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Bye


robw

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Hi,

 

I just want to say Goodbye (at least for now) to all the wonderful people I've met here, and helped me over the years I've been using my HC2 and later the HC3. It have been wonderful to be on board beta testing UHAS for the HC2 and meeting all the nice people and @Sankotronic there. I wish you, all the best with UHAS, @Sankotronic! I hope we will see UHAS on the HC3 someday, it really was UHAS that made the HC2 shine! @Krikroff, thank's for your support on the HC3 with you Sonos QA! It made me wake up every morning in time to work! :) @jgab, You've educated the masses here with your code for the HC3 - amazing work! And a big thank you to everyone else here who have contributed to the Fibaro users, kept the forum alive, and thus helped me!

 

@Fibaro. Thank you to support, who've always helped me when I had issues. I'm moving to another HA solution now because of the lack of features with your products and that the promised features for the HC3 are still missing (for instance ZigBee support). I have to tell you that I feel cheated regarding the HC3. It was (and still is), marketed as the "A true game changer of smart home market". That fell flat. I bought it for the better hardware, 433MHz support (that turned out be very limited), and ZigBee support (still missing over a year after the release). The HC3 still feels like a HC2 with a new UI, missing promised features.

 

I've not done much to help, I'm not a coder. I can read code and do a little bit of coding, but I'm not good enough to get going and make up a nice QA from scratch. I did help Fibaro on my spare time though, for free, doing Swedish translations for the HC3 UI. It felt good to help out a bit. I wish though that Fibaro took more time helping out their customers. The HC3 can be a powerhorse, the QA system is powerful, but you have to be a coder or hire someone who does the job. That makes it more difficult to use for the average user, and thus more limited. Yes, of course, using home automation you need some knowledge about it all, what the protocols are, how to plan a setup etc., but it should all be about making it easy to setup for the user.

 

I've got a Raspberry Pi 4B, a ConBee II ZigBee stick, and a Aeotec Z-Wave 5 stick (waiting for the gen 7 stick that I have ordered). I have installed a HA solution on it that is actively developed and has a huge user base that is also providing smart solutions, looks and support for the system. And, it is free. Now I have a ton of views, graphs and integrations that I did not have on the HC2 and the HC3. I now have a feeling that I can make my home truly smart, as I have devices that are not supported by Fibaro. It seems this HA solution and Fibaro goes totally opposite ways - Fibaro goes to a closed area, where only Nice products are supported and the user will be a reseller of their products with coding skills. The HA solution I will move to is open, geared toward the end user, striving to make it easy yet powerful to the user and also bringing a lot of creative solutions in a near Plug & Play fashion. A lot have changed over this last year, where it it now moving from the user having to write text files to get things going, to being more user friendly where you can do most of the jobs through ready templates in the UI. I can now consolidate the hardware, using only a RPi for everything, while with the HC2/HC3 I also had to have an AutomationBridge and a Hue Bridge.

 

I think I will keep my HC3 though. Perhaps Fibaro will change their ways, making it a game changer. But as it is now, they are still standing still behind the start line while the others are running their second lap. Hope this will change, competition is well needed in this market. I will still be around checking the forums from time to time, see if anything new happens and is released. I will probably from time to time, start up the HC3 and update it.

 

Again, thank's to everyone here! I wish you all the best!

Edited by robw
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Hello @robw,

 

Thank you very much for the kind words. I wish you all the best and hope to see you here again.

 

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Hi @robwthanks a lot for the words.

have fun ;)

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HA is a cool choice, Sir!

Edited by 10der
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I can only say that you are not alone robw@, there are more and more of us, with the same thoughts or actions.

 

sad but true.

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  • On 5/9/2021 at 10:07 AM, 10der said:

    HA is a cool choice, Sir!

    It definately is! I have started to move the Hue lamps to HA. HA autofinds a lot of things, like my two Synology NAS, phones, media players, TV's, BluRay players... I got my robot vacuum cleaner to show up, and I got my climate devices setup without hassle. I was not able to do all that with the Fibaro controllers. The Fibaro controllers ain't bad, but I always felt the limitations, both hardware/support wise (mostly missing ZigBee), and also my lacking skills as a coder.

