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Coming over from SmartThings - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly


aaa426

Question

I've been using my HC3 for about a week now and I'm pretty unhappy with it.  It's going back unless I can find answers to some of the issues ?.

 

I've been using  SmartThings for about 2.5 years.  I decided to try HC3 in the hope of better responsiveness and reliability, and a more 'premium' experience.  Most of my devices are Fibaro, so the upgrade path seemed obvious...

 

The Good

  • Proper support for Scenes and Associations
     
  • Pretty painless inclusion of devices (no need to have the hub in direct proximity to the new device, better recognition of generic devices)
     
  • Block Scenes and automations easy to set up. 
     
  • Much faster response than SmartThings

 

The Bad

  • No (direct) way to tell which devices have been added securely or not
     
  • No way to tell what scenes use which devices - so if you re-place a device the scenes end up with missing sections.  There is no dependency check, no warnings, just broken scenes.

 

  • Can't find Z-wave logging anywhere.  I had problems trying to associate a roof window to a switch.  No logs anywhere to help me figure out the problem.
     
  • Impossible to choose a different Template for your device.   With SmartThings you can literally chose any template ('Device Handler') you like, or write your own.  This wouldn't be so bad, but (for example) by my Aeotec Multi-white bulbs appear as RGBW bulbs, so I can't actually change the white colour temperature at all.
     
  • The Web app - mostly good actually, but the scrolling regions don't support touch.   We've had touch controls for what, 15 years? 

 

The Ugly

  • Terrible support for Google Assistant:
    • Blinds/roller shutters don't appear in Google Assistant at all - SmartThings didn't support rollers as a type either, but they at least appeared as binary switches.
       
    • RGBW lights appear as normal lights.  No colour control available
       
    • The Default Room.  It's supposed to be hidden, but appears in the Google Assistant
       
  • IFTTT doesn't appear to work at all ('Options Unavailable')
     
  • GPS presence doesn't seem to work.  I set a scene to set me a notification when I left the house, and went 1km away.  Nothing, even after 2 hours.  And no logs.

 

  • The Android App
    • Literally ugly.  Both versions look like they were written for Windows 95.  But to bring it up to date, it's got an iOS style 'back' button.  On Android...
       
    • The 'Home' button is right next to the 'Turn everything in the room on' button

       

The unforgivable

  • Every time I've checked the forum for help and guidance, I keep finding threads along the lines of "You can email support about this, but they haven't fixed it for 2 years".  Maybe I'm reading the wrong threads.
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9 answers to this question

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No offence intended but your post seem like a sort of ultimatum towards the other users.  Or maybe i'm just more of the sensitive type :)  

 

Moving from one system to another is always a process that involves a lot of patience and understanding that you will not get the best of both worlds. Also there is a learning curve. It was a learning curve also for those who switched from Fibaro HC2 to Fibaro HC3 if you can imagine; and still is. 

You have to compromise in some areas. If you can not , better send it back and stick to the system you are already familiar with.

 

That being said:

Many of your issues can be resolved by learning LUA.  A lot can be acomplished through it. 

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

No way to tell what scenes use which devices - so if you re-place a device the scenes end up with missing sections.  There is no dependency check, no warnings, just broken scenes.

Use the HomeTable approach in LUA and then changing device ID's will be quite easy.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

Can't find Z-wave logging anywhere.  I had problems trying to associate a roof window to a switch.  No logs anywhere to help me figure out the problem.

It is all in the associations of each device. Current set and future.   Maybe describe the issue you had in more detail as associations are pretty straight forward.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

Impossible to choose a different Template for your device.   With SmartThings you can literally chose any template ('Device Handler') you like, or write your own.  This wouldn't be so bad, but (for example) by my Aeotec Multi-white bulbs appear as RGBW bulbs, so I can't actually change the white colour temperature at all.

For devices that do not have a template you can enter all the parameters manually if that is what you are looking for.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

Terrible support for Google Assistant:

Never used Google Assistant, but Alexa works just fine.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

IFTTT doesn't appear to work at all ('Options Unavailable')

As far as i know, IFTTT works just fine.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

GPS presence doesn't seem to work. 

that is true, very unreliable.  There are workarounds for that also.

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

The Android App

  • Literally ugly.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally i like the android app (Home Center) even if it still needs some improvment. Bigger problem is that there is no tablet mode :(

 

7 hours ago, aaa426 said:

The unforgivable

  • Every time I've checked the forum for help and guidance, I keep finding threads along the lines of "You can email support about this, but they haven't fixed it for 2 years".  Maybe I'm reading the wrong threads.

And we come around full circle to my first comment.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Momos said:

Use the HomeTable approach in LUA and then changing device ID's will be quite easy

Yes. Especially in conditional block ;) (irony)

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Hi.

