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Features postponed after 2020


jwi

Question

On Friday I ordered an HC3. More out of curiosity. Yesterday I read that

Fibaro postponed some features until 2021.
It is about this:
▪ ZigBee devices support
▪ Bluetooth Low Energy devices support
▪ Energy management panel
▪ Temperature charts panel
▪ Energy consumption charts panel
▪ Gateway connection with Home Center 2 / Lite

Since I have known Fibaro for years, I am not surprised, but if I had known that on Friday, I would not have ordered it.

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5 hours ago, SmartHomeEddy said:

 

B2B or B2C ?

 

With Lua programming, Quickapps and not that many support for integration by Fibaro it indeed tends to B2B. The only other way to support customers who don't know Lua, is with this forum. But Fibaro doesn't have that much focus on the forum, so more and more it will be B2B, and the more higher cost solutions. 

Yes.

B2B and B2C doesn't tell the whole story - it's also how the value chain is laid out in the market. For a market that goes all the way out to the consumer, it tends to be B2B in the back-end (supplier value chain) and B2C in the front-end (what's offered to customers)

When home automation was complex, the majority of the focus was B2B (KNX, and resellers and installers). When it becomes easier the weight shifts towards B2C (Zigbee and philips lightning)

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This picture I found on some smart home analyst page (it's more a stack than a value chain -

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). I think it's quite ok view on the market, but in general never believe that analysts has the truth.

The 3 battles outline seems reasonable but I think that Battle3 and the value in the 2 top layers will be mostly eaten by the big smart home platform players...

 

The problem with the Internet is that it historically has killed a lot of middle men in legacy value chains as things got easier to connect and distribute. When value chains tilts towards consumers (consumers being more in control) because of technology advancements and ease-of-use, it tends to simplify the value chain too.

Note, capturing a consumer business can generate enormous revenues as it usually has a scale that B2B never has - just look at Apple.

 

Anyway this was what was attractive with Fibaro in the beginning. It felt as a consumer play in something that was traditionally complex and "Installer heavy". As a consumer, buy a box, switches and sensors and put together your own system. It was a different (disruptive) play compared to the legacy expensive home/building automation world (KNX). Z-wave promised plug&play and it was only the issue of wiring the electric switches right without the house catching fire. - and maybe in the future all houses would come with Z-wave switches and it was only a temporary retrofit issue....

 

I think this was an excellent play in the beginning. However, the market maybe didn't evolve as fast as people hoped and it's still tricky for the average people to thinker with electric installations - and house don't come pre-wired with smart switches yet. Selling boxes in bulk to house builders and installers solved the latter problem and thus the strategy tilted in that direction. The problem is that it also caused the consumer platform play to loose focus... that is the long game for world domination.

So they bet safe for, as it will turn out, a much smaller return....

 

With some perseverance, they could have evolved this to the perfect platform today - they were early out - the smart GW to everything in the home - and it would have been much more worth than their device business. ...and they would have been bought by Google for billions more than the

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. With the acquisition any hope for a platform come-back probably ended - the Fibaro people got their money and the strategy was retrofitted into a garage opener business.

 

The appeal of HASS an OpenHAB, NR is that they solve the messy integration of existing systems today - I believe that if Matter succeeds the attractiveness of these platform will become (even) more niche as there will be a commercial market for the different subsystems - UIs, AI brains, etc..

 

But I don't recommend people to hold their breath waiting for the market to come together - so please tinker with HASS, OpenHAB, NR, or Fibaro's boxes if you feel and has the need to solve problems today. It's fun to tinker, but just remember that we that "tinker" don't represent the main audience for the future home automation market - and thus our voices may not count as much as we would like. We are just the

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...

 

Edited by jgab
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2 hours ago, SmartHomeEddy said:

With Lua programming, Quickapps and not that many support for integration by Fibaro it indeed tends to B2B. The only other way to support customers who don't know Lua, is with this forum. But Fibaro doesn't have that much focus on the forum, so more and more it will be B2B, and the more higher cost solutions. 

And without the means of protecting the source code of integrations with Quickapp, not many B2B partners will create commercial integrations. 

I don't think Installers will be the source of innovative QAs.

The "Now I installed smart switches and everything - You can buy a custom made QA from me to automate your day - actually you have to buy it from me because you don't have admin rights on the box"... that kind of "captive" market is not going to last.

