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Meet the Fibaro Wall Plug FWGPF-101

By Robert Hekkers | March 27, 2013 - 21:50 | Domotica

Today I received a Fibaro Wall Plug FGWPF-101.

I shut down my RPi running RasPlex, exchanged the SD card for the one with the RaZberry software on it, booted the RPi and from the RaZberry UI I included the Fibaro Wall Plug (Plug from now on). Within 2 minutes the Plug was ready to play with

Lets have a closer look at what this Plug can do:

- handle 2.5 kW continuous load (resistive load, so watch the cos φ)
- Radio: Z-Wave, 1 mW @ 868.4 MHz
- Range: 30 m indoors
- Dimensions: D x H 43 x 65 mm
- Crystal RGB LED ring which can be used for a number of things
- Measuring momentary and historic power usage
- Local control by a small push button

The first thing I noticed was the very tiny manual: A4, printed on both sides with a very small font. I downloaded the Operating manual as PDF, maximized Adobe Reader on one of my 22″ HD resolution screens and still had to zoom to 121% before i could start reading. MS Word counts > 3100 words on a single-sided A4 – I’ve seen better.

The Plug itself looks great though! The white surface is glossy and the LED ring looks nice too. But the biggest advantage is the size – it’s really small!

I took a picture of 3 plugin modules I have and as you can see 4 Fibaro Plugs will easily fit into that box with 4 sockets; Insteon will manage 2 (and 4 with some extra force) but PLCBUS is the big loser here: only 2 will fit.

The first I did was trying to get a feeling about how fast the Plug responded to On/Off switching from the RaZberry UI. Well, what can I say.. comparing it to X-10 or PLCBUS is useless in terms of responsiveness, those 2 will never win. But I also have a Insteon Hub and an Insteon On/Off Module on my desk and I can control this On/Off module from my homebrew Home Automation system. So i tried both Fibaro and Insteon and I’m not sure, but I think Insteon is a little bit faster: the clicking sound of the Insteon module relay seems to have a smaller ‘silence gap’ with the clicking sound of the mouse than the Fibaro Plug. But maybe I’m biased, so I’ll redo this ‘measurement’ in another way

I’ll test this more thoroughly in the next few days, but before I can do that I need to be able to control this new Plug from my system – that’s the only way I can really compare the two. And I’ll add PLCBUS to the competition as well, just for fun.

After that I’ll do some range testing and see how really well (reliable) this Fibaro Plug performs in a real house, compared to those other 2.

Stay tuned!

PS, a message for Mr. Essent – my wife’s hairdryer did turn the LED ring of the Fibaro Plug dark orange, while my hobby equipment all stayed in the green zone!

Getting rid of some outstanding issues

By Robert Hekkers | March 24, 2013 - 23:48 | Domotica

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I tend to lose interest in things by the time they’re almost finished – that may sound strange (I don’t ), but it’s the truth and it’s a habit that’s hard to beat. Knowing that I will get something working, doesn’t always mean I will make it that far and complete the whole job. The main reason is that there’s so much more to explore and learn, and that’s the most interesting part of it all; the thrill of learning more each time you start something new, right? In a way, being able to unlock the front door with my smart phone is just a nice side effect…

So while I’m still waiting on some Z-Wave hardware for my RaZberry, I started doing those last bits on some of my earlier projects.

Security system

Getting our security system connected to the rest of my Home Automation system has always appealed to me. With RFXCOM and an Alphatronics interface I did have access to the information of the sensors, but controlling the security system can be very handy too, for example arming it when everybody has gone to bed.
I did some experiments with a Powerlink in 2011, connected the system to my LAN in 2012, tested this with some experimental code, helped others to get things working, but there is where it ended; during a re-shuffle of some Serial-to Ethernet servers our security system was disconnected and I kinda ‘forgot’ about it; however some recent ‘events’ in the neighborhood brought the job of integrating the security system higher up on the to-do list.

Someone was so kind to give me his PowerMax code which has already been tested at various locations and the last 2 weeks I’ve been busy ‘porting’ the VB code to Delphi, testing the code with my own security system and monitoring everything to see if it’s all working OK. And it is… so now it’s time to take the last step and start using that interface. The biggest advantage is that my Home Automation system knows exactly the same as the security system does:

Panel Status (e.g. Armed, Disarmed, …);
Panel State (Ready, Alarm, Zones in memory, …);
Sensor information ( Open, Closed, Motion, Battery Low, ..).

