A call for advanced zwave logging

[Guest jrkalf]

Dear Developers!

since I've bought the HC2 solution and some zwave.me wall controllers I had inexplicable errors trying to configure the devices properly.

It was until recently when I "hacked" the HC2 box to gain root access, I was able to solve the issue. By opening up the "screened" zwave process I was able to look under the hood to what actually was going on, on the zwave network.

I saw a lot of transmit errors and reconfiguration errors which caused a lot of transmit delays and my zwave network was going berserk! This has costed me 3 pairs of AAAA batteries on the devices already because the zwave network was literally draining the life out of the wall controllers trying to configure them properly.

With some testing I found out it was the angle at which the antenna of the HC2 was set that caused a weak spot in the coverage of my house and the proper communications with the controllers.

I was only able to recognise this by monitoring the output of this screened z-wave process which should have been logged to a file which is viewable in the web-interface for debugging purposes!

Because I was finally able to recognise this, I deleted my wall controllers from the network and set them up properly again under a right angle of antenna and have proper communications.

It seems that setting up the zwave.me devices isn't hard at all and doesn't require a lot of waking up the devices. It's all about feedback and knowing WHEN to wake up the device and start receiving the information.

If you need help setting this up "under the hood" of the device, I won't mind helping. I want a perfectly working device.

please provide us with the essential tooling for, besides having an easily usable device, a powerful device.

[ Added: 2013-02-26, 12:18 ]

Link to Fibaro Bugtracker:

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and

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[rvorsten 0]

- deleted -

[Guest MitchellOnline]

@jrkalf you know the root-password or did you reset the root password?

[Guest jrkalf]

@jrkalf you know the root-password or did you reset the root password?

I reset the password. I will not post the procedure here in public. Fibaro has the box closed down for obvious reason. One of them being people deleting the linux filesystem by issueing the wrong commands. We can't have that now do we?

Root access is a powerful thing, everybody should be able to gain root acces, but do remember you'll probably void any support from Fibaro as you've had the ability to alter the system in such a way it can't officially be supported.

Hence my request not to hand out root access, but hand out a better logging in the webinterface so root access won't be required.

[Shad 4]

Hence my request not to hand out root access, but hand out a better logging in the webinterface so root access won't be required.

I agree with you, It is the first time for me I have buy something where I don't have the access. I don't ask for the moment to have root access, but have a better access on webinterface would be great.

Sometimes user can find solution for problems and help the community.

[Guest jrkalf]

A official respons from fibaro would be nice....

[rvorsten 0]

Indeed! It's too bad, isn't it? HC2 is a product with great potential, but it faces still many challenges.

One thing that I find Fibaro particularly bad at is communication. They should have one person full time scanning this forum, capturing inputs, suggestions, complaints even, provide feedback and all. All this stuff won't go away by ignoring it. It only becomes bigger in the minds of the users ("why do they not respond? It's probably sensitive. Oooeeehhhh....").

I am getting pretty decent responses from [email protected] these days, but here, at the "official" forum, unfortunately I see many complaints by users, hardly and responses by Fibaro and of the few response they write, many are promises that are not kept. That's even worse than not responding at all!

I appreciate that they apre probably very busy improving the product (and they should, as a matter of priority!). I also picked up that they are significantly increasing the staff in Poland (which is good too). Hopefully, one of those folks will understand that it is us - their customers - who can eventually make or break the success of the product.

I'm forcing myself to be patient and constructive for now. Share my findings and ideas here when possible. Provide feedback to my supplier (who is quite actively communicating with Fibaro). For there, I can only hope that a lightbulb goes on, somewhere, soon...

[K.Bergmann 2]

Hi,

One thing that I find Fibaro particularly bad at is communication. They should have one person full time scanning this forum, capturing inputs, suggestions, complaints even, provide feedback and all. All this stuff won't go away by ignoring it. It only becomes bigger in the minds of the users ("why do they not respond? It's probably sensitive. Oooeeehhhh....").

Thank you for your concern, but please remember that forum is mostly for the users also. There are several way to contact with us - you can use mobile phone, e-mail and also even bugtrucker where you can find latest status of our works.

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

[Guest jrkalf]

Krystan, you misunderstood.. I used my abilities to gain root access and fix my issues.

I don't say hand it out: I say provide proper logging so root acces IS NOT needed

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/emoticons/default_smile.png" alt=":)" srcset="https://forum.fibaro.com/uploads/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

[rvorsten 0]

Hi,

Thank you for your concern, but please remember that forum is mostly for the users also. There are several way to contact with us - you can use mobile phone, e-mail and also even bugtrucker where you can find latest status of our works.

Hi Krystian,

Thanks for your response. Good to experience that you guys are following what's happening on the forum!

I appreciate your statement that "the forum is mostly for the users" but... almost every day I read about users expressing their wish for more interaction with you guys in Fibaro. Sure, you can decide to ignore that. You can also see it as an excellent opportunity to bond with your users, interact with them and use that contact to improve not only the product but also your image. I believe the image needs a proper boost, and if you can achieve that through more interaction and some proper expectation management, then isn't that a wonderful opportunity?