The WEB UI shows a small "lock icon" when added in secure mode at the top right of the device

Please login or register to see this image.

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19 hours ago, aaa426 said:

No way to tell what scenes use which devices - so if you re-place a device the scenes end up with missing sections.  There is no dependency check, no warnings, just broken scenes.

True - see "home Table" approach which works in LUA

19 hours ago, aaa426 said:

Impossible to choose a different Template for your device.   With SmartThings you can literally chose any template ('Device Handler') you like, or write your own.  This wouldn't be so bad, but (for example) by my Aeotec Multi-white bulbs appear as RGBW bulbs, so I can't actually change the white colour temperature at all.

Me and I guess a lot of others would love to see a feature like a "Template Builder"
and then be able to choose a "default settings" for that device! 
Just imagine you have to go through 50 identical devices and change the default parameters for every one of them!!
A MAJOR time consuming task.
 

19 hours ago, aaa426 said:

Can't find Z-wave logging anywhere.  I had problems trying to associate a roof window to a switch.  No logs anywhere to help me figure out the problem.

Regarding inclusion problems and association: 
This hast most certainly to to with the distance to the HC. ( The closer -the better)
This gets worse the more devices your network has.  ( Z-Wave - traffic!) 
This is also true for Firmware updates! 
I spent days to get the firmware of Fibaro switches (inside the wall boxes) upgraded.
Some of them had to be as close as 20cm to the HC to finally get the updates done.
To get that to work I had to move the HC as close as possible to the device (shut down - reboot ~1000 times!!)
...and I had to do ~50 of them ONE by ONE!!
...and then again for all ~30 RGBW controlers

...downloading the same Firmware file OVER and OVER again!.
instead of doing "ONE" download and applying it to all devices in need ( BULK - update)


... but with the help and the incredible work of some very clever guys here -- thanks to all of them!!?
one can make the HC really do what it needs to "make it great" 
 

Cheers and have fun with Fibaro HC?

... it makes sure that you never have to worry about what to to in your "spare time"?

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Keep the discussion going, guys!

 

I really like the post of @aaa426 - although maybe some  issues can be addressed and his criticism  may not always be 100 %warranted it is very good to get the perspective of someone who has spent considerable time with a competing product. For this reason, I am going to tag @A.Socha who is responsible (with a team of course) for HC3.

 

I think if a user 

- finds the weak spots of the HCX, and in most cases correctly deduces that these weakness have not been fixed in a long time (eg diagnostic logging only available to support - even when there are good reasons for that decision).

- does not find answers on the forum readily

 

Then it is worth checking out if some of that could be improved.

 

We could make a similar post on the Smartthings forum, if we had enough experience with that product.  I run a small production network (about  5 devices) based on "Home Assistant" to put things in perspective ;)

 

In the end, it is his decision - how much time to spend using the "search" button and how many questions to ask. Some users accept "workarounds" and others hate it, thay consider a product with "workarounds" to be ... inferior I guess? I can understand that.

 

Lastly, I am the author of some in-depth posts about the "internals" of Z-Wave and most people don't need that, but when I see questions about "inclusion" and "association" I might have an answer for you. I totally understand the "search" function does not always bring you to the right topics.

 

Thanks @Momos@10der@pflugj for joining the discussion.

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  • Thanks for the replies, everyone.  I really appreciate you taking your time to help out.

    @Momos - apologies if I came over wrong. It might have been better framed as 'how do I' questions - I was feeling a bit ranty when I wrote the post ?.


     

    15 hours ago, Momos said:
    23 hours ago, aaa426 said:

    No way to tell what scenes use which devices - so if you re-place a device the scenes end up with missing sections.  There is no dependency check, no warnings, just broken scenes.

    Use the HomeTable approach in LUA and then changing device ID's will be quite easy.


    Thank you - I'll take a look into HomeTable - I'd not spotted reference to that in other posts

     

    15 hours ago, Momos said:
    23 hours ago, aaa426 said:

    Can't find Z-wave logging anywhere.  I had problems trying to associate a roof window to a switch.  No logs anywhere to help me figure out the problem.

    It is all in the associations of each device. Current set and future.   Maybe describe the issue you had in more detail as associations are pretty straight forward.

     

    The problem I had was with a trying to associate a double switch to a motorized window and the motorized window's blind (2 separate devices).  Ultimately I figured out that the problem was because the window was secure joined, but the switch was insecure.  I removed the insecure switch and re-added as secure, and that worked.  But then the blind (which is insecure, and *was* working) stopped working, even when I set the association to always send insecure messages for that Group.  The current workaround is that I've set up scene and I'm triggering that from the switch.  It took a good couple of hours for me to suddenly think "I wonder if it's because the window is secure" - it would have been much quicker if I could have seen the actual messages being sent by the switch.  

