For years I have been using Homeseer but realized that for me it was time to move on..
Note that I’m not the expert but someone who wants to share his experience hoping that it helps you. This post doesn’t tell you how to do things but helps you to ‘organize’ the migration. Enjoy!

TOPICS

1. Why
2. Analyze HS
3. Analyze HA
4. Install HA
5. Prepare HS
6. Migrate

When I say “migrate” I’m not saying that all of your (historical) data will be available in HS. No, it’s a functional migration. Of course you may find a way to migrate certain data but that’s up to you.

NOTE that quite often I will use the word “migrated”. Sometimes that means “Created in HA and when working removed from HS”.

1. WHY move to HA?

In short:

• Built-in Database for history recording
• HW requirements
• Integration ecosystem
• Python support
• Community

“Great community” appeared twice. Yes, and because of this community that helped me a lot I’m now documenting things to “give back”.

Sharing is caring.

2. ANALYZE Homeseer

The main “components” to analyze in HS are:

• Hardware
• Devices
• Events
• Plugins
• Scripts

NOTE: Chapter 3 (below) has three links that help you find out if your integration/plugin/capability has some kind of built-in support in HA.

HARDWARE

Go through the external hardware that is integrated with HS and see if this HW is used by HA. Also check if this HW can be integrated with BOTH HS and HA at the same time! (simultaneous column)

At some point you have all “yes/yes” or “not a problem” – ready for the next step!

DEVICES

Go through your devices in Homeseer and sort them by “date last change”. If there’s too many, filter per location1/location2. Now you will find devices that haven’t updated in a long time.

Question: are there devices that are not relevant or don’t need migrating?

If so, move these devices in a new location called “_OLDdevices”.
Note that the location starts with an _underscore for sorting purposes.

RESULT: a list of relevant devices. Can these be migrated? Do you see problems getting these in your new setup?

EVENTS

Go through your events per group and find the ones that did not run in a long time.

Question: are there events that are not relevant or don’t need migrating?

If so, move these events to a new group “_OLDevents”. Again, starting the name with an underscore for sorting purposes

RESULT: a list of relevant events. Can these be migrated? Do you see problems creating these in your new setup?

PLUGINS

List all of your HS plugins in a table and document the priority, HA equivalents and remarks. Copy the table below as a template/example.

OFFICIAL PLUGINS
OPTIONAL: Priority 1 (high) – 5 (low)

ADD ON SCRIPTS

These are not official HS plugins but scripts you can add. Copy the table below as a template/example.  OPTIONAL: Priority 1 – 5 (high – low)

OWN SCRIPTS

Check out the \HomeSeer 4\scripts\ folder and list the scripts that you created. These are not official HS plugins but scripts you have added. Copy the table below as a template/example.

As you can see, all of my tables were green. Time to move on!

3. ANALYZE Home Assistant

Based on step 2 you know what needs to be done. Use the following resources to see if it is possible to do what needs to be done.

• integrations
• add-ons
• and possibly the HA community store

You will most likely do this while creating the tables in step 2.

4. INSTALL Home Assistant

Install HA on your computer, your Mac, a Raspberry Pi, in Docker, on your NAS, etc.
Ideally, install it where you want it to eventually run. In my case I started with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and later migrated to a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB)

I have also done testing on HA using Docker on my MacBook.
Familiarize yourself with the way things work and the capabilities.

HYBRID TECHNOLOGIES?

Some technologies / platforms can be used by multiple home automation platforms at the same time. This is great for migrations. Examples:

Deconz  (for the great Conbee Zigbee stick)
Connects to both Homeseer (JowiHue plugin) and Home Assistant (Deconz integration) at the same time. This allows for a gradual migration of all events/actions related to Zigbee.

Hue
Works perfectly with multiple platforms

Tasmota devices
Communicate using MQTT. At the beginning I had them talk to HS and configured mcsMQTT to share the data with the MQTT plugin on HA so both platforms had access to data and the ability to control.

5. PREPARE HS

Prepare your migration as much as possible.

• CLEAN up your setup
  • Disable unused plugins (remove  not really needed?)
  • Remove unused devices
  • Remove unused events

6. Migrate

Migrated events need devices to work. Migrate these devices first!

1. Devices
2. Events

DEVICES

First make the “hybrid” devices work (see examples in step #4). For example: Zigbee and Hue devices can be used/integrated on both systems at the same time.

EVENTS

Now I started with the most simple things: Zigbee devices.

1. Take an event from HS and create it in HA.
2. Disable the event in HS
3. Check if it works in HA.
4. In HS add ” – migrated to HA” in the event title, or move the event to a group called “_Migrated to HA”. Double check the event in HS is disabled. You can keep monitoring the “last run time” to see if there was no other event that called it.
5. Repeat :-)

….. Hope this helped you a bit!
Cheers
DJ