So why am I also so annoyed with Fibaro

[robmac 173]

Many years ago I decided to stop dabling in z-wave home automation and do a proper job. I decided a single vendor approach would probably be most wise due to previous experience with less than perfect z-wave compatibility.

 

So what went wrong this time?

 

I had to take a software upgrade so that I could get the fixed firmware for the Fibaro heat controllers that were released with huge bugs.

 

And guess what... that upgrade made a complete mess of my perfectly well configured and working network. No crashes and total freezes like some have but not the performance that I expect.

 

So I have just started to work through all of my devices soft configuring etc etc and checking parameters. 150 devices takes some time!!!!

 

What I have found so far:

1) lots of devices have global polling set. I never have polling on so what is that about? Thanks Fibaro for setting a totally unnecessary and detrimental value as part of the upgrade as it is the only way it could get set. I now have to waste my time turning off again.

2) a few devices are totally messed up and I have had to remove and re-add 

3) various devices are showing low battery even though they have new batteries 

4) lots of batteries have used a load of power. Probably due to all of that totally unnecessary mesh rebuilding.

 

 So the immediate result is that the £xxxx I had put aside to upgrade a load of my old Fibaro modules to new version is not getting spent any time soon. Why would I invest more in my single vendor system when I can not trust the single vendor I chose. 

 

If you think these poor quality releases are not hitting your profits you guys are in a dream world.

 

 

 

[1152 33]

Sad to hear such depressing news from one of the most capable old timers around. But you are not alone. I suspect quite a few of us do the same. Z-wave is placed on the slow burner, e.g. I don't spend much money on it these days - there are so many other things hitting the HA-market, and unless z-wave is "cleaned up" I will eventually end up replacing it altogether...

Edited February 9, 2019 by 1152

[NorthernRough 2]

Have to agree with @robmac, I'm exhausted with the random unreliability of the fibaro system.

I've experience all the same issues and many, many more. 

 

Just yesterday, using the wonderful guidance and tools from experts in this forum ( @tinman, @petergebruers ), I systematically worked through all the worst offending devices of my 147, to force them to rethink their unreliable and unnecessary 4-hop z-wave routes, which have been causing all manner of frustration.

 

Was so happy that I got from 42 devices with direct connection to the HC2, to almost 70, with a clear improvement in overall speed and usage.

However, a number of resistant devices complained about "waiting on wakeup" when they weren't battery powered, and others wouldn't reconfigure at all. Experience has told me that these types of problem often disappear with a HC2 reboot (open to other ideas - but when it gets stubborn, it's my only resort).

 

I do the reboot which is fine except that the number of directly connected device drops immediately to 45, and the mesh is a complete mess again. How is that even possible?

It takes huge effort for them to forget a rubbish routing and adopt a sensible one (and yes, I know what's sensible to me, isn't necessary sensible to a z-wave signal - but, trust me, these are obvious cases), but just a reboot to have them lose their minds again.

 

Honestly, if a vendor promoted a Fibaro conversion package deal, to something where their forums weren't constantly foaming at the mouth about reliability, I'd spend the money in a heart beat.

 

As it is, I'm back to spending another weekend, tentatively trying to coax the HC2 to play nice, while my family roll their eyes and despair over how their friends in their houses "can just put the lights on".

[Thomasn 77]

17 minutes ago, NorthernRough said:

As it is, I'm back to spending another weekend, tentatively trying to coax the HC2 to play nice, while my family roll their eyes and despair over how their friends in their houses "can just put the lights on".

 

I am completely with you.

[PepsiMac 17]

On 2/9/2019 at 7:38 PM, robmac said:

If you think these poor quality releases are not hitting your profits you guys are in a dream world.

 

I am really dismayed to hear someone at the "top of the pile" like @robomac expressing such dismay. Many of us really respect his views and knowledge in this area. If he is fed up, what chance to the rest of us have.

 

Maybe, given its focus on HomeKit, we have to accept Fibaro is only interested in the US market even though its initial efforts have not proved successful What they fail to understand is that no amount of fancy graphics will replace reliability and eventually legal challenges. Many a sloppy company has found its final greeting place (grave) in the US market.

[NorthernRough 2]

And this morning - after a reboot because a number of device were stuck in "pending" after an Update Neighbours command, several devices are showing "Initialization error". 

