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FIbaro Review


moosairshad

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Hi, I am new to fibaro.

 

Our company purchased Fibaro system for testing of the devices. In a single order having single pieces of most of the fibaro devices, I got two non working devices.

 

1) Home Centre 2

2) Fibaro Motion sensor.

 

I have discussed about the problem of both devices here in the forum more clearly. SO NOW i WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH IS The reliability of the FIBARO?

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13 minutes ago, moosairshad said:

Hi, I am new to fibaro.

 

Our company purchased Fibaro system for testing of the devices. In a single order having single pieces of most of the fibaro devices, I got two non working devices.

 

1) Home Centre 2

2) Fibaro Motion sensor.

 

I have discussed about the problem of both devices here in the forum more clearly. SO NOW i WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH IS The reliability of the FIBARO?

Confussingly enough that varries alot depending on scale of aplication, conditions and yes even the ocasional hardware.

I've ran into cases that just could not catch a brake - they had 3 sequentiall HC2s and noe one of them worked, yet all of them were completly new. Since 4th HC2 they had no problems... tho so i guess its stable when you are not lucking into ones that arent?

Most problems users have is not with units tho it usually falls into "how do i make this do something" category, and consequentiall i've fed 230V into UBS, how come it dont work no more?! Because end users are fun creatures.

 

RGBW i think is the worst case scenario - nigh impossible to replicate phanthom associations randomly occuring at some instalations using only certain individuall modules, IE.: you replace those and you are likely going to be fine.

 

Overall Fibaro's about 80% reliable, when the firmware is good and users keep their mader plans on aplications shelved. Oh and unless they patch to Beta ... that leads to even more "entertaining" things happening.

 

I work serviceline  in large city, i think i have some grasp on what might be causing most worries at least locally. But i could be completly wrong in global scale.

Edited by Kuba13
little less boasting me
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  • Topic Author
  • thank you for your information. So that means mostly the controller and Motion sensor , also Other modules all work perfect at most occasions. 

     

    As I found two devices having complaint in a single order (that too.. HC2 and Motion sensor), I feel disreliable about the products. And I am in a big dilemma about what will happen if I start providing this service to the clients, Will I be always busy with the compalints. So hope someone will give more infoprmation on reliabilty of these devices

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    9 hours ago, moosairshad said:

    thank you for your information. So that means mostly the controller and Motion sensor , also Other modules all work perfect at most occasions. 

     

    As I found two devices having complaint in a single order (that too.. HC2 and Motion sensor), I feel disreliable about the products. And I am in a big dilemma about what will happen if I start providing this service to the clients, Will I be always busy with the compalints. So hope someone will give more infoprmation on reliabilty of these devices

     

    @Kuba13 has written a clear technical summary of the system.

    I act as installer and technician for my sister's house, HCL and all devices are here below listed.

    By having the experience of only one "customer" I would never ever install that system if I were a professional installer with a large scale customers.

    Reason: if I multiply by n times (customers) the calls I receive from my sister about problems it would simply be the end of my days.

    Major problem: firmware. Never seen something like that in all my life. Complete parts of the FW do not work at all: heating panel, GPS localisation, weather, sunrise/sunset triggers, frozen unit to be restarted once a day and so on and on and on.

    Not only the FW is buggy but also very risky to perform the update. A lot of people gets a stuck device while updating. Never had that type of problem updating all my other devices in the house, never.

    I just take one minute to remind me what I currently use with updatable firmware and how to update in brackets:

    - SONY TV (USB key+file)

    - Samsung Blu-ray Disk player (internet connection or USB key+file)

    - EMTEC media player (USB key+file)

    - iPod (iTunes)

    - Garmin Forerunner (Garmin PC SW)

    - Garmin Vivoactive (Garmin phone app)

    - Bose Soundtouch 10 (Bose phone app)

    - FIAT Blue&Me handsfree communication and media player (USB key+file)

    - GoPro 3 silver (GoPro pohone app)

    - DJI Phantom 3 bird (DJI phone app or microSD card+file)

    - DJI Phantom 3 remote controller (USB+file)

     

    none of them failed during any update performed during the years.

    none of them have parts of the firmware not working (all features are working as listed in the device specifications).

    none of them uses a web browser to update (and I see here in the forum a lot of troubles with different browsers or different versions. Try to clear the browser cache, try to restart, try to change computer and blablabla).