    Now that I've got a cooler head, I realise that even in SmartThings I'd have had to add logging code to the device handler to see these messages - it's just that I know how to do that in Groovy (ST's scripting language) and I don't in LUA (yet)

     

    15 hours ago, Momos said:

    For devices that do not have a template you can enter all the parameters manually if that is what you are looking for.


    The problem isn't the parameters, per se, and I might be misunderstanding what templates do.  I've added the 2 parameters that this particular bulb uses (Warm colour temperature, 2 byte, default 2700) and similar one for Cold temperatures.  The problem is that these aren't shown anywhere (that I can find) in the UI, so I can't change them; what the UI does show is a full colour wheel.  So it looks to me like HC3 thinks this bulb is a RGB device, not a W/W device and I don't seem to be able to tell it otherwise.
     

     

    15 hours ago, Momos said:
    23 hours ago, aaa426 said:

    Terrible support for Google Assistant:

    Never used Google Assistant, but Alexa works just fine.


    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Google Assistant works fine - it just doesn't show half my devices (blinds), and some of the ones it does show (RGBW lights) it shows as the wrong type.  That's not GA's fault - it's HC3 not telling it what type the devices are.  Maybe Alexa is a little more forgiving ?

     

    15 hours ago, Momos said:

    As far as i know, IFTTT works just fine.

     

    I was investigating to see if I could use the '$' notation in IFTTT to work around the RGBW problem above.  But although I've successfully added the Fibaro service to IFTTT, it can't find any scenes or devices.  After reading a couple of posts saying this was a known issue, I gave up.

    12 hours ago, 10der said:
    16 hours ago, Momos said:

    Use the HomeTable approach in LUA and then changing device ID's will be quite easy

    Yes. Especially in conditional block ;) (irony)

     

    I'll take a look.  I did briefly dabble with LUA, but the first thing I tried (the 'ZWave Monitor' scene, for reasons as noted above) didn't work because the script couldn't read some global variables and methods.  First up was '__fibaroSceneId', so I hacked that in (go, me!).  But then it couldn't execute fibaro:countScenes().  I didn't have time to investigate further.
     

    @pflugj - thanks also for your comments.  Hopefully the clever guys will help out too.  One thing I've noticed with the ST forums is that the clever guys have mostly done their stuff years ago, and moved on.  But as @10der has replied to my rant, perhaps there is hope ?

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  • 3 minutes ago, petergebruers said:

    it is very good to get the perspective of someone who has spent considerable time with a competing product.

     

    Awesome - thank you @petergebruers.

     

    Again, my apologies to all for the combative style of my opening post - I was very frustrated by the problems.  I'd (perhaps naively) opted for Fibaro/HC3 assuming that it was going to be a panacea to the problems I'd had with SmartThings and have no problems of its own.  ?

     

     

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    @aaa426 all good ?

     

    Lets start to try to solve each of them. I'll start with the Hometable. Below are 2 LUA examples on how to build the HomeTable. Credit for the first goes to @10der if i remember correctly  :)  . Second, the more ugly version is mine ? For both you have to create the global variable first.

     

    Please login or register to see this code.

     

     

    Please login or register to see this code.

    In the second version i also create some globals that keep track of my roller shutters and sensors :) 

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  • Thanks for the example, @Momos - looks like a great way for me to start exploring.

     

    I won't comment on ugliness or otherwise of code.  I'm a Solution Architect, so frequently do code reviews - but I'm not in a position yet to criticise/applaud LUA ?

    On a related note, how does the Fibaro community manage and contribute code?  SmartThings uses GitHub - largely because (for US users anyway) there is a native integration.  It's quite cool - you can add and maintain a device handler by pointing to a GitHub repo.  For those of us outside the US, you have to cut-and-paste the code, but it's still a neat feature.

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    On 6/22/2020 at 10:46 AM, petergebruers said:

    Some users accept "workarounds" and others hate it, thay consider a product with "workarounds" to be ... inferior I guess?

    @petergebruers ,

     

    Peter,

     

    I know, it's an old post but yes if you want, I'm one of the 'haters' of workarounds. First because you often need considerable knowledge and experience with programming from scratch to make these so-called 'workarounds'. For the many 'powerusers' that is not a problem, they probably see it as a challenge and a nice hobby. I don't have the time nor the will to spend (a lot of) time 'coding' something that should be working out of the box in the first place.

    It's like buying a smartphone and, after trying for a long time, find out that, if you actually want to make a call, you first need to send an email to yourself with the number in the subject-field. Then copy that number from your email and paste it in the phone-app.

    Would you like such a smartphone ?

     

    And THAT is exactly what generates sometimes some raw language between the novice-users and he 'power-users': the newbies just want the thing to work, the powerusers get frustrated thinking (and sometimes saying) OMG, you bunch of whiners, is it asked too much to write a  few lines of code ? My answer to that last question is, you guessed it: yes.

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