ZWave devices not working after system migration

First of all: Thanks for Openhab and the Z-Wave binding, I’ve been very happy with it so far!

Earlier this week I migrated my Openhab system. It’s still on the same Raspberry Pi as it was before, but it was not stable, so I have (a) added a powered USB Hub, in which I plugged my aeotec Z-stick; and (b) instead of the SD card I’m now using an external USB HDD (which has its own power).

So I reinstalled raspbian from scratch on this HDD, I installed Openhab 2.4.0 from scratch, and I restored a backup that I had made earlier of my previous system (the SD-card based one) (using this procedure: https://www.openhab.org/docs/installation/linux.html#backup-and-restore). Result is that all my things etc are back in the UI, but all the Z-wave devices are not working, neither the battery-powered ones, neither the mains-powered ones. I have a number of different devices, such as door/window sensors, smart plugs, smart meter, etc.

My question is: should this way of migrating work? I’m assuming it should, but before I spend tons of time debugging this, I’d like to make sure if I missed something.

(P.S. Some devices show ‘Node initialising: REQUEST_NIF’ in PaperUI, some show just ‘online’, even though none work. I don’t see anything strange in the logs, but I didn’t delve into debug logs yet. Just want to verify that this is a valid use-case first.)

Was your old system running 2.4? I have never migrated Z-Wave using that process so I do not know if it is supposed to work or not.

Indeed, it was also the 2.4.0 release version.

If you do not see your controller, add it using the same thingid. Your other devices should then keep their old ids.

I do actually see the controller. And in debug mode I see some lots of “stuff” fly by, so "it is doing something"™.

Can you think of a reason why the backup/restore would NOT work? What it does is simply copy config and data files into a zip file, and copy them back out on restore.

That would be a good question for @chris. I have no experience doing things that way. Most of my configuration is in files.
Secure Z-Wave devices may be an issue but other should be discovered OK.

Right, eagerly awaiting @chris’s response then :slight_smile:

But you do think secure devices would be problematic? I mean, the Z-stick has it’s internal administration of things, that didn’t change, and Openhab has its XML files, which should be restored from the backup, so that’s actually not clear to me how that could be a problem…

I believe the security key in in OH too.

Sure, but I woud (perhaps naively :wink: ) expect that it is part of the backup as well…

I would be surprised if Chris will be able to help with an OH backup/restore question, since it is not specifically zwave or zigbee. The Things for the controllers will be backed up and restored, including the zwave security key. However, since a USB hub is now in use, the port may have changed, and that is the first thing I’d look at. If the Things for devices are online, then there must be communications, so this must be OK.

Are the Things initialized and do the links show up under Channels? By not working, you mean the Item states are not updating and/or commands are not being sent to the devices?

Was a manual install of the zwave binding previously being used? Maybe one from before 2.4, which would require the Things to be deleted and rediscovered to pull in the new Thing definitions?

1 Like

Wow, I think everything is working again. While I was reinstalling things, I had the Raspberry pi in my study hooked up to a monitor. I just thought: ssh works again, so I’ll put it back in the fuse box where it was before. Guess what: after booting everything magically worked again. Color me confused… :thinking: I don’t know a lot about how z-wave works, is this because the mesh structure broke by me physically moving the controller? And if yes, how long should I normally expect for such things to automatically fix themselves; because they should, right? I expected especially mains-powered devices to be quick to pick up on this, but apparently a day was not enough.

(By the way, thanks @Bruce_Osborne and @5iver for your help!)

1 Like

Absolutely! Mains powered zwave devices are not meant to be moved after they have been included. Since you moved the controller, you essentially moved ALL of the devices… although, technically, the controller is a device too! If you move devices, then you need to heal the network to repair the routes. By default, there is a daily network heal performed at 2AM, so after a day, things may have cleared on their own. If big changes are made, it can take a few network heals to sort things out. However, at the other location, the controller may have not been able to communicate with anything.

You are very welcome!

2 Likes

Just a point here - the security key used by openHAB is not stored in the controller, so if there are secure devices, then you will need to have a backup of the OH configuration.

2 Likes