Homeseer Z-flash with smartthings and S2 devices

Devices & Integrations
1

Since Smartthings still doesn’t support OTA updates for Zwave, if you want to upgrade firmware on your devices, you need another option…right? Please tell me otherwise… anyway…

On top of this, so far I haven’t been able to update S2 devices connecting my zwave stick as a secondary controller using Silicon Labs PC Controller software.

I think the issue is that the S2 devices connect as “s2_failed” in smart things and the pc controller software gets a bit confused. If I leave the zwave stick (it’s the S2 ZSt10 from the smartest house) on its own, the S2 devices connect as S2 unauthenticated and firmware will update fine. But it hangs as the secondary.

So…all that being said…does anyone know if the Homeseer Z-flash software will work in this scenario or will it also get confused? Or failing that, how to get the pc controller software to work?

2

It works. I’ve used it to update firmware on my ZebraBlinds roller shades.

1 Like
3

Are those s2 devices?

4

They’re standard ZW+ devices - i misread your question as does the HomeSeer ZFlash work - not does it work with S2 enabled devices. Which device are you trying to flash, specifically?

5

I have some Zooz s2 switches and not able to update the firmware unless I take them out of smartthings. The issue seems to be the security.

6

I believe SmartThings is working on adding support for S2 but I haven’t heard anything on that in a few months

7

That’s been in the works for almost a year I think. :slight_smile: I only bring it up because I think it prevents the OTA update from working via a secondary controller.

8

I have had some success updating Zooz ZEN26 and ZEN27 devices using the Zooz S2 stick and the PC Controller software (not Homeseer Z-flash).

I was able to do most devices with the stick as secondary to SmartThings V2 hub. At the time I was doing this, Zooz provided detailed instructions for updating using the stick as its own primary controller or as secondary to SmartThings. I just checked their KB entry and the instructions for updating when secondary are gone.

I did have issues with two out of seven ZEN26 switches. Those failed to reconnect to Z-wave after updating and had to be reset to get back online.

I had no issues that seemed to be related to S2 security.

9

Very interesting! I only suggested zflash because of the issues with pc controller. Connected direct, they update fine. Not so much as secondary.

10

Several months ago I purchased the Zooz stick and Homeseer Z-flash to update my Leviton devices.

I wasn’t able to use Z-flash for that, in secondary mode it wasn’t reliably seeing the Levitons. Now it’s possible that was caused by the firmware issue I was correcting by updating them.

Next firmware update I did was to bring some Zooz devices from 1.x firmware to 2.x version. Zooz didn’t provide instructions for using the PC Controller software as secondary so I did it the hard way.

Last month I was updating the ZEN26 switches to fix an issue with them always turning on after power loss. Had the mixed results I mentioned.

Zooz support suggested I not use secondary controller method as they had seen mixed results.

But I had no issues with the PC Controller software extracting my entire list of Z-wave devices from the SmartThings hub.

Looking over my notes in my Zooz case, I see I did have an issue getting PC Controller to enable update. Here’s what I wrote to Zooz support:

In Step 7, I was unable to get the device to be updated “checked” under the QO column heading on the Network Management page. This, in turn, meant that the GET button was not enabled when I changed to the OTA Update page

The method I found that worked was to highlight the device to update on the Network Management page, click on the Node Info button, then click to the OTA Firmware Update button. That sequence caused the GET button to be enabled and I could continue with Step 8 and complete the update