     

    I've run HA side by side for a while, letting it fetch the devices from the HC3. The HA I used for exploring the settings, how to do things and run a nice GUI. It really have a lot of options GUI wise. Now I feel that there is no point to run them both - I'll just take the jump :)

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    From my side I can wish you good luck, I hope you will change your mind about HC3. We plan to stand out and not be one of the many manufacturers who have the same thing only differently. This process started earlier and for now you can see the work on Yubii Ecosystem. But soon we will be able to tell you more about the integrations we have made or the cooperations we have established. Adding to this the functionalities that the user will benefit from.  I hope that with what I write above and ZigBee you will change your mind and come back to "Us" one day

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    2 hours ago, A.Socha said:

    ZigBee

     

    save time and skip that, add CHIP support and Thread firmware to the EFR32^^

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  • 12 hours ago, A.Socha said:

    From my side I can wish you good luck, I hope you will change your mind about HC3. We plan to stand out and not be one of the many manufacturers who have the same thing only differently. This process started earlier and for now you can see the work on Yubii Ecosystem. But soon we will be able to tell you more about the integrations we have made or the cooperations we have established. Adding to this the functionalities that the user will benefit from.  I hope that with what I write above and ZigBee you will change your mind and come back to "Us" one day

    Thank you, A.Socha! Yes, I hope that I will change my mind about the HC3 someday. I hope there will be huge changes (quicker development, openess regarding integrations, ZigBeee of course, and a focus toward the users). I will keep my eyes and mind open. I hope Fibaro will, too. :) Thank you A.Socha for your support here!

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    13 godzin temu, tinman napisał:

     

    save time and skip that, add CHIP support and Thread firmware to the EFR32^^

    Probably just the naming thing ... but now "Matter" support. ?

     

    @robw Many thanks hope you will come back. 

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    20 minutes ago, M.Mróz said:

    Probably just the naming thing ... but now "Matter" support. ?

     

    yeah, skip CHIP^^ and get some dark "Matter" into HC3/Yubii. The EFR32 inside is even certified to run Thread, you guys have WiFi certification for these two as well, so it's only "short" step into dark "Matter" world.

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    All my respect for the integer and friendly way you say goodbye

    I must admit frustrations with HC3 have made me sometimes less friendly towards Nice/Fibaro.

    I think the Nice/Fibaro/Yubii-system now has become a full installer system where the customer is not expected to do much change to the installed system without the help of his installer.
    I agree with you that having to code something to get what was promised in marketing is a bridge too far and definitely makes the HC3 a bad choice for those who just want to automate their home and don't have coding as a profession or a hobby.

    I understand your choice for HA and wish you success. 

    I have a few devices left on my HC3 that will be transferred to my Hubitat Elevation C7 in the coming weeks and then I will say goodbye to HC3 also.

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  • 3 hours ago, wienog said:

    All my respect for the integer and friendly way you say goodbye

    I must admit frustrations with HC3 have made me sometimes less friendly towards Nice/Fibaro.

    I think the Nice/Fibaro/Yubii-system now has become a full installer system where the customer is not expected to do much change to the installed system without the help of his installer.
    I agree with you that having to code something to get what was promised in marketing is a bridge too far and definitely makes the HC3 a bad choice for those who just want to automate their home and don't have coding as a profession or a hobby.

    I understand your choice for HA and wish you success. 

    I have a few devices left on my HC3 that will be transferred to my Hubitat Elevation C7 in the coming weeks and then I will say goodbye to HC3 also.

     

    I wish you the best, too, with your move to a new HA system! The market is constantly changing, and those who adapt to the end users will benefit. Sure, there will be a market for "Professional installations", like if you build a new home, you hire someone for a full home HA installation. But as the bridges become cheaper, and the software sometimes even free, and easy to use, perhaps the "Pro install" market will be quite small and difficult to earn any money in. So I'm not so sure Fibaro is on the right path now. We'll see if that'll change.

     

    All the best!

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    I am also rather fed up with the development of the HC3, have started to look for alternatives but haven’t decided what path to take yet. Several of the alternatives looks interesting, but the iPhone/Android apps for them looks really ”legacy” and outdated with strange user interfaces. 

     

    Any good tips on alternatives with good iPhone/Android App would be highly appreciated.

     

    Have a rather large system with over 100 z-wave devices, have previously tested SmartThings which looked good but couldn’t handle large amount fo z-wave devices. Same with the Animus Heart, which was a disaster. Best alternative so far is the Homey, but had other issues with that.. Haven’t tested Hubitat or HA, but their Apps looks awful…. 

