Shelly Wave Door/Window firmware update times out or bricks the device

[nifoc]

Back in December, I started a thread over on the Shelly forums regarding Wave Door/Window sensor firmware updates always timing out. You can find the entire thread here.

What I ran into was the following:

...
2026-01-11 20:31:21.301 CNTRLR » [Node 035] Sending firmware fragment 1506 / 9963
2026-01-11 20:31:21.494 CNTRLR » [Node 035] Sending firmware fragment 1507 / 9963
2026-01-11 20:31:22.175 CNTRLR « [Node 035] received S2 nonce without an active transaction, not sure what to d
2026-01-11 20:31:29.642 CNTRLR » [Node 035] Sending firmware fragment 1508 / 9963
2026-01-11 20:31:33.960 CNTRLR   [Node 035] Timed out while waiting for a response from the node (ZW0201)
2026-01-11 20:31:33.962 CNTRLR » [Node 035] Sending firmware fragment 1509 / 9963
2026-01-11 20:31:44.158 CNTRLR   [Node 035] The node did not respond after 3 attempts. It is probably asleep, m
2026-01-11 20:31:44.160 CNTRLR   [Node 035] The node is now asleep.
2026-01-11 20:31:44.164 INFO Z-WAVE: [Node 035] Is now asleep
...

After trying to update the firmware I-don't-know-how-often it finally succeeded, but all that did in the end was to brick the device:

2026-01-12 20:43:56.920 CNTRLR   Received Smart Start inclusion request (Z-Wave Long Range)
2026-01-12 20:43:56.923 CNTRLR   NWI Home ID not found in provisioning list, ignoring request...
2026-01-12 20:43:56.928 CNTRLR   Received Smart Start inclusion request (Z-Wave Long Range)
2026-01-12 20:43:56.931 CNTRLR   NWI Home ID not found in provisioning list, ignoring request...
2026-01-12 20:44:02.981 CNTRLR   Received Smart Start inclusion request
2026-01-12 20:44:02.983 CNTRLR   NWI Home ID found in provisioning list, including node...
2026-01-12 20:44:02.985 CNTRLR   Leaving Smart Start listening mode...
2026-01-12 20:44:02.993 CNTRLR   Left Smart Start listening mode
2026-01-12 20:44:02.995 CNTRLR   Including SmartStart node with DSK XXX
2026-01-12 20:44:03.006 INFO Z-WAVE: Controller status: Secure inclusion started
2026-01-12 20:44:03.126 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.204 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.223 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.262 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.279 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.346 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.392 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.410 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.456 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.493 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.513 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.557 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.602 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.622 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:03.793 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:04.231 CNTRLR   [Node 000] is unknown - discarding received command...
2026-01-12 20:44:07.637 CNTRLR   Adding the node failed

---

2026-01-12 20:50:03.283 CNTRLR   Received Smart Start inclusion request
2026-01-12 20:50:03.287 CNTRLR   NWI Home ID found in provisioning list, including node...
2026-01-12 20:50:03.289 CNTRLR   Leaving Smart Start listening mode...
2026-01-12 20:50:03.298 CNTRLR   Left Smart Start listening mode
2026-01-12 20:50:03.304 CNTRLR   Including SmartStart node with DSK XXX
2026-01-12 20:50:03.314 INFO Z-WAVE: Controller status: Secure inclusion started
2026-01-12 20:50:06.702 DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2026-01-12 20:50:07.921 CNTRLR   Adding the node failed
2026-01-12 20:50:07.922 INFO Z-WAVE: Controller status: Inclusion failed

(This was after a forced exclusion, because it was spamming the entire network and making it unstable.)

Multiple other users have run into the same problem(s).

After some back and forth, the official Shelly account eventually responded with the following (source):

We have identified that this issue only happens when the device is included with S2 security in Home Assistant.
What We Tested

We tested the device using PC Controller with:

• Normal (non-secure) inclusion

• Secure S2 inclusion
  → No issues were found in either case.

In Home Assistant using Z-Wave JS:

• Firmware updates work without security

• Firmware updates time out when S2 security is enabled

Temporary Workaround

Until this is fixed in Z-Wave JS, we recommend:

• Including the device without S2 security

This allows the firmware update to complete successfully.

We will also share our findings with the Z-Wave JS development team so they can investigate and address the issue.

(Based on the formatting of the original post, it was probably written by AI)

Disabling S2 doesn't really fix the issue (see other posts in the same thread), but what I want to point out is that they seem to say this comes down to an issue in Z-Wave JS.

I have asked them multiple times if they have actually reported their findings, but I never received any response. So I'm opening this discussion to raise awareness.

[robertsLando]

cc @AlCalzone

[AlCalzone]

@QubinoHelp do you have any insights about this you could share?

[QubinoHelp]

@nifoc Well the Ai only format my test results which leave me more time doing more important tasks than formatting ;)
We still do not have an AI tool that would test issue like this for us :)

As mentioned in the Forum post today we were very busy to port all of our firmware to the SDK that we found is more stable that the ones before that.

@AlCalzone The first tests, which I usually do when I get a ticket is resumed in the forum post. Where I mention that the OTA update with the PC controller with the same OTA file works well.
We will need to do more testing in verify where is the issue. But we were busy porting the firmware for all of our devices on the newer SDK.
Apart from that we do notice some issues when we use our battery powered devices with the ZWA-2. We will need to do more tests also for that.

I do not have much more insight as more tests were not done for the mentioned priority tasks we have over last few months, we are starting checking this issues in the upcoming weeks.

[AlCalzone]

Happy to help investigate if you manage to capture Zniffer traces or serial logs of a working and a problematic OTA process.