(Last Updated: November 23, 2020)
For those who registered but didn't received the confirmation email, please send an email to support@smarthome.community with the email you used
  • K

    Dear Experts!

    In January 2020, I decided to get involved in automation as a complete beginner.
    I purchased a Vera Plus device controller.

    I built the network gradually, at the cost of overcoming no small problems .....
    Since I am a beginner I have had a lot of problems.

    For example: I had 6 multisensors that sometimes got stuck with motion detection (lights stayed on) and also created ghost devices.
    I knocked everything out of the system, the system stabilized a lot after that. (many red lines disappeared from luaupnp ....)

    Over time and with the help of the experts (Eg: AKbooer was a great help to me in netatmo which I thank again) I managed to solve most of the errors.

    I only use a reactor to control the logic and execution.
    The logical composition of my reactor is not very complicated in my opinion.

    My DSC alarm (with plugin) controls the house modes, cameras, each room has a separate reactor sensor (18 sensors in total) which control the automatic lighting and shutters.

    I tried to improve the conditions and scenes in the reactor to perfection. (don't have executions, delays and reservations at the same time, I record the states with the "time from reactor" group state, just like the motion and opening detections from another sensor.

    The situation is that the system does not always work reliably.
    I experience Lua recharges at completely unpredictable intervals, about 1-3 per day
    times.
    Because of this, unfortunately my scenes slip, (or don't happen)
    For simple things (tablet charging in) there is usually no problem.

    However, if I am not at home for several hours and return home, the alarms will turn off, and the luup recharge(90%).
    If you approach the afternoon when more times are set in the time reactor then recharging will still occur but not always.

    For the past 10 months, I feel tired of the constant error search and still not good. I'm starting to doubt Vera's abilities.

    Therefore, I would have the following questions:

    Are the conditions set in the reactor loaded on the vera without action?

    Can the Vera be stable and well-functioning without an unexpected lua reload?

    If so, what do I need to add? (I'm a simple user, not a programmer, I don't know lua and linux programming languages ​​and I don't want to learn because of vera)
    I don’t want to deal with this too much anymore, so I still spent more on it than I deserve.

    Is there another controller that works safely and well on the z-wave platform?

    In what direction should I move away from the vera, which will not disappoint me?

    Have you heard of a controller called comfortclick? (I was now offered this instead of vera)

    Thank you in advance for your help.

    Krisztian

  • T

    So ... I am trying to do the following:

    Current setup:
    Vera Plus (1.7.4955) Zwave only -> HASSIO VM (full control via Vera Integration)

    Future Target:
    HASSIO VM (leveraging zwave.me UZB1 dongle via USB)

    I have done the following so far:

    Updated UZB1 dongle (via RPi SmartHome) to latest 5.39 Firmware

    I followed the following steps to try and migrate my existing Z-Wave NW (currently on Vera) onto the UZB1 dongle following the steps listed here:

    Migrate from Vera to Z-way

    Problem:

    Steps 1-3: went fine (although the dumps are labeled as dongle.6.1.dump.x)

    Step 4: went fine and the UZB1 was recognized as it should be (per dmesg)

    Step 5: updating the port to /dev/ttyACM0 went fine, although I didn't see any indication of luup reload (or a save button for that matter when updating the port mapping)

    Step 6: I did the touch for dongle.restore, but wasn't sure where to trigger a luup reload (I assumed it was Z-Wave Settings > Advanced > Reload Engine). I believe I got an error message when trying to do that step

    Step 7: verify dongle.restore.go I don't recall being in the directions when I was going the test, but I rebooted

    Post Reboot: None of my previous z-wave devices were listed. I also checked dmesg via ssh and noticed the following items:

    [ 4.328000] Unsupported Device! [ 4.328000] Vendor=658 ProdID=200 [ 4.328000] Manufacturer= Product=

    I saw that item a couple times which almost seems like Vera is blocking the UZB1 or at least complaining about it.

    I ended up switching the Z-Wave back to the embedded controller, and restoring configuration from backup.

    Any suggestions what I did wrong??