In my experience, nothing is worse than "silence"; being ignored. People start thinking up their own "realities" then, and you lose the last bit of relationship you had. This will inevitably lead to lost customers (of which I have actually seen evidence on this forum, unfortunately).

I personally believe you are creating a wonderful product. And there are a lot of folks here who are willing to contribute to its success, asking nothing in return other than benefiting from the improved stability and functionality. Why would you ignore that?

Bottom line: it's your company, it's your future. Most of us have spent several hundreds of €€€ already, and we want to see some bang for our bucks. So we're here to help rather than only complain. But again: it's up to you: You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink...

Cheers,

Ronald

[Guest sgbirch]

Hi,

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

If you don't want to give out root, why dont you create a non-root account on the box and give that out? Set it up so the public account only has read access to the HC2 internals. Seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who want to look at log files as an aid to debugging our system.

[Guest jrkalf]

Hi,

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

If you don't want to give out root, why dont you create a non-root account on the box and give that out? Set it up so the public account only has read access to the HC2 internals. Seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who want to look at log files as an aid to debugging our system.

it's even way more simple.

They already use part of the interface to connect to the zwave engine to catch all events passing through.

Just make a log interface, just like the eventpanel and parse the raw output of the zwave engine through that.

It's not that hard to do.

Please login or register to see this code.

I even get nice warnings I can debug... this stuff is readable and useable.. the event panel Fibaro has build sofar isn't suitable for debugging.

Without the debugging panel the device will never be sold properly because implementers who need to implement them in houses for other people don't have the tools to support the customer.

[Guest sztywniak]

+1

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/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" />

[Guest MitchellOnline]

Hi,

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

If you don't want to give out root, why dont you create a non-root account on the box and give that out? Set it up so the public account only has read access to the HC2 internals. Seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who want to look at log files as an aid to debugging our system.

it's even way more simple.

They already use part of the interface to connect to the zwave engine to catch all events passing through.

Just make a log interface, just like the eventpanel and parse the raw output of the zwave engine through that.

It's not that hard to do.

Please login or register to see this code.

I even get nice warnings I can debug... this stuff is readable and useable.. the event panel Fibaro has build sofar isn't suitable for debugging.

Without the debugging panel the device will never be sold properly because implementers who need to implement them in houses for other people don't have the tools to support the customer.

How did you get in this screen? I also have root access already

Please login or register to see this image.

/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" />

[Shad 4]

It is a log information, normally they are in /var/log

But I think you make a mistake.

[Guest deraaij]

Hi,

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

If you don't want to give out root, why dont you create a non-root account on the box and give that out? Set it up so the public account only has read access to the HC2 internals. Seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who want to look at log files as an aid to debugging our system.

it's even way more simple.

They already use part of the interface to connect to the zwave engine to catch all events passing through.

Just make a log interface, just like the eventpanel and parse the raw output of the zwave engine through that.

It's not that hard to do.

Please login or register to see this code.

I even get nice warnings I can debug... this stuff is readable and useable.. the event panel Fibaro has build sofar isn't suitable for debugging.

Without the debugging panel the device will never be sold properly because implementers who need to implement them in houses for other people don't have the tools to support the customer.

How did you get in this screen? I also have root access already

Please login or register to see this image.

/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" />

screen -list

screen -r

[Guest MitchellOnline]

Hi,

With reference to the subject - I am afraid we will not release information about root access - Root is verry powerfull layer and this information are related with safety of the system and please remember that our platform is not only software but hardware automation system.

If you don't want to give out root, why dont you create a non-root account on the box and give that out? Set it up so the public account only has read access to the HC2 internals. Seems like a reasonable compromise for those of us who want to look at log files as an aid to debugging our system.

it's even way more simple.

They already use part of the interface to connect to the zwave engine to catch all events passing through.

Just make a log interface, just like the eventpanel and parse the raw output of the zwave engine through that.

It's not that hard to do.

Please login or register to see this code.

I even get nice warnings I can debug... this stuff is readable and useable.. the event panel Fibaro has build sofar isn't suitable for debugging.

Without the debugging panel the device will never be sold properly because implementers who need to implement them in houses for other people don't have the tools to support the customer.

How did you get in this screen? I also have root access already

Please login or register to see this image.

/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" />

screen -list

screen -r

But I see only the following screens:

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Or is it necessary to have the beta?

[Guest deraaij]

mhhhhm I have always been on beta. So it could be it only exists after they build the z-wave from the ground up......

[richo 4]

Yes, more log information please +1

Then we could be more helpful to you Fibaro and be even better testers of your products for free

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[Guest jrkalf]

But I see only the following screens:

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Or is it necessary to have the beta?

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You should see a screen like that the "26123.Zwave" process. The numbers will vary, because they'll match the process number. In my case I did a back-up of the configuration. Then the zwave engine gets restarted I think. So you get a new process number.

[Guest MitchellOnline]

But I see only the following screens:

Please login or register to see this code.

Or is it necessary to have the beta?

Please login or register to see this code.

You should see a screen like that the "26123.Zwave" process. The numbers will vary, because they'll match the process number. In my case I did a back-up of the configuration. Then the zwave engine gets restarted I think. So you get a new process number.

Well I think this screen is only available on the BETA, not in regular FW, like deraaij says.