Does HA support Z-Wave Stick upgrade?
No, not yet. Z-Wave JS UI is working on adding it. Support in the driver itself was added yesterday. You can upgrade via external methods in Linux or Windows.
What freshcoast said. A little additional info; you can update pretty easily in windows using PC Controller 5.
did this in the past upgrading to 7.17 Any benefits upgrading to 7.18 ?
Looks like its fixed some issues with exclusion. I’ve noticed that the stick would sometimes become unresponsive when excluding a device. I’ve excluded 2 things since updating and have not had that happen. That may be related to this update or I could have just been lucky both times.
At a high level, I’ve noticed no other differences (if the one above even counts).
The release notes link from this site is dead.
The link you need is: https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/release-notes/SRN14889-7.18.3.0.pdf
But I’ll save you the trouble, the release notes should just say, “ZWave is not a completely reliable technology for home automation, don’t buy it.”
@daphatty summed it all up pretty well at the end of this thread: Automate ZwaveJS Ping Dead Nodes?
Whoa, cool! Great to have this built in!
@ImNotSpam - Wait! Don’t use it yet. I just bricked my Aeotec S7 trying it out. Still trying to recover from it!
I’m sorry to hear that! So, I don’t have much of a need for it. A couple of days ago, I reverted from the zstick 7 to my old nortek dual zigbee / zwave stick. I didnt have a terrible experience with the zstick 7, but there were random disconnects. Haven’t experienced any problems since going back to Nortek. I may go back to the zstick at some point, but I’m pretty content for now. As a side note, if anyone wants to do this, zwavejs did everything. It did the NVM backup, conversion, and restore to the nortek stick. It was flawless. (You do have to update the nortek firmware though.)
Edit: Did you get 7.19.0 from the SDK? The latest version of firmware I see on the aeotec site is 7.18.1. Does aeotec do anything special with the SDK version before hosting it on their site?
@ImNotSpam - My stick is either completely dead or stuck in some bootloader only limbo. I ordered a new s7 but also ordered a Zooz 800 series controller. I am not sure which one I will go with but the 800 series is tempting as I can use this snafu to migrate to a newer platform. Luckily I did an NVM backup just before tempting my fate so I am hoping I can simply restore the NVM to the new s7 and be back up. I am assuming I cannot just restore the NVM to the Zooz 800 series controller as it is different hardware, or am I wrong? You speak about a “conversion”… what did not entail?
A Pre-GA 7.19.0 firmware is available and I was curious to see if it would help with nodes coming and going which started recently. Supposedly I was on firmware that had already sorted that out so the two may be unrelated. Anyhow, I made it worse 
This github discussion thread has lots of info on the firmware files for s7 and Zooz sticks. I got mine from SiLabs github page and it matched the one that Aeotec offers on their site (BRD4206A).
@aruffell I did a ton of googling, so I can’t remember the specifics, but there was a script that could be run that would convert the NVM backup of a 700 series to work on a 500 series. Sometime in the recent past, zwave-js was updated to include this functionality. I did a backup of my S7 stick. Swapped sticks and relaunched zwave-js. I did a restore on the old stick and when I selected the S7 backup, the status bar at the top right said converting. After the restore happened, everything worked perfectly. Even all of the S2 authenticated devices. The only precautions I took was a full backup of home assistant (in case any device names changed) and I turned off the web socket in zwave-js to prevent any communication while switching sticks.
Good call. I forgot to do it and I wonder whether my busy network is what caused it to fail (I believe I saw a timeout error before the melt down).
Yup I recall reading about this now. I wonder what the deal is going from 700 to 800
Would you consider a 500 series stick? I’m no expert, but from what I can gather, they might be the most reliable option right now.
Also, when updating the firmware on my old nortek stick, I had to pry open the case and solder a wire to a pad to do a ground reset. This allowed programming. Maybe there is some low level thing like this that you can do to resurrect your S7 stick. Keep in mind that I have no idea what I’m talking about. 
I love to live on the bleeding edge, and often pay the price for it… but in this case the benefits of the 800 series chip are attractive as they may help with my busy network. Some may argue that those benefits are only achievable with 800 series nodes (is that the case?) but given I am ready to replace most of my 500 series switches/dimmers/outlets, the new ones will either be 800 series or thread but more likely a mix as I want to keep a strong backbone for both zwave and zigbee/thread.
Edit:
@ImNotSpam - I had a series 700 Zooz stick I was not using… I backed it up using Zwave PC Controller and also Zwave JS UI. I then restored the Zwave JS UI backup I took this morning on the s7 to the Zooz stick with no further steps… and I am back up. Aeotec s7 is still dead, but at least my house isn’t.
In the next few days I will look into moving to the Zooz 800 and send the new s7 back to amazon if that works out.
Glad you’re back up and running. I have zwave-js installed on a raspi located in the middle of my house. I keep screwing around with docker to do different things, occasionally boning my network. Sucks when its down. You forget about how much stuff you have automated…
Lol, true, that is why I could not resist doing something to get back in working order. Last time it happened I had to use command line tools to migrate… it is so much easier now!
I jokingly say that my kids forgot what does funny looking switches are on the wall and that when systems are down I must remind them they can still press them especially now that they can reach them…
NVM restore doesn’t work on the 800 yet, FYI.
Thank you for letting me know! Hopefully it will some time soon 