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Install portable Z-Wave firmware

Place ZWA-2 optimally and connect via Wi‑Fi

This experiment allows the ZWA-2 to be placed anywhere, and connect to your wifi network to establish a connection with Home Assistant.

Follow this tutorial to install the portable Z-Wave experiment on your Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2.

Learn more about it in our blog

Requirements

To get started, follow these steps:

  1. Make a backup of your Z-Wave network in Home Assistant.
    1. You can do this on the Z-Wave config panel in Home Assistant. Config → Devices & services → Z-Wave → Settings icon.
    2. Download backup is at the bottom of the page.
  2. Connect the ZWA-2 to your computer via USB and use the installer below to flash the firmware:

    Go to Installer

  3. This step is for people running a recommended Z-Wave installation:
    (Home Assistant OS with Z-Wave JS add-on managed by the Z-Wave integration)
    1. Open Home Assistant and check for discovered ESPHome devices on the integrations page. Configure the discovered device.
    2. On the same page, once ESPHome has been configured, look for the discovered Z-Wave device. Configure it
  4. This step is for other installation methods:
    (if you are managing your own Z-Wave JS server)
    1. Find the IP address of the ZWA-2 on your network.
    2. Configure the Z-Wave JS Server to use the following serial port: esphome://ZWA-2-IP. Replace ZWA-2-IP with the IP address of your ZWA-2. If the IP address of your ZWA-2 is 192.168.1.100, the serial port would be esphome://192.168.1.100.

      Note: this is for the configuration of the Z-Wave JS Server, not inside Home Assistant!
  5. If you have moved the ZWA-2 to a different location, go to the Z-Wave config panel in Home Assistant and hit rebuild network routes.

Troubleshooting

Make sure the ZWA-2 is connected to the same network as Home Assistant.

Make sure you configure both the discovered ZWA-2 ESPHome and Z-Wave configurations in Home Assistant.

If Home Assistant is connected and you are not able to see your Z-Wave devices, restore the backup.

  1. You can do this on the Z-Wave config panel in Home Assistant. Config → Devices & services → Z-Wave → Settings icon.
  2. Restore backup is at the bottom of the page.

If you are unable to get it to work, revert back by installing the original firmware and connect it directly to Home Assistant.

If you want to further customize the ESPHome-based portable Z-Wave firmware that runs on the ZWA-2, you can adopt it inside ESPHome Device Builder. To ensure it continues to work, after adoption, you have to edit the generated YAML and remove the encryption and key sections under api:. Z-Wave JS does not currently support ESPHome encryption and the Z-Wave serial protocol has their own encryption mechanism.