I'm soo unhapppy with Fibaro now

[jwi 53]

11 hours ago, petergebruers said:

It is 3.5. He answered this question here (see picture). That is why I pointed @T.Konopka to that topic.

OK, my mistake, I overlooked that.

[petergebruers 1,261]

That's OK, no problem at all!

[T.Konopka 8]

17 hours ago, JanRemco said:

So my conclusion was twofold: The update changed parameter 1, and then the update changed the state to off.

So, this happened after updating the gateway to 4.520. You noticed that the Wall Plugs turned off and that's it.

Did it happen again after setting the parameter 1 to proper value?

I want to determine if this might be the outcome of the update process or if the update affects Wall Plugs use in this matter.

 

Dimmer case will be continued in the other thread.

 

 

 

[JanRemco 7]

5 hours ago, T.Konopka said:

So, this happened after updating the gateway to 4.520. You noticed that the Wall Plugs turned off and that's it.

Did it happen again after setting the parameter 1 to proper value?

I want to determine if this might be the outcome of the update process or if the update affects Wall Plugs use in this matter.

 

Dimmer case will be continued in the other thread.

 

 

 

 

It did not happen again. But hen, at this moment, the devices are all exluded because  i completely did reset the HC2, and have not yet included them

[hanhoo 3]

Just as a maybe positive response. I also got word that the 4.530 update could cause problems. I waited for at least a month. With 50+ devices and 40+ scenes I was reluctant, but since i've never had any problems I went ahead anyway.

 

The update took a heck of a long time. So much that I went to bed. But only to find out the next morning that the light switched on as always. Haven't had any problems. Not with thermostates (eurotronic), dimmers (fibaro), lights (including Hue), Harmony, or even with VD's and IFTTT connected devices as the Ring doorbell and Nest Thermostat.

 

I'm new to the forum as a contributor, and somehow interested how people end up with these problem en where the unhappy responses regarding Fibaro's update policy come from. For I don't have them really. 

[alex88 70]

10 minutes ago, hanhoo said:

. I also got word that the 4.530 update could cause problems

 

4.530 fixed the problems in my system that 4.510 created. 

 

I think you need to be clear about which problems you are referring to.

 

There are quite a few different problems that persist and then there are problems that are version specific. 

 

4.510 created unconfigured devices for me (and a number of other new issues). Other people reported the same unconfigured devices issue. Some people suffered a great deal of pain resolving this and some are still going through it. 

 

You only find out how much you can take and how badly specific issues affects you when things go wrong. If you have been lucky enough to not experience that, then good on you. 

 

10 minutes ago, hanhoo said:

somehow interested how people end up with these problem

 

Good luck finding the answer to that. I think you would have about at much success trying to boil the ocean. 

 

Edited February 6, 2019 by amilanov

[hanhoo 3]

@amilanov: somehow you make me feel that posting something positive on this forum is a bad thing. Sorry for that. Good luck with your system. And yes, everything has worked well for me and no i'm not interested in boiling the ocean. Just trying to understand and help over here.

[robmac 173]

On 1/28/2019 at 11:17 AM, T.Konopka said:

Moreover, we strive to bring what users want

in that case please:

 

can we have plugins back?

 

and can we not have this weird behavior?

 

Simple requests 

[alex88 70]

8 hours ago, hanhoo said:

somehow you make me feel that posting something positive on this forum is a bad thing

 

I don't know what to say. Maybe create a separate post to talk about how happy you are with Fibaro. 

 

Lots of people have had REAL bad experiences and need a place to vent AND to remind Fibaro that they need to keep working at it. 

Edited February 7, 2019 by amilanov

[PepsiMac 17]

2 hours ago, amilanov said:

Lots of people have had REAL bad experiences and need a place to vent AND to remind Fibaro that they need to keep working at it.

 

I must say that my posts are not about venting but about expressing views on aspects of Fibaro's service. If we all just vent on such platforms, then they will ignore all the messages and no progress will be made. Perhaps review sites are the best place to express opinion, I use the forum for support and information.

 

Some Thoughts

 

On that note, I have noticed that one area that causes many of the problems are the "false" messages and confidence the system leads one into. If you behave as the patient, slow, careful social worker looking after a very frail elderly person who has a big garden that requires endless maintenance and weeding.

 

From my experience, part of the issue appears to be that Fibaro places more budget and effort into marketing and presentation than technical support. The other big challenge actually appears to be the z-wave platform itself. Z-wave seems to provide false message that give the impression processes are complete when in fact they take much more time to complete than the messages show. This seems to risk database corruption of the z-wave database (that holds all the device information) I usually exclude any device at least as many times as devices it adds plus one. I have also started

 

First off, using Chaicka's procedure for updating your box software version seems to help. I never try anything from the mobile app unless you have no choice, a laptop seems to provide better messaging and information so you do not carry out multiple tasks whilst you are adding new devices. In part, some of the failings are attributed to the fact you may have intensive scenes and adding devices is also intensive and the cpu simply cannot manage both at the same time without dropping packets which cause many of the challenges.

