Should i have really spent my money on a HC2?

[Produno 15]

Im hoping to outfit my new home which im currently renovating with full home automation. I was sucked into Fibaro due to their glossy advertising which inspired me, so i decided to go with the HC2.

Though after reading these forums a lot lately I see a lot of concerns with Fibaro and their system.

Should I really have gone with the HC2? Is my smart home not going to be so smart and just a massive pita? Im hoping a few here can give me some reassurances.

Also what Fibaro products come recommended and which should I avoid like the plague?

Cheers.

[robmac 173]

yuzo, Danfoss thermostats are really nice devices regarding their functionality, however such big number of them in one installation can cause some problems. They tend to generate much traffic, therefore with 20+ units you can experience delays in Z-wave network or even some dead nodes can appear. It is rather matter of the way they were designed, rather than configuration or HC2's software. Please consider reducing their number and everything should be ok

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with the greatest respect:...

Danfoss valves sleep most of the time. They have no association ability so send no data reports? How can they cause the issue.

Heating panel in HC2... now that is another story!!! cron job every minute? Is that a serious architecture solution??

[OnnoH 1]

yuzo I was under the impression you would buy 20 HC2's.

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/emoticons/default_icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" /> Why would you need 20 thermostat valves?

robmac You control the temperature in 6 rooms with Horstmann, with 9 Danfoss valves? I thought the valves also measure the temperature?

I have only 85 m2 living space with floor heating, controlled by 8 (dumb) valves and four temp zones. So I'm trying to paint a picture

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[robmac 173]

yuzo I was under the impression you would buy 20 HC2's.

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/emoticons/default_icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" /> Why would you need 20 thermostat valves?

robmac You control the temperature in 6 rooms with Horstmann, with 9 Danfoss valves? I thought the valves also measure the temperature?

I have only 85 m2 living space with floor heating, controlled by 8 (dumb) valves and four temp zones. So I'm trying to paint a picture

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It is all a bit complex due to my situation.

I use the Horstmann as subcontrollers. Sadly the Danfoss do not report their temperature and also need to be synced if there are more than one in a room.

The Horstmann are the zone controllers. Each has a switch (ASR wired in parallel so that any zone needs heat - demand is made of the boiler) that controls the demand from the boiler. These are associated directly with the horstmann so the HC2 is not part of the normal run.

Currently HC2 syncs the valves and Horstmann with a set temp difference when the HC2 sets the set point or when the Horstmann is manually set by the dial (wife mode).

HC2 previous release did not process the temperature reports properly and expose them to scenes. In the beta they do. I have a plan to updated my scenes on HC2 so that if temperature continues to rise after demand or does not reach demand the difference is increased/decreased to find the correct difference.

It worked well last year but if I had power near each radiator I would have just used a powered valve and fibaro module associated directly to the Horstmann in that room so that the Horstman would have had direct control of the radiator and the boiler demand.

In my extension (120m2) I am using underfloor heating with a central manifold an powered valves and will do this. The Horstman will be associated with the boiler demand ASR module (again in parallel on the demand circuit and also associated to a powered zone valve controlled by a fibaro module. Much simpler and what I would prefer throughout but getting wires near the radiators to control valves is not an option in the old part of the house as it has 1m thick limestone walls.

I do not use the heating panel. It may have been updated but it used to run a cron job every minute so if you tried to manually control the Horstman at the wall it would be within a minute put it back to HC2 value. i.e. wife mode did not work. I hope Fibaro will get rid of this inefficient design in the future.

[deanrparry 19]

I to am interested in the response!

They sleep a lot! I have 6 of them...

[sj3fk3 27]

yuzo, Danfoss thermostats are really nice devices regarding their functionality, however such big number of them in one installation can cause some problems. They tend to generate much traffic, therefore with 20+ units you can experience delays in Z-wave network or even some dead nodes can appear. It is rather matter of the way they were designed, rather than configuration or HC2's software. Please consider reducing their number and everything should be ok

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with the greatest respect:...

