Fibaro
Selected products from this vendor are presented on this page, with my assessments where I have personal experiences to share. The links are primarily directed to the vendor’s own pages, in English; for local pages/prices you will have to conduct your own search.
About the vendor and its products
Fibaro (opens in a new window) is a large player in the smart home market, both as supplier of individual components and of its own extensive system built around its own base station, Home Center. Examples of useful products are:
- The base stations Home Center 2 and Home Center Lite, which both utilize the Z-Wave protocol (more about this under control & automation). Through a graphical interface in an app on a PC or Mac, comprehensive smart home algorithms can be set up and the system is also compatible with both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
- Sensors of many different types, for motion, water leakage, door/window, CO level and smoke
- Switches is another category spanning a wide variety of products; a smart plug, thermostat controller, smart light switches, smart dimmer relay, relay for controlling blinds, shades, etc., and a relay for changing the color of lights
- Intercom, which in reality is a smart doorbell
- Remote controls, including a keyfob, smart button and a kind of tablet for controlling devices based on gestures
- In addition, at the start of 2019 Fibaro announced a new line of products, Fibaro Walli, containing a number of products based on the same design and meant to replace existing wired switches/outlets. This includes both smart outlets, on/off and dimmer switches, switch for sun coverings, and a “wall controller”. The whole line used Z-Wave and is compatible with both Amazon Alexa and Google Home
Fibaro offers several apps, including this one for iOS (opens in a new window) (others requires the Fibaro base station) and many of the individual components are also compatible with Apple Home, and there is both a Homebridge plugin for the home centers (opens in a new window), a Homey app (opens in a new window), and official support for many of the devices in Samsung SmartThings.
Our experiences
We have a couple of Fibaro products integrated into our system, see more specific experiences in the table below. We used to have more, but many have been replaced with other solutions, typically smart switches.
Notice that on phones, the table might only display in landscape mode
| Component | Room | Experiences |
|---|---|---|
| Single Switch smart relay | Guest room 1 | These have been installed behind wall switches/fan connection box and these provide solutions to challenges that few other products can. Our experiences with these are very good; we have so far never had to reboot any of these or see them fail in any other way, fortunately, since they are not easy to reach. |
| Door/Window Sensor | Uninstalled | This one gave us some problems in terms of staying connected. At that time, it was located in the outdoor shed, though, and after relocating it to the kitchen, it worked well. However, it uses very expensive batteries and has been replaced by one from Aqara. By the way, it offers temperature measurements, which can be useful. |
| Smart Plug | Uninstalled | Like with some other Fibaro components, we have had frequent issues with this plug, which often becomes unresponsive. This requires resetting it, after which it’d work again for a while, before failing again. It has now therefore been uninstalled and taken out of use. |
| Roller Shutter 2 smart relay for sun screen | Uninstalled | This relay did work as intended, but it was not compatible with Apple Home and was therefore replaced by a device from Meross which is |
| Walli Switch smart light switch | Uninstalled | This was for a long time used to control the lights in the downstairs bathroom. For two reasons, it was uninstalled (and replaced by an Aqara wired smart switch), partly that it is not compatible with Apple Home, so that I had to go via Homey, and partly that it uses Z-Wave as protocol, and I have tried to remove all devices that use this protocol, as they have created some issues when restarting the Homey base station. |
| Motion sensor | Uninstalled | This is an expensive, but nifty motion sensor. It looks like an eye, uses colors to indicate status, and in addition to motion, it also measures temperature and light level as well as warns about tampering. The experiences with this sensor were basically very good, but the setup, in our case using SmartThings and Homebridge, is a bit more clunky than for sensors natively supporting Apple Home, and its use in Apple Home was a little unreliable. It was therefore replaced by one with native Apple Home support. |
| Fibaro Walli Outlet | Uninstalled | This is a rather unique product; a smart power outlet (i.e., not a smart plug) that replaces a traditional power outlet with one that can be remotely operated. There are a couple of issues with it, however; depending on the size and shape of your wall recesses, it might not fit perfectly, and it is not compatible with Apple Home (it uses Z-Wave for communication). But it looks good, with a LED ring indicating its on/off status, and it seems well built. |