Fibaro KeyFob

Community Playground General Discussions
#21

I tried to configure it several times in three days with no luck.
Pairing is easy but it ends at: “setting special configuration”. For a minute the text is blue and then turns red.

I am using Vera plus with the firmware 1.7.3232 and the keyfob is a 601 v. 3.2 with the second battery.

#22

Anybody who has got it to work yet. I saw a thread that Fibaro Keyfob should now be suppported UI7. But I don’t know what to search for to find it from the list when adding device.

Thanks in advance

#23

[quote=“NenneJKG, post:22, topic:196919”]Anybody who has got it to work yet. I saw a thread that Fibaro Keyfob should now be suppported UI7. But I don’t know what to search for to find it from the list when adding device.

Thanks in advance[/quote]

Search for “Fibaro” and go through the list, or search for “keyfob” and pick from there, or search for “fgkf”.

Cheers

#24

Like I noted previously in this thread, it is possible to get it to work - it just takes patience. Get another battery (or better, order a stack of them from the likes of aliexpress as it does eat them) and try again. I would note that it is not perfect even when it’s working. For example:

The ‘dream’: coming back home, pressing the button on the keyfob, and the garage door opens and/or I’m able to unlock the front door etc.
The reality: when you get home and press the button it doesn’t always work immediately - I suspect because it takes time for it to get back onto the zwave network. I haven’t tested it, but I suspect the delay is longer if a button on the keyfob has been pressed whilst out of range. This ‘sometimes doesn’t work immediately’ rules it out as WAF would be very low for that.

The dream: estimated battery life of “2 years (default settings, max. 5 pushes per day and direct range)”
The reality: 2 years is incredibly optimistic. Expect 3 months, maybe. I suspect that the part that says “direct range” is the killer. If a button is pressed and you are not within the range of the network, I suspect it uses more power trying to send and resend the command. If your keyfob is in your pocket, it is quite likely a button will be pressed accidentally whilst you are away. So battery life sucks. There is an option to set a lock on the keyfob to prevent accidental presses, but a) that makes the WAF even lower as it would be very annoying to have to do that and b) I’ve tried to set it and have had no luck.

In short, the keyfob is a cool looking device with a number of flaws that work against it. It is a total pain to get to work. Once it is working, it sometimes doesn’t work because it’s been in your pocket whilst you are away and a button has been pressed accidentally. The battery life is so short you are changing it every few months or (once you work out how to do it) you need to set a key sequence to wake it up, which impacts on the convenience factor of having it in the first place.

Did I mention that the buttons are quite sensitive? Sometimes I toss the keys into a dish, or something lands on them, and I hear the garage door going up. I had to remove the command to unlock the front door, as I was finding the front door was being unlocked accidentally.

Even if you used a Fibaro system, so it was a lot easier to program, I think this device will still fail in the usability stakes due to the requirement to program it to lock to avoid false triggers.

I think that, if I ever try a remote again that I want to put on a keychain, I’ll get one that has a sliding protector for the buttons - like the one from Aeotec. Not as pretty, but I’ve had good experience with Aeotec and suspect a physical barrier that protects the buttons will help a lot with respect to reliability and battery life for a device that is meant to be portable and kept in your pocket/bag.

For the moment this thing will stay on my keychain. I’ll eventually work out how to program it to lock, and live with the initial key sequence to unlock it. Alternatively, I could always stick it to a wall and use it to trigger scenes. If I’d known all this before though, I would never have bought it. Sigh.

#25

…and (thanks to 'martnwendon" in a separate message) I can now lock the keyfob to stop false triggers.

The magic is as follows:

First, choose how long you want to wait before the keyfob locks itself automatically, if you want to have a specific button to press to lock the keyfob, and what button combination you want to use to wake it up. The manual shows you what each button value is, and you just calculate the total number from that. There are also calculators here: Lock mode | FIBARO Manuals

Anyhow, I wanted to use the minus & plus keys (note that it is order sensitive - so it’s minus first then plus) to unlock the device (which is 5 + 8*6 = 53), and have a 30 second auto lock. I went into Device Options for the keyfob and I changed:

1- Lock Mode (disabled or calculated value) - 2 byte dec - changed from 0 to 53
2- Lock Mode time to lock and locking button (disabled or calculated value) - 2 byte dec - 60 default, changed to 30

I then hit “save” and immediately pressed the circle & plus button to wake it up so it would get the new settings.

Now comes the slightly tricky part. Need to set the Protection Command Class, and there is no direct option to do that via the GUI in Vera. To do it, you need to first:
Identify the node ID for the keyfob. Go into device settings, and you should see under “Variables” a number starting with ID. In my case it was “ID35”.
Go into apps/develop apps, open the test lua window and use these commands (replacing “nn” with the NODE ID of your Fibaro Keyfob - in my case it was “ID35”). Note that as soon as you hit enter, press the circle and plus buttons to wake up the remote so it will get the command.

To set Protection By Sequence

luup.call_action('urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1','SendData',{Node='nn',Data='117 1 1'},1)

To set it back to default (Unprotected)

luup.call_action('urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1','SendData',{Node='nn',Data='117 1 0'},1)

You might need to try this a few times in case you ran the command but the keyfob wasn’t awake to get it. It worked first time for me, though. If you are having issues, place the keyfob on top of your Vera. Once done, the keyfob should now automatically lock after the amount of time you have specified, and before using it you just need to press the unlock button combination.

update
I can confirm that after two weeks not only is this working, it’s working well. By setting the automatic lock it may be slightly annoying to have to unlock just before using, but it does mean that it works immediately when I return home. There are also no false triggers when the keyfob hits something, and the battery is definitely lasting longer. Now that everything is sorted I may replace the battery one more time (I got some spares as it was eating them so quickly), re-enable some of the scenes I’d removed, and see exactly how long the battery lasts now given that I am using it maybe once a day on average (which actually means three button clicks - two to unlock and one to fire of the scene).

#26

Thanks for the help ninkasi.

Unfortunately, having used both the aoetec and (ultimately giving up on) the zwave.me keyfobs, I can confidently say this “dream” isn’t going to happen. I guess it’s the blessing and the curse of a mesh network.

If you want to operate your garage door, exterior lights, or door locks remotely when you arrive home, I suggest scrapping these keyfobs. They burn through batteries, function unreliably, and inevitably go belly-up long before other z-wave devices…not to mention the complete headache of trying to include and configure them.

I use the Wayne-Dalton gateway for my exterior lights and garage door. Modern cars come with 3+ programmable buttons that the Wayne-Dalton gateway can pick-up and then communicate to your z-wave network as Vera-configured scenes. It still doesn’t always work, but it’s FAR more reliable than the key fobs I’ve tried (to be fair, the aoetec is the only one I ever got working completely, and even that inexplicably died after a couple months – not a battery issue, which was replaced). And the fobs always needed to be much closer to the house in order to work. So you get more range using the “garage door” frequencies and then converting to z-wave from a stable, always-on node (the Wayne-Dalton gateway). I know this isn’t the solution for everyone (it only works from your car or a cloned transmitter), but I’ve decided that, after going through three of these fobs, these z-wave fobs just aren’t anywhere near “game ready.”

#27

Thanks for advice buddy.