I had added some new wireless devices to an existing system after extracting the programming and the new devices were all fine, but some (6 total) existing devices, all shades were giving a "update of device failed" error, but were still working. I called tech support at that time and was told to not really worry about it. I don't remember their exact explanation but from I understood, the programming in the devices didn't need changing so it wasn't updated but was giving the error. It was working so I let it go. I had to make a few more changes and transferred and didn't get any other errors so I thought that was that.
I was notified however that one shade in particular was not responding. It was one of the 6 devices mentioned above with the error. My theory was that during the upload, I had moved the repeater closest to it a little further away so maybe something went wrong during the upload and all it would take to fix it would be to just re-transfer. That did not work and the repeater is only about 20 feet away. My next attempt was to perform a factory reset of the shade (tap tap tap hold tap tap tap), deactivate the device in the software, add it, and then do a transfer. Then things got REALLY weird.
When you try to activate shades, you have two options: press and hold the button on the shade, or do it from the PC where any non-activated shades in the area shiver. Being lazy, I tried the shiver method but it said it couldn't find any non-activated devices. Little weird but no problem, I press and held the shade button, heard the pleasant beep, but on the software it had highlighted another already activated shade in a completely different area red telling me that it heard a devices that was already activated. I believe it was also one of the ones that had gotten the "update of device failed" errors. but was working.
This wasn't a project I had started so I thought the previous installer had made a mistake or someone had taken the shade out and put it back in the wrong place so I factory defaulted that one and deactivated it and was going to activate both of them in the correct spot. Easy, right? This time, when I tried to activate the 2nd shade, it AGAIN gave me a notice that it was hearing a 3RD shade! I was playing whack-a-mole. I also believe that was one of the ones that had gotten the "update of device failed" errors. So I took a deep breath, deactivated and factory reset that one, and was going to activate the 3 shades and then transfer. To my relief, this time, all 3 were activated correctly in the right spot and all it would take to fix it was to do a transfer. But no, it wouldn't be that easy.
During the transfer the 2nd shade in the story, and ironically the one that was only 6 feet away from the repeater was now giving a "cannot communicate with device" error. I tried transferring failed devices, doing complete transfers and nothing. It just would not "stick" to that shade. Oddly enough, the "Update of Device Failed" errors were down to 2 from 6 even though I had only messed with 3 devices. I tried calling tech support but gave up after 15 minutes on hold (wait times have been really long lately) so I tried replacing the batteries in the shade even though it was working just fine before, factory reset again, and transferred again and still got the error. I attempted to do a diagnostics, but the software crashed in the middle so I restarted my laptop and when I attempted to transfer the database, IT WORKED!
I charge by the hour so now that it was working and everything else was working, I was satisfied to leave it alone for now, but I will be doing more things in this house later so I want to get rid of the other two "harmless" Update of Device Failed errors and am curious what happened with the whack-a-mole of trying to activate one shade when the system hears another shade. This particular system has version 12.4 on it. Would updating it to 15.x fix the issue? I spoke with tech support later when I got through and they said it very well might and recommended I update. I would have updated it but this was kind of a sensitive situation and I wasn't familiar with other things that may be integrated so I didn't want to break anything but now I'm confident there is no issues with doing an update. Was this a known bug?