 

Another consideration is the process of asking Fibaro Technical Support to clean up dead and troublesome devices from your system, please search online

 

Those old enough would remember the battle between Betamax and VHS for dominance of the market. Some compare Zigbee as Betamax, best quality to Z-Wave as VHS, "cheap and cheerful" or cheaper (unless you use Fibaro/Qubino) and cheerful, if you have the patience of Jobe. I am not sure Zigbee is robust, I do know that Z-wave is not as tight in terms of integration and the Z-Wave alliance seems to have loose control of certification compared to Zigbee.

 

Whichever way, unless you are going towards far more expensive and compliant systems such as Creston,  Z-wave demands you be a dedicated carer and gardener to the system, rough handling leads to more frustration.

 

Right now, my major bugbear is that Fibaro seem to only provide templates when they think the product is good for the US market, such as adding support for a Jasco Multisensor only certified by the Z-wave alliance in Oct 2018 and not bothering with multi-tone sirens and other really useful modules because they are not from he USA.

 

Just some thoughts and observations

 

 

 

 

 

[alex88 70]

20 minutes ago, PepsiMac said:

If we all just vent on such platforms, then they will ignore all the messages and no progress will be made. 

 

@PepsiMac

I didn't say that all people do on the forum is vent nor that this is all they should do.

I'm not sure why you read that into my statement which was written in a context of previous posts and the topic of the thread. 

 

The forum is there for the community to share and support each other and Fibaro has a role in that although you would have to read their posts to understand what they do and don't get involved in. 

 

@PepsiMac

I have never heard of Chaicka's update procedure. Thanks for sharing!

 

Does anyone know how to setup a wiki for Fibaro best practise?

 

It feels like there are so many good ideas out there, but it takes alot of time to find them all. 

Edited February 7, 2019 by amilanov

[PepsiMac 17]

59 minutes ago, amilanov said:

It feels like there are so many good ideas out there, but it takes alot of time to find them all. 

 

I agree with you. In fact I have recently been lamenting the removal of Fibaro.co.uk as they had a very useful section that made easy using the various lua commands. It seems Fibaro reduces technical support with every upgrade, I found the old style of forum much better than the one we have now.

 

As we all get used to Fibaro's nice graphics, I have a sense we are demanding more and more real stability and functionality. It is like saying : "OK! Now you have persuaded me to buy your products, how can I best use, and rely on, them?" That is a question I feel not well answered.

[robmac 173]

On 2/7/2019 at 12:01 AM, robmac said:

in that case please:

 

can we have plugins back?

 

and can we not have this weird behavior?

 

Simple requests 

@T.Konopka you had a lot to say to defend the indefensible  but no wish to tell us when we can expect a version that is actually fit for purpose. 

[Hiram K. Hackenbacker 2]

Well, JanRemco, you're not the only one. I've got my HC2 for free from a good friend who uses these things professionally and he's having a hard time), but if I had bought it for the hefty price they ask for it, I'd really feel cheated!

 

I am an IT professional with 40 years of experience in, amongst others,  technical software and hardware development and I've rarely seen such an unstable and poorly documented product. I have seen bugs in the software (really incredible bugs, do they ever test?) that made clear to me that Fibaro software developers are totally clueless.

 

The main reason that initially I was attracted to Fibaro was that you can write your own software for it without the hassle of installing and maintaining a development environment. But then you also need 1) proper documentation and 2) some basic functions that enable you to build a solid system. And that is where things go wrong with Fibaro: documentation is virtually non-existent (you really have to search all the nooks and crannies of the Web to find info) and essential LUA functions are not usable. And if they improve on that (that also happens every now and then), they don't tell you about it; you have to stumble upon it during your everlasting quest for information on the Web!

 

I haven't looked in to this to a great extent but Domoticz running on Raspberry with Razberry looks like a good alternative. And it is a whole lot cheaper!

[PepsiMac 17]

8 hours ago, Hiram K. Hackenbacker said:

if I had bought it for the hefty price they ask for it, I'd really feel cheated!

 

@Hiram, I am sure that whatever you imagine, multiply it by 3 for each controller we have purchased, some of us were fooled into thinking Fibaro put as much effort into heir software as they did with their graphics and acquired more than one.

 

It seems that since they have been taken over by Italian company NICE, support and product quality have deteriorated. Even aspects like the removal of 3rd party plugins and the "Fibaro Marketplace" show a company that started with promise but is really coming apart at the seams.

