Thank you for your feedback and for your patience throughout the troubleshooting process.
We completely understand your frustration and agree that the setup process should have been smoother. Based on the troubleshooting completed, the issue appeared to be related to the older firmware version and incomplete Z-Wave interview process rather than a hardware fault.
We’re very pleased to hear that everything is now working correctly in the end, including:
successful firmware updates,
stable device operation,
proper Home Assistant integration,
and resolution of the phantom entity issues after the final restart and re-interview process.
As this was a fairly advanced technical issue involving staged firmware upgrades, Z-Wave JS re-interviews, entity cleanup, and Home Assistant troubleshooting, the additional steps performed were necessary to properly resolve the issue and avoid incomplete migrations from the older firmware version.
We truly appreciate your patience while working through the advanced diagnostics with us, and we’re glad we could help get the devices functioning correctly again.