I have been waiting for a while to switch to ZwaveJS because the sacred WAF must be respected. Before I take the plunge I was searching for a post/thread/screed about the best practices for doing the switch. I've seen bits and pieces but I think a definitive list would be great. FWIW I used two hubs. A C8 Pro that has all my Z-Wave and Zigbee devices and a C-7 that runs all the WiFi and third party integrations - just to spread out the load. Both are running 2.4.1.153.
I have 62 Z-wave devices with roughly half of them being hard-wired and half being battery operated - mostly motion and contact sensors.
Anyway a list of steps/expectations would be great.
First I would say expect that you will have some devices that just want to be problematic. Personally I had about 9 of 54 devices that didn't fully connect properly. All of them were battery powered devices. Most of those were able to be connected simply by waking them up. For this reason, it is good to know the process to wake your specific devices.
It should also be noted that S2 data gets wiped when changing to ZwaveJS. For that reason you would want to use @jtp10181SmartStart App to backup and then restore the SmartStart data during this process.
The process I followed was
Upgrade Hub to 2.4.1.x
Once that was done I pretty much immediately change to Zwave JS.
I waited a little while for the hub to settle down and then updated the firmware Zwave firmware. This is good because the firmware that is already loaded on the zwave radio is not the recommended version.
You will need to wait for probably atleast 24 hours for all of the devices to be interviewed and show as connected to the hub. During this time the devices will be interviewed by the radio and should reconnect. Some battery powered devices seem to have issues.
If a device somehow changes it's security settings then use the below endpoint to re-interview the device. Remember to change the # at the end to the number value shown on the zwave page.
/hub/zwave2/reinterview?node=15
Lastly if you can't get a device to connect I ended up unpairing and repairing the device.
My problem devices were Zen34 Remote Switch devices. I couldn't get them to complete the interview process. I ended up just excluding and including them again. I only have 4 of those so not to big of a deal.
The good news is that you can always go back to Z/IP if things start going really wrong.
This is very helpful. So the switch of the library and the update of the firmware are two separate acts then? Also, it sounds like I can expect automations to fail for a day or so while things get settled down is that right? If so, I’m going to need to warn my wife about that.
Hopefully there’s some long-term gain from what seems like a day or two of pain.
When I migrated, my mains-powered devices all come online fine overall**, and I just ran around and manually woke up all of my battery devices -- all of those ended up being OK too.
** - I had one (of two) Leviton outlets that came over "S2 Unauthenticated" for some reason. A re-interview would've fixed that, but I forgot about that option at the time. Now I can't even recall how I ended up fixing it, but whatever it was, it wasn't too painful.
ETA -- in some cases, it admittedly took a couple/few "activations" (button presses, contact open/close, etc) to get a device to come alive. But nothing too crazy.
Not if you are proactive about waking up your sleepy devices so they can be interviewed by ZWaveJS.. It's pretty clear the devices that haven't been interviewed yet, as the security will show "unknown" in Z-Wave details..
Probably wise
My personal experience is yes.. My garage door opener required multiple commands often for it to work on zipgateway, now it's always on the first command attempt..
I have 4 hubs that could be migrated to ZwaveJS and I took my time doing it. The first was trivial because it's a Development hub with few REAL Zwave devices. Sleepy battery devices and FINDING the wakeup instructions were everything I encountered.
For the 2nd thru 4th hubs, it was as described above... sleepy battery devices and one or two reluctant others. The WORST was one battery device that needed to be woken as much as a dozen times to complete the interview process. I have 12 of those devices and just one of them ended up as the worst. No clue why. But the point is.. . it's not a difficult process but put your frustration skills "in a jar by the door", because at least one device is going to be a challenge. What I don't know, is if that "worst" device would have completed if, after the first wake up, I'd just left it alone for hours. Each of the 4 hubs took between 20 mins and 60 mins to get fully operational. The advice that it might take a day to settle... well I didn't wait that long
Already started with step zero. "Hey hon! Let's go out to dinner tonight!" as a way to buy some extra patience... That should probably be added to the final checklist actually.
This where I am too - everything else is good but these remotes - and a ZSE41 door sensor - had to exclude / include it too... a little more trouble because of rules it was associated with. Other battery devices like leak sensors and motion sensors are doing OK. Not sure if its because they are newer 800 series and these are 700
thanks - i'm pretty sure i tried that also... door sensor is working ok for me now but the remotes are still wonky in that I cant get direct associations to work now -going to have to mess with them more later
Thought I'd report back. Things went really well all things considered. As mentioned the "mains" Z-Wave devices all came up without incident. Even my one "Eaton" outlet. None of the battery operated ones came up quick enough for me, so I woke them all up. FWIW I found grok to be outstanding for finding how to wake up the myriad battery devices. Just typed in "How do I wake up a ZCOMBO device." For example and the answers were close enough to get me to a successful result. I left one "Pending" smoke detector just because I'm curious if it will complete the interview process on its own. Thank you for the input. I hope this thread might be helpful for others thinking of migrating.
PROCEDURE TO MANUALLY WAKE-UP THE DEVICE
To manual wake-up the device, slide the battery door open wait for ~5 seconds and then slide the battery drawer closed. Upon power-up, the device will send the wake-up notification.
It should when the device naturally hits it's wake-up interval.
Anyway, I did 3 out of 4 of my smoke detectors and left one as a test. But, I always appreciate how helpful and responsive you are! So far, this Z-Wave upgrade seems speedy. Thanks!
I thought so as well, but I just went in to the SS Manager and clicked Refresh List and now the list is empty. I should note that I'm having zero problems with any z-wave devices.
I clicked Restore Full Backup from File Manager (not really knowing if I ever created a backup in the first place) and the list was restored, but now the Status column for every device is Unknown. None of the devices are enabled, either.
I have no idea what all this means. If I click enabled for any device, status changes to Not included and Node is pending. Again, all my z-wave devices work so I'm not really sure if there's any reason for concern.
Each of the 4 hubs took between 20 mins and 60 mins to get fully operational. The advice that it might take a day to settle... well I didn't wait that long 