By getting the information directly from the security system itself, it won’t matter anymore if RFXCOM or Alphatronics receiver will miss some packets – now I’ve got 100% correct information. And now I also have several new things I can do with my security system:

Arm and disarm the security system from my Domotica system;
Arm the system and bypass certain zones if I want to;
Control the security system from anywhere and with any User Interface;
Disarm the Security system event-based; for example, when someone opens our Nemef Radaris RFID front door with a badge;
Arm the system when the front door is being locked.

This weekend I updated my system.

Done!

Nemef Radaris Evolution

One of those other things that got disconnected some time ago in a 90%-finished-state. While working on a Plugin for the Nemef Radaris, I stopped using the Nemef RF Module from my own system to test the Plugin, and I never started using it again afterwards. A big loss? Well, the Nemef Radaris doesn’t need a HA system, it works completely autonomously (for obvious reasons), so in some way we didn’t really miss the ‘Domotica link’.. today I finished some loose ends in the code and it’s working 100% now.

Next!

Web interface

I’m very bad at creating nice-looking icons myself, it’s just not my cup of tea. Most of the times I try to find some icons on the web, but I’ve never been able to find an icon collection that has all the icons I need. So it becomes a mess very quickly, and ugly.. too ugly to use (and to show off..)

And my requirements are really not that high – as long as the icons speak for themselves and have a somewhat similar ‘look’ , I’m easily satisfied (I think).

After finding a new collection of icons on the domoticaforum this week, I decided to use that one. And there’s 1 big benefit with this collection: I know the person who made these icons, so if I miss some specific icon, I know I won’t be lost…

On to the next item!

So, even if the outcome of my new Z-Wave tryout with the RaZberry will be disappointing, waiting for Z-Wave has already brought some positive things, namely finishing some things that should have been done a long time ago. OTOH: waiting this long is OK – just once every 3 years or so, not more often please!

Raspberry Pi and RaZberry as Z-Wave controller

By Robert Hekkers | March 12, 2013 - 22:28 | Domotica

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Today the first Raspberry Pi (RPi) arrived. In size it equals an Arduino Mega, but the nice thing about the RPi is that it’s running Linux, which adds a whole new range of possibilities.

For example (and that’s what I’m going to do with it, for now) turn it into a Z-Wave controller with the use of a RaZberry.

Powered by the adapter of my old smartphone, a standard 4GB SD card inserted to the left and a network cable to the right and the RaZberry connected to the GPIO. Power the thing up, wait about 30 seconds, start an ssh session to the RPi and you’re good to go!

Well, some preparations had to be done though, but those were all very easy and went very smooth.

First, make sure you have a SD card and a USB card reader. I didn’t, so I went to a local shop for those items after work. The image that has to be written to the SD card can be downloaded from here. Windows users will also need a tool to write the image to the SD card, for that I used Win32DiskImager. I inserted the SD card into the card holder of the RPi, connected the network cable and power adapter and saw the LEDs starting to blink. So far so good..

Next I used PuTTY to login. User pi, password raspberry. I followed the instructions on the screen (sudo raspi-config) to set the Time Zone and things like that and was done within half an hour or so, including preparing the SD card.

One of the first things I did was installing joe, my favorite editor on Linux (with Wordstar keystrokes, yeah!). That’s when you get reminded of the fact that the RPi is not your regular full-blown desktop PC – it took a bit longer to install than I was used to. I really don’t wanna know how long it would take to compile Apache from source… Well, never mind, that’s not what I’m going to use this RPi for anyway.

After shutting down the RPi I connected the RaZberry to the GPIO and booted again. The software for the RaZberry can be installed very easily:

wget -q -O – http://razberry.z-wave.me/install|sudo bash

After a 2nd reboot I could now surf to http://<rpi-ip-address>:8083/ and watch the demo User Interface of the RaZberry:

And after that… this exciting new adventure stopped, due to the lack of Z-Wave hardware. I can’t wait to find out if this combination of a RPi and the RaZberry add-on will enable me to use Z-Wave without too much hassle, cause that’s my ultimate goal – ‘talk’ to Z-Wave hardware through the RaZberry JSON API and not having to worry about every little detail – there are too much other things to explore, right??

