Old hardware migration

[dbemowsk]

So I have been out of touch with MySensors for a few years now. I still have a bunch of hardware running that uses MySensors 2.0 I believe. It is all connected to my old Vera controller. I am working on setting up a machine to run Home Assistant and plan to slowly migrate hardware to the new system. My question is, if I configure a new 2.3.2 gateway and connect it to the Home Assistant box, will my 2.0 hardware be backwards compatible and connect to the new gateway? Also, is it possible for me to run 2 NRF24 gateways at the same time without the hardware freaking out? I do have the HomeAssistant box configured as an MQTT gateway and may put new hardware on the MQTT side going forward. What are peoples thoughts on the best approach. The migration will most likely be S L O W.

Any input is appreciated.

[OldSurferDude]

@dbemowsk
I will share my limited MySensors experience with you.

I'm pretty sure that your old hardware will be compatible 2.3.2 gateway.

I don't think you can have two MQTT gateways. First, I don't think Home Assistant (HA) will allow you to do that. I would suggest you try it, though, but, obviously, back everything up before you try.

Now that said, I'm pretty sure you can have add a serial and/or ethernet gateway. Each gateway would run on a different channel.

I run HA in a Virtual Box (see HA docs for installing it) and the virtual machine is running in an Ubuntu computer.

On that computer I am running my MQTT broker.

It's a little tricky poking a hole for a serial connection into the virtual machine. You have to do this if you are going to have a serial gateway. And you'll have to this if you have a z-wave dongle. (I have a Zooz module and have found the documentation at Zooz for doing this)

I see that you're pretty experienced and I'd advise you to have a development machine on which you would do your experimenting. This has saved me untold grief when things start to get funky. I even developed a script for recreating my development virtual machine because I've buggered it so many times or I want to have a clean install when I'm trying to learn something new. (Latest was ESPHome)

It's a good project and you, because of your experience, won't have any significant problems. Well, if you're not a yaml or python guy, HA is going to drive you nuts.

-OSD

ps, I sent you an email on you switch -O

[dbemowsk]

@OldSurferDude My old 2.0 setup is with nRF24L01 radios. This is a link to the thread on some light switches that I designed and built.
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7376/us-decora-wall-switch-continued/2
I am aware that you cannot have two MQTT gatways. When I designed my old setup I was not that familiar with MQTT so I never ended up implementing it. On the home assistant server that I have set up though, I have installed the MQTT broker on there so I should be able to comunicate with any MySensors stuff over MQTT in the future devices I make/set up. As I mentioned, I do have a Home Assistant box that I have started about 4 months ago and eventually want to migrate my Vera equipment to the HA box.

As for the YAML and Python, I'll muddle my way through. used to program in PHP and have done enough on Arduino that I'm sure it won't hurt my brain too much.