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    5 minutes ago, JcBorgs said:

    I am also rather fed up with the development of the HC3, have started to look for alternatives but haven’t decided what path to take yet. Several of the alternatives looks interesting, but the iPhone/Android apps for them looks really ”legacy” and outdated with strange user interfaces. 

     

    Any good tips on alternatives with good iPhone/Android App would be highly appreciated.

     

    Have a rather large system with over 100 z-wave devices, have previously tested SmartThings which looked good but couldn’t handle large amount fo z-wave devices. Same with the Animus Heart, which was a disaster. Best alternative so far is the Homey, but had other issues with that.. Haven’t tested Hubitat or HA, but their Apps looks awful…. 

    Don't be to quick to discard the Hubitat. Yes it's UI needs some working on but they have about two or three updates of the firmware each week and with new features and bugfixes, not introducing new bugs.

    There are several,methods to enhance the app: Action Tiles and Sharp Tools are the most commonly used.

    That said, I expect Hubitat itself to come with a much improved UI in the near future as they realize all too well that that is their weak point.
    Big advantage is the very large, friendly, helpful community that gave me good answers (including 'drivers', ) for 99 % of my questions. So now, directly from Hubitat and without any extra code or hardware I control, Samsung smartthings, Honeywell thermostats, Hunter Douglas shades, Logitech Harmony remote, Netatmo etc  and , of course, a stable z-wave and zigbee network. On top of that it has something called 'Hub-mesh' that gives you real unlimited coverage of your network by adding Hubitat boxes in different places of your house (and only when you buy the fifth box, you will have spent the same amount of money you spent on your HC3.

    But hey, i'm not here to market Hubitat. I'm sure you have your own needs and know what you want and don't want.

    Just to say that it is a huge relief to have a little box that just does what it promised and has a good future in front of it.

     

     

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  • @JcBorgs I would take a look at Hubitat, too, as @wienog. Or, IMHO a really good solution - Home Assistant. You can set up the UI pretty much how you like, with your own tabs, pictures, order etc. As you have a lot of devices you certainly need to look deeper into that, but I think you can connect two Home Assistants together using MQTT Eventstream if needed.

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    On 5/11/2021 at 5:35 PM, A.Socha said:

    From my side I can wish you good luck, I hope you will change your mind about HC3. We plan to stand out and not be one of the many manufacturers who have the same thing only differently. This process started earlier and for now you can see the work on Yubii Ecosystem. But soon we will be able to tell you more about the integrations we have made or the cooperations we have established. Adding to this the functionalities that the user will benefit from.  I hope that with what I write above and ZigBee you will change your mind and come back to "Us" one day

    Almost 1 year later … Zigbee support on HC3?

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    I'm tired of Fibaro's empty promises and am now integrating from HC3 to Home Assistant which I run on my old rebuilt HC2.
    There I already have the Z-Wawe, ZigBee and 433 MHz protocols and it works fantastically well.
    In Home Assistant I have everything I could want and most of it works without having to write any code. Influx and Grafana are integrated with a simple push of a button, and there are hundreds of other fun things to integrate.
    The interface is super and it works great on the boat tablet and mobile.
    So, soon it's time to shut down HC3 and put everything on my new and stable Gamechanger, a rebuilt HC2 :-)

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

    Edited by RH_Dreambox
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    On 5/11/2021 at 5:35 PM, A.Socha said:

    From my side I can wish you good luck, I hope you will change your mind about HC3. We plan to stand out and not be one of the many manufacturers who have the same thing only differently. This process started earlier and for now you can see the work on Yubii Ecosystem. But soon we will be able to tell you more about the integrations we have made or the cooperations we have established. Adding to this the functionalities that the user will benefit from.  I hope that with what I write above and ZigBee you will change your mind and come back to "Us" one day

    @A.Socha we are almost a year later. What has changed in the meanwhile? Where is the promised Zigbee support?  What cooperations are there? 
     

    I’m curious… 

    Edited by Sjekke
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    Hi

     

    Soon you will be able to test Zigbee yourself

    We've put a new energy panel in your hands, we've rebuilt the system significantly to handle the energy used as well as the energy produced

    Scenes for the energy panel have been expanded

    We have partnered with leading inverter companies to give you the ability to download inverter data into your energy panel.

     

    We have resolved many of the issues you have complained about, made our software faster

     

    We have added native support for NICE and ELERO devices which resulted in many improvements in the field of roller shutters, gates

     

    Of course, this is not all and we will announce some collaborations when we are ready to announce them

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