  • rafale77

    Script to disable all the mios/vera proprietary program and broadcast its zwave and zigbee radio serial ports in your network so it can be picked up by another controller... For example z-way.

    rafale77/Nuke-Vera

    Script to neuter the vera and broadcast its zwave and zigbee serial ports - rafale77/Nuke-Vera

  • E

    I have a VeraPlus and would like to purchase a second z-wave controler. Is it possible to build a second z-wave network next to an existing z-wave network? Slowly I want to move devices form Vera to the new z-wave network. Is it more advisable to install the second z-wave controller as a slave controler?

  • C

    My VeraPlus is in Christmas Light mode after attempting the latest update. So as I attempt to get things back with Vera Support I need to start looking into an alternate solution. I've installed OpenLuup in an Ubuntu VM I have running on an old PC. Right now I can still ssh into the VeraPlus.

    Will I be able to migrate the Z-Wave NW to a UZB dongle in this state? Or can I use @rafale77 's Nuke Vera Script to just use the VeraPlus as my zwave antenna? With either of these options have I lost the ability to migrate my configuration without Vera support restoring my VeraPlus first?

    Thanks

  • rafale77

    Never posted this on the vera forum but...
    Did you know about this?

    The vera has a very powerful zwaveserial API program in the firmware. Take a look at what it can do:

    It is what the UI calls to interface with the zwave dongle.

  • S

    So, after more than 10 years and 4 Vera's, my vera forum account is suspended.

    I think the monkey of the company, called melih is not man enough te have any critic. In the topic about the "great to come app" I responded to the topic (not off topic!) that a subscription can also be seen (financially) as buying a box, run it for 2 years and come to market with a better one (in better wordings).
    That means that if you as a company hast a box of 50USD cost, sell it at 250USD would give him a monthly subscription of 200/24=8.33 USD... Users that would last 5 years would pay a monthly of 3.33USD.

    But... the monkey on the rock has bolded his fists and said: ban him! He just can't take any criticism.

    To be honest! I am not even sad! It was a very rough journey with Vera. The journey stopped when Ezlo and the monkey took over the name.

    After that it quickly went downhill...

    Goodluck all! (except the monkey).

    Edit:
    The topic:

    Aug 16 MiOS Application - early Beta enrollment

    are you serious? would I become a cost? that is, customers who periodically replace the control unit and are happy with the service praise the Vera system and therefore also free advertising but, the new “company” decides to charge less to bind the customer with a subscription … But the genius...

    The post:
    The point you are missing is:

    If the hardware would “cost” around 50USD, and you sold it for 250USD, an average life span of 5 years would mean 200/(5×12)=3.33USD per month. Thats how Vera used to do it.

    Then release a faster/better “beast” every 2 years gives you 200/(2×12)=8.33USD per month. That’s how vera used to do it.

    And that’s how I did it for around 8 years and 4 veras with them untill you bought the company.

    This is just a matter of how you look at it and explain it.

    I dont frikking care how you do the maths, I only liked a working product and a close user community (like it was).

    Now all I see on this forum is a lot of “we are going to” and “we are working on”, “keep them coming guys”. But the reason for ever considering to buy a new vera every 2 years is gone…

    No clear migration path, no clear compatibility path and no clear integration path…

    That’s why I started to look for alternatives…

  • T

    I have 50ish devices in connected to Home Assistant via. VeraPlus hub. I recently picked up an Aeotec Gen5 USB stick which I have successfully integrated into Home Assistant using OpenZWave.

    Can I add the Aeotec Stick as a Secondary Controller to Vera, turn off vera (making Aeotec primary) and then run natively that way on HA?

    I know the entity ID's in HA will change, but a lot easier to fix vs. unpair/repair all the devices from Vera.

    Will this work?

  • rafale77

    To answer @sdtoddl who emailed me asking how to manually force neighbor node setting on the vera, I don’t think it is possible with the UI.
    The solution is actually to trigger a neighbor node update on the given device and all the devices located between that said device and the controller.
    The vera deals with this by running multiple repeated (nightly) network heals which is not very efficient and causes it to frequently have unexpected network breakdowns and surprises good (some devices with problems get fixed) and bad (some devices which used to work stop working). It also takes down the entire network when it does it. One can however manually trigger neighbor node updates on the vera through the device’s advanced menu.

