Migrated to C7 - Experienced some Z-Wave issues after trying to use Device Updater

I finally completed my C4 to C7 migration and overall, it went well. I was left with 2 ghost devices, but I was able to get rid of them with the instructions provided on the forum. I left the network to stabilize for over a day and then I looked at upgrading the firmware for my Aeotec Multisensor 6 devices.

I had to search around for the Device Firmware Updater and finally found it in the Built-in apps. I ran it from there, but then it does not seem to "install" and once run, it is not in the Apps list. Is this by design, or a bug in FW 2.2.8.151 ?

In any case, I tried to update one of the sensors, but the updater was stuck at transferring firmware so I just left it there overnight to see if it would resolve itself.

Then, this morning, the house was feeling chilly, and I noticed that none of my Z-Wave devices were connected (RSSI 0). I did a Z-Wave radio disable and enable, but it only came back to life upon shutdown, removal of power and restart of Hub.

I then tried the FW update again, and now it started, but got stuck at 2% and then many of my devices were back to being unresponsive. Another reboot and things were back to normal again.

My conclusion is therefore, the firmware updater can easily "break" a Z-Wave network, and perhaps is best left unused?

Some devices you need to re-pair in order to get working again - I think that was the experience I had when beta testing bryan's original community code (especially the MS6). If that's the case then it could affect the Z-Wave mesh as a whole.. I'm not sure it's completely an HE issue here...

How did you remove the ghosts? If you used a usb stick and the PC Controller SW then you have an alternate way of updating your firmware. I've found that way to work a little faster..

Yes, it could easily be related to only the MS6 devices, I haven´t tested other devices yet as I mostly have Fibaro which cannot be updated via HE.

I did use a USB stick to remove the ghosts (a ZME-UZB1), but haven´t tried to use that for updating the MS6. I also have a Aeotec Z-Stick, so I guess I could easily just exclude the MS6 devices again and re-join to HE when done updating (same/similar as I did when moving them over).

So yes, it could be that the Device Updater works well, just not for the MS6 devices. The "dissapearance" of the device updater app though sounds like a bug, or it could be by design so it doesn't linger around?

Yeah I don't know. If the MS6s are usb powered they tend to make very poor repeaters in my experience. There used to be a trick where you could pair the device on batteries THEN switch over to using power and it would not repeat. I'm not sure this is quite true with the newer firmware unfortunately but I could be mistaken - I only have one MS-6 left on the "edge" of my network and it's purpose is a lux sensor.

I have 2 that are also on the edge of the network and they seem to be working well on their current 1.02 FW, but I just wanted to update to the "latest and greatest".

Oddly enough, one of these sensors seems to be a repater for the other one, but more oddly, the sensor is a repeater for the Aeotec Repeater that I had installed to repeat to the sensors :grinning:

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There is something about the MS6 having a very small cache so can't handle a large maybe even moderate amount of messages passing through it. I can't remember exactly - @bcopeland mentioned it at some point but I cannot find the old post.

edit: the workaround has been to pair with battery then switch back to power..

Thanks... I might then exclude them, update FW with Aeotec stick, pair with batteries to HE and then plug it in. Sounds like a reasonable plan.

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