A year with Fibaro

[richo 4]

It's been a year of my experience with Fibaro. I'd like to share some o them with you. I hope it will help you with your installations and your choices.

Why Fibaro?

I wanted to install home intelligence for a long time. I didn't want to start with wired systems as I didn't want to "ruin" my house. I was thinking about starting a business in this field as well and ease of installations, flexibility and good pricing were a key factors to me. I wanted especially to control my heating system, alarm with window rollers and of course some lights.

First experiences.

Year ago I have made a small test installation with about 5 devices. Everything worked as I expected so I have decided to implement a full solution. In total I have aded over 80 devices including Danfoss valves, Roller shutters, switches, door sensors etc. I have started to integrate the system with my Satel alarm (old version), boiler (to some extend), media centre. Then the problems begun

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As I was doing it on version 1.041 at some point of time the system reaction became very slow, lot of problems with dead nodes, Danfoss’s didn’t work in the middle of winter etc. The final straw was upgrade to 1.045 - it was a total disaster (check the posts on Fibaro forum). By February I was so disappointed that almost decided to throw everything away…

Second phase.

Fortunately Fibaro released a beta of 3.x It was a big risk but I had nothing to loose. After upgrading I was shocked (positively) how reactive system became. Obviously some other problems still existed but it was a major improvement. Then I have discovered LUA - the best part of Fibaro software

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Thanks that I have started slowly take control over the system (with some help from Fibaro support). Working with next betas was not easy but there was a “light in the tunnel”. Soon I have discovered that it was the light of the coming train

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On March 11 after upgrade to 3.488 I have received a message “HC2 is not your primary controller” … uups that was bad weekend. Again, thanks to some guys from Fibaro who worked over the weekend, in the evening, system has been brought back to life.

It was a better life again, I have started to add more scenes in LUA and my house became more “intelligent” i.ex. didn’t have to check if the windows were closed when leaving home, together with arming the alarm lights went off, rollers down etc. My wife slowly started to like it and suddenly on May 27th when we were out there was a power failure in our district and HC didn’t wake up after it. After a few team viewer sessions with Fibaro Support system was back but my backup memory was blocked. I had to send the HC to Fibaro for repair. I took me another few weeks to prepare the system and family for a life without HC for 2 weeks…

Latest phase.

After HC was back in July, I have decided to start building some sort of “fire wall” or a “backup system” in case something goes wrong. With some help from the members of Fibaro Forum I have implemented additional scenes for waking up dead devices, have added extra lines of code in scenes to make sure that if something goes wrong the system will adapt and if needed inform me about the problem. In a meantime Fibaro has released a couple of new devices, iPad App, “stable” version of HC software, Bugtracker (great tool, a pity that iOS programmers don’t use it to much

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/emoticons/default_icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" /> Android products, Virtual Devices (another great stuff that adds flexibility and more integration with other systems or internet)

I have learned not only LUA but also some Javascript, PHP, SQL and other stuff. Now I have almost 80 scenes and 20 virtual devices.

I don’t feel like an expert but I think that I’m quite an advanced user of a Fibaro system. I didn’t track it (what a pity) but I have invested over 1000 hours in my system. Is it a lot ? I don’t know. If it wasn’t also my hobby I would have probably dropped it long time ago.

Main headaches

I’m still struggling with a few very important issues:

1. dead devices - that appear randomly (few per day) for different devices. I have invested a lot of time and effort to avoid them but so far nothing helps.

2. lost communication from HC to devices - from time to time some commands send from HC either with scenes, iOS device or from system interface are not executed or executed with a significant delay.

Because of them the system becomes from time to time unstable and there is a risk that i.ex. alarm won’t work or heating will not work as expected.

3. problems with backup and recovery require to go from v. 1.04 of the software - it’s absolutely unacceptable and I hope I will avoid such situation in future.

4. poor documentation…

Main good points.

1. System is quite easy to install and run. The interface is clear and easy to use.

2. Ability to create very advanced scenes with LUA - that allows to build a real home intelligence - not many competitive system have it.

3. Ability to build virtual devices that can deliver different informations or control external devices in home or even outside.

4. Fibaro forum - I can’t imagine life with Fibaro system without it. It solves a lot of problems and makes you believe that you can manage and improve the system.

5. Fibaro devices are very small and well designed - they are quite easy to install (not that easy to remove from the system though

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Am I satisfied?

In short - YES. I have a system that in theory delivers even more than I expected a year ago. More opportunities are just opening with real voice control and response (not LILI by the way - it’s just a nice gadget) In my opinion home intelligence will become a huge market and in 10 years everyone will have some sort of home intelligence or automation as we have smartphones today. Will there be a place for Fibaro - I don’t know. Company has made a huge progress over the past year but is still missing big on a KEY MATTER - RELIABILITY ! Both in terms of products and services.

From my experience If you want to succeed in long term it’s not enough to deliver great packaging and nice looking soft. There are very few people like me, Sztywniak, robmac, krikroff, rafal.m and others who know how to deal with majority of the problems. For the others: IT JUST HAS TO WORK ! Full stop.

Otherwise customers will go away and Fibaro will disappear like many young computer companies in the 90’s…including Microsoft that have lost it’s lead to Google and Apple.

What next?

We’ll see - a lot depends on Fibaro ability to listen to it’s customers and improve. On the other hand if you Google: “z-wave” or “home intelligence” there are hundreds of companies that are waiting for our money

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Some advices for newcomers.