    To go to the next level, this data, the network node list is actually not recorded in the host controller firmware but in the non volatile memory of the zwave chip both on the controller and on the devices. It is therefore independent of the platform you use and can’t be set by the host. One can only ask the zwave chip on the device to run a survey and then inform the controller’s zwave chip of what it has found.

  • rafale77

    How to overcome the vera's storage limitations:
    Execrably poor partitioning and usage of the onboard flash causing hardware reliability failure through data corruption and storage availability for plugin limitations: Add your own external USB SATA drive and extroot.

    rafale77/vera-extroot

    Scripts to extroot the vera edge-plus-secure. Contribute to rafale77/vera-extroot development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • akbooer

    Amazing. One of my (un)trusty old VeraLite machines running UI5 has just achieved an uptime of one month... the maximum that that firmware can ever achieve!

    The graph below shows the uptime for the last two years, and although sometimes being up for a few weeks, it's never achieved a whole month!

    I put this down to reduced ZWave traffic and zero plugins, although the configuration hasn't changed for a long while.

  • S

    I am used to errors, but never seen this before on altui on vera. keep getting this now all the time, any clue?

  • S

    Using Home Assistant as the heart of my domotica (this was vera for 10 years up untill just a few months ago!) I currently have vera integrated as zwave hub only. Having almost all logic moved to hass leaving vera solely as zwave hub.
    As I am searching for a solution for a more stable zwave network and all options are open (but messing with zwave network ids etc is still too hard for me) I am also looking to another option.

    Multiple veras in hass. This way I can have isolated vera edges with smaller zwave networks and still do all logic in hass.

    One thing... currently only 1 vera is allowed in hass.

    It is a feature request already and I would like to ask to help me vote this request up:

    Jul 26, 2018 Multiple Vera Hubs

    I have multiple locations with Vera hubs at each for Z-Wave/Zigbee controls. However, you cannot add two or more Vera hubs to your configuration.yaml. Please add this as an option.

  • prophead

    I found a device on my vera which accidentally had automatically configure set to on. After I turned it off the vera’s memory went from 50% to 20%!!

  • S

    Since I have disabled nightly heal long time ago and since I have replaced some devices since and I am watching the webinar of z-way I wonder if it is wise and or advisable to do a manual heal of my zwave routibg in vera... what's the best way of doing so?

  • prophead

    So if my vera will as it will want to restart after removing each zwave device and I have say 35 devices what are the chances it survives 35 restarts? How do I explain to my wife that our HA system is unstable? Yes, I know backup first.

  • prophead

    Is there a way to remove a vera app and keep the devices it created?

  • S

    As the tiltle describes :-). Is this possible in android via a browser? Mine doesn't allow me.

  • rafale77

    The vera can run both its zwave and zigbee network off of external USB radios instead of the onboard ones. This could have advantages in terms of portability, facilitating migrations or recoveries in case the vera craps out. It could also enable testing of newer radio firmwares.
    Zwave is pretty straightforward as its serial API is standardized and the protocol is the same regardless of what brand of USB stick you use. I have run my vera off of USB sticks of various brands for years going from Aeotec, Zooz, Homeseer and even the most generic silabs/Sigma Design. You just insert the stick in the usb port, find out which serial port it created (under the /dev/ folder) and use that port (ie. /dev/ttyACM0, /dev/ttyUSB0 etc) in the zwave advance menu.
    Zigbee is a little trickier as the protocol and chipset was not quite as standardized as zwave. The vera only works with ember Znet protocol and you will need to find a usb stick with an EM35x chip in it which already has an ember zigbee firmware loaded. One example of such a stick is the Go Control HUSBZB1 (dual zwave-zigbee stick). The port is not readily accessible on the vera UI but can be accessed either through editing of the /etc/cmh/user-data.json or through ALTUI by going into the hidden zigbee radio device through the "table devices " menu and changing modifying the port variable there.

    You can also upgrade the onboard zwave and zigbee radio firmwares from the command line SSH...

