ISY994 to eISY migration with ~100 zwave devices

[heardc]

After 10 years with the ISY994, I decided to get the eISY and give it a shot. Had multiple hardwired computers spread out on the table, printed my migration instructions, fully rested with 8 hours available to do the work. Assumed that 15 battery devices would require Syncing,  and was hopeful that the new unit would recognize the other 100 wired devices. I made one critical mistake which bricked my eISY. I clicked the “upgrade packages” button not knowing that this was actually a big firmware update from the stable 5.8.4 to 5.9.1. Apparently 5.9.1 doesn’t allow for migration with zwave for some reason and if I was made aware that upgrade packages meant a massive re-wiring of the firmware, I would have declined the offer.

After Restoring IoX from the ISY994 backup, every zwave device is disabled with a red circle/slash. After enabling a device, syncing fails for all of them. The eISY is back in the box and I have submitted a ticket. Apparently I am not alone. 

Do not “upgrade packages” before doing a zwave migration!

Edited January 30 by heardc
More accuracy.

[Geddy]

19 minutes ago, heardc said:

Do not “upgrade packages” before doing a zwave migration!

Thanks for the warning. Hopefully there's a "fix" in the works for this. With your ticket are you just sending the eisy back or are they helping sort things out to get it operational and able to setup Z-wave again?

[larryllix]

I thought you were going to give the old humour thing. I couldn't get my lights back on to fix the problem and now I am burning the midnight oil using a flashlight that is getting dimmer.

Another analogous one is MS telling you to go to www.fixYou2.com for help with your ethernet card that has crapped out.

Now to return to our regularly scheduled program.

Hope you get that eISY running again. I have two polisys, and they are good machines.

[heardc]

No offer has been made by UD to send the unit back.  I’m stuck with it and am praying that UD figures it out with new firmware. Not being able to roll back to a previous firmware is pretty bad. Peplink routers are spectacular for this single reason. In the meantime I will be turning a Lenovo Tiny PC into a Home Assistant box for at least an NVR and at most, a replacement to my dead eISY. 

[paulbates]

Did you specifically state you'd like a return/replacement?

[heardc]

I did not ask and will do that. 

[larryllix]

13 hours ago, heardc said:

I did not ask and will do that. 

Put in a ticket and I am sure somebody will be able to help you to fix your problem. UDI is excellent for service, and empathy towards their customers.

[heardc]

Update on this:  I heard back from Tech Support to Update Packages, did that, firmware stayed at 5.9.1.  Got much further in the process, but still all wired devices disabled and non functional.  Battery devices stuck in a never ending Network Heal / Finding neighbours loop that I had to kill after 6 hours of no progress.   Why try to find neighbors of battery devices if they are likely asleep?  Each device has 4minutes allocated to find neighbors, I tried waking them up after seeing status to that effect, still didn't help.

[heardc]

Has anyone tried using Aeotec or similar USB Zwave stick in the eISY instead of the $120 combination dongle that I purchased?  I’m starting to wonder if that thing is totally incompatible with my 10 yr old zwave network comprised of mostly 300 and 500 series devices. 

[Techman]

The UD Zwave dongle is backwards compatible. The downside of using a 3rd party zwave controller is you probably won't be able to back up your Zwave network.

The UD dongle is zwave certified. If your zwave devices are zwave certified then they should be compatible.