 

I do think that B2B partners could create QAs for their devices using proprietary protocols and protect the code - kind of the discussion of binary drivers for the Linux kernel - and that's fair.

 

Then of course, if a B2B partner, or any developer, come up with ex. the ultimate scheduler app that was so easy that anyone could use it - you may want to protect the code so you can get some money back from the investment.

 

Idea: The ultimate Scheduler QA and then a really user friendly Web UI that would allow non-coders to click and drag rules for their daily home automation task? Because we don't seem to get a decent UI from Fibaro before that market opportunity has passed (Yes, you could probably do it in NR, but a browser only JS UI that push config/rules to a QA would be enough)

The innovative part would be the UI as I have still not seen something that's both user friendly enough and flexible enough... (and no, the answer is not wiring boxes in NR :-) )

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.

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Is it possible to delete a post?

 

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I agree on most of youre parts,

 

A big problem is that there is no money to make for coders.

If you look at homeseer (yeah yeah again) there is a market for buying plugins and a lot of people buying them.

 

So the things i miss with fibaro:

(good) plugins / marketplace where people can sell/buy them

An open way to create your own touchscreen, i hate the "daddy knows best mentality

i want to decide what's on my screen

 

This is also the reason i only use hc3 for a couple of zwave devices and for the rest... it;s homeseer

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Personally I was put off by HomeSeer. I looked at it a bit and even installed it. I'm not saying it is bad or anything, but I found that the cost was high (HS4 Pro costs 359 USD, and then some plugins on top of that). Instead I went with Home Assistant that is free and got tons of integrations and plugins that is updated weekly. The only cost was the hardware. Easy to setup, yet offers advanced scripting or easy to make automations. There's a lot of free templates also done by contributing people. You can setup your UI however you want it, with your own backgrounds, images, icons or whatever. All free of charge.

 

The HC3 have been out for quite awhile now, and Fibaro does not seem so interested in making additions themselves, but are relying on others to make QA:s. Sure, I guess there could be some bucks made by programmers making plugins, but I don't think you would make gold on that. And, from what I can see, the interests seems not so high for the HC3. I think many have have left the forums here and Fibaro, or are still keeping their HC2 running whatever it have done for years.

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3 hours ago, robw said:

Instead I went with Home Assistant that is free and got tons of integrations and plugins that is updated weekly. The only cost was the hardware. Easy to setup, yet offers advanced scripting or easy to make automations. There's a lot of free templates also done by contributing people. You can setup your UI however you want it, with your own backgrounds, images, icons or whatever. All free of charge.

 

I also have Home Assistant running only for a "Plan B". But I know there is no such thing as "for free". 

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3 hours ago, robw said:

Personally I was put off by HomeSeer. I looked at it a bit and even installed it. I'm not saying it is bad or anything, but I found that the cost was high (HS4 Pro costs 359 USD, and then some plugins on top of that).

Correct, i bought secondhand hs2, updated for 60 dollars to hs3 and now 60 dollars (or so) to hs4

Indeed most plugins costs money (not all of them) i have no problem paying for a plugin that works good.

 

I paid a lot of money for hc3 and it does the same as hc2, no more no less.

That's  money down tha drain :)

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On 7/6/2021 at 4:23 PM, akatar said:

Correct, i bought secondhand hs2, updated for 60 dollars to hs3 and now 60 dollars (or so) to hs4

Indeed most plugins costs money (not all of them) i have no problem paying for a plugin that works good.

 

I paid a lot of money for hc3 and it does the same as hc2, no more no less.

That's  money down tha drain :)

Yes, I feel the same, the HC3 has a different UI than HC2 but otherwise for the daily use it does the same thing. If ones hobby is to sit and code, it is a different matter. But If you just want to run your normal automations like lights, alarm etc., the HC2 can do it as good as the HC3. So, you're right, money in the drain for me, too!

 

f you got a secondhand HS2 it could be worth it. It all depends what you like and need. In my case, HA provides we with all I need and want, and I don't have to pay for any integrations or plugins :). But I would not have any issue paying for it, if it was really good and did things nothing else did. So far I haven't found myself missing any feature, integration or plugin in HA, quite the opposite - I am overwhelmed! :) Good luck with the HS4, I'm sure you will be happy with it, it does seem good, too!

