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[rafale77]

And I do want to say for the record, the post which got me banned over there was about 2 things:

1. A response to a link to the review article for the ezlo USB powered dongle which obviously was written by a home automation newb journalist who knew nothing about it, making claims which were obviously untrue as I had one on hand myself. I called that false advertising.
2. The fact that the ezlo controllers, the ezlo plus was an obvious cost reduced version of the vera plus with everything that matters downgraded and everything which is unimportant brought up to date for cost reduction. It is basically a toy grade device barely good enough as a toy for my then 8 year old lego projects. I was pretty sad seeing all the people spending time and money on 3D printing for a shell which is likely worth more than the content. I am a hardware enthusiast working in the semiconductor industry and am pretty well versed in the grade of these chips, who makes them and how. That was my honest feedback. So I called out the false advertising and the forum spamming.

There is nothing wrong with the hardware of the vera. It is actually a very cleverly designed piece of hardware based on a wireless router which was not utilized appropriately by its mcv firmware developers. Unlike the ezlo, it uses SLC NAND which is bears >100x write cycle lifetime than the garbage ezlo put out (the partitioning of the vera storage was the main problem). It uses an appliance grade CPU which is much more reliable than the toy grade junk in the ezlo plus you can buy as a full system for $7 on aliexpress. I could tell from the build of material that it was reallly a cost reduced and downgraded from the vera plus from the build of material and would have never even tried to run my home on it even someone paid me to do it. The only reason why I am no longer using the vera plus as a radio for openLuup/home assistant or z-way is that I got tired of how prone to bricking these embedded devices are. They take a lot more work to recover when there is a storage problem (data corruption etc) so I went low cost x86/x86 which often can be more energy efficient but are always more cost effective and more reliable.

[toggledbits]

@rafale77 said in Vera account suspended for a 1000 years:

people spending time and money on 3D printing for a shell which is likely worth more than the conten

ROFLMAOO.... and I'm dead!!!

[Matteburk]

Maybe I should sell my 3d printed ezlo Plus shell on Ebay along with the ezlo plus hardware .... Shell 20 Dollar, Hardware Free .... hahaha

[rafale77]

To give you a more graphic analogy of how I see it from a hardware engineer's point of view:
The vera is equivalent to a solid 80's Mercedes with a V8 diesel engine in which mcv has tried to feed some gasoline to make it faster and forgot to install more than 1 seat. It still runs but sputters a little. With a little maintenance and a few fixes, it will run for a long time albeit with only one passenger.
The ezlo plus on the other hand is a brand new 90's Lada on which they put the wings of cessna and they, ezlo, the snake oil salesmen, tell you it will fly you across the ocean powered by the Lada engine. Sorry I didn't believe it for one femto second, would you? Of course the paint job is worth a lot more than the vehicle... and it has 4 seats! yoohoo! You can seat more people but you can't go anywhere with it. And thanks but no thanks, I don't want to test drive it even for free. And no, I won't consider replacing my private jet with it... yeah yeah I know... the door on it can open really fast! awesome! got it! Still it's a "no".

[cw-kid]

@pabla said in Vera account suspended for a 1000 years:

So this is where all the banned Vera members rejoice

Surprised they haven't banned me yet.

I always state my mind, good or bad.

[Pabla]

@cw-kid don’t jinx it, they’ll probably find a forum rule that you’ve somehow broken to ban you too if they want

[rafale77]

The only consistent rules there from what I can see after not having gone back there for so long are:
Do not piss the CEO off, do not win an argument with him, do not prove him wrong, do not mention that he broke his forum rules. Truth does not matter. All you need to know is that they are awesome.
Do not provide helpful information to make your home automation work better than ezlo can. They are already awesome. That's what they call stealing from their awesomeness.
Do not criticize the product repeatedly and consistently or point out the false advertising/marketing, especially if what is said is true and you are a respected and regular contributor. Again, they are awesome. They call this spamming.

Every other rule is fabricated to justify the above and are applied selectively except for one person. The ultimate purpose is obscurantism to brainwash possessions (huh, I meant customers) into believing that their broken systems work and that they are... you guessed it... awesome... and very fast!

[Matohl]

This post is deleted!

[Nameless]

Before the take over, the Vera forum was really useful. The criticism was thought provoking. Wow what a change.
Other smart home forums allow for plenty of criticism within their discussions. Even SmartThings allows whole sections of Hubitat related talk. I only know of 1 discussion removed there and it eventually was put back by an employee/moderator.
Glad to see this independent forum has started!

[rafale77]

Warm welcome for your first post! This forum only exists thanks to the generosity of @DesT who provided the domain name, hosting and design! We should also be grateful to the venerable mcv/vera for connecting so many people and pioneering this hobby.

[LibraSun]

This post is deleted!

[DesT]

Here we go.... got banned too!

[toggledbits]

Are you kidding me? For what? Saying the thread isn't constructive? Well, shucks, there's just no room for you around here, Captain Obvious.

[DesT]

@toggledbits

[DesT]

@toggledbits don't worry, I will be able to sleep tonight

[Pabla]

I think Melih is having troubles sleeping, hence his easily bothered behaviour. He needs a drink.. or two.. or maybe 5?

[DesT]

can share a bottle of whisky with him

[toggledbits]

Pretty sure at this point that he and I aren't going to be drinking buddies, so I'll leave that to you guys.

[Crille]

The maturity, repeated disrespect and name calling indicates he already had too many in my opinion.

[Maipensato]

Well....since this morning I cannot login to the vera forum anymore.. Account suspended for 1000 years. No warnings at all. What a joke....The almighty dictator that cannot endure any criticism and breaks every forum rule himself again proves what kind of person he is. Really unbelievable his recent behaviour towards rigpapa and akbooer !! Well I don't bother at all. Seeing the lack of progress in Ezlo controllers these will not be part of my (future) home automation system.
@toggledbits: I liked your reactions towards the dictator (probably the reason he suspended me) and I really fully behind you !!
@akbooer: ridiculous that the dictator calls you a thief (you stole away "his"customers). He'\s very good in chasing them all away himself.

I use Vera controllers for almost 8 years now. Honestly I'm quite happy with how they function right now. Thanks to the great research and tips of @rafale77 and switching all my scenes to the magnificent Reactor plugin it is now working (although with on average 1 luup reload per day). My setup is quite complex and next to a lot of zwave devices I also use the plugins for e.g. Hue, Sonos, Netatmo, Milight, RFXcom, smartmeter, Datamine2. For short term I will consider decoupling my Veras from the Vera servers and/or start using Openluup. First dig in to this a little more, I already noticed this forum is very informative about all the options.

I think much more members are banned now from the vera forum. Because if they ban me for liking the posts of rigpapa.... well I was not the only one.
@toggledbits: are you still allowed by the almighty dictator?