FIBARO Home Center Lite/Z-Wave, Wireless Smart Home Controller, up to 230 devices, FGHCL,white

Perfect

Firstly this unit is overpriced by about £150. If you accept that and you want a unit that is really only suitable for switching lights/appliances on and off/dimming then this is the product for you.The idea of using a Fibaro to control security of your home would be foolish as z-wave is simply too unreliable to depend on in security critical situations. A dedicated security system is the only real solution.You can also use z-wave to control a heating system, but again I would recommend a dedicated system.I'm using the HCL to control lighting only and it does this reasonably well.The unit has be running for 2 months without fault.Update 15/12/2017I've now been using the HCL for almost 3 years and its still OK for lighting. The conversion to version 4 was a pain as some of my configuration was lost, but new purchasers should have version 4 already installed.I'm using the HCL to control 23 lights throughout the house, garden and drive and all timed events work 99.9% of the time.A real plus is that it works well with Amazon's Echo, However, you need to review your devices naming convention to ensure you have "snappy" names to shout at Alexa ! Alexa had real trouble understanding "Tiffany lamp" so its now called "Ted".I'm sticking with 3 stars because many of the firmware updates cause stability problems. Never, never, never update until you've checked out the Fibaro forums and then wait at least 4 weeks for users to give feed back.

If you've got fibaro controllers the only way to upgrade their firmware is via this or the HC2.Whilst you can run the device with SmartThings etc you can't upgrade the firmware updates, which whilst aren't monthly are frequent enough for this to be worthwhile.Setup was easy and so far it's been reliable.Only point is that it NO LONGER comes with a UK plug. So you need to purchase a separate adaptor.

This product is a complete pile of crock and advise anyone considering buying this to not go anywhere near it. Hardly any of it works reliably, the instructions are virtually non-existent and configuration of anything is an exercise in frustration and guesswork. I'm sure if you were prepared to put up with it and had endless time on your hands, you probably could get it to work but for the rest of us, it's a complete waste of time. Literally the very worst tech product I have ever bought. No fault of the supplier.

3 stars is about fair. When it works, it's brilliant, but when it decides it's had enough, it does NOT fail gracefully!When choosing between the HC2 and the Lite (this one) I not only looked at cost but thought I 'wasn't really doing anything that fancy' and was more than happy, for example, with block scenes and not the LUA scripting language. That much is true, although it wasn't long before I was thinking that was a shame when it comes to creating virtual devices for 3rd party remotes (i.e. non Fibaro ones like Duwi or MiniMote).Unfortunately, as the number of devices grew - still far less than the alleged 250 maximum, but getting close to 50 individual outputs now - the system started to get buggy. Timed scenes at first became quirky, then failed completely, then the box needed rebooting constantly. A quick look at the stats told me why; memory of 128MB was always 98% used. The last straw was when one of the key aims of the system, a single button at the bottom of the stairs to 'sleep' and 'wake' the house without having to go round each light, lamp, hifi, TV etc... failed because there was no memory spare to run the program. All this was before I'd even added extra hooks into the heating and (separate!) alarm system. As others, I don't think I'd ever trust this system with my security or smoke alarms, only to interface with it at 'switch input' level.This is a shame as the Fibaro GUI system on the Lite, same as on the 2 but cut-down, is a dream to use otherwise. I know there are many that have cursed the Fibaro, tried the Vera, and have come back to the Fibaro within days!I wish I'd bought the HC2 first time (it is based on old technology, but still has nearly ten times the RAM) although at least my Lite can be relegated to outbuilding use as a secondary controller...

Disappointed. Unreliable - works in the garage OK, but doesn't seem to communicate through walls well.They have then, in the last few days, changed the log-in system without warning, and I have been forced to set up the whole system from scratch again.I wouldn't trust Fibaro with any important devices like lights or heating, and it doesn't work if you house is built of brick/stone.

I've had this for 3 days now, here are my initial thoughts.....If this is to be sold to the UK market it should come with a UK plug.software quirky feels like a beta release, very unreliablesupport forum unusable, technical support documentation limited.

As other reviewers have posted, very buggy with controller requiring regular reboots.