  • S

    I know how to uptrip but it is so annoying that lots of motion sensor keep tripped...

    ("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:SecuritySensor1", "Tripped", 0, 986)

    Any tips or suggestion to avoid this sensor behaviour?

Vera or not vera?

Vera
Log in to reply
  • K

    Dear Experts!

    In January 2020, I decided to get involved in automation as a complete beginner.
    I purchased a Vera Plus device controller.

    I built the network gradually, at the cost of overcoming no small problems .....
    Since I am a beginner I have had a lot of problems.

    For example: I had 6 multisensors that sometimes got stuck with motion detection (lights stayed on) and also created ghost devices.
    I knocked everything out of the system, the system stabilized a lot after that. (many red lines disappeared from luaupnp ....)

    Over time and with the help of the experts (Eg: AKbooer was a great help to me in netatmo which I thank again) I managed to solve most of the errors.

    I only use a reactor to control the logic and execution.
    The logical composition of my reactor is not very complicated in my opinion.

    My DSC alarm (with plugin) controls the house modes, cameras, each room has a separate reactor sensor (18 sensors in total) which control the automatic lighting and shutters.

    I tried to improve the conditions and scenes in the reactor to perfection. (don't have executions, delays and reservations at the same time, I record the states with the "time from reactor" group state, just like the motion and opening detections from another sensor.

    The situation is that the system does not always work reliably.
    I experience Lua recharges at completely unpredictable intervals, about 1-3 per day
    times.
    Because of this, unfortunately my scenes slip, (or don't happen)
    For simple things (tablet charging in) there is usually no problem.

    However, if I am not at home for several hours and return home, the alarms will turn off, and the luup recharge(90%).
    If you approach the afternoon when more times are set in the time reactor then recharging will still occur but not always.

    For the past 10 months, I feel tired of the constant error search and still not good. I'm starting to doubt Vera's abilities.

    Therefore, I would have the following questions:

    • Are the conditions set in the reactor loaded on the vera without action?

    • Can the Vera be stable and well-functioning without an unexpected lua reload?

    • If so, what do I need to add? (I'm a simple user, not a programmer, I don't know lua and linux programming languages ​​and I don't want to learn because of vera)
      I don’t want to deal with this too much anymore, so I still spent more on it than I deserve.

    • Is there another controller that works safely and well on the z-wave platform?

    • In what direction should I move away from the vera, which will not disappoint me?

    • Have you heard of a controller called comfortclick? (I was now offered this instead of vera)

    Thank you in advance for your help.

    Krisztian

    1
  • rafale77

    Welcome to the club...
    What you are describing is very similar to my own experience. Fighting and debugging the vera, requesting fixes has lead me to where I am today along with a number of us. After years of struggle I ended up giving up on the vera and only kept the best part of it, which is the lua backbone and the community developed apps. I would encourage you to read through the blog section of this forum where people are sharing their experience, including my own.

    As designed, the vera is not capable of functioning without luup reloads. It is inherently fragile and is a pile of fundamental software design mistakes. The longest I managed to get it to run without luup reloads is about 2 weeks but eventually the accumulated garbage from its absurd zwave management engine catches up and to get there I needed to offload almost everything to openLuup except for the zwave management. Scenes, plugins, vera server connections, all were removed. Even the most basic and simple functions are unreliable and paradoxically their very immature implementation of zigbee was the only thing which appeared to work almost properly.

    0
  • K

    Thank you for your response!
    Although it doesn't sound too good ... Does this mean that vera will never be able to work without error? (I read your story)
    Basically, my dream would be an automation that is reliable, no need to be constantly maintained, tuned.
    ... the user-friendly interface would be just icing on the cake.
    Is it worth welding the vera with openloop and who else knows if it won't be perfect even then?
    What would be the solution for the future?

    0 rafale77 1 Reply
  • Black Cat

    I feel for you....Vera is (was) a good step into the HA world but it was/is far from perfect as you found out.
    I ended up changing over to HomeSeer3, eventually updating to HS4 which has many native implementations that suit me and worked out of the box so to speak.
    Everyone will have a favourite so it's difficult to get a fair comparison, but for me a system that has been around for 20+ years, has a good community and backup was most important.
    Try the free download, be quick if you like it as the software is on special this week less50%.
    Either way you go, anything will appear better than Vera.
    Good luck.

