Letter from an unsatisfied customer

[Quikdav 15]

10 minutes before my lights are switch off !!! My family asked me if there were ghosts in the house so there is really something wrong (sometime only)...

[Quikdav 15]

I confirm there are latency issues.. Here is how I can confirm it

 

I turned off my FGS (behind a switch) that triggered a scene to turn off 3 lights. It take more than 10 minutes to react before truning off my 3 lights !!!

 

Then a few second after, I walked in front of a motion sensor that trigger a light.... and it doesn't work... My light turned off after 10 minutes too

 

So I have 2 different scenes that took more than 10 minutes to be triggered... whereas sometime the are triggered as soon !!!

 

All the devices react as soon as I turned them off or on. So that means it is the scenes that are not triggered....

[Sankotronic 2,370]

I read this thread and I wonder why my system is working properly without latency, without ghosts with 40 sensors and actors installed and 22 scenes running on HC2 with 4.070. There were some glitches but mostly caused by lack of information and guidance how to do things. It took me more than two weeks of endless browsing on the web and experimenting with scenes before I manage to understand basic principles of how to actually do things on HC2. I emphasise BASIC principles, because HC2 is very powerful device with LUA and I will have to do more digging and learning before I will be able to program more sophisticated scenes and virtual devices and that they work seamlessly and as expected.

 

So, my only complain is on lack of more complete information and guidance with plenty examples on one place that should cover all the possibilities of Fibaro Home Center, a very promising and capable home automation system in my humble opinion.

 

I do believe that many of you out there have problems with your automation, but I also believe that most of you don't have technical background to be able to solve this problems without help because Fibaro HC is not plug and play system no matter how much Fibaro try to make it that way. Block and magic scenes are that shortcuts that Fibaro implemented to the system but they will never become good enough for anything but basic and mostly simple stuff. Real power is in LUA, but this is again only for enthusiasts and technically educated people who are able to understand what is behind every line of code. Please no offence!

 

And just to make myself completely clear, in my humble opinion home automation is not just turning ON some light when motion sensor detect our movement or remote opening of blinds etc. Home automation is complicated set of actions which house do to make our life more comfortable and it adapts to our needs and habits with minimal request for our action and involvement.

 

I really wish you all less problems with your systems and more comfort at your homes. I hope that I will be able to help you more in the future!

[Bamsefar 13]

Sankotronic: I do not agree with your statement that only people with limited knowledge has problem.... I consider myselt a bit more advanced that You are, and I work within IT (andhas done so for the last 30 years), and have a background as UNIX sysadm among other things. I know this *. And FW4 has issues and bugs, plenty of them. Z-Wave engine for example can not handle multiple requests at the same time (it is supposed to be multi threaded), because then it starts to fail to send commands... So this is a buggy software, and your background does not matter since this is Fibaro's fault. I could solve this, however Fibaro does not let me know what happens (no loggin), nor do I have access (to root and command prompt) - this is all created by Fibaro - there limitations, and buggs.

[fi-bar-oh 47]

99% of issues with Fibaro is mesh and signal... I have limited knowledge but that part is fact!

If you have ghosts get a gateway...

[Guest 22]

Bamsefar.

 

If you have been a UNIX sysadmin among other things, than getting "root" to a HC (or any other UNIX system) should not really be a problem for you

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[Quikdav 15]

I read this thread and I wonder why my system is working properly without latency, without ghosts with 40 sensors and actors installed and 22 scenes running on HC2 with 4.070. There were some glitches but mostly caused by lack of information and guidance how to do things. It took me more than two weeks of endless browsing on the web and experimenting with scenes before I manage to understand basic principles of how to actually do things on HC2. I emphasise BASIC principles, because HC2 is very powerful device with LUA and I will have to do more digging and learning before I will be able to program more sophisticated scenes and virtual devices and that they work seamlessly and as expected.

 

So, my only complain is on lack of more complete information and guidance with plenty examples on one place that should cover all the possibilities of Fibaro Home Center, a very promising and capable home automation system in my humble opinion.

