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 
@PX80 Thanks to the awesome team behind Zwave-JS, there is now a tool to recover from a zwave coordinator stuck in bootloader mode. The s7 stick has been recovered using this:
what caused the ‘bricked’ s7 Stick? Did you uplaod the wrong Firmware?
@PX80 No, the firmware file is the same one I used to recover it… I recall getting a timeout and at that point it was stuck in bootloader mode. I am not sure what caused it but in past updates I would move the zwave controller to my PC so I could update it using Zwave PC Controller 5 which would stop HA from flooding it… this time I was doing it within HA and I had not disabled the websocket so HA may have been flooding the controller with commands while it was updating? This would be a good question for the devs… I asked it here:
Thanks. As per issue it seems there was a API request before/while doing the Upgrade causing the failure!? I will wait until new info comes up.
@PX80 Issue was fixed so it should be in the next Zwave-JS UI release for HA. Anyhow before I use it again I might let others be the brave ones this time I have to say that AlCalzone was stellar in fixing my issue, finding the bug, and fixing Zwave JS in no time at all!
@aruffell Came here just to say you saved my ass, had the same issue and the github steps to fix it using the flasher brought it right back. Thanks for being the guinea pig on this one!
@Nixon506E Lol, and I did it AGAIN! I tried to update my Zooz 700 stick from 7.18.1 to 7.18.3 and got it stuck in bootloader mode. Luckily the previous fix I linked above, fixed this one too… but I lost a lot of entity naming and a few zwave devices are not working right now…
I was on 7.18.1 and just updated to 7.19.1 GA version in a hope to improve the dying nodes problem.
The guy from the Aeotec help desk explained me the Aeotec website is not listing the 7.19.1 firmware version because it apparently switch the stick from US to EU frequency automatically. You need to set back to US frequency (for US users) with PC Controller 5 after updating to 7.19.1. He also said that some users are reporting better stability with 7.19.1, with 1 user repoting worse results…
The update went fine, I’m now waiting to see if there is any stability improvement.
Hi Alain Raymond,
Attached is firmware 7.19.1, just note, when you update, this will automatically change your Z-Wave Frequency to EU Frequency.
If you are using EU Frequency you don’t have to do much more after updating.
If you are using US Frequency you will need to change the Z-Wave Frequency back from EU to US Frequency.
I currently don’t have this firmware version available due to this potential issue where in some cases some users would not be able to access the frequency change function since it is embedded into PC Controller 5.
If you have access to PC Controller 5, you would have no issues being able to swap z-wave frequencies
Hi Alain Raymond,
Page 7 (2.3 section) shows all of the fixed issues, and the following section afterwards shows all of the known issues that may still apply to some issues: https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/release-notes/SRN14910-7.19.1.0.pdf
I have been told by some users who have used the firmware update was able to determine that there was an improvement from 7.18.1 to 7.19.1, while i have received 1 report that it is less stable. May depend on the number of devices you have and what devices are setup.
There are still some issues with S2 sync and looping issues that can cause some destabilization which i would recommend waiting for later 7.19.X firmware versions if you have a lot of devices on S2 security.
@Alain_Raymond I’ve been following a thread on Github about this so I will avoid 7.19 and 7.19.1 for now. If you are using Z-Wave JS UI (not the default HA one) then you should be able to set the US frequency in the controller settings as shown here (so there should be no need for Simplicity Studio which includes the Zwave PC Controller software):
I think I will try 7.19.x once it gets to .2 or .3
I dont know if its because of the firmware update, but I do not have the RF Region drop down list on my side in ZwaveJS UI, Can’t tell you if it was there before. Could you give me the link to tat github thread if you dont mind? Never mind, found it above.
Thanks
Not sure if you figured it out from the GitHub thread, but if not, yes, the region is unavailable to set (with Z-Wave JS) because of the firmware update. With 7.19.1 you need Z-Wave JS 10.10.0, which is not yet available with the ZUI add-on.
Where can I download 7.19.1 and is it possible Update over homeassistant directly ?
I would not update to 7.19.1 based on the experiences so far. No vendor is recommending it yet.
No, you cannot upgrade the firmware directly from HA, yet.
Better to use simplicity studio with pc controller 5 to update. You’ll also need to set back the region to US after updating (if you are using the US frequency). It is now possible to change regions from zwavejs-ui since the recent update to zsj 10.10.0 but it can also easily be done from pc controller 5 just after updating the firmware.
I noticed no stability improvement from 7.18.1 to 7.19.1, I’m still having some ramdom nodes dying. I dont know if the recent update of zwave-js ui will help, I updated yersterday only.
I can send you the firmware file if you still want to try it, but imo its a waste of time. I think the best solution for now is an automation to ping the dead nodes to revive them or to go back to a 500 series controller.
Anyone knows if the 800 series controllers worth upgrading or if they are not stable yet?
