HC2 love and @*&@#~

[robmac 173]

I thought some more ramblings were due on my experience with HC2. I hope a balanced view but some may think not.

After trying many controllers and packages I finally purchased a HC2 in Nov 2012.

I had an expectation that the system would be easy to use straight out of the box set by the shiny marketing material. I was bored with fiddling with Homeseer. While you can make Homeseer do what you want it takes time and effort. A brief spell with Vera made me realize that was the same.

So I stumped up the hefty price tag for HC2 and headed for what I thought would be a better world.

Late 2012 and 2013

As with all things technical the truth is not as simple as plug in and use. Even the early iPods and iPhones were painful to get going.

The HC2 is no different. Below the shinny interface all was not well. Many features were imperfect or very difficult to use. Anything advanced required the use of LUA script or hundreds of impossible to manage block scenes. Other features seemed OK at first but as the network grew started to fail to deliver.

By April 2013 I had a system that did everything Homeseer had done but it had taken a lot of effort. Exactly what I was trying to avoid. Even simple scheduling did not come easily out of the box thus my LUA scheduler script.

During the summer I started to get an uneasy feeling that all was not well at the heart of my system. While I could work round the issues, the random changes of the units reported by devices and 2 minute pauses in execution with lost events were always there.

Alongside this I had a bad batch of Fibaro modules that failed for no good reason. This forced changes to the network and wasted my time and caused constant change in the network. If I had been a commercial installer my business would not have been well.

In December 2013 my unit started to fail altogether so it went back to the lovely people at Vesternet in the UK who quickly sent me a new one. I think if it had not been for the fantastic service I get from these guys I would have given up.

2014

So the new year started with a full reconfiguration on a new HC2. I installed exactly what I had on the old system in stages so I could see if it was my configuration causing the issues.

It took time but as reported back in February the results were much better.

So the truth is that a bad unit had caused the majority but not all of my issues.

I put in a script that woke any odd dead nodes. These were very rare anyway and considering the thickness of walls in my house and the size of my network the results are very good and better than Homeseer and other controllers I have tested. In reality a second controller is really needed for my installation.

So what is my system like now:

The response times of the modules in 99%+ of the cases is instant.

I still have occasional 1 to 2 minute pauses when no messages go out from my HC2. My scripts make sure it recovers but very occasionally events are missed.

I have loads of my own code to support. I know a few of you are using some of my scripts also. This was not really the aim of moving to HC2 as I thought it would not need loads of scripts just simple configuration.

BUT

HC2 does everything that I need very well 99.9% of the time. Also if I was starting now with the code snippets and posts on this forum I could have built it all a lot quicker.

I have my concerns and gripes but as an overall package HC2 still holds a high position and possibly an overall best in class in my opinion.

Yes the marketing exaggerates and the latest iPad interface is far too complex and therefore almost unusable for anyone without a technical degree but it:

• 
  controls my heating (~£40 less spend Jan, Feb, March this year compared to last)
  integrates with my media
  sends me important alerts
  automates my garage doors
  automates my lights
  turns on my coffee machine in the morning to preheat for my morning coffee and off again after a period if I forget
  and a long list of other automated tasks

So from me a cautious thumbs up for HC2 but the pressure is on to make it the complete package promised. I have made it work and I am sure a good professional installer will also make it work.

If I was to move home and starting again I would still choose HC2 and would get very good results.

If you are not a geek, I would advise you to get an installer or you will get very frustrated. But I think this is true for any home automation system and in that category I do not include single function devices like the NEST that is great if you use an iPhone and have simple single needs.

For me a lot is riding on V4.x software and judging by the lack of noise from Fibaro on here they are busy doing stuff so my fingers are crossed for a better year and more of what was promised by the Fibaro marketing men.

And yes if Fibaro do not introduce decent scheduling in V4.x I will be updating the LUA scheduler this year.

[Valken 0]

Hi Robmac,

My apologies for directing this message directly to you, but you seem to have a lot of experience with HC2 and it's stability (Just read your other post -http://forum.fibaro.com/viewtopic.php?p=37228&sid=1436f6db4152554272621d63c9c2fb5e#37228)

I need some seriouse help here before i throw my HC2 out the window!! (Ok, not really, was too expensive

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I am new to HA and HC2 and only had my HC2 for 1 month now!

I only have 2X Fibaro Motion sensors, 2X Aeon Smart Dimmers, 1X Fibaro Door/Window Sensor and 1X Fibaro 2X1.5Kw Relay.

The furthest sensor is only 12m away from the HC2 (All other sensors is under 12m range from HC2)

I am experiencing lockups (HC2 Web interface not responding) Constant scenes that dont run for no reason (scene will run fine for a few days then suddenly one day just stop running)

Lights not switching on or off (By scene and motion)

Just this morning before going to work the lights switched on and off by motion like intended and then just as i was about to walk out the door i realised that the light was still on (Was supposed to have switched off after 1min no motion)

I logged into HC2 and could turn of light by no indication as to why the scene did not switch it off.

Now i am still too new to understand how this scene loops and timeouts and stuff works.

I am just getting very frustraded not understanding why it just stops working.

Why is there no LOG in HC2 that can tell us when something goes wrong???

I will even give remote access to someone to just quickly have a look at my HC2 scenes and scripts... Maybe i did something wrong that i am not aware of??

Oh, my scene that trigers when my phone (Via GPS) is in 100m range to disarm the alarm also did not work when i just got home.

So PLEASE-PLEASE can someone help me here?

Below some screenshots of my Scenes....

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[kiwi 2]

(...)

For me a lot is riding on V4.x software and judging by the lack of noise from Fibaro on here they are busy doing stuff so my fingers are crossed for a better year and more of what was promised by the Fibaro marketing men.

And yes if Fibaro do not introduce decent scheduling in V4.x I will be updating the LUA scheduler this year.

Hope they will make a stuff that's rocks... The silence is always a good thing with fibaro.

Anyway thanks for LUA Scheduler it is really the one of the best code to use.

By the way, can you share your stuff to check that all nodes are not dead? Because sometimes there is some modules that miss some commands...

Xavier