Z-Wave power-strip

By Robert Hekkers | March 28, 2012 - 20:54 | Domotica

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Yesterday the Z-Wave power-strip I mentioned earlier arrived, in a light-weight large-size cardboard box mostly filled with air. After unpacking the air and reaching the bottom of the box, there it was: the GreenWave Reality PowerNode. Wow, I have never seen such a shiny bling-bling power-strip in my life

Since Maarten Damen already discussed some of the software related aspects of this power-strip, I’ll only talk about my hardware related observations.

The power cord, which is 130 cm long, looks good. Thick and solid, like a power cord should be that has to supply 6 sockets. Personally I prefer straight plugs, but as most plugs are these days, the power cord of this power-strip also ends with a right-angled plug.

The bling-bling level of this power-strip is high; high enough for my son to ask “What’s that??”. ”A power-strip, my son.” ”Yeah dad, I can see that, but is there something else you can do with it as well, or what? Cause it looks so, ehh, unusual?” ”Yes, with this power-strip I can switch off the TV in your bedroom from the other side of the world, ain’t that cool?”

The power-strip has a On/Off button and some sort of dial. Pushing the button feels a bit cheap; no real ‘click’; and a very soft push is enough to switch the power-strip on or off. This button works too easy for my taste, which increases the risk of turning the complete power-strip off accidentally. The dial feels a bit cheap too; in my opinion, there’s some imbalance between look and feel here..

The 6 sockets have child protection, feel solid and keep the plugs in place firmly enough. Each socket uses 45 mm of space. With a lot of adapters this can be a problem, as with all other power-strips I have, so this power-strip is neither better nor worse as a standard power-strip in that perspective.

A standard procedure for everything with a power cord that comes into our house, is measuring the standby power usage. With nothing plugged in, this power-strip uses ≈ 3.5 Watt. That’s about 30.5 kWh per year. IIRC that’s about 0.9% of the yearly power consumption of an average household. (in my case, that percentage is much lower

So the first impression is OK. I’d love to see what’s inside, but that will not happen. Yet. First I’ll hook it up to Homeseer to see if and how it works before I open it up; so that when I close it again and the strip doesn’t work anymore, I know who to blame…

Z-Wave?

By Robert Hekkers | March 25, 2012 - 22:13 | Domotica

1 Comment

Never thought this would happen, but I’m going to try Z-Wave. Yeah! Ow yeah? We’ll see..

Maybe I only read the wrong forum topics and maybe I only talked to the wrong people, but the things I read and heard about Z-Wave never gave me a good feeling about it. Z-Wave users have to deal with scheduled network optimizations, short battery life, incompatibility issues, vaporware, products where the parts have to be held together with some good old DIY with pieces of tape – hell, they sometimes even have to wait for 48 hours before a new device becomes usable… and it’s being accepted by the Z-Wave users?? I don’t get it. I will never accept those kind of things, that’s for sure.

So maybe this Z-Wave adventure will be a very short one. And maybe not. At least I’ll be able to make up my mind about Z-Wave based on my own experiences for a change, once I’ve got my own hardware to test with. Maybe it’s not that bad after all … always an optimist!

The thing that triggered this Z-Wave initiative was a post on the Domoticaforum where this power-strip was discussed as an alternative for one of those vaporware products I mentioned. This powerstrip seems to be a re-branded GreenWave Reality PowerNode and I would really like to have 1 or 2 of those in my house.

So last week I ordered one at the NUON Energy shop (no, you can’t buy Energy in the shop) and ordered a Aeon Labs Z-Stick.

One tiny problem left to solve – the software side of things. From what I’ve read, the best option to get Z-Wave operational is using the OS Open Z-Wave initiative, but how do I make this work in my Delphi based system? Searching for more info revealed very little to start with, and I don’t want to spend too much time on the software side while I haven’t decided if Z-Wave is a go or not… there has to be an easier way for that; at least for this experiment.

And there is – HouseAgent. Maarten Damen, the maker of HouseAgent, only lives ‘a few blocks away’ from me and he has also bought this power-strip! And he has made a Z-Wave Plugin for his multi-platform Home Automation software. So why not install HouseAgent, let HouseAgent do the Z-Wave stuff and pull the data I need out of HouseAgent? That would be perfect!

Maarten told me his system has a REST API, which shouldn’t be that hard to interface with, no matter what programming language you use. Right, lets do it!

Tag Archives: Z-Wave

Meet the Fibaro Wall Plug FWGPF-101