    0
  • DesT

    I'm very happy with openLuup ( @akbooer ) and having z-wave.me hardware to "talk" with all my zwave devices!

    I also use the DSC plugin in vera (for the moment), as I didn't take the time to debug the plugin for DSC and make it works directly in openLuup!

    0 K 1 Reply
  • rafale77

    @krisztianszabo

    I think if you explore what a few of us did on this forum you probably will find what you need but there is obviously some compromises to be made and at the moment, at least in my opinion, there isn't a platform which has it all. (See my thread on the home automation pyramid)

    The best zwave controller is z-way (for both reliability, scalability and having an approachable API)
    The best zigbee controller is Deconz but there are close seconds if you don't need to integrate both the ha stack and a number of various customized zigbee stacks. hubitat and home assistant come to mind.
    If you have a lot of cross platform integrations with various APIs, home assistant can't be beat. It develops so fast and is so well supported, being opensource with a huge number of talented community members that I can't see any platform coming close.
    For automation setting, and programing, openLuup/ALTUI is amongst the best especially if you started with vera and have already stuff built into it. I have run it for months without a reload, using z-way as the zwave device controller and home assistant as the zigbee and integration bridge.

    The downside is that it is a pretty steep learning curve with multiple platforms interconnected as I have had to become versed in lua and python (for home assistant only because I developed my own implementation of video processing). I have a very large, complex, reliable and maintenance free system with a very decent interface. As you can see the vera is nowhere to be found in this due to its catastrophic unscalable design. I am now doing so many more things that I could not do with the vera in much more reliable manner. My answer would be "Not Vera"

    0
  • C

    Same here. My system is now several orders of magnitude better than on Vera. I have no hesitation in suggesting you move away.

    My thread 'What I did on my holidays' or something like that, details my experience and is something of a How-To (warts and all)

    C

    0
  • K

    @blackcat
    Thank you for your response!
    I don’t think I understand HS3-4 exactly. Is this just software? Then it's not like vera .... (vera hardware and software in one)
    Should I try it?
    How?
    How will my system know?
    What other hardware do you need? Rasberry? 3? 4?
    Sorry for my amateur questions .....

    0 C 1 Reply
  • C

    @krisztianszabo

    Homeseer

    Smart Home Software That's Powerful, Fast & Reliable | HomeSeer

    Smart Home Software That's Powerful, Fast & Reliable | HomeSeer

    Perfecting The World's Best Smart Home Automation Software Is Our Passion & Constant Pursuit. Leverage The Power Of The Cloud Without Being Shackled To It!

    C

    0
  • K

    @rafael77
    Well, with all the components built in, I’d be happy if I didn’t have to make any major changes to the hardware protfolio.
    Let's see, do I understand?
    Vera, openLuup / ALTUI, is a good stable choice.
    If I choose this, do I need to understand lua / linux or other programming languages ​​??
    Or as an outsider, I just install and configure them and you’re done?
    As with other plug-ins?
    What exactly does openLuup do with vera?

    0
  • akbooer

    I am, of course, biased...

    You can progress in easy steps, and see how things improve. You will need another computer (Raspberry Pi of any sort is not a bad choice.)

    • install openLuup on RPi
    • link openLuup to Vera
    • move any plugins to openLuup (really helps reliability)
    • move scenes to openLuup (ditto)

    These are easy steps for which there is much help available. If this is not reliable enough for you then

    • buy a UZB stick with ZWave licence, and software (runs on RPi)
    • clone your Vera ZWave network to it
    • plug in UZB to RPi
    • throw away Vera

    Then you are in a hugely reliable, yet still familiar, home automation environment.

    2
  • akbooer

    I should also add that the Reactor plugin, of course, works on openLuup (indeed, it was developed there, IIRC.)

    1
  • K

    Thank you for your comments and helpfulness!

