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Home Center 3 Lite


sergiobaiao

Question

Hi there,

 

Have you seen the new HC3 Lite? I really can't understand this. Not only Fibaro shipped HC3 totally unfinished on the software side (we never had zwave, rf, btle working, and it's full of bugs), but also releases a new Home Center (Lite?) version with a better Z-Wave chipset (ZWave 700). That's far from reasonably. Why in the hell would someone release a lite version of something that's better than the actual "Pro" version, and even before finishing the software implementation of the current one.

 

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Edited by sergiobaiao
forgot one thing
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There is no difference between z-wave 700 and z-wave 500 from the perspective of the customer, for us the gateway with the 700 chip is easier to manufacture. However, when HC3 was developed, the technology was not ready to use it in production.  Over the year since the release of the HC3, the stability of the chip z-wave 700 has improved significantly, which is why more manufacturers began to gradually switch to it, as did Fibaro, who presented a new control panel based on it

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Hello @A.Socha

I agree with @sergiobaiao.
Now it is the case that several devices have to be serviced and we also wait longer for updates and innovations.
From my point of view, that is very surprising.
That a second unfinished product is now being brought onto the market is astonishing and unsettling.
If I had known all of this beforehand, I would have thought longer about buying the HC3.
Greetings Frank

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I think the idea was to have cheaper HC3 on the market and it does make sense...

Yes, it has same abilities software wise, but  HC3 is more powerful than HC3 lite. I mean CPU/RAM, number of devices and etc.

Users that want lite system with few devices won't buy HC3 (is too expensive) , but HC3 lite is an excellent solution (for Fibaro)

 

Edited by cag014
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On 2/11/2021 at 4:45 PM, A.Socha said:

There is no difference between z-wave 700 and z-wave 500 from the perspective of the customer, 

Ah, @A.Socha that's a big lie.

Maybe you think your customers are non IT people .... but that's simply not true.

The most of your customers are people working in IT or IT enthusiast.

 

Quote

 for us the gateway with the 700 chip is easier to manufacture

For us the zwave 700 have other advantage : have you ever seen a z-wave 500 network turn on 100 bulbs at same time ?

This is only one of the multiple advantage of zwave 700 .... better range , better security (always encrypt, echd), always NWI, Flirs

 

Just an advice : don't treat your customers as fools. They are not!!!!

 

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15 minutes ago, candrea77 said:

For us the zwave 700 have other advantage : have you ever seen a z-wave 500 network turn on 100 bulbs at same time ?

 

no matter if you take 500 or 700 series, the transfer rate is exact the same, max 100kBps.

 

100 bulbs on same time means on both, one by one turn on, get ack, turn next on , get ack ... (yes, one can do it faster with bc/mc/distributed zwave/ association proxy, but the result is exact same for both at the end of the day. Yes, there might be advantage of "faster" Cortex M4 core vs. 8051, but we talking about 100kBps, and 8051 in the zw500 can drive two uarts at 230k).

 

 

 

15 minutes ago, candrea77 said:

This is only one of the multiple advantage of zwave 700 .... better range ,

 

so let's compare:

 

zw700 RX path:

-97.9dBm sensitivity at 100kBps GFSK, 868MHz

 

zw500 RX path on HC3:

stock zw500  is -94.2dBm sensitivity at 100kBps GFSK, 868MHz
on HC3 you can assume something like -104dBm sensitivity at 100kBps GFSK, 868MHz

 

so zw700 stock version is better than zw500 stock version, however Fibaro did spend saw filter (-60dBm blocker for LTE sideband) and LNA giving some extra dBm (around -10 extra sensitivity), so no, HC3 is better as stock zw700.

 

zw700 TX path:

up to 13dBm

 

zw500 TX path on HC3:
stock +6dBm, so zw700 is better than stock zw500, however Fibaro did spend PA with max +30dBm. As the TX goes over saw filter as well, there is some los, but who cares, HC3 did send with +14dBm, so it's better than stock zw700

 

As these number means nothing to ppl who don't know them, let's use range calculator:

 

Stock ZW700
 

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Fibaro HC3

 

image.png.4610823d1cbb82fb05e233cbc4fd641e.png

 

for me, the HC3 is clear winner (and i haven't mentioned the great antenna in HC3)

 

 

15 minutes ago, candrea77 said:

better security (always encrypt, echd),

 

ehm, security is SDK software thing, HC3 got z-wave certified (DSK, SmartStart, S2 AES), so no difference to zw700 here

 

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it does not matter if zw700 could do aes256, or rand in hw, it is not being used by zwave at all. 

 

15 minutes ago, candrea77 said:

always NWI, Flirs

 

how important is FLiRS on gateway? There is no use at all for FLiRS on gateway (and btw, that's SDK things)

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

These things you mentioned, are based on stock compare, from Silabs or zwave manufacturers, not on what in the reality on the market and not against what Fibaro did on HC3.

 

But let's check other GWs and compare them to HC3:

 

- Fibaro HC3L -> 

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Stock zw700, but TX only +9dBm, something like only half direct range of what HC3 is doing

 

- Hubitat

no information at all, some data from zw500 based mode, but there are pics on FCC website, showing the same cheap-ass antenna inside as on zw500 based model, while HC3 (even with 0dBi antenna is already better than zw700) is using much better antenna.

 

- A.I.Pilot

same as for Hubitat, stock 700 which is not any better than HC3

 

- ELAN

only zwave stick (+1dBm), stock TX/RX, chip antenna (wondering why)

 

- ONU

one can't compare it, is Japan only and they using 3 channels there for zwave

 

- Dwelo and Trane

US only, so no compare possible

 

- Z-Pi 7
TX Power: +4,8 dBm
RX sensitivity: -97.5 dBm

so that's even worse than HC3L

 

there are not so many zw700 based gateways, but that should be sufficient to understand how marketinag paper "get zw700, it's better" is not really important in real world.

Btw, HC3 is not the first zw500 based gw with PA and LNA, there was once Fantem OOMI cube, but they screwed up BUI, androoid version choice, marketing, almost everything - except the hardware.

 

 

To make it simple, zw700 is only better (from manufacturer point of view):

- when you wish to save some money with gw certification (this is what Socha actually tried to tell about HC3L and zw700)

- when your device is battery powered

- when TX is higher than 6dBm (max. of what zw500 can do)

- when your design\device make use of Cortex M4 features (it is pure pain for 97,8% of developers to make use of 8051 for exact same things, so you find on most zw500 based devices additional ARM or whatsoever uC)

- when you need z-wave LR

 

From customer point of view:

- battery powered -> long(er) live

- z-wave LR (one day, when available)

- zw700 gateways can be developed bit cheaper, so customer happy with price diff

 

 

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