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SmartThings Device Firmware Update - Secondary Controller Method

Samsung SmartThings
#1

I’ve written a tutorial on how to use a USB Z-Wave device as a secondary controller in your SmartThings network to update the firmware of a device. This makes it so you can update the firmware without excluding the device from your network first.

One thing to note when doing an update in place like this is that if new configuration parameters are introduced in the firmware, they may have an unexpected value after the update is complete. It is a good idea to go into the device preferences and set these configuration options to their desired settings to make sure they are set to what you want.

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#2
#3

This would have been so helpful when I did this the first time! Great KB article.

Few recommendations:

  1. For the fan/light, you will want to update the parent, not the two sub-devices (hesitate to call them children).

  2. For the dimmers with 2 Targets you should specify how to handle that AND that there needs to be a 30s break between the first and second updates. I’ve consistently found that the second update (bin) doesn’t work if I start it before I regain physical control of the switch after the first target is updated.

Great work!

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#4

Better late than never! LOL.

Thanks for the feedback. I will add some more information as suggested.

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#5

While this is my preferred method of doing the upgrades, I have found that I still have to exclude/include in Smartthings to get scenes working again. Also the updates don’t seem to appear in IDE until exclude include is done.

#6

I’m not sure what you mean by updates, but make sure you set any new configuration parameters after you do the update as mentioned in the first post. Specifically if you don’t set the “instant on” parameter to disabled then you will lose most of the scenes.

#7

Sorry, I was referring to the firmware upgrade. I did set the parameters after flashing, but scenes just wouldn’t work until after exclude/include. Like I said IDE didn’t show any changes until I did an exclude/include. BTW, it’s a real shame the classic app is going away, the device handler is fantastic there.

#8

I have tried this process 3 times and 2 of the times I get the PIN from the PC Controller as expected but the Smartthings app never goes to the QR screen so I can click on Manuel setup. Is there something else I am missing? The first time it just completed without bringing up the pin screen. Last two times it gives me a retry option in Smartthings app, not the QR screen.