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Question - "Integration" into Fibaro Home Center 2 environment
mvdkallen
Member
Hi Homey's 
Yesterday I received my Homey (thanks a lot @Emile and @Stefan) and although the software is still in Beta I do believe the product at this stage is already much better than some of its competitors which are already on the market for some years now.
My personal conclusion, based on experience and research, is that unfortunately for me at this stage Homey cannot replace my Fibaro Home Center 2 controller simply because it is not mature enough yet from software point of view (.. don't get me wrong; this I fully understood and accepted from the beginning so there are no wrong expectations given or set by anyone).
.. and no, I won't sell Homey because I do see the potential of this big little fellow 
For now I still would somehow "integrate" Homey in my home automation environment, specially because of its good speech recognition capabilities.
Therefore, my questions are:
1. How can I let Homey change a Global Variable on my Home Center 2 controller. Basically my idea is to define some flows within Homey based on the "WHEN' and "THEN" criteria only, which let Homey change certain Global Variable within my HC2 (.. so based on this Global Variable change, scenes will be triggered in the HC2).
This way I still can use Homey for speech control, but keeping my HC2 as the main controller.
2. I can't manage to set up Homey as a secondary controller for the Home Center 2... is this possible at all (I don't think so, but yet I'm seeking for a confirmation from Athom)
Last but not least, I'd like to give compliments to the @athom team in general for all their hard work and effort given. You definitely have gold in your hands with this controller so keep up the good work and make sure you keep up with the software development and bug fixing.
Your product is one of the reasons why I'm proud to be Dutch, because we can!
best regards,
Mark
Comments
After playing around I found a solution for my first question; it turns out that I just thought too complicated...
By using the app "HTTP Request Flow Cards" I can simply call any Scene I want directly from the HC2 controller. So no need to use any additional Global Variable, just call the Scene by its ID and it works
I still would like to know if (.. and how) I can configure Homey as the secondary controller in my network.
Best regards,
Mark
@Taco ?
I haven't found an answer on the secondary controller question yet, but meanwhile I found something cool too
Once Homey is added to the HC2 controller as a device, you'll see a notification within the Homey UI that Homey can perform a scan on the HC2 zwave network. If you confirm this action, then Homey will add your HC2 devices into his configuration, which means you then can control your HC2 devices through Homey too
This "device sync" process is not working perfectly yet (.. in my case it stopped after adding three devices), but I'm confident that @Emile and his team are working on this later on too.
The possibilities are endless here. I really like it that HC2 and Homey can work together on several areas, this makes Homey a really cool add-on to my home automation set up.
Best regards,
Mark
After inclusion I suggest waiting 3 minutes per device in your network. If an always-on device isn't added to Homey the interview probably failed. You can manually try adding an device, already in the network, to Homey by selecting it in the dropdown an pressing the Refresh Node button. Alternatively you can let your device broadcast a NIF. If Homey receives a NIF from a unknown device it tries to interview and add it.
Thanks for the info Taco, good to understand how it works.
I was not aware that Homey would do this, so when I found out I was actually quite happy I can say
I notice that Homey does not instantly respond to a device change once it is initiated by the HC2 controller (.. when I switch lights on in HC2, the device status in Homey does not get instantly updated. Only once I select the device in Homey then it will refresh the device status and send me a confirmation by speech which I've set up in a flow).
Is this per design or should I treat this as a software bug?
When you open the device card (of a non battery device) Homey fetches the state and the change is applied.
I also tried using HC2 broadcasting Node Information Frame or node refresh when I woke up the sensor.
I haven't tried this yet but will do when I'm at home later today
Besides this, I also sometimes see that the powered devices (added by Homey himself after the inclusion in my HC2 network) cannot be used because they report an error. The message looks like "ERROR: Busy with other communication" (.. I forgot to screen capture this). This I find a bit weird, because these devices are idle plus HC2 is not continuously polling these device either.
Once I restart the Z-Wave chip in Homey then it all works again.
Is this something you encounter as well?
might happen in the future, but is way, way, way down the list since it does not benefit them, especially since they are a main controller them selves.
There might be the option to shift controllers, but not sure if that is implemented correctly yet.
Also @Taco you mention manually trying to add a device, I don't se ether drop down the you mention, where can I find this to be able to add the devices that I already have in my Z-Wave network please. This ability to join the existing network and send commands to existing devices was the main reason I decided to give Homey a go but so far I've failed to get it to see any of the existing devices.
Your help is very much appreciated in getting my Homey up and running in my existing Z-Wave network.
Please note the date of the posts (start of 2016, over a year ago).
A lot has changed since then. (including a complete Z-Wave re-write, and Taco leaving the Athom team)
And as stated in my previous post, homey is not configured to be included in another controller, as a secondary controller.
So it can not be controlled by other controllers.
This might happen in the future, but for now... that is not the case.
A controller shift might be possible, but is not fully configured by athom, so there is a big chance of failure to switch controllers towards homey.
Your best chance is to include all your z-wave devices into homey manually.
Thanks for the reply. Being such a new device, I don't yet trust Homey to take over my entire Z-Wave network hence why I wanted to include it in my existing network and just start using homeys Flows and other features till I was happy atet all worked as planned, then I'd exclude from the existing network and include in Homeys own. It's a shame that features have been removed as versions progressed, it's made details a bit unreliable.
As that is a lot of work to implement correctly, and they can spend their time better then the few people that want to controller shift.
As you already state, homey is pretty new, and there is A Lot of work to be done still, with not that many people working on homey core.