add-ons]. Use the store on the lower right to find “Z-Wave JS to MQTT” and install it. Don’t start it just yet!
  2. Now we need to get the network_key and the device from the “OpenZWave” configuration. Navigate to [Configuration] select [Add-ons] and hit [OpenZWave]. in the [Configuration] tab on top you will find the network_key. Copy the string and paste it in notepad (or your favorite plain text editor). I did not have a password filled in at all (possible because I already had it from the beta). Hence, I generated an 18 long password string (in hex) and paste it in the field there. You do need to reboot the service before it takes effect. Also you need to copy the device. i.e. /dev/serial/by-id/usb-0658_0200-if00
  3. Next up is to Stop the “OpenZWave” service. If you navigate back to the info tab, there is a stop button. The color of the round thingy in the top right should become red.
  4. Before we start our Z-Wave JS to MQTT, we first need to setup a web socket to be able to manage all devices from and to HomeAssistant. Navigate to the configuration tab of the Z-Wave JS to MQTT section and use port 3000 in the Network section. Now we can start the add-on from the Info tab. Make sure you selected the “Show in sidebar”.
  5. Now we need to add “Z-Wave JS” as an integration. Navigate to the [Configuration] and in the [Device and Services] section use “Add Integration” to install “Z-Wave JS”. It should be done pretty fast. Start it right away BUT make sure you do not use the Supervisor add-on. (This box is ticked by default). Instead, in the next screen after you hit submit, connect to port 3000 from step 4.

Phase II – Configuration and cleanup

In the next part we will do the basic setup and check to see if all the devices are back and integrate them into Home Assistant

  1. First we need to add the device and key to Z-Wave JS. Open the Z-Wave JS app on the sidebar and navigate to the Settings
  2. Open the Z-Wave part and put your device link (step 2 from Phase I) in the “Serial Port”. The key that we also got in step 2, should be placed in the S0 Legacy part.
  3. Now move to the Control Panel in the Z-Wave JS section to see your devices discovered. It took here 5 minutes to have everything in status “complete”. Though, in my case, the names where lost. So I added the names to all the nodes
  4. Than I moved back to my dashboards but it was not replacing my automation and stuff I put in my “Overview”. So I removed everything that was related to “OpenZwave” in my automation and dashboards.
  5. I ran some small tests to see if everything worked and recreated some of my dashboards using my new devices. So I could safely delete the “OpenZwave” integration. If you move to [Configuration] and go to [integrations], you can use the three dots to delete the integration.

Thats it! some of the issues I had with devices and scenes only partial executing on OpenZwave, where now gone! Let me know if you got stuck somwhere 😉

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