The future

[[email protected] 0]

is there a migration path from UC2 with LUA and a network with mesh congestion and lack of transmission range that would preserve  the 20 big LUA scripts? Is there any way to to get a network router from Z wave to LR z Wave or a Matter web protocol? Is there any device or matter hub software that would work in a UC2?

[awlieser 19]

Could you pls be a bit more specific on what you intend? And … what do you mean by UC2 with Lua?

[[email protected] 0]

Sorry that was a typo I meant HC2. I built the HC2 system 5 years ago and it does not work very well as many of the nodes are too far away My house is about 300 sq Mtrs. I have struggled with repeaters, and written extra code to ensure no wasted commands have been sent by Zwave protocol. I am retired now and thought I ought to clean it all up but I can't really see a migration path. As an old IT consultant I always tried to steer the clients onto the most popular standards to ensure plenty of future options and I now find myself up the creek without a paddle. Perhaps the solution is to move to something else but I don't know if anything else is better. Matter seems interesting because I have house wide WiFi and a good Starlink connection, but I don't see any well developed hub with a simple, rich, scripting language. I like weather VDs Fibaro HC2 is great but I am at the limits. If there was a bridge to LR ZWave it would be great and I could start with just changing the distant nodes and then over time convert the whole system. I guess that would require HC2 to support the LR addressing scheme in some way - mapping a sort of Network Address Translation would do it. 

[awlieser 19]

Have you considered upgrading to HC3 or Homey Pro? I never had range problems with z-wave (if there are enough mains-powered z-wave devices in the network, which act as repeaters). Distances covered vertically ca. 12m, horizontally ca. 30m

[awlieser 19]

BTW: On my previous HC2 I did install a more powerfull antenna, like 

Please login or register to see this link.

. Presently not available, but you should be able find something similar. With current HC3, antenna performance is sufficient.

Edited May 22, 2025 by awlieser

[[email protected] 0]

Thankyou for your interest and constructive response. My house  has Z-Wave devices on 3 floors and some of the linear distances are well up to 30 mtrs. The network is overloaded with mesh congestion and the problem is the Z-Wave routing algorithms (Routing is too grand a word its more like bridging, but you know what I mean). As a personal view the Z-Wave designers started to build their own clever bits on a pretty basic system and thus pushed themselves in what to my mind is some blind alleys, ( they should have tried to get to the next level (A bit like going to TCP from IP on the internet) The individual devices got too clever like mini smart hubs themselves all while the basic radio signalling was error prone with simplistic error recovery. I found myself trying to write error recovery into my scripts!.

 

I do have my own created problems in that after trying the HC2 in different locations I found I had to site the HC2 hub in the plant room to be sure that some of the more fundamental controls in the heating system were less error prone. That puts the ZWave antenna in among the pipes!

 

And yet my house has Wifi everywhere at very high data rates with secure encrypted transmission. Even my car has wifi access everywhere on the road at slow speed through the GSM 4 LTE network and I don't have to pay. I suspect the manufacturer paid a one time licence. My burglar alarm, electricity, gas and water meters all use LTE (I.E. Internet protocols and addressing)

 

I did try an antenna but to no discernable effect. Because of the lack of diagnostics I was never sure why, but antenna matching is quite critical and definitely beyond my pay grade.

 

But at the end of the day I do love the functionality of the HC2. It is feature rich with Peter's Time scheduling extra. I even taught myself to use LU2!

[awlieser 19]

I still would suggest you try a migration from HC2 to HC3 (remember to do a cloud backup before). Prblem is that all your scenes will have to recreated and VDs no longer work (but you will find alternatives, i.e. QuickApps on the forum.

[Sankotronic 2,370]

Maybe master-slave combination is solution for you. For example HC2 as master and one or two HCL as slaves placed on each floor?

 

Also it is good practice to reduce reporting from power metering devices such as smart plugs, dimmers and relay modules where it is not really needed.

 

Placing mains powered devices strategically can also help since they can relay communication from other devices that are unable to communicate with HC2 directly due to distance or obstacles. I used Fibaro smart plugs on places where I do not really need them, but I get good communication with devices placed down in the cellar.

 

BTW - I still use one HC2 to cover my 200 sq mtr house and also some devices placed in my yard  

Edited May 23, 2025 by Sankotronic

[[email protected] 0]

Again many thanks for your interest and understanding. I have tried a repeater half way but with not very distinguishable results. It probably just creates further Network congestion as of course it transmits its search backwards towards the congested HC2 mesh as well as forward.

 

I did go through a phase of buying a z-wave sniffer and looking at the path routes. I found it very hard to tie the "sniffed" traffic with the HC2 trace and tie it back to the originating scripts. When you do look at the traffic it is horrifying the shear volume of it just trying to find a working route (and I don't let the HC2 Poll).

 

I did try a Z-Wave slave hub unit which is supposed to be an architected protocol. It never really worked and when I spoke to either the slave manufacturer or Fibaro they each claimed it wasn't them! (I believe them.) I don't think it is a very successful or debugged protocol. (We had to signal by making the slave think it was talking to dimmers in the HC2 so we could pass numbers but then there had to be scaling because one used 0 to 99 while the other 0 to 255 for dimmer levels

 

When I built our new home I put the very latest ideas into it and of course every bit of technology has its own clever logic from the boiler which works on external temperatures and has about 14 "thermostatically limited" circuits. The house has many passive house features so solar gain is a problem. The house is also fully air conditioned with its own controller logic. Then there is the security system, which also has scripts. I have the rainwater recovery system which flushes the loos and waters the lawn Finally there are the fans in the 5 heat recovery units in the MVHR systems and these are interlinked to the fire and CO detectors to either go off or high speed depending on the alarm type!

