Panel firmware update bricked my customer's system, do we roll back or ride it out?

Last Tuesday I updated a DSC panel to the newest firmware during a routine service call. Everything looked fine on the bench test, then I left and the keypad started showing a comm fault at 2 AM. Customer was not happy, called me at 6 AM. I had to go back and factory reset the whole thing, which wiped their zone labels and took an extra 45 minutes to reprogram. Now I'm wondering if I should've just left the old firmware alone or if I'm being too cautious by telling my crew to skip all updates for now. What do you all do when an update goes sideways? Do you stick with the fix or try the next update when it drops?

1 comments

1 Comment

blake43213d agoTop Commenter

Did you check if the new firmware changed the default comm settings on you? Tbh, I had a similar thing happen with a different brand and it turned out the update reset the baud rate to something the keypad hated. I just locked the old firmware file on the shop laptop and told the guys to load that until the next update, worked fine after that.