WTH does Home Assistant's ZHA not notify about Zigbee OTA (Over-The-Air) "update availability" and give users UI options to apply OTAU firmware updates per Zigbee device on demand?

While the ZHA integration already does support Zigbee OTA updates (activated via YAML only) when enabled it currently simply applies all available Zigbee OTA updates as soon as it finds any OTAU files are available, without any UI options for individual Zigbee devices.

So firstly, would it be possible for ZHA users to only get notifications about Zigbee OTA updates and have UI options to update per device?

Secondly, would it be possible for ZHA users to get UI options to just select which specific Zigbee devices they would like to OTA update?

Could ZHA integration and its UI frontend utilize Home Assistant’s new update entity type to notify about ZHA OTA updates availability?

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/update

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#updates

What does ZHA component + Home Assistant core and frontend UI developers think?

(I guess that if something like that was implemented then it could be reused for Z-Wave JS as well as possibly Matter/Thread in the future?).

Read news in Home Assistant 2022.4 release that introduced update as a brand new entity type which seams made for features like these?

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/04/06/release-20224/#introducing-update-entities

You can now upgrade your devices from inside of Home Assistant just as you would for Home Assistant Releases. You will also notice the number of updates pending in the sidebar by the indicator badge on your configuration cog icon. It’s now possible to read the release notes, skip or even install the upgrade to your device in one convenient place.

FYI, in related news Home Assistant’s Z-Wave (Z-Wave JS) developers exposed OTA updates for Z-Wave devices in UI from Home Assistant 2022.7 release, and they also created a new Firmware Update Service (web service with an API) to power semi-automatic firmware updates:

The firmware update service for Z-Wave JS

https://firmware.zwave-js.io

They talk more about it in this video and blog post:

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/07/06/release-20227/#update-z-wave-devices-directly-from-home-assistant

Z-Wave JS Firmware Update Service

This is the web service powering semi-automatic firmware updates in Z-Wave JS.

How it works

Firmware upgrades are defined in the files in the firmware directory. This information is parsed by the web service and used to respond to requests.

Z-Wave JS will query the web service on demand, providing the device identification of the device to be updated. If an update is available, the web service will respond with the necessary information to display to the user.

When desired, Z-Wave JS will download the update(s) from the provided URL, verify their integrity and install them

Update Z-Wave devices directly from Home Assistant

All software has bugs, including the software on your Z-Wave devices. But how to update those? Have no fear! As of today, we have a solution for this!

Thanks to the hard work and collaboration between @AlCalzone from Z-Wave JS and @raman325 from Home Assistant, you can now install updates on your Z-Wave devices directly from the Home Assistant interface!

Screenshot showing the new upload firmware item on the device page of a Z-Wave device page

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On the device page of your Z-Wave device, there is now a menu item allowing you to install Z-Wave firmware updates onto your device manually.

Get a software update for your Z-Wave device from the manufacturer, and start an update in Home Assistant, which allows you to upload the update file you got from the manufacturer. The rest is pure magic!

Screenshot showing the a Z-Wave device that has firmware installation in progress

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During update installation, you’ll be presented with the update’s progress.

It is that easy :muscle:

PS: They also made a tool is meant to help generate the integrity hash for that Z-Wave JS firmware update service:

https://github.com/zwave-js/firmware-integrity

Introducing update entities

Say “hi!” to a brand new entity type: update.

Update entities can tell you if an update is available for your device and service and, in some cases, allow you to install the update straight from Home Assistant!

And the beautiful thing is: They show up in your configuration Dashboard, just like a Home Assistant, Home Assistant OS, or add-on update. As a matter of fact, those are now update entities too!

Now updates are entities, other integrations can provide them too! For example, a WLED firmware update for your LED strip will show up and installs with a single click.

Screen recording showing a WLED firmware update can be installed with a clickA WLED firmware update can now be installed just like any other update.

These update entities can be provided by integrations and provide more information about the update, like: Version information, links to release notes, and the possibility to skip that specific version offered.

The blue number indicator on the configuration cog icon in your sidebar tells you how many updates are pending.

The Home Assistant Supervisor (providing Core, OS, and add-on updates), WLED, Pi-hole, and Synology DSM integrations have implemented these brand new update entities in this release.

And because they are all entities, it means you can automate with them. For example, you could send a notification when a new add-on update is available for installation.

The new Z-Wave JS Firmware Update Service (and update server) is now available in UI as of Home Assistant 2022.9 release:

Z-Wave Firmware updates now live

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In 2022.7, we added support for updating Z-Wave device firmware, but the catch was that you needed the firmware files from the manufacturer in order to complete the update. @AlCalzone wasn’t satisfied with this approach and began working on a better solution. That better solution is here with the introduction of the Z-Wave JS Firmware Update Service! For supported manufacturers, Z-Wave JS can now automatically detect, download, and install a firmware update if it is available for your device. This will be done the same way you are currently updating Home Assistant. You will see a notification in your settings menu and you can update right from there. Thanks @raman325

For now, only Jasco products are supported. Nabu Casa has been talking to other manufacturers to get more devices supported. To ensure our users can take advantage of this feature, we added update entities for your devices that will check once a day for new firmware updates. Nifty!