    It's strange, it doesn't seem to me such a complicated device or system.

    Mah

     

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    Hi Kuba

    Just curious how your customers cope with features not working correctly?

    How do you sell and support stuff that doesnt work?

    80% sucess  rate in most businesses would not work.

    Or do you offer the support once the customer has already purchased the product themselfs?

    When I look at my GUI everyday and see the moon where the sun should be during the day with no apperant fix, it really makes me wonder how you installers cope with this.

    Ive asked that queston twice on this forum and  twice from support and have recieved no awnser so I guess there is no fix. This is just one small issue but it kind of "in your face" for a user interface.

    This maybe the best Zwave solution avalible, however seems to be more of a "hobbiest" solution to home automation.

    Dont get me wrong I have actually enjoyed messing around with the hc2 and my basic house set up is working for now (except remote connection, but thats another story)

    thanks and enjoy reading your posts..

     

    Jamie

    Edited by Jamie mccrostie
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    Hi @moosairshad,

     

    I brought my HC2 more than one year ago. In this time I have included 82 sensors and actors mostly from Fibaro. Also have developed more than 80 scenes, dozen of virtual devices.

    During this period I had some setbacks, but all solved with restoring backups. Now I believe that this setbacks were caused mostly by me not knowing how z-wave network work and didn't know some procedures how to do some things with HC2 so to avoid problems.

     

    My HC2 came with 4.056 and I upgraded always only with final releases such as 4.070, 4.080, 4.090, 4.100 and finally to 4.110 always successfully without any problems. Never had to do complete recovery of the system!

    There are always some bugs in the software but until now I always found some kind of solution or workaround to avoid strange behaviour of my HC2. It is now working stable for a week (I'm not working on it) with always same RAM memory usage (free RAM is stable around 40%). CPU usage is between 2% and 12% with spikes every half minute to 70% highest.  Actually it is working stable already for months, but I have occasionally to reboot the system because when I'm working on it writing new scenes, making new virtual devices and testing then memory usage jumps to 90% so I restart it to clean cache and some remains from my brainstorming :)

     

    I had some problems with several sensors, mostly door/window sensors and one motion sensor. Sometimes when battery is replaced on door/window sensor it needs to be excluded and included to work properly. But one week ago I replaced batteries on two of this sensors and they work properly showing proper status of new batteries so don't know what to say. One motion sensor is having ghost breaching and re-inclusion, resetting and moving to another location didn't help so most probably is faulty. So, I have three faulty devices, one motion sensor, one smart plug and one roller shutter out of 82 until now. I still have around 15 devices that still wait to be included into the system.

     

    To conclude, after one year I can only say that I'm very pleased with this system and despite some problems that I had on the way, it is quite stable and working as expected. It is wireless system and it has to be build with some rules and good practices. If that is followed then it will show it's full potential especially Home Center 2 with it's LUA capabilities.

     

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    On 29. 1. 2017 at 1:42 AM, Jamie mccrostie said:

    Hi Kuba

    Just curious how your customers cope with features not working correctly?

    How do you sell and support stuff that doesnt work?

    80% sucess  rate in most businesses would not work.

    Or do you offer the support once the customer has already purchased the product themselfs?

    When I look at my GUI everyday and see the moon where the sun should be during the day with no apperant fix, it really makes me wonder how you installers cope with this.

    Ive asked that queston twice on this forum and  twice from support and have recieved no awnser so I guess there is no fix. This is just one small issue but it kind of "in your face" for a user interface.

    This maybe the best Zwave solution avalible, however seems to be more of a "hobbiest" solution to home automation.

    Dont get me wrong I have actually enjoyed messing around with the hc2 and my basic house set up is working for now (except remote connection, but thats another story)

    thanks and enjoy reading your posts..

     

    Jamie

     

    I am not SELLING the stuff, i have no idea how thats taken care of on that front.

    for technicall support i generally fall into your standard categories of : rest it, reboot it, clear your browser's cache, send it over ill have a look.

    Can not do much more of annything else since there are sadly inssufficient tools in vast majority of tech supports (i know of only 2 places that can do you backup/recovery and those are so close to one another that it kinda lacks meaning to even have such separation: one is is Poznaň, Poland and other is somwhere in Germany).

     

    I provide support to those whom purchasesed these and advice to people whom are asking weather or not it can do this or that (trying to make users not go too crazy with integrating stuff is what i conssider pre-emptive damage controll). I highly recommand just testing stuff your company sells and tell customers something to extent "yeah theoretically it is possible, but i've not tried your crazy idea and if you do go ahead with it, you deal with those consequences". Automation is not Star Trek, you have to make customers understand that it is not going to solve everything and that it can take quite the effort making it work the way they want it to. And trust me people are LAIZY - if you dont say it dose work perfectly and that they'd have to integrate it on their own, most customers will not do it.

     

    I am fairly confident that most of what customers end up with works, but yes there are alot of issues with Fibaro and offten these things come out of left field (remeber when WPE/F kept mechanically breaking down and having the outlet part stuck close? wasnt that fun?).

    Edited by Kuba13
    trying to make few things make sense
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    I recon fibaro are missing the boat here . 80 percent of there customers want to do some fairly basic stuff. Turn some lights on and off by sensor, control there alarm  and heating etc

    if they could make the heating panel and a few other plug ins bullet proof they would be half way there.

    make the basics work well and most customers would be happy

    and  they would take the market

    it cant be that hard

    sorry getting a bit off topic here

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    1 minute ago, Jamie mccrostie said:

    I recon fibaro are missing the boat here . 80 percent of there customers want to do some fairly basic stuff. Turn some lights on and off by sensor, control there alarm  and heating etc

    if they could make the heating panel and a few other plug ins bullet proof they would be half way there.

    make the basics work well and most customers would be happy

    and  they would take the market

    it cant be that hard

    sorry getting a bit off topic here

    I wholehartidly agree

    make few thigns work really well, give at least some tools for analysis to servicess and than build upon that.

     

    It is such a good strategy that it is used whole lot in manny various bunisses.  Sadly software developement dose nto seem to follow the suit and rather releses half baked ideas that work only when they feel like it (in games this is manifested by giant first day patches, in operating systems the service packs were iconic of this, in Fibaro its just your tipicall patching schedule that fixes few things, breaks few things and ignores few things).

     

    I hoped that such approach would be completly shoved off back when Daikatana was released (there was afterall Battlecruiser 3000AD with basically same problem set), but nope not only has this remained it seems to get slightly worse each year (great work on No man's sky Peter Moly... i mean Sean Murray). same thing is offcourse happening in operating systems, browsers, various players.... man i do miss my old software set that kinda just worked.

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    • 4 weeks later...

    I'm using Fibaro for the last 4 years without any major problem.

    My house it's build only with Fibaro modules without any switch.

    I have ~50 devices and maximum 10 scenes.

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    9 hours ago, Razvan said:

    I'm using Fibaro for the last 4 years without any major problem.

    My house it's build only with Fibaro modules without any switch.

    I have ~50 devices and maximum 10 scenes.

    Very good!

    i am glad to read that and wish that this continues to work this well in the future.

     

    Alas as you can read on pretty much anny topic in these forums that is not generaly the way things go with Fibaro, now weather it is insane end-customer ideas on integrating stuff, overly ambitious plans by developers or just plain bad luck i can not tell (i too had few odd issues, particullary pahnthom associations are bugging me with RGBW modules - since they make least sense and do not appear to happen offten enough to manage way to predict them). All i know is that the system offten has issues, sometimes quite grave ones, sometimes bit humurous, so while i do genuinly hope that you will keep having stable system i can not expect that to be the case for everyone.

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