 

I do believe that many of you out there have problems with your automation, but I also believe that most of you don't have technical background to be able to solve this problems without help because Fibaro HC is not plug and play system no matter how much Fibaro try to make it that way. Block and magic scenes are that shortcuts that Fibaro implemented to the system but they will never become good enough for anything but basic and mostly simple stuff. Real power is in LUA, but this is again only for enthusiasts and technically educated people who are able to understand what is behind every line of code. Please no offence!

 

And just to make myself completely clear, in my humble opinion home automation is not just turning ON some light when motion sensor detect our movement or remote opening of blinds etc. Home automation is complicated set of actions which house do to make our life more comfortable and it adapts to our needs and habits with minimal request for our action and involvement.

 

I really wish you all less problems with your systems and more comfort at your homes. I hope that I will be able to help you more in the future!

Here we are !!! why there are so many problems and issues for so many people whereas we have same hardware environment, same devices and so on.. it is really amazing !!!

 

Regarding people that would not have technical background as you said, concerning me, I work as a software engineer in a big company so writing code in LUA is not complicated. No need to be an expert to write a simple condition in LUA.. When a scene is running 10 minutes after it is triggered whereas it works instantly in most cases, that means there is something wrong with the HC2. When devices disappear as it was the case yesterday for a motion sensor, it is not a lack of competence but really an issue with the HC2... so indeed, HC2 works fine for some people and become a nightmare for other.. I just find we spend - too - many hours each time there is a new update and it is inadmissible.. when you update your mobile with android or IOS, you don't have  to check everything and resinstall applications. So why it is not the case for HC2. Users are the testers, that's why there is so many problems. There is no regression test. And I think that as for older Windows OS from Microsoft, they stack improvements, new functionnalities whereas the core of the HC2 is not so reliable. Else why we have so many discrepancies between users ??

 

And regarding the use of home automation, we need a reliable box for basic scene before we go any further. I manage my heating, my swimming pool and many other actions to make my life more confortable. I think it is sufficiently important to make it operate by a reliable box. Fortunatly I don't activate watering each time the smoke detector is activated else my house would become a swimming pool

 

And to finish, as I said above, it is not a chinese low cost box. Devices are not cheap so we expect something reliable. Else home automation is dead on arrival and we will back to DIY...

[Sankotronic 2,370]

As I can see I stir up some technically educated people and I apologize to all of you I offended with my post. That was not my intention, but to stir up this forum is definitely my intention.

 

As I already wrote, my system HC2 is on 4.070 and is controlling 40 physical sensors (for example motion sensor is counted as one device not four) and actors plus 27 HUE lamps with 22 scenes and everything is working as expected. So, can someone explain to me how is that possible when according to some members on this forum this is buggy system almost unusable?

[Bamsefar 13]

Guest: I don't need root in 3.600 since everything just works at this version. If I try 4.xxx again, I might go root and try to fix what needs to be fixed...

[Quikdav 15]

As I can see I stir up some technically educated people and I apologize to all of you I offended with my post. That was not my intention, but to stir up this forum is definitely my intention.

 

As I already wrote, my system HC2 is on 4.070 and is controlling 40 physical sensors (for example motion sensor is counted as one device not four) and actors plus 27 HUE lamps with 22 scenes and everything is working as expected. So, can someone explain to me how is that possible when according to some members on this forum this is buggy system almost unusable?

I'm affraid only Fibaro can answer this question... and we won't have the answer

 

From which firmware did you get your HC2 ?

 

To take up the analogy with Microsoft OS, I think that installing firmwares one after the other let unused and obsolete data.. or for backward compatibility, there are some patch.. I don't know but it's my opinion..

 

I'm sure if I reset my installation and I install again everything, It will works fine... but it is not conceivable...

[Sankotronic 2,370]

I'm affraid only Fibaro can answer this question... and we won't have the answer

 

From which firmware did you get your HC2 ?

 

To take up the analogy with Microsoft OS, I think that installing firmwares one after the other let unused and obsolete data.. or for backward compatibility, there are some patch.. I don't know but it's my opinion..

 

I'm sure if I reset my installation and I install again everything, It will works fine... but it is not conceivable...

