MySensors - Fibaro question

[Strooom]

Hi Alexander, Henrik,

could you write a topic (or point me to existing resources) as to what is needed to make MySensors integrate better with Fibaro HC2 / HCL ? (in general - to make them compatible with any controller)
I see that many commercially available Z-Wave components are 100% compatible with controllers from different brands (http://www.vesternet.com/compatibility/z-wave-compatibility-guide)
That means it must be possible to make the nodes in such a way that they present themselves to any controller which is compliant with the z-wave protocol.

Is my understanding correct that thanks to a plugin at the Vera controller, the nodes (and thus the library they are built from) can be simpler. Working without anything special at the controller requires smarter nodes.. (maybe beyond the capabilities of Arduino..)

I'd like to develop a central heating sensor/actuator, but before doing so I'd like to better understand what is needed to make it vendor independent / work with any controller.

kr,

Pascal

[hek]

Z-wave is a completely different protocol/hardware stack which has it's own set of supported device types and parameters.

Some controllers manufacturers has made a more general software layer on top of this to represent devices. Which can be reused for other types of hardware.

Fibaro has unfortunately made it quite complicated to make a MySensors plugin. Their controller is locked down (the last time I checked). Problems:

• Does not allow to keep sockets open to external services. Like a MySensors gateway.
• Does not have any api to create devices programatically.

[Strooom]

@hek Ok, that clarifies a lot.
Is the MySensors protocol/hardware stack anything which already existed or did you design this yourselves ?
Why did you decide not to use the Z-Wave protocol/HW (even if it seems to be quite popular for HA) ?

tnx

P

[hek]

Z-wave is a company "standard" which is closed and the hardware expensive without any possibility to tinker with.

The MySensors protocol is quite simple. And you can basically build whatever you need in terms of sensors and actuators.

[Strooom]

@hek Ok, got it.
Sad to hear the Z-Wave protocol is closed. Looks like they choose the same strategy as KNX/EIB which is also hard to tinker with.

I will follow-up on their forums to see if we could still build a gateway that talks to the HC2 / HCL

Bye,

P

[axillent]

@Strooom I had an experience with fibaro last year
I was liked their z-wave devices and hope that controller could be cool too
but it was not
something probably improved from my last experience but in general the fibaro design is not that flexible as others

fibaro HC even is not able to deal with a primary or secondary controller in zwave network
this possibility is missing while it have to be the standard one

the only way i knew is possible to integrate mysensors to fibaro HC is to design a special gateway
HC allows you to manually create and configure a custom device which is linked to an external WEB service
your gateway can be that WEB service holding an individual interface with each mysensors device

It will be not standard design of the Mysensors gateway because the standard is to have very simple gateway which just passes messages between controller and Mysensors network.
In case of the HC the gateway have to be more complicated and act as mid layer controller and gateway at the same time