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Author Topic: General impression of Almond+ from new user  (Read 6798 times)

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Offline hilo90mhz

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General impression of Almond+ from new user
« on: August 15, 2014, 03:34:46 pm »
First off great job Securifi in delivering a great piece of hardware! I have been a part of a few bad kickstarters and this is NOT one of them!

The general outside appearance is very good, whoever designed your injection molds obviously knows what they are doing. The built in stylus is awesome too!

With the newest firmware I can switch to Access Point mode! Awesome! been using the 2.4G band with my laptop and galaxy S5 cell phone since yesterday with no problems. The range seems very good too! at least as good if not better than my previous AP.

I use a separate wired router so do not care about actual routing/firewall abilities: a Ubiquiti Edge Router Lite(1 million packet per second routing) - can host a fast openVPN server - but not for the faint of heart. I do not want my router to also be my access point.. Keep them separate this way you can put the AP in a better location and my wired devices keep funtioning even if I have to reboot or change settings on the AP, also with the touch screen on the A+ I want it to be more accessible than my main router which connects to a 16 port Gbit switch. Mine runs 3 months straight (between firmware updates on UPS) without a glitch.

On the firmware: It is definitely not all there, but they are working on it! that is the important thing.. Software/firmware can be finished after release(of course not ideal), but what is really important is that the hardware is solid... Which is what I am sure they were spending all their time working on and ironing out the bugs in before shipping us these units ;)

The Zwave functionality is why I purchased this router. Unfortunately my Zwave switches are not yet supported ;) but I hope they can get that in soon. Or provide me with a way of manually adding it in. The switches support sending their status back to the controller also which I want to use as a trigger for events like turning on a separate zwave exhaust fan in my bathroom.

My eventual goal is to have one of these motion detectors: Ecolink Z-Wave PIR Motion Detector, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FB1TBKS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1XO9WGZO0A93O

Controlling this Zwave dimmer: Cooper Wiring Devices RF9540-NAW Aspire http://www.amazon.com/Cooper-Wiring-Devices-RF9540-NAW-Multi-Location/dp/B00EZVM6SY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408130866&sr=8-1&keywords=cooper+zwave

So while it is a little disappointing to be missing some of this functionality at launch I understand and am willing to wait for what seems like a very well thought out product. That is what I like about the Almond+ it seems like the people working on it know what they are doing.

Lars is a crazy good forum moderator/support person too - so important in alleviating our fears at this point ;) I hope they pay you well Lars!

Cheers!






« Last Edit: August 15, 2014, 03:41:19 pm by hilo90mhz »

Offline sorphin

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Re: General impression of Almond+ from new user
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2014, 06:13:52 pm »
.... been using the 2.4G band with my laptop and galaxy S5 cell phone since yesterday with no problems. The range seems very good too! at least as good if not better than my previous AP. ...



You know the S5 can do 5Ghz wifi, right? 5GGhz is less crowded by far, so you stand to have better throughput if you can use it. (same with your laptop if it supports 802.11N (with 5ghz).

Offline hilo90mhz

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Re: General impression of Almond+ from new user
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2014, 06:43:36 pm »

You know the S5 can do 5Ghz wifi, right? 5GGhz is less crowded by far, so you stand to have better throughput if you can use it. (same with your laptop if it supports 802.11N (with 5ghz).

Yes I know the 5Ghz band has higher bandwidth and less congestion in theory. Both of my devices have 5Ghz, I even upgraded my laptop to the 7260NGW Intel 802.11AC capable card.

The A+ is currently 40 feet away from my living room through 3 walls and the 5Ghz band was dropping and reconnecting on my phone - this may or may not be caused by firmware issues or reception issues. I didn't have a 5Ghz capable AP to compare this to but have experience with poor reception on 5Ghz. With my laptop right next to the A+ it connects at 866mbps. Actual throughput seemed far less(100mbps - yes my wired network is all 1Gbit and all devices are connected at 1Gbit) from a file transfer test, but it was not very scientific and could have been caused by other bottlenecks.

Either way there is plenty of bandwidth in the 2.4Ghz band left for me to saturate my 50mbps cable internet connection..

Eventually I will have the A+ in the center of my house and then I will see if the 5Ghz band is stable enough to bother using.

LGNilsson

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Re: General impression of Almond+ from new user
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2014, 11:30:25 pm »
We're still working on optimizing the Wi-Fi performance together with QCA as we've found a few issues. We didn't want to include the fixes in R065, as we haven't had a chance to test them fully yet.

Thanks for the overall positive feedback though and we're working on getting support for more Z-Wave devices.

Offline TomKeddie

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Re: General impression of Almond+ from new user
« Reply #4 on: September 07, 2014, 12:46:34 am »
Is there a list of supported Z-Wave devices anywhere?  I'm struggling to add my Schlage locks and GE 45609 light switch.  I have older outlets HomeSettings outlets that I'm hoping will be supported too.

LGNilsson

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Re: General impression of Almond+ from new user
« Reply #5 on: September 07, 2014, 02:17:24 am »
http://wiki.securifi.com/index.php?title=List_of_compatible_sensors_-_Almond%2B_2014

Have you removed the sensors from the previous gateway they were connected to?
You can remove (reset) them using the Almond+ by going to Add Sensor, Remove and then doing the pairing process on the sensor. Then you can proceed to adding them again.

 

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