Clone Dongle

Revision as of 16:36, 31 August 2009

The Z-Wave chip inside the black dongle maintains the master list of all the other Z-Wave devices that you have included into your Z-Wave network. Vera also maintains its own database with a list of devices, and Vera's database has a lot more detail, such as the name of the device, the room that it's in and so on. Vera continually syncs its database with the master list of devices in the Z-Wave dongle. This is why you can remove the dongle, carry it around to pair and unpair devices devices, and when you reconnect the dongle to Vera, Vera will show any new or removed devices. If you insert a new dongle in Vera, then all your devices will disappear since the new dongle doesn't have any devices paired to it and so Vera deletes the ones in its database.

Starting with Luup version 1.0.880 and higher, Vera is able to backup not only Vera's database, but also all data which is stored in the black dongle, and Vera has the ability to restore this backup to a dongle also. This makes it possible to clone a dongle. If you receive a new, replacement dongle, for example, you can restore a backup of your old dongle's data to the new dongle so you don't have to rebuild your network. To do this follow these steps:

1. Be sure that you have not made any changes to Vera within the past 2 hours. Vera will backup the dongle's configuration whenever the list of devices in the dongle changes. But the backup process is rather slow, so Vera does it in small increments when there is no activity on the Z-Wave network. In Vera's setup page, go to Devices, Z-Wave, More Z-Wave options, and look at the value for 'Last Dongle Backup'. This will show the date & time that Vera last completed a successful backup of the dongle. Be sure that this is not empty. If it is, leave Vera alone for a couple hours, refresh the Vera setup page, and check again.

2. Once you've confirmed that Vera has backed up your dongle, go to Advanced, Backup and choose 'Create backup'. Your browser will prompt you to save this file. Save it to your computer somewhere, such as on the desktop. Be sure to wait until your browser has finished downloading. That backup file contains both Vera's database as well as the dongle's.

3. Insert your new dongle. Wait a minute to be sure that it's recognized. You should see all your Z-Wave devices have disappeared.

4. Go to Advanced, Backup and in the restore section, click 'choose file' and locate the backup file. Check the box 'Restore Dongle Firmware'. Then click Restore.

5. Leave Vera alone for 15 minutes. Vera will restore its database, which has all the detailed information on the device, and will also restore the dongle's data from the backup file, which takes several minutes.

You can now confirm that your new dongle is working and that you have your complete list of devices.