Thinking of switching to HC2 - downsides?

[harri__s 0]

I started my home automation with Telldus Tellstick Znet 4 months ago. I use it mainly to control electric heating, water heating, some lights and alarm. I want to add my heat pump to the system as well. I have around 20 zwave devices in the network. My main issue with tellstick is the bad reliability which mainly seems to be coming from the connection issues to server but also some issues point out to local zwave network problems. 

 

As im saving a lot of electricity with the system (when it works) im considering of changing to something better = more reliability and still the savings.

 

But I dont want to buy another gateway and find all the same problems so Im asking you who own HC2 to give me some ideas what are the problems and how often those really occur? 

 

My issues which are too frequent are:

1) Devices disappearing

2) Devices going to zombie - no command goes through or even the settings of the device partially disappear

3) Lag sometimes from 10 seconds to 10 mins even with devices close to the gateway

4) Preprogrammed commands not going through

 

I assume that HC2 doesnt have problems like 3) or 4) as it stores the programming locally (?) but what about 2) or in general the reliability? Does it work well? 

 

Also does it have some form of self-diagnosis, i can tolerate some amount of issues if the system is smart enough to tell me that something is wrong. 

 

Im very grateful for all the sincere opinions

[Guest FredrikKarlsson]

Hi,

The Znet is a new controller, and like all new things with Software in them, there will be issues. More mature controllers will have less issues, except in early development of new features.

I am very happy with my HC2 controller, especially after having tried a few others before it. My main complaints would be that the Lua library is a bit silly, not updated in the docs for some newly included functions and that you are a bit constrained in the controller by what the developers think you should do with Z-wave. Silly instances of the latter is that if you have an overall power consumption meter and metering on devices too, there is no way of getting the house measurement being skrewed up. And, you may specify that a device controls a toaster, but not a dishwasher (or was it a laundry machine, I can't remember) in the interface. Just silly and arbitrary, without a point to it.

That being said, I would guess that your issue 1 may go away with a more mature controller. 2-3 is likely due to issues in your network. 4 may be either or (or both).

Hope this helps.

[Joacim 11]

I think your questions are a bit narrow. I'm not saying that the HC2 is without any issues but these issues it does not have*.

*- if you search the forum i think you can find examples of all of them but I'd say if you build your mesh in a physical smart way there is work arounds for most issues.

Edited September 3, 2016 by Joacim

[harri__s 0]

Thanks for responses.

I was reading this forum and trying to learn about possible issues I might be getting, I got the impression that for basic stuff I'm planning to do, HC2 should be much better and more reliable bet. I will give znet some weeks and see if my problems continue like this and then either switch to HC2 or stay with them.