 

All is not lost though, the HCL makes a cute coaster for hot drinks and the HC2 is a good stand to protect a wooden table from hot plates. Meanwhile, the devices are quite well served by other companies though the Intercom may end up as landfill.

[AR27690 17]

Hi all.

I have HC2 for about an year and half and till now everything works as expected and I do enjoy the software freedom to write my own code.

Few weeks ago I have decided to join the forum just to be able to download scenes and VDs to use and to learn, but by reading all your opinions and experience, I'm afraid that I did a huge mistake by purchasing HC2.

Right now I have 23 physical devices only, but I want to continue to build up my system... any suggestions from you how to continue will be very appreciated.

By the way my previous controller was Vera and I was very disappointed how it works, although I must to admit they have a great chat on-line support , something that Fibaro could adopt easily.

[robmac 173]

You know you should not have any issues with 23 devices. It all gets a bit more fragile beyond 100 to 120. There are much cheaper solutions that will also handle 23 devices so I guess you like the graphics.

 

If you are going to take firmware, make sure you take basic precautions. Simple things like make sure your devices are in good order before you start. They may not be when you finish but it is best to start clean. Restart HC2 before you upgrade etc etc.

 

As the number of devices increases, reduce the traffic by configuring energy reports and temp reports to less regular values. Never use polling as no modern devices need it.

 

If you take new firmwares, most of the time you will get away with it but one in every few, despite everyone else having no issues, you will be spending hours configuring devices to find the one that stinks.

 

Every now and then Fibaro release a complete stinker of a firmware. It is always a gamble and the warning on the screen is not there for fun, it is there because even Fibaro know their stable releases can be monstrous. Probably because testing is for sissies as they never bother from the evidence of most releases. 

 

I hate HC2... yes I really do. You get it all working and then foolishly buy some nice Fibaro expensive heat controllers that force you back into firmware upgrades. The result is wasted time in a system that is supposed to save time.

 

Best of luck.

 

 

[patrickvh 4]

About  4 years ago I did want to become a Fibaro dealer/integrator. Lucky me I realised after 2 customer integrations it would have become a real disaster, so I stopped.

Today I have 2 Fibaro integrations at home and I do agree it functions pretty well, with 2 conditions: 1) you're a software literate and 2) you don't mind to debug issues from time to time with the help of the forum members because Fibaro support is real disaster. Not because support people aren't helpful but because Fibaro management is a bunch of narcissists.

[unitedeurope007 2]

Hey guys,

 

I agree - this system is a disaster. Every three months something stops working and the system requires min 4 hours of work to funtction again. After the update to 4.550 no device reacts to commands and the Web UI takes ages to load. I will try to go back to an old version (now on 4.550). 

 

For the the case is clear. Dimmers and others are okay (altought I have a failure of 20% over three years) - but the home center is a disaster. I came from, domotoicz and wish I had stayed there. 

 

EDIT_ Went back to 4.540. But the house is still offline (again).

 

EDIT March 2021: On 4.600 Issues have decreased significantly. Apart from hickups during inclusion of new devices (and the slow Zwave traffic for mass device operations) things work well. I still run a daily reboot at 0500 am. This seems to be necessary due to http calls in a virtual devices (for reading/seting a modbus device) which seem to crash the network stack

 

EDIT: 3 years later most problems are gone. The only thing that still does not work correctly is mass device operation based in scene activation (more than 8 devices changed in a script, esp. if this script is run twice). And yes zwave traffic is reduced by setting all parameters and devices operate with a time lag (using sleep command).

 

I will stick with Fibaro for three reasons:

1. MIgration effort

2. Well working Alexa integration (now using Alexa as the main app)

3. Backup functionality. Only system I know of that backs up zwave radios without charing a monthly fee. Restoring backups also worked for me several times, when the DB corrupted (ghoast devices which were never created and which could not be deleted)

Edited November 21, 2022 by unitedeurope007
Time lapse

[Sankotronic 2,091]

Fibaro system is not perfect, but it is great and it works fine when scenes are properly written (specially those in LUA).

 

I'm with Fibaro for almost 4 years. Started with building my Fibaro HA on 10th December 2015   Most of the problems during this 4 years where caused by me and my scripts and also because I was building z-wave network without first trying to learn about it and how to properly do it. There were only few problems that where caused by system itself like deleted devices or with z-wave initialization error, but in all this cases restoring last backup solved all problems.

 

Last disaster happened two months ago when HC2 motherboard died. Can't really blame Fibaro for that, can I? Once I buy Toshiba super duper 17" laptop, just to work for one day and died on me. Part that died in that laptop was not produced by Toshiba but by one factory on Taiwan  

 

On 9/24/2019 at 9:03 PM, unitedeurope007 said:

I agree - this system is a disaster.

 

So, I agree - this system is one of the best choices that HA market can give you today ?