Danfoss valves sleep most of the time. They have no association ability so send no data reports? How can they cause the issue.

Heating panel in HC2... now that is another story!!! cron job every minute? Is that a serious architecture solution??

I would love to hear wat fibaro has to say.. Do we get an other empty drive-by comment or will it simply be ignored again.. As with all serieus comments in this forum.

[deanrparry 19]

yuzo, Danfoss thermostats are really nice devices regarding their functionality, however such big number of them in one installation can cause some problems. They tend to generate much traffic, therefore with 20+ units you can experience delays in Z-wave network or even some dead nodes can appear. It is rather matter of the way they were designed, rather than configuration or HC2's software. Please consider reducing their number and everything should be ok

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with the greatest respect:...

Danfoss valves sleep most of the time. They have no association ability so send no data reports? How can they cause the issue.

Heating panel in HC2... now that is another story!!! cron job every minute? Is that a serious architecture solution??

I would love to hear wat fibaro has to say.. Do we get an other empty drive-by comment or will it simply be ignored again.. As with all serieus comments in this forum.

It will be fixed in 4.018

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[robmac 173]

To be honest I will write a plugin so no issue to me as I will not use it. It is not a big issue and will be fine for those with a small number of heating devices who want simple control only from HC2. A bit inefficient though.

[deanrparry 19]

Bit like owning a mobile phone and having to write your own os to use it

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or maybe just having to write the bit that allows you to make more than one call a day

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[blawre0000 1]

Hi all

I am still on 3.591. I have 8 Danfoss valves (the older model) and used to have lots of dead nodes. Between 1 and 5 a day. I read on the forum to split up the wakeup times so I have the first on 900 wakeup through to the last on 907. Since then I have had no dead nodes.

Hope this helps.

Brian

Edit I used to have to restart the HC2 every week but now I don’t have to any more.

[robmac 173]

Hi all

I am still on 3.591. I have 8 Danfoss valves (the older model) and used to have lots of dead nodes. Between 1 and 5 a day. I read on the forum to split up the wakeup times so I have the first on 900 wakeup through to the last on 907. Since then I have had no dead nodes.

Hope this helps.

Brian

Edit I used to have to restart the HC2 every week but now I don’t have to any more.

Think that is true of all battery devices. 50 devices all waking at the same time probably is not a very good configuration. Interesting you used only 1s intervals. I use 10s so I may be using more than I need.

Also it is interesting that the default for the old Danfoss was 900 the new defaults to 1800.

I should have also mentioned that I had to go through and reset them all after upgrade to Beta as they were all over the place. Had some door windo sensors set at 2295345???

[yuzo 4]

yuzo, Danfoss thermostats are really nice devices regarding their functionality, however such big number of them in one installation can cause some problems. They tend to generate much traffic, therefore with 20+ units you can experience delays in Z-wave network or even some dead nodes can appear. It is rather matter of the way they were designed, rather than configuration or HC2's software. Please consider reducing their number and everything should be ok

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Hmm, why i have buyed such a system, when 20 danfoss are to much?

I think we will start with 10 ... but what is the max for our system?

[ Added: 2014-09-21, 00:43 ]

yuzo I was under the impression you would buy 20 HC2's.

Please login or register to see this image.

/emoticons/default_icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" /> Why would you need 20 thermostat valves?

robmac You control the temperature in 6 rooms with Horstmann, with 9 Danfoss valves? I thought the valves also measure the temperature?

I have only 85 m2 living space with floor heating, controlled by 8 (dumb) valves and four temp zones. So I'm trying to paint a picture

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/emoticons/default_icon_smile.gif" alt=":-)" />

Hi OnnoH, we're having round about 500m² in the houses and we want to controll every room (>12 rooms) with danfoss so we can save a lot of money, only heating rooms where realy heating is needed ...

[fergalmccarthy 5]

These limitations need to be clearly stated, is that the same for all battery devices

[yuzo 4]

Would it better, to have some gateways? Will them move load from main-controller to gateways or not?

also we need a statement from fibaro about max devices + will the new z-wave enginge clear up things?