 

I long ago decided that it was futile to try and interconnect all these systems because there were far too many controllable points requiring too many Z-wave devices and each one had a different control interface and the basic on off Z-Wave switch doesn't always cut it. However, I am still trying to get HC2 to manage the solar gain by switching on and off the south side circuits and in extremis switching on the air conditioning. Z-Wave just doesn't seem to hack it. I am not sure anyone will supports LR Z-Wave. 

 

Rather than trying to grab a bit more spectrum for this reinvention of the wheel the z-wave designers should take the lead from the mobile phone suppliers who have finally decided to throw in the towel with there own systems and all switch to internet protocol for everything (GSM 5).

 

If I've got to rewrite such as moving from HC2 to HC3 then I am beginning to think the internet protocols might be a good way to go. The internet has evolved over the years but always managed to provide a growth path. If the higher level layers of the protocol  are going to be standardised with Matter, it just gets better. However I have not yet found a matter hub that is as rich in features as HC2. Is there any chance of Fibaro supporting the IOT and Matter? In the past they have been reticent in talking about direction but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.

Geoff Foden

[awlieser 19]

Hi Geoff, I don‘t believe Fibaro will move into Matter. Even their Zigbee implentation on HC3 is still half-baked, i.e. in Beta since years. Regarding number of devices: I‘ve got 90 z-wave and 12 zigbee devices plus some integrations and qa‘s on my HC3 with no problems. Cheers Alfons

[Ondrej Bajer 2]

On 5/24/2025 at 6:45 PM, [email protected] said:

I did try a Z-Wave slave hub unit which is supposed to be an architected protocol. It never really worked and when I spoke to either the slave manufacturer or Fibaro they each claimed it wasn't them! (I believe them.) I don't think it is a very successful or debugged protocol. (We had to signal by making the slave think it was talking to dimmers in the HC2 so we could pass numbers but then there had to be scaling because one used 0 to 99 while the other 0 to 255 for dimmer levels

Hi @[email protected]

 

I think that the master-slave combination that @Sankotronic was mentioning is having HC2 as a master and then connect another HC2 (or HCL) via Ethernet network...and place it on the other side of the house.

Then, you migrate selected z-wave devices from the main HC2 to this Slave and share them back to the main HC2 via GUI in the screenshot below.

Z-wave traffic will be directed to this HCL, communication with the main HC2 will be then automatically routed via Ethernet.

I used this combination in the past and it worked well.

Of course, this will not give you integration of Matter or Z-Wave LR protocols, but might solve the issues with Z-Wave's range and reliability.

 

From your posts here I see that you've used some other kind of Z-Wave Bridge or Slave so it did not work this way and it was more of a trouble than any good. Am I correct?

 

Anyway - do you have an update to your situation? Are you staying with HC2 or did you found a better solution for the future?

Please login or register to see this attachment.

 

Edited October 30, 2025 by Ondrej Bajer
picture

[[email protected] 0]

Just revisiting this thread. Thanks for your interest. Your solution above looks interesting but is a bit late for me and I'm not sure I want to invest in any more ZWave protocol. I don't have a solution. I am about to add electric gates to the house and they are over 100 metres from house. I have an internet cable to the gate for cameras etc so for the gate automation it makes sense to use Matter compatible switches and sensors. I think I will buy a cheap matter controller and keep the system separate from the UC2. Its a shame. The UC2 has a serviceable network port and protocol stacks for email. Surely it could send Matter strings and someone could easily write a Virtual device that would provide some sort of matter compatibility. It doesn't need any radio capability. I love the UC2 development environment. I am thinking of buying another UC2 (Amazon has the best prices.) so I have a spare and then let the system die a natural death as I switch to wifi based devices.  I worked in communications may years ago in Palo Alto and the lesson I learned then was that well defined simple layered protocols were easiest and safest to use for the long term. Getting locked into a specific propriety protocol that reinvents routing (switching), error recovery and network control can be a blind alley. I'm afraid if the Z wave consortium  had a new protocol that would reach the moon I still wouldn't want to be part of it. Incidentally I am already using StarLink so in a way I am already in space!!

[[email protected] 0]

This is my second more considered reply. I had not realised that a) it was possible to do what I call function shipping to another HC2 (I've been calling it UC2 by mistake) and b) the price of the HC2 had dropped from around £500 to around £160. Given this, and my plan anyway to buy a spare unit I have ordered one and will definitely try it first as a Gateway connection. I am very comfortable with a wired Ethernet back haul as this is, after all, the basis of the universal WiFi coverage I have already. This may well solve my original system range problems, which would be brilliant!

 

The problem I had was that I tried the promoted ZWave slave controller system and it did not work well and other hardware vendors had inferred it did not really work. This confused me. Whereas function shipping was a proven technology from the  early 1980's mainframe market and by separating the higher level (the function shipping) from the lower level protocols it becomes trivial. In a way this just confirms my belief in structured protocol layers and the completely wrong direction of Z Wave!

 

The ethernet RJ45 mechanism of course could enable migration to new technology without having to engineer any new radio hardware just talking to a simple hub for the new protocol and my LUA scripts would work. I can only dream!

 

Geoff F