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On 7/5/2021 at 9:57 AM, jgab said:

Yes, you could probably do it in NR,

 

For a scheduler you could build a nice UI using uibuilder, so any numpty could schedule tasks....but yes, you can also wire stuff up in the native UI if you want to do it quick and dirty.

 

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14 minut temu, Flemming64 napisał:

Is there any news regarding update incl. Zigbee or at least some zigbee brands?
Will there be an update this year on HC3 with that?
Flemming

Zigbee will be implemented similarly to zwave 3.0 While the development work is slowly coming to an end, we do not plan to implement zigbee this year. A beta with Zigbee engine is expected around Q2 2022

This year we will mainly focus on the energy panel, which will be extended and scenes will be added to use its capabilities. We will expand support for Nice and Elero devices. A lot of work will be devoted to the mobile application, from which we will give the possibility of partial configuration of the gateway. We will expand the possibilities of z-wave 3.0 by migrations and some improvements. We will also spend more time on improving the stability and performance, and will enter with our devices in several new markets, which so far can only buy HCL.

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4 hours ago, A.Socha said:

 will enter with our devices in several new markets, which so far can only buy HCL.

Eeh?  hc3 with 700 chip?  or something else?

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22 minuty temu, akatar napisał:

Eeh?  hc3 with 700 chip?  or something else?

HC3L and yubii on another markets

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15 hours ago, A.Socha said:

Zigbee will be implemented similarly to zwave 3.0 While the development work is slowly coming to an end, we do not plan to implement zigbee this year. A beta with Zigbee engine is expected around Q2 2022

This year we will mainly focus on the energy panel, which will be extended and scenes will be added to use its capabilities. We will expand support for Nice and Elero devices. A lot of work will be devoted to the mobile application, from which we will give the possibility of partial configuration of the gateway. We will expand the possibilities of z-wave 3.0 by migrations and some improvements. We will also spend more time on improving the stability and performance, and will enter with our devices in several new markets, which so far can only buy HCL.

No comments, Sir. 
 

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10 hours ago, 10der said:

No comments, Sir. 
 

There is a first time for everything :)

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On 8/13/2021 at 9:28 AM, A.Socha said:

Zigbee will be implemented similarly to zwave 3.0 While the development work is slowly coming to an end, we do not plan to implement zigbee this year. A beta with Zigbee engine is expected around Q2 2022

This year we will mainly focus on the energy panel, which will be extended and scenes will be added to use its capabilities. We will expand support for Nice and Elero devices. A lot of work will be devoted to the mobile application, from which we will give the possibility of partial configuration of the gateway. We will expand the possibilities of z-wave 3.0 by migrations and some improvements. We will also spend more time on improving the stability and performance, and will enter with our devices in several new markets, which so far can only buy HCL.

I do understand that Fibaro has it's own priorities for development, specially after it was acquired by Nice, but what i don't understand is why they are not taking into account it's users priorities. I think, and i may be wrong, that almost everyone that invested their money on the HC3 did it because of multi-protocol support. HC3, in regards of z-wave connectivity, is not a huge improvement over HC2, it's not even z-wave 700 (which was pushed to HCL3, great job Fibaro), and as of now most of HC3 functionality, if not all, were present on HC2 (and HC2 had a better web UI). So, IMHO, i think Fibaro should, at least, give it's users a real roadmap on users priorities development, maybe create a public pool on what should be prioritized over it's own business matters. So far, Zigbee and BTLE support have been postponed several times, and every single time a Fibaro rep talks about this, it's to postpone it a little more. It's not only un-ethical, but also un-lawful, to sell a piece of equipment promising it has support for "all kind of devices", while in the end it doesn't do it. If this was taken to court in several countries, Fibaro would be in a bad place. 

 

 

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11 hours ago, sergiobaiao said:

I think, and i may be wrong ... HC3, in regards of z-wave connectivity, is not a huge improvement over HC2, it's not even z-wave 700 (which was pushed to HCL3, great job Fibaro),

 

i might help you to understand this better

 

 

 

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20 hours ago, sergiobaiao said:

A beta with Zigbee engine is expected around Q2 2022

 

And before you know it, it is Q2 and we have the long awaiting Zigbee thing. 

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