Z-wave based home automation solution

[Patrick69]

Greetings, I heard abit about smart homes recently and I found something pretty interesting called Z-wave,
I was wondering about if anyone had any of their own personal experiences to share?
I was also interested if anyone has any experience using the Fibaro Home Center 2 and knows how well it works?

http://www.interaktivahem.se/p/contr...enter-2.html(A link to where I first found it)

[martyn.wendon]

Greetings, I heard abit about smart homes recently and I found something pretty interesting called Z-wave,
I was wondering about if anyone had any of their own personal experiences to share?
I was also interested if anyone has any experience using the Fibaro Home Center 2 and knows how well it works?

http://www.interaktivahem.se/p/contr...enter-2.html(A link to where I first found it)

Hey Patrick,

I've been using Z-Wave for several years now and generally find it to be a pretty solid, reliable experience. I've been migrating a lot of legacy X10 / Home Easy based Home Automation equipment to comparable Z-Wave devices for some time now and it's been quite a revelation coming from the "press and hope" world of one-way communication to something that is two-way and mesh based.

I've not used the Fibaro Home Center 2 myself as I think it's over-priced, although it looks really nice and has a great looking UI and smart-phone / tablet app. My Z-Wave system is based around a MiCasaVerde Vera which is a decent, flexible controller with a whole host of plugins available to expand it into other areas like Sonos, Visonic alarm panels, Insteon, RFXCom 433MHz supported devices, etc.

Having said that, Fibaro have today released the Home Center Lite which looks to be an absolute bargain at half the price of the HC2 - see the scoop at http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/hardw...ontroller.html

I have to say that if I hadn't just recently upgraded from a Vera 2 to a Vera 3, I'd be ordering an HC Lite and checking that out - I may even order one anyway as an early Christmas present :-)

Hope that helps!