1. Before you decide to buy and install the system read the comments in that Forum to make sure what you are getting into. Obviously it’s a sort of support forum so most of the posts are dealing with problems. In real life it’s not as bad as it may look like

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2. Start small and don’t add quickly to many devices - it looks that up to 30-50 physical devices it’s more manageable.

3. Learn a bit of LUA or find someone who can help you with the system or just have a good contract with you installer

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4. If you plan to use Danfoss valves make sure that all of them are in the reach of HC - otherwise buy some electrical valves and control them with switches.

5. Before you buy any z-wave device not made by Fibaro make sure that it works well with HC - search the Forum for information.

6. Be careful when implementing critical features like alarm or heating system. I recommend to have a parallel system to that from Fibaro or just independent and integrated with Fibaro.

7. Have some fun and don’t give up to early

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Final words to Fidziu and Fibaro team.

I really appreciate what you are doing and what you have achieved. Just please don’t treat us as a bunch of “idiots” that has bought you products and don’t know what we know and want. We are your customers or partners and have a common goal: we want our systems to WORK and Fibaro to SUCCEED. We are ready to help you just treat us with respect and you will benefit from that.

Marry Christmas and Happy New Year !

[Guest Paweł Świerczyński]

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[Guest Fidziu]

richo,

Its nice review. Really obiective and illuminating for us. I really want to satisfy all our users in a short time and we are trying the best we can do, belive me. Right now there is about 16 thousants HC2's all over the wolrd and we have a huge amount of queries on various issues, new ideas to implement and products to lunch. I konw that in the eyes of our esteemed users we can move slowly but Im trying to amplify all departments in our organization during our growing. I think the easiest to see it for our customers is with our technical support.

We are trying to constantly evolve and fulfill wishes of our clients, even if it takes some time.

I think that you will be suprised and more satisfied with posibilities our new fibaro OS4.x whih we are trying to build since relase 3.x saw the light of day.

One more think I can say right now, becouse of christmass

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/emoticons/default_smile.png" alt=":)" srcset="https://forum.fibaro.com/uploads/emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20"> - it will be prepared for multimedia and ready for download plugins from 3rd party developers (prepared in LUA), ofcourse new z-wave engine inside, and 4.x its almost finished:) just sitting in the QA department.

I really appreciate what our advanced customers are doing for us and big thank you for this:)

I wish you MERRY CHRISTMAS and ofcourse HAPPY NEW YEAR.

ps

we will relase new smoke sensor tonight:) watch our web site:)

PL ver:

EN ver:

[richo 4]

Fidziu,

Thanks for the response. I'm looking forward to new features but please don't forget about QA. It's been a major headache so far.

All the best for the Chrismas and New Year

[hvb83 1]

I know it's very hard to keep everybody happy Fidziu. I've been using another system in the past and they tried to include every wireless protocol out there. The concept was fine, but the result in my situation was that it was just very unreliable. So even if the pace at which HC2 is evolving seems slow to some (not to me), I appreciate that you guys are focussing on reliability before anything else. On a system that controls amongst others the temperature and the alarm system, you shouldn't expect it to do a whole lot of fancy stuff, but only 80% of the time...

And with the ability for plugins, I think it may reduce the amount of requests for new features to Fibaro themselves. At the cost of an increase in complaints about stability issues, probably.

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At the same time Fibaro is growing quite fast right now. Trying to make your company grow at a rate that is enough to keep up with demand, while at the same time making sure that the people you hire can deliver the quality that you need is an achievement in itself.

[K.Bergmann 2]

richo,

Thank you for such complex review. I belive that your advices for newcomers would be appropriate for every wireless home automation system. I hope that our future changes will only strenghten our good points in your opinion.

[robmac 173]

Great post and spookily similar to my experience in the same year.

Would add a few additional headaches:

• No way to backup full configuration for recovery on second HC2. If you have a complete system failure you reconfigure from scratch.
  No advanced diagnostics, debug and logging of z-wave. If you have a problem it is trial and error.
  Lack of Net library in standard scenes.
  Some key LUA features are disabled for "security" reasons.
  UI configuration is still limited.
  No list of known issues so you waste a lot of time possibly trying to fix the impossible.
  

On the good side:

• When the system is not having one of those intermittent slowdowns it is fast. There is a lot of capacity on this hardware for a lot of automation.
  There are a number of third party scripts etc now that start to allow wider integration. I like the Samsung Smart TV info. Saved me days. Thanks piotr

If I had the choice again, I would choose the same system as this is still a developing area. Look forward to the new software and if the significant issues listed on bugzilla are fixed, in time I will buy a HC3 when it inevitably arrives.

If you are in the market and are a geek or know a good installer you can't go far wrong.

Just be aware all those fantastic marketing video features are a vision of a future. Read the small print.

[berjdemerjian 0]

richo, Hello richo, can we use the roller shutter2 with a 3 way valve with SPDT Connection?

[tuanha 0]

Hi, I'm new to Fibaro but I'm just happy after reading your review.

I wish someday I have a good system like yours richo

I know it take time but I hope I'll get there some day (start learning LUA, I code C# daily so it's a bit easier to understand stuff xD)

Again, thank for sharing your experience, richo.

All the best.

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[MarcoGT 0]

Hi, I'm new to Fibaro but I'm just happy after reading your review.

I wish someday I have a good system like yours richo

Yes but now richo is using Indigo, not Fibaro HC2 anymore.