[quote=“CoolHome666, post:1, topic:261005”]
Q- did the device itself send that info to the hub, ie. i am a visonic sensor or does the hub have to go to the cloud to look it up ?[\quote]
The device sends it to the hub at the time that it joins the network.
Q - when i select ‘driver’ in the App (the 3 dots upper right), i see name=zigbee contact and devloper=smartthings . where did this info come from? are some devices just treated as generic sensors by ST and thus maybe not taking advantage of all the features a specific device might have
That information comes from the edge driver. There was a match on the fingerprint that the device presented at the time it joined. The system will look first for a custom edge driver that matches the fingerprint, and if it doesn’t, then it will choose a stock driver that matches the fingerprint, and if there isn’t one of those, it will choose based on capabilities. And if none of those work, then it will just add it as a “thing.“
Q: when I select ‘info’ in the App. I see a firmware version and a controller version… are these the versions of the h/w in the sensor device? does that imply that the sensors firmware can be upgraded?
Yes, it can be upgraded, but maybe not from smartthings. Some devices can only be updated by a specific hub, typically of their own brand. Others could be upgraded by a different hub, but only if that hub gets a copy of the update file, and those aren’t always available.
You used to be able to do “OTA“ (over the air“), Updates for Zigbee Devices with the old architecture, but not Z wave devices. However, that feature is not currently available on the new architecture. There are a couple of forum threads discussing all of this, if you want them all find them later.
this raises the question that can older zigbee devices be upgraded to support thread since both standards use 2.4G radios?
Some can, some can’t, it always requires an update file from the original manufacturer. Much industry discussion on this now but most companies are finding that they cannot update legacy Zigbee devices and so they are coming out with new thread models instead. Or, like Philips hue, they have a bridge device, and they are updating that to bridge the existing zigbee devices into a matter Network that includes thread devices.
So put it all together and it’s not very likely that this will happen for anything you already own.