Hey everyone!
I was waiting for a bit to see how big some of the issues were in R069cb before upgrading from the previous R069 beta (R069bk I believe). Since I run in AP bridge mode, general consensus seemed to be the issues were in router mode, so I plunged in.
Good news first:
On the internet / router / AP side, everything still seems to work after the upgrade. Hooray! In fact, it seems like my 2.4 GHz network is now functional again. To elaborate - under the preview R069 public beta, I had an issue none of my Macs / iOS / Android devices could get out to the Internet, but yet a few devices like my wireless IP camera had no issues. I just forgot about it because most of the issue devices could connect to 5 GHz without a problem.
On the home automation, everything also seems to still be working! Hooray! I currently have 2 Zigbee devices (Securifi Power Outlet, Securifi Water Sensor), and 4 ZWave devices (3 First Alert ZCombo Smoke Alarms, and 1 GE 45637 lightswitch). All those devices still turn on/off and the smoke alarms still report their battery levels on the mobile app, which is incredibly useful and awesome.
The Feedback:
Internet / Router / AP Side:
- 5GHz range seems to have suffered a bit. Hard to quantify without proper testing equipment, but my rMBP can report dBm, and I seem to have lost anywhere from 5-10 dBm in some of the more hard-to-reach parts of the house. Upside is the 2.4 network is working again, which is stronger in those parts of the house (and always has been).
- I want to be able to statically assign an IP address for the local web interface from NutsOS without having to dive into OpenWRT. I currently can’t (clicking on the Network section seems to be the ideal spot, as it reports the IP, but that’s disabled in AP mode).
HA Side:
- Want ALL THE THINGS. I run a software dev house, so I can only imagine the amount of things your team has to get through, so I truely appreciate that things work the way they do now.
- Seriously though, some kind of external notification system needs to be implemented. I have zero knowledge of what is going on in the house unless I open the app. Email at very least. Push Notifications / SMS would be even better.
- More rules actions/targets. I realize it’s beta, so I’m not going to beat on lack of features, but given my current setup, if my sump pump sensor goes to flooded, I can turn on a light. Ick.
- Better device support. This is a *huge* moving target, and you guys could dedicate a large team of devs / QA just to this, and have issues staying on top of things. So, let’s prioritize this: anything the big box stores (Lowes, HD, Best Buy, etc.) carry needs to be on the list. These days that includes most of the major HA appliances like Nest and Philips Hue, thankfully. My smoke alarms from Lowes for example don’t even show up as options in the current rules beta, even though they’re associated and reporting data.
- The local web interface for sensors is very… spartan. I want to be able to add sensors, remove sensors, and group them. Also, why does the iOS app report battery levels for my alarms, but the local web interface does not? I saw someone from Securifi mentioned scenes is coming, which could be nice.
- IFTTT support could solve the first 2 items in a straightforward fashion. I remember Lars saying it wasn’t in the pipeline for implementation. That is unfortunate as this would allow Securifi-based HA systems to interact with some of the more esoteric devices / closed systems (Like Belkin WeMo stuff) without Securifi having to actively buy/implement support for these things. There would probably be testing needed, but since IFTTT seems to have a fairly standard API interface, it's on them to marshall things back and forth.
General Securifi Feedback:
- Better expectation management. The community here is ravenous for betas and more new things, so telling us that a new beta firmware is coming out “later today” means a fair bit of us are probably going to be routinely checking the forums for announcements throughout the day. Then to see in the original post “Whoops found something busted” or more generic “Not happening” messages is frustrating to have spent time looking for it.
- Your dev team needs to hit their communicated goals better. This is probably preaching to the choir, but there have been times where development communicated a launch date, which Lars then communicated to us, and then subsequently have been missed 2-3 times in a row, and sometimes by weeks.
- Where are the Securifi sensors? I would love to purchase some more of those power outlets that also report power usage, but I’ve seen nothing about more of those / different versions coming available.
- Just a minor nitpick, but R069cb is like the worst version naming scheme ever.
http://semver.org/
