Temp/Humidity Sensor: Bad Response / "Bricked" after Configuration Attempt

Hardware
1

Hello NCD Team,

We have an issue with a brand new Wireless Temperature and Humidity (https://store.ncd.io/product/iot-temperature-humidity-sensor/) sensor that was delivered this week.

We attempted to configure the new sensor (Change the delay to 300 s), but it is now completely unresponsive. Here is the chronological order of events:

  1. Node-RED Configuration Failure:
  • We attempted to configure the sensor using the NCD Enterprise Palette (which is fully up to date).
  • We repeatedly received a “Bad Response” error during the configuration attempts.
  • We tried troubleshooting by power cycling the device, swapping batteries, adjusting the distance to the gateway, and toggling “Wait for Network Formation.” We attempted this 6-8 times with no success.
  1. Alpha Station Failure:
  • To diagnose the issue, we connected via Alpha Station.
  • Initially, Alpha Station was able to read the sensor.
  • We sent a standard configuration packet to the device via Alpha Station.
  • Immediately after sending this packet, the sensor stopped responding entirely.

Current Status: The sensor is now undetectable in both Alpha Station and Node-RED. When powered on, the LED still illuminates, and we have verified the unit has fresh batteries, but it will not communicate.

Is there a hard factory reset procedure for this state, or does this indicate a defective unit that requires an RMA? WE have yet to try and factory reset by Pressing R and then CFG for 15 seconds (I think this is possible), but not sure if this works for these sensors.

Let us know, esepcially about the Bad Response in Node Red.

Thanks,

2

Hi @tulanowski Perhaps during your Alpha Station testing or configuration, you set a different Network ID, resulting in a miscommunication, especially since you had communication with the sensor before this.

Yes, a Factory Reset will set all the settings to default (including the Network ID). Could you please try the complete reset process again?

  1. Press and release the RESET button.
  2. Immediately press and hold the CONFIGURATION button.
  3. Hold the CONFIGURATION button for about 20 seconds.
  4. Release the CONFIGURATION button.
  5. Wait for 3 seconds.
  6. Press and release the RESET button.

Regarding the “Bad Response,” this typically indicates that the sensor firmware does not support the setting or that the command is incorrect, but this is an old and well-tested setting. Do you happen to have a second Temperature/Humidity sensor to test with?

Thanks,
Eduardo M

3

Hey @Eduardo_Mtz , Thanks for this. Here is an update:

  • we performed a Factory Reset Successfully. great!
  • We tried configuring it again - still got a bad response
  • we had an extra identical unit on hand from purchase 6 months ago - we were able to configure it on the first try, no issues. Exact settings as the first one.

Here is some information showing node red packets:

SUCCESSFUL CONFIGURATION (SENSOR PURCHASED 6 MONTHS AGO)

image
image604×446 54.9 KB

BAD RESPONSE:

image
image582×556 67 KB

BAD RESPONSE SENSOR SHOWING NORMAL PACKET WHEN PRESSING R

image
image624×1304 144 KB

{“topic”:“sensor_data”,“payload”:{“nodeId”:0,“firmware”:10,“battery”:“3.29”,“battery_percent”:“99.64”,“counter”:1,“sensor_type”:1,“sensor_data”:{“humidity”:31.07,“temperature”:14.43},“sensor_name”:“Temperature/Humidity”,“type”:“sensor_data”,“addr”:“00:13:a2:00:42:3c:5a:ac”,“received”:1765518445169,“original”:{“mac”:“00:13:a2:00:42:3c:5a:ac”,“receive_options”:{“ack”:0,“broadcast”:0,“type”:“”},“data”:[127,0,10,3,255,1,0,1,0,12,35,5,163],“rssi”:{},“type”:“receive_packet”},“rssi”:40},“time”:1765518445173,“_msgid”:“d1f891c6e4f28398”}

What should we do? Send it back?

4

@Jacob Could you take a look as well?

5

Hi All, any updates? Thank you.

6

Hi,

Apologies for the delay, looks like I missed this tag.

Unfortunately it appears that this is a bug on the firmware of that sensor for this command. The sensor command goes through in my testing its just erroneously reporting a bad acknowledgement.

7

Thank you @jacob . OK, given this, what do we do to resolve it.

Can we update the firmware ourselves, rather than sending this back? If so, we would need instructions to do so, including any hardware we need.

If we cannot update/fix this ourselves, I guess we will have to RMA, correct?

Thank you!