Further reboots and a recovery from a good backup don't help (in fact more devices joined the party so now all are showing the error).

Calling the help line. Seriously, I don't want to see a single new feature until basics of stability are sorted!

 

 

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[NorthernRough 2]

While waiting from support, I tried another recovery from the same backup, and this time it worked.

No rhyme or reason. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Anyone experienced the same, and had any advice to avoid?

[Guest spazpeker]

11 minutes ago, NorthernRough said:

While waiting from support, I tried another recovery from the same backup, and this time it worked.

No rhyme or reason. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Anyone experienced the same, and had any advice to avoid?

Had the same thing had to go back a few backups till i got one that worked

[jnathalia 0]

I have got the same on version 4.620... what a nightmare...

I just added one Fibaro dimmer. It didn't go well after several times. Then I added another one Fibaro dimmer because this one was not working properly because it didn't react on SceneActivation (while parameter was set) and then the entire network crashed.

 

As 

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 I got all Fibaro devices saying: Initialization Error

 

What to do??? My backup is from May 2021... so really helpless. I can cry...

[Sankotronic 2,086]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:39 PM, jnathalia said:

What to do??? My backup is from May 2021... so really helpless. I can cry...

 

The only one you can blame for not having recent backup is you. The only simple way to solve this problem with initialization error is to restore latest backup. other way is to reset all devices and include them all over again. Been there and did both ways, learned my lesson.

 

UHAS for HC2 that I'm working on has Automatic Backup VD+scene that now takes care that backup is regularly made at least once per week. Now I'm waiting for cloud memory to be full to check if deleting of the oldest backup is working to make space for next fresh backup.

 

My HC2 has 113 z-wave devices included, 87 scenes and 119 virtual devices with running main loops and when Automatic backup was not installed it worked stable for 148 days before I made next backup:

Please login or register to see this spoiler.

 

Now I can't show another proof since Automatic backup is made every Sunday at 5:00 in the morning and then server status is reset, but can say is a long long time.

 

I know how annoying it can be when home automation fails, but HC2 is just computer as any and can sometimes fail same as other computers fail, so making regular backups is a must.

 

 

[jnathalia 0]

I know I have to backup. It's the old lesson, but I didn't...

 

I have managed to get my system up and running again. I have copied all my scenes into Word to make sure I really don't lose something if further recovery would fail. But restored my backup of May 2021 and all went fine, except I have lost some work as device id numbers have changed so I (still) have to walk through all my scenes.

 

I just think this all happens because my network has become extensive. Around 100 Z-wave id's I have as well. I have 4 levels, concrete building, open stairways. My HC2 is at level 1. The problem I have is that the devices at level 3 react sometimes slow and the thermostats (Heltun) don't always communicate the temperature, brightness, humidity etc correctly. What I did when it failed: I added 2 devices, Fibaro Dimmers, latest version at the 2nd level, not really far away from the HC2. First I thought it didn't work, as normally the adding procedure is taking too much time or it's not being finished. I noticed I received a bunch of parameters instead of typical sophisticated settings for a Fibaro device. But in the end I made the conclusion that the latest Fibaro Dimmer 2 (production date Dec 2021) is not recognised by the software of the HC2!!

 

Then added another second Dimmer after some retries for the 1st Dimmer and then the network got the error "Initialization Error" for all devices. Once the Z-wave network (dump) in HC2 is invalid, I believe you cannot recover anymore and you have to go back to the latest backup. Actually, my experience for the best procedure to add a Z-wave device (regardless if it's a Fibaro device or not) is connecting it to the outlet next to the HC2 and perform the adding Z-wave device procedure. This works the best, fast (and safest?).

 

A backup is crucial if you gonna mesh around with Z-wave network devices, all others seems to be pretty stable. I'm one of the first users of HC2, so using it for many years and I have done 5 houses since.

 

How did you install the periodic backup? 

[Sankotronic 2,086]

7 minutes ago, jnathalia said:

How did you install the periodic backup? 

 

Hi @jnathalia ,

 

All about UHAS you can find here:

 

System Backup that can be setup to make automatic backups is part of the System module. Also pictures are available. Last few weeks I was optimizing code to get more free memory and that was a success   Now I'm working on lighting and few more things that needs to be finished before publishing. Still have to add Philips HUE API v2 support and also integration for

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modules.