 

My HC2 came with 4.056 installed and then I upgrade to 4.070 after I allready installed all sensors and modules and wrote few scenes. Rest of the scenes was done after upgrading to 4.070. Upgrade was done without any glitches and after that never rebooted again. Of course all my sensors and modules are Fibaro products and there is only Vision wireless siren & strobe waiting to be included in the system. Philips HUE has it's own controller so all problems that I had before with lights go to that address and my programming

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Well I don't think that HC2 can be compared to Windows since it is based on unix like system if my information is correct. These are completely different worlds. I'm still quite new with HC2, have one for only little bit more than two months, but from what I can see upgrades are actually not documented thoroughly and on one place which makes a lot of trouble to old users, like this latest when upgrade stopped some scenes from working because syntax was changed but was not mentioned here on forum!

 

I don't think that you have to reinstall complete system but just find the source of your problems. It is not as easy as it sounds I know, and since fibaro support is not always up to the task I can understand disappointment and disapproval from users. But still I believe that only 5-10% of all problems that users have are caused by system itself and unavoidable bugs in firmware and software, everything else is caused by other causes like lack of understanding the system and how it really works, z-wave network limitations which are not accounted when building network. Also there are limitations of battery operated sensors and modules their sleep state and frequency of waking up for which takes time to find proper adjustment to keep batteries life long enough and on other hand to get them work with as much shortest delays as possible.

 

Also, building house automation should be planned action and requires thorough preparation. This is necessary because each action, each scene must be done in such way that there is no clash between them and not wanted influence. Also communication to the sensors and sending commands to actors must be done carefully so that there is never too much traffic at once.

 

For example, I have one scene which turns On all 27 HUE lights at once and there was problem that some of the lamps never turn on. Reason is that HUE controller is not capable of processing so many commands especially if brightness, hue and saturation are sent in one combination. Solution is to add delay of 100-200ms between commands to give HUE controller enough time to process them all. For lamps that are communicating with controller through other lamps this time can be even a bit longer.

 

Same goes also for scene that is arming all sensors especially in my case where I have to arm, check if it is armed and if not then force arm 19 door/window sensors and 9 motion sensors. If there is no slight delay between commands to give network enough time to process that and also another traffic then in one time it will fail and fail even more as z-wave network grows with more and more sensors and modules.

 

At this point I have only one scene "Main scene" which is running every minute all the time and alarm breach cannot stop it. This scene is checking time of day and year and time of sunrise and sunset and changes values of global variables and also calls other scenes depending on global setup like "Wake up scene", "Fire & flood check" etc.

 

There is one scene "Wake up scene" which is either called at set alarm clock time by "Main scene" or started manually when alarm is off, which then turns lighting on, starts music and opens blinds etc. I hope soon will also start coffee machine

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There is one scene "Sleep scene" which is triggered manually only and this one turns off lighting, smart plugs, closes blinds if not closed already, partially arms alarm and changes some global values to enable scenes which control lights with motion sensors for night walk to toilet or kitchen. It is triggered manually only because we always go to bed at different time so this is the best option. At moment it is triggered from iPhone, but I will also program one of the switches connected to our bedroom dimmer to trigger this scene.

 

"Leaving home" is manually triggered scene when we all leave house and this scene first checks all door/windows sensors and informs us if we left any opened and then arms sensors, turns off lighting and lower the blinds etc.

 

"Holidays" is manually triggered scene similar to "leaving house" but it also turns off some more smart plugs, activates simulation scene etc.

 

"Coming home" is manually triggered scene which disarms alarm, and then depending on time of day turns on lighting, opens blinds etc.

 

Other scenes like "Open/close blinds", "Arm Alarm", "Disarm Alarm", "Turn Off all lights", "Turn On all lights", "Welcome lights", "Fire & flood check" and "Global Info" are called from scenes above.

 

There are also some other scenes like "Night walk", "Lux light On/Off" etc. which are triggered by sensors but run only depending on settings of global variables.

 

And all this up to now is working up to our expectations. Of course I still need to do some fine tuning and add few more scenes for our swimming pool, fountain and barbecue place and to include house heating and garden watering but for that I need more investigation before I choose solution.