[robmac 173]

Would it better, to have some gateways? Will them move load from main-controller to gateways or not?

also we need a statement from fibaro about max devices + will the new z-wave enginge clear up things?

It would but you need to consider the network also. Send 50 messages at the same time that need to get there while the battery devices are awake?

You may be lucky but better just to minimise the number of messages that need to go to sleeping devices at the same time. That way less chance that some will need to retry and miss the wake window of the device.

Remember the devices send a wakeup notification when they wake. This should trigger the controller to send anything in a queue for that device to the device. So the controller is sitting waiting for those but they need to get to the controller and items from any queue back faster than the wake interval of the device. That interval depends on the device

Depending on what is sent there are then the receipts sent back. So lets say you have edited a load of parameters for a load of devices and they all wake at the same time ...that could be a load of messages across your network at the same time when some devices expect quick service so they can go back to sleep. Most device only stays awake for a short time after sending the packet.

There are also Frequently Listening Devices (FLIRS) devices that behave slightly differently and wake for a fraction of a second every second but a fraction of a second says it all.

So in simple terms regardless of your controller you are wise to make sure that sleeping devices do not wake on mass.

[mmmprod 0]

what a mess...

[robmac 173]

what a mess...

What?

How would you make battery last 2 years ? They go to sleep and only wake when needed. Either when they have something to say or when they want to check for new configuration.

I do have concerns that HC2 does daft things though. Rather than just constructing a queue and waiting for the device to say please send by sending a wake notification packet to HC2, I sometimes think HC2 tries to send the values or force the device to wake. That would explain why batteries last so little time.

Possibly Fibaro would care to comment?

[JanJoh 1]

or force the device to wake. That would explain why batteries last so little time.

Nah.. A controller cannot force a sleeping device to wake up. But it can, of course, force it to stay awake once it does wake up.

[robmac 173]

or force the device to wake. That would explain why batteries last so little time.

Nah.. A controller cannot force a sleeping device to wake up. But it can, of course, force it to stay awake once it does wake up.

Yep I know it can't but it does not mean it doesn't try and as you say it may also be keeping them awake.

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It worries me that the devices need to be configured at different wake intervals as they were not all set-up or restarted at the same time. They share no common clock so why would they be in sync just because they have the same wake time???

The devices are ignorant of each other and HC2 should not care what the wake interval is other than there is one set. It should be just sitting there waiting to be poked for any waiting messages.

IMHO HC2 has never dealt well with battery devices. Something not correct. Odd as it listens well for associated reports so why not wake request and then respond with what is waiting and process any reports sent.

Any comment Fibaro?

[A.Socha 133]

robmac, in most you got right but please remember that battery device == battery device

for example some of devices need wakeup every 4000+ with them should not be a problem

some other like zwave locks use FLIRS - with them should not be problem too

and here we got a group with device with 1 -1000s wakeup we can say there is two groups in that group

- Horstamnn thermostat send wakeup notification and wait for controller - with this device should not be problem

second group is for example danfoss where he send wakeup notification frame and give some time to answer controller, when controller will not answer danfoss starting panicking.

In theory should be ok but there is many situation when we got that problem

for example when you want do action like turn ON group of devices

- controller is talking with other battery device

- controller is rebuild mesh

- controller is learn mode

There is no good solution for this situation if we give danfoss bigger priority then when you will want turn On light you will saw lag because controller first must answer all danfoss with wakeup notification frame. If we give bigger priority to control frame like turn ON/off then change that some danfoss will get panic is higher. Even Danfoss with his own protocol and controller not support more then 20 devices on it So every installer should know that when client want more thermostat he should group them in diffrent zwave networks

[JanJoh 1]

[...]

Hello!

I would just like to compliment you on your post.

It is clear, it is informative, and it actually explains abit in regards to what is going on "behind the curtains".

(Heck, I figured with all the critique as of late, I would like to point out when good things happens as well. ;=) )