Right now “Raw Description” is generated on the new device inclusion into the network, and that includes firmware version and other variables that might change in time. I.e. I’ve updated WF on my device with a secondary controller.
There should be a way to force updating this “Raw Description” or do this automatically once an hour/day/week.
Excluding and including the device is to harmful as it breaks all the automation configurations, z-wave associations, etc.
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This would also be useful for the rare occasion when the raw description pulls in all zeros.
Are you in the beta program? Because otherwise this is off topic here.
I have responded to your duplicate request in your other thread:
I believe this information is already available, it’s just not being updated in the cloud account record. Because that’s how the Z wave Tweaker works. But again, I’ve already responded to this in the other thread.
( i’m not saying it shouldn’t be refreshed occasionally in the I DE, it’s annoying that it isn’t, (although please, God, not frequent polling 
). I’m just saying I do think it’s available if you need it.)
The only method available to update the raw description is to exclude and include the device again. I would like to say that I wish that was not so, specially about certain fields,.
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Well as in an example, I would love it to be updated to the current state. If you decide to include firmware version into the Data string you should have thought that it might change in time. And this is one of the reasons, I want to see actual product firmware on the device details page now it’s just not there, it always shows me outdated information about my device from the moment when it was included in the network.
And moreover, api.smartthings.com do not show actual firmware version field.
As of Beta, I would love to have betas, but I currently don’t have it.
Tweaker is not a solution, because it goes ass a device handler and I have native device handlers for almost all my devices, inovelli is quite good at supporting that.
And how is it offtopic here? I just hit a create topic button there were no options to select a subforum or anything, so it looks like it all in one giant thread. It does not even say anything about being in a beta sub-forum anywhere on this page.
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I’m not sure what device you are using to access the forum, or what browser, but it does have subcategories, and you posted your new thread in the subcategory for the beta program.
You also posted the same question by adding onto a thread in a different section of the forum, “connected things“ which is where questions about devices go.
Some of the mobile interfaces do strip out a lot of the header information and you have to look carefully to see where it’s being added.
I would never get as a sub-forum, I though that is more like a tag, and it was suggested by the form, and as I would expect this feature to appear in beta first, I decided to have it there. I moved this topic.
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Aren’t you a developer or involved in the development? Why not add at least a call which simple smartApps would call for a device to update it? This is ridiculous to force users to exclude and include devices, it will come back with another ID breaking all automations and settings one had.
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Have you considered that if the raw description is all 0’s it means the device is having issues communicating with the hub (interference, distance etc). It may be better to get to the root of the issue upfront than trying to mask it as it may lead to other issues down the line. Not saying it won’t be a useful to have a way to update the raw description but it may not solve all your problems.
Also for the platform to work correctly it associates the DTH’s based on the raw description, to you’ll anyways have to manually update your DTH assigned to the device if the information is missing.
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I was not complaining about missing raw description, I was complaining that it’s getting out of date.
DHT does not lock on full raw description value, rather on the manufacturer, device ID, i.e.
fingerprint mfr: “031E”, prod: “0001”, model: “0001”, deviceJoinName: “Inovelli Dimmer Red Series”
So updating the description won’t break anything. I’m not even sure that the hub parses this Description directly every time, I hope not. Because what if a developer will decide to update the firmware with another prod/model ID if firmware update causes a huge change in behaviour so he wants it to be handled with a different DHT? Moreover, the end-user won’t be able to identify updates properly, because nowhere in the UI, or api.smartthings.com fw version or IDs from zwave request is posted. The only way to get it is to find a way to execute a query with a third party controller and/or app.
To me an ability to update “Raw Description”, is essential, ideally to have this functionality on the web front-end or even in smart things app on the phone.
@Kianoosh_Karami, don’t you think that forcing people to exclude a device and add it back is too brutal? This disconnect\connect process breaks too much. Unless you can tell me how I can exclude a device and add it back with the same ID.
The zwave “replace” utility would do exactly this. However, although it was available through the classic app, it does not seem to be available in the new V3 app anymore. So I’m not sure what’s going on with that, it’s part of the protocol specification. 
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