#SILabs Recommended Firmware

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

steel thistle
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Been a while since I updated my SILabs firmware but lately I'm getting lots of 202 errors in my logs. I'm currently on 7.17.2. Is 7.19.2 the recommended firmware?

tacit vessel
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what controller

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and what's a 202 error

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Looks like Controller_MessageDropped.

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7.19 and 7.20 are bad firmware

steel thistle
tacit vessel
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anything less than 7.21.4 in the 7.21 line is bad

steel thistle
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and I looked through that doc, but my network has been in place for years with no changes lately so while it could be new interference, it just seems odd that it'd just randomly start in the last couple weeks?

tacit vessel
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If that's the case, why would upgrading the firmware be a good response?

steel thistle
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Well because the thing that has changed is many HA updates, zwave js updates. Seemed reasonable to think perhaps it's not liking my many year old firmware.

tacit vessel
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7.17.2 is probably one of the most stable. I've been using 7.18.8 on my older Zooz. I wouldn't go with anything besides 7.18.8, or try the newest 7.21.4.

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Anything in-between is likely to introduce controller hang problems. 7.21.4 may or may not fix it.

steel thistle
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gotcha. Ok seems like I should try to do some other investigation first

tacit vessel
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Also, if you don't upgrade in the proper order you can brick the controller

steel thistle
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hmm where can I find info on the proper order?

tacit vessel
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So 7.18.8 first then 7.21.4

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At the bottom is a matrix of upgrades they tested

steel thistle
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fun 🙂

tacit vessel
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according to that, you'd be safe 7.17.2 to 7.21.3 (presumably .4)

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I also had issues flashing BRD4206A, neutered range of controller while BRD4201A works fine. But BRD4201A doesn't support LR.

steel thistle
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One interesting thing I noticed is almost every report I find online says Z-Wave error 202: Failed to send the message after 3 attempts mine always says 1 attempt. I don't know if some retry setting got changed?

tacit vessel
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Could have been due to flashing one of those bad ones

steel thistle
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sounds like maybe before I do all this it's an opportunity to buy a spare 800 controller in case things go wrong

tacit vessel
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Do you see controller jammed or unresponsive messages?

steel thistle
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I’ll have to check. I assume that would be in zwave logs, not HA?

tacit vessel
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usually in zwave logs, unless you turned on the integration debug logs, then both

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controller status entity would probably show it in history

steel thistle
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I see some occassional jammed messages in the controller history. I'd have to dig in further to see if it aligns with these errors

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doesn't look like it

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not seeing anything interesting in the zwave logs either. I had the issue occur at 11PM ET yesterday. So I pulled the 9/20 logs. The word error isn't found. But the HA log has 2024-09-20 23:00:02.005 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.zwave_js] Unable to set value 118-37-0-targetValue: zwave_error: Z-Wave error 202 - Failed to send the command after 1 attempts (ZW0202)

tacit vessel
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There would be something in the driver log

steel thistle
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hmm not sure where to find that. I went to zwave js ui, then the logs store/logs/z-ui_2024-09-20.log.gz guessing that's not the right thing?

tacit vessel
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no, those are app logs

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Guess you should turn them on, recommend Debug level

steel thistle
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ok. Seems to happen every night when one of my "turn off lights" automations runs so I'll see if it happens today

tacit vessel
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If you see any of the jammed/unresponsive messages, the firmware update to 7.21.4 might help. Would be interesting to know if so. Only the 800 firmware has been confirmed to help so far.

steel thistle
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alrighty I'll keep an eye. As is often the case, of course now that I have debug logging on when I manually trigger the automation multiple times it's working flawlessly 🙂

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yup I'm getting some jammed messages

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Is it just because this automation is trying to turn off about 10 zwave devices? Maybe I need to add some delays?

tacit vessel
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probably related to that. you could try multicast. it doesn't reduce the traffic (adds one extra command) but might have a different result.

steel thistle
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not familiar with that, got a doc I can read up on?

tacit vessel
steel thistle
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cool, not going to lie I didn't know zwave supported that

tacit vessel
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requires same security classes

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otherwise it splits it. you may still end up with some errors, but something to try.

steel thistle
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the actual HA device I'm changing is a helper/group. So it sounds like I could just specify that entity and HA will handle the fact that it's multiple nodes?

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I live in the middle of no where, I have encryption turned off on all nodes

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probably not the best decision but I don't have zwave locks or anything

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this sounds promising, thanks for the suggestions! I'll give this a try before dealing with firmware

tacit vessel
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S2 encryption doesn't have much overhead, but it does ensure messages aren't corrupted.

steel thistle
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Yeah, when I get an 800 controller and have to repair everything anyway I'll probably do it

tacit vessel
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You can just backup/restore NVM though.

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Unless you want to re-pair them

steel thistle
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to move from 700->800? I hadn't heard that was supported yet

tacit vessel
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Been supported for several months at least

steel thistle
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ah cool I didn't know that

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turning on S2 does require re-pairing though right?

tacit vessel
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yes, unless you fail the node and do a replace

steel thistle
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gotcha, that still requires going to each device though right? I've got stuff in my basement and attic which is why I've been lazy and avoided it

tacit vessel
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yep

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Probably not worth switching then

steel thistle
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Tried multicast, failed with Unable to set value via multicast I have the driver log but nothing seems interesting other than a transmit status: Fail on the multicast command. So doesn't seem like this helped unfortunately

tacit vessel
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Not surprised

steel thistle
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I'm not surprised this didn't fix this, but I'm surprised that sending 7 commands on a mesh of ~110 devices seems to be overloading it

tacit vessel
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Depends on if those nodes are doing anything. The more nodes, the worse it could be. Probably won't ever work if you're being affected by the firmware bug.

steel thistle
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The nodes shouldn't be doing anything, they're receptacles that don't support meter/reporting and they're off so I wouldn't know what they'd even be able to be doing?

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yeah firmware will be the next step. To your original point about being skeptical of firmware being the cause though - I've had this all working for years. I'm not sure what broke in the last month or so

tacit vessel
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They probably would have been seen as dead before. Maybe you didn't notice?

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Z-Wave JS detects unresponsive controllers now instead of declaring nodes dead.

steel thistle
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That makes sense then. I did sometimes see dead nodes that weren't really dead

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this is a Christmas/Halloween lighting automation so it hasn't been run since last January. Maybe that was before the change

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last question I'll bug you with, I'm going to get an extra controller just in case I do anything wrong and brick it. Any recommendations of an 800 controller? Figure it'd be a good time to ugprade

tacit vessel
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Zooz or Homeseer 800

steel thistle
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Thanks for all the help!

steel thistle
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Hmm the zooz website says this: NOTE: Do NOT perform NVM backup from 500 series or 700 series Z-Wave sticks for this device, this feature is currently not supported and will brick the product

tacit vessel
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That's for PC Controller software, or other software. Z-Wave JS supports it.

shadow relic
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ugh, how has silabs still not sorted out the 700 series firmware? 😵

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I guess at this point it's not going to happen and it's also time for me to pick up an 800 stick.

tacit vessel
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They are still releasing updates. 🤷‍♂️

shadow relic
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soon ™️

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A few notes on the upgrades I just went through in case it proves helpful to anyone else in the future:

tacit vessel
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I'm thinking one of the upgrades to 7.20 broke my UZB7 on 4206A.

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maybe it was .19

tidal cobalt
alpine swallow