HC2 Compatible device list – v1.044

HC2 Compatible device list for v1.044 – As of Feb 2013.

Please note, I have not (yet) tested all devices !

Devices are classified into categories (Binary sensor, Dimmer, Switch, Door bell, IP camera, Motion sensor, Multiple, sensor, roller shutter, water sensor, etc) and then by company (Aeon, Danfoss, Everspring, Fibaro, etc). The table columns has a sorting and filtering capabilities too.

Whenever relevant, the user feedback and documentation columns provide some additional information.

Your input and update are most welcome !

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Alarm activation – IP camera control & Virtual device with Fibaro HC2 – PART 2

The purpose of this post is to illustrate an interesting capability of the Fibaro HC2 in managing some very specific devices that are not originally made to be manage by the HC2 ! This post is the second part of my initial post related to virtual device management.

The objective is to activate the camera motion detector and the automatic send email function through a script and make available the building blocks for an alarm system.

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Alarm activation – IP camera control & Virtual device with Fibaro HC2 – PART 1

The purpose of this post is to illustrate an interesting capability of the Fibaro HC2 in managing some very specific devices that are not originally made to be manage by the HC2 ! An IP camera like the Foscam FI8910W presented in my previous post (Improving home security with video monitoring) is a good example for the usage of “virtual device”. The objective is to activate the camera motion detector and the automatic send email function through a script and make available the building blocks for an alarm system.

Here are the constraints when using the HC2 with version 1.046:

– Using the graphical script builder, there is NO specific IP camera command for motion detector & email. The only available command is take a picture !

– Virtual device is therefore a good solution to communicate/send orders to the IP camera through “virtual buttons”.

Let’s consider our IP camera “foscam2” located in the kitchen. The “V-foscam2” is the virtual device associated to this camera. This V-foscam2 has 3 buttons or functionalities:

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Fibaro HC2 compatible/supported device list

There is no official communication (yet) from Fibaro related to a list of supported devices by the HC2.

The forum section of this blog is dedicated to identify & share some knowledge of “proven” supported devices by the HC2.

In order to have a complete or the most exhaustive list, the contribution of the user community is required!

Therefore, your input and experience in the forum will be highly appreciated.

For more information, you can access the forum at this link.

Improving home security with video monitoring – Foscam FI8910W & Fibaro HC2

Let’s improve the home security with monitoring the main entrance door: whenever the door is open then 2 pictures, with 5 sec interval, are sent to a given address. We will use a Foscam FI8910W and the Fibaro HC2.

The detailed workflow of the script would be:

(i)                  The HSM02 door contact detector is armed

(ii)                The HSM02 detects a breach at time T0.

(iii)               The video camera takes a picture at T0 and send the file by email

(iv)              The video camera takes a second picture at T0 + 5 sec and send the file by email

The HC2 manages well IP video camera as a special device: IP camera is not like the other z-wave based device since there is no z-wave technology embedded in the IP camera! Therefore the inclusion process of an IP camera is different: you only need the IP address and login/password of the camera.

I selected the FI8910W IP camera from Foscam because of the following:

Foscam FI8910W

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Home security monitoring with Everspring HSM02 – Door/Window contact detector

The security set-up and monitoring of my house is an important target. This should include various devices like motion detector, door/window contact detector, video monitoring, smoke detector, etc. Let’s start with a very modest configuration of the Fibaro HC2 and we will improve it by adding some other functionality!

My first goal is to monitor the opening of the main entrance door and get a notification by email whenever the door is opened. Activate/Deactivate the device through a Fibaro script.

I have selected the door/window contact detector HSM02 from Everspring which is a Z-Wave enabled device and compatible with the Fibaro HC2.

Everspring HSM02 – Door/window contact detector

The main reasons I selected this device are:

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Interior design/modelling with Home Center 2

Let’s start the set-up of our HC2. The configuration of my house is straight forward and I have decided to define 3 main zones (or area or section):
(i) Maison (the house)
(ii) Jardin (the garden)
(iii) Garage (no translation needed !)
And within each zone, we can have a set of rooms. Please note that there is no concept of sub-zone within a predefined zone within the current version of HC2.

For the time being, I have started the design of the first zone called “Maison” where we have 6 rooms or areas: Salon, Chambre parentale, Salle de bain, Cuisine, Couloir and Chambre invite. Each room must be linked with one zone which is “Maison” in our case.

HC2 – Zone creation

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My HC2 is live !

Good – once you have received the precious box, the set-up is straight forward and I will not spend time on the hardware part of the HC2 and any way a lot of websites can give you this kind of presentation. I am more interested to share with you some more “real life” issue or advantage in managing the HC2.

To start with, I work on a mac based environment and my media center is a mac mini. Once the HC2 is connected to the network, my first challenge was to find his IP address ! There is a PC windows tool that can help finding the IP address but nothing with Mac OSX. It would be great if Figaro could provide a similar tool for Mac users.

After a few guess on the bar address of Firefox starting from 192.168.1.XX, I had access to the HC2 login page 🙂

HC2 – Login page

You will notice that the login page is in French as I changed the system preference of the HC2 – a full system reboot is required to take the language change in effect. An other interesting point is the number of available flags or system language if you perform the system upgrade to the version 1.036. I have tested English and French so far !