full devices reset

[akbooer]

@powisquare said in Why Migrate to Z-way from vera and how?:

Then I read zway can run multiple UZBs! Would the ser2net/socat route work for multiple UZBs with one controller - and make for easier maintenance?

...I have NO idea!

[rafale77]

I just took a good look at it and no it doesn't seem like a z-way-server instance can support multiple zwave radios. You will need one instance of z-way-server per radio so your approach is correct... running the z-way-server on the remote unit with multiple z-way bridges is the way to go.

[powisquare]

Thanks guys - just one more thing ; ) If I install say a reactor on a remote device running zway server and openLuup - will my central openLuup see this as a device or does the zway bridge only talk to the zway server.

[rafale77]

Each instance of z-way bridge talks to one z-way server. You can have multiple instances of the bridge on openLuup. one openLuup can obviously connect also to another openluup using a verabridge instance.

[LibraSun]

This post is deleted!

[akbooer]

@librasun

Thanks for the heads up on that. Strangely, the forum software seems to have converted plain text to a URL link (to a non-existent domain, so I ended up with a web hosting service offering to sell that domain to me!)

Anyway, it's fixed now, and I edited your quote above to remove the link too.

Thanks again

[Pabla]

Hey guys, I am just tired of the Vera Z wave setup I have too many devices falling offline randomly and almost all my lock's states are incorrectly reported. Though my network is fairly fast I want to move to something a bit more reliable. I don't want to go the full route of OpenLuup + Z way yet, but I would like to go just the Z way route.

If my understanding is correct Z way is just a Z wave dongle that handles all the z wave tasks, and once configured properly the Vera will still be able to see all these Z wave devices but it just wont be directly controlling them .. instead going through the Z way?

[rafale77]

@pabla

Hmm not quite. I was hoping my github readme would be clear enough but apparently not.

Z-way in really meant to be a competing platform to the vera supporting zwave only. It can be made to run all automation etc... They just don't sell a hub. The hardware they sell is only a usb zwave stick (the zwave.me uzb) or a raspberry pi HAT (the razberry). It means that you need to supply your own hardware to run the software. I found it to be relatively easy to migrate my vera zwave network to their uzb stick and then found that the device configuration on the z-way-server software was much easier and transparent than what happens on a vera. This however does not migrate your scenes and plugins. It only migrates the z-wave mesh. The vera cannot control that mesh anymore but potentially you could look at the plugins on z-way to reproduce what you had on vera and redo all your automations on that platform, assuming that you only have zwave devices.

That's not what I and a number of others did. Instead, many of us had already offloaded our plugins and automation to openLuup, a different machine running a luup engine which then connects to the vera, treating the latter as a device hub only. All I did was replace the vera with z-way, switching from the verabridge to z-way bridge. My reason for doing it this way is also because I was heavily invested in vera plugins and scenes and didn't want to start from scratch.

I think the first step to improving reliability on your vera is indeed to get yourself another small machine (I recommend a cheap mini PC based on a celeron for example, I posted links to a few $30 ones on ebay), install a version of linux and openLuup on them and start migrating all your scenes and plugins on it. @akbooer built a number of tools to make it relatively easy to do. This will alleviate all the problems associated with luup reload causing scenes and plugins to go out of whack. It won't however fix zwave network specific issues. You can then run your vera that way for some time and see if it yields satisfactory reliability for you.

Alternatively, before I migrated all my controