Migrate Zigbee (ZHA) Network To New HA Install | Home Assistant | Page 1

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:02 AM

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Hi, what is the best way to migrate a zigbee network (using ZHA) to a new home assistant install including devices and entities? I originally installed home assistant in a virtual machine to play around with it. I added a bunch of addons and played around with dashboards, and messed with my config. It was just an environment to mess around in. During this time I added all my zigbee devices via ZHA.

Now I have a proper install of HA going and I want to bring over my zigbee network with all my zigbee devices and entities. I do not want to do a backup/restore of my whole HA installation because the mess around VM is full of junk and mess and sometimes warnings/errors.

I tried doing a ZHA backup and restore but that does not bring over the devices or entities.

Any help would be appreciated.

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:07 AM

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Are you reusing the same coordinator on the new instance?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:07 AM

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same one

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zigbee devices are all the same as well. just trying to bring them from homeassistant-test-vm to home assistant-real-vm

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:09 AM

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Then a ZHA backup restore should work.

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When you do that, do any devices show up at all?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:09 AM

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no nothing

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i can share my backup file if it helps

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:10 AM

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On your new instance, does adding a ZigBee device work?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:10 AM

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its a json file

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:11 AM

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tranquil lion On your new instance, does adding a ZigBee device work?

pretty sure i can, i haven't done it yet because i didn't want to mess something up in the coordinator and lose my whole network or something

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:12 AM

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How many devices do you have in your network?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:12 AM

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https://pastebin.com/6yYa2xvV

Pastebin

{ "version": 1, "backup_time": "2025-03-11T00:02:33.757052+00...

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

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here is the zha backup

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:12 AM

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tranquil lion How many devices do you have in your network?

20ish right now

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:12 AM

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Oh that's not many. I would just take the plunge and re-add all of them from fresh.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:12 AM

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right now the coordinator is plugged into HA-real-vm. if i plugged it back into HA-test-vm the 20 devices would start working again

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:13 AM

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tranquil lion Oh that's not many. I would just take the plunge and re-add all of them from fre...

some of them require scaffolding unfortunately because they are in an open to above area with high ceiling

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was trying to avoid that tedious work

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:13 AM

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Lol hmm ok. Let's see...

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You're saying the devices don't show up at all in your new instance, not that they are there but unavailable?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:14 AM

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i see the devices/entities in my config files, can i just bring those files over ?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:15 AM

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tranquil lion You're saying the devices don't show up at all in your new instance, not that th...

devices do not show up. but also, how would they? the json file doesn't contain any of their information like their names or areas or anything

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do i need to somehow add these devices to HA first before restoring the ZHA backup?

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:17 AM

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Do you have a working backup of your original instance?

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A whole backup, not just ZHA.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:18 AM

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the original instance is still up and running. its just in a vm that i can launch at any time and do what ever i want with it

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i was thinking i can try copying the devices/entities over manually from the config yaml files

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:19 AM

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Ok. So this is a bit off-label but in the original config folder, you should see zigbee.db. Copy that.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:20 AM

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okay i can try that. just curious though, what is the connection between a device in HA and the devices on my zigbee network. for example, the zigbee.db, will it have the information required for HA to generate devices/entities like the device name, area, etc?

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:20 AM

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Then in your new instance, do ha core stop using the terminal. Then replace zigbee.db with the original version using Samba or sth. Then do ha core start.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:21 AM

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sure will try that now

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:22 AM

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I'm not sure. It is possible you need to copy your core.xxx_registry or something too. But zigbee.db has the info about the devices in your network.

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This is off-label so make sure you can restore backup if it borks your setup.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:23 AM

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yep for sure. is there any way to move a thread in discord? i can take it to #1284966540617449515

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:24 AM

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No idea about that.

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Just thinking about next steps

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Other than your 20 ZigBee devices, how many other devices/entities do you have in your original instance?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 12:34 AM

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a bunch of security cameras. i was trying different addons to see which gave the best resutls

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 12:45 AM

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If yr original system is relatively small, it could be easier to just prune out all the devices and automations you don't want to transfer, make a full backup, then restore that in your new instance

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Actually have you tried a full HA backup restore to your new instance already?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 2:27 AM

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no i havent tried it yet. like i said the old instance was just a playground to get messy and learn. the new instance is the real one that will be running for myself and my family

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okay rbought the zigbee.db over

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let me reboot and see if that does anything

brittle nova Mar 22, 2025, 2:58 AM

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~~i didnt read~~

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the "problem" is you dont need to backup or restore your coordinator because that's fully in tact, what you actually want to do is migrate over just the devices/entities created by zha

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:23 AM

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oh i don't need any restore for the zha stuff?

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i brought the zugbee.db over. looks like it populates the devices and entities. but they are missing names/tags/areas/etc

brittle nova Mar 22, 2025, 3:30 AM

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clear tinsel oh i don't need any restore for the zha stuff?

the download backup on the zha page is for the coordinator itself, youre not changign coordinators so you dont need it (always good to have a backup in case though)

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:31 AM

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ah okay cool. so what about the devices/entities then? manual import using the config yaml files?

brittle nova Mar 22, 2025, 3:31 AM

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the missing info for your zigbee devices would be in config/.storage in one of the files (proabbly core.config_entries), but along with it are all your other entities and devices

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actually theres a bunch of files named core.*, not entirely sure what which is for but thats where that data is stored

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:33 AM

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yea pretty sure it would be in devices and entities yaml

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was hoping there was a selective way to backup and restore but looks like that doesn't exist

brittle nova Mar 22, 2025, 3:34 AM

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nope, core is all or nothing unfortunately

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 3:35 AM

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The core.xxx are just text files. You could edit them to keep only the ZigBee devices and copy them over.

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But a wrong edit or indent could corrupt your whole system

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If the devices exist in your new instance after the zigbee.db transfer and they function properly, I'd say just use the UI to re-input the names, labels etc.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:37 AM

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yep figured that. plus they are formatted really weirdly.

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:37 AM

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tranquil lion If the devices exist in your new instance after the `zigbee.db` transfer and the...

yea might have to do it this way unfortunately.

brittle nova Mar 22, 2025, 3:38 AM

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its just a json dictionary, but yeah id also just rename them then bother with that

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 3:38 AM

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Do your devices respond?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:44 AM

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honestly not sure yet. this is in a remote property so i can't move a sensor or something to force a refresh

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maybe just gotta wait

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tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 3:49 AM

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Lol this is living dangerously!

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:50 AM

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hahahaha it's more fun this way

tranquil lion Mar 22, 2025, 3:51 AM

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They are all battery powered sensors?

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 3:52 AM

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yes

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the other thing is (and this might be me being an idiot) i had an old 9dbi antenna lying around so i plugged it into the coordinator today before i left. i'm not even sure if it will work with the zigbee coordinator because it's from an old router lmao

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oh well

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at least the devices are there with their entities now. i can rename them manually

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lets see if they start responding soon

clear tinsel Mar 22, 2025, 5:01 AM

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okay so after bringing zigbee.db over, it automatically added the devices and their entities. i went into .storage/core.device_registry and compared it to the one i had in my other HA install. basically brought over the zigbee devices from old install to new install. just had to make sure their config_entries parameter was updated, and the id parameter was updated.

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rebooted and now devices have the right names, labels, areas, etc per my old HA install

#Migrate Zigbee (ZHA) Network To New HA Install