Jump to content

Welcome to Smart Home Forum by FIBARO

Dear Guest,

 

as you can notice parts of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO is not available for you. You have to register in order to view all content and post in our community. Don't worry! Registration is a simple free process that requires minimal information for you to sign up. Become a part of of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO by creating an account.

 

As a member you can:

  •     Start new topics and reply to others
  •     Follow topics and users to get email updates
  •     Get your own profile page and make new friends
  •     Send personal messages
  •     ... and learn a lot about our system!

 

Regards,

Smart Home Forum by FIBARO Team


  • 0

HC2 maximum number of devices


Anssi

Question

Hi all,

 

A simple question but to which I haven't been able to find an answer. What is the real maximum number of physical devices the HC2 can support?

 

The documentation states 230 "devices", but does that include the number of slave devices too? I'm a bit worried since I'm at the beginning of building my setup and based on backup file information I already have 110 devices. The number of physical modules is just 32.

 

So, is the 230 the number physical modules or master & their slave devices?

 

Thanks,

Anssi

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

It is "physical" so you have now used 32 out of 230. If you upgrade your HC to 4.5XX firmware, the backup will only show physical devices. This is not an error, Fibaro changed the way they count devices during backup.

 

But...

 

My Z-Wave rules of thumb: less than 5 modules, sometimes issues because not enough devices to cover all areas. Between 5 and 20...almost never issues. Between 20 and 50... sometimes trouble. Between 50 and 100 devices real "weirdness" starts and communication gets "fragile". Above 100 make sure you have the tools to diagnose network issues (for example, Z-Sniffer, you can make one yourself - EDIT: you need a lot of background to understand it) or get in touch with a good certified installer to support you (I am and end user, not an installer). Know about CPU and memory usage. Follow this forum.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
  • Inquirer
  • On 9/9/2018 at 12:13 PM, petergebruers said:

    It is "physical" so you have now used 32 out of 230. If you upgrade your HC to 4.5XX firmware, the backup will only show physical devices. This is not an error, Fibaro changed the way they count devices during backup.

     

    But...

     

    My Z-Wave rules of thumb: less than 5 modules, sometimes issues because not enough devices to cover all areas. Between 5 and 20...almost never issues. Between 20 and 50... sometimes trouble. Between 50 and 100 devices real "weirdness" starts and communication gets "fragile". Above 100 make sure you have the tools to diagnose network issues (for example, Z-Sniffer, you can make one yourself - EDIT: you need a lot of background to understand it) or get in touch with a good certified installer to support you (I am and end user, not an installer). Know about CPU and memory usage. Follow this forum.

    Thanks for the clarification and insight! It would be interesting to know if the problems with large setups arise from the Z-wave system design itself or is it badly designed devices. I'm sure many will also unneccessarily overload their network and controllers with bad LUA scenes etc. But that's another discussion..

    Edited by Anssi
    typo
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0

    Sorry for the delay. Short answer: "all of the above" apply but that is not surprising because everything you mention is somewhat related.

     

    Long answer: well... We'll talk about that when you need it. I would say... Don't panic, just keep my rules of thumb in mind. I have been helping quite a few users via Private Messages (I think about 20 in total over the years), and I cannot help everyone, but I have had some success as well. But understanding Z-Wave is "not very fast" and keeping traffic really low really helps. Also, Buy Z-Wave Plus devices if you can (not the older ones) because of, well, several reasons...

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0

    ...so Peter's rule of thumb would explain the weird behaviour of my HC2, which has 136 device masters attached (translating into 636 devices). The HC2 runs very, very slowly - sometimes taking tens of seconds to respond to a scene trigger, and also failing to learn and/or configure new devices. Is there a solution to this? I see that a number of other HC2 users have multiple gateways either/or another HC2, or and HCL, but it's not clear to me how this is intended to work, and even less hop to set it up - is there a setup guide anymore here is aware of (I have looked, but with little success)?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0
    12 hours ago, Derek said:

    ...so Peter's rule of thumb would explain the weird behaviour of my HC2, which has 136 device masters attached (translating into 636 devices). The HC2 runs very, very slowly - sometimes taking tens of seconds to respond to a scene trigger, and also failing to learn and/or configure new devices. Is there a solution to this? I see that a number of other HC2 users have multiple gateways either/or another HC2, or and HCL, but it's not clear to me how this is intended to work, and even less hop to set it up - is there a setup guide anymore here is aware of (I have looked, but with little success)?

    With a slave hc2, you create a second zwave network. But you can create scenes etc on the master.

    Long story short, you have 140 devices, you can divide them into 2 networks with 70 devices each.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0

    please,

    What would be the recommendation when you have a project with more than 100 modules and want to prevent problems with the client?
    the safest way would be to use 2 HC2? thanks

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0
    3 hours ago, jorge rintaro said:

    please,

    What would be the recommendation when you have a project with more than 100 modules and want to prevent problems with the client?
    the safest way would be to use 2 HC2? thanks

    It depends,

    If the house/building is quite large then i would use 2 hc2's. to assure that alle devices have a fast connection to the hc2 (max 1 hop)

    If the house/building is not that big, one hc2 will be enough.

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 0

    Based on my experience, you will have big problems with that many devices on a single HC2 (as per Peter's comments above, there will be z-wave latency problems and other strange behaviour).

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

    Guest
    Answer this question...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

    ×
    ×
    • Create New...