    @AKbooer
    I think it seems so understandable, although I'm afraid the construction will be much larger in volume .... 🙂
    Before I start purchasing, I have a few questions:

    • "You will need another computer"
      What RPi should I take? 3's 4's? 2GB? 4GB?

    • "buy a UZB stick with ZWave license, and software (runs on RPi)"
      If I understand correctly, two softwares came up. The Homeseer and the z-way? How can I try these? Does that require any hardware?

    • My shutter control is not commonplace. I have 433Mhz radio frequency shutter motors. The shutter control interface is connected to the vera via a USB port. It is a 15-channel radio frequency shutter control module that uses port 3481 to communicate with the vera. It communicates with the shutters on RF433Mhz. (device type: urn: schemas-arduino-cc: device: arduino: 1)
      Will I be able to use this if I leave the vera completely?

    0
  • Black Cat

    Homeseer has a 30 day free trial, it's available in both Windows (ideal for repurposing an old laptop) or run it on a Raspberry Pi.
    I do both flavours for testing but love the Pi.
    A UZB is essential for a Z-Wave network, HS is software not tied to a particular system, for instance apart from Z-Wave you can run Zigbee, KNX, Hue, Tuya... the list goes on.
    Your RF controller will work with it.
    It's free for 30 days, jump in and give it a try.

    0
  • akbooer

    Whatever, if you replace the Vera, you will need a ZWave stick. If you buy a ZWave.me one (UZB) then you get the ZWay software.

    0
  • Black Cat

    ^^^
    The point I was trying to make is that you can trial HS software without a UZB, also there is other software than Z-Way.
    I'm hoping that the forum doesn't become Z-Way centric as there other good options available as well including Home Assistant.
    If you like the software then choices can be made for Z-Wave, Zigbee etc, if you have a TUYA device then it's all there for you without buying anything additional.

    0
  • rafale77

    Without wanting to be z-way centric, HS is indeed a decent choice for zwave as a holistic controller, not needing anything else but... It is very very expensive. Its integrations are good but nowhere near as good as home assistant and again very expensive. And lastly it doesn't have any decent API for it to use as a device controller which would enable people to overcome its inconveniences which is cost and insufficient integrations. So no I don't really recommend homeseer. It is good if it fits exactly what you are seeking in terms of control and integration and are willing to pay the $$$. I downloaded it, used the free version for some time and though it is stable, it lacks the flexibility of openLuup in automation and the completeness and user friendliness of z-way in zwave command class level controls. Each has its pros and cons but homeseer has no good way to overcome its cons unlike others you can make work with others.

    0
  • akbooer

    @Black-Cat said in Vera or not vera?:

    The point I was trying to make is that you can trial HS software without a UZB, also there is other software than Z-Way.
    I'm hoping that the forum doesn't become Z-Way centric as there other good options available as well including Home Assistant.

    100%.

    These are just opinions based on individual experience... what else could they be?

    If there was a ‘perfect’ answer, then we wouldn’t need a forum.

    Edit: I should back up this philosophy with the very practical note that I am not, in fact, now, even ZWave centric, abandoning it for almost everything (can’t find a good replacement yet for two pulse-counter meter readers or MiniMote four-button hand-held controllers.)

    I’ve surprised myself by being impressed with Shelly WiFi-based devices.

    0
  • S

    (can’t find a good replacement yet for two pulse-counter meter readers or MiniMote four-button hand-held controllers.)

    Have a look at esphome.io

    0 akbooer 1 Reply
  • akbooer

    @sender said in Vera or not vera?:

    (can’t find a good replacement yet for two pulse-counter meter readers or MiniMote four-button hand-held controllers.)

    Have a look at esphome.io

    Yes, thanks. You (or someone else) May have pointed this out previously?

    I have no problem building my own stuff (I used to use MySensor Arduino-based sensors) but have been trying to move towards more consumer-based hardware (Philips Hue, etc.) for easier maintenance in the future (possibly by others, rather than myself.)

    It would seem that a natural response for a new owner acquiring a home-made smart home would be to rip it all out and start again, but an infrastructure of commercial, and documented, systems would, perhaps, be more likely to be retained?

    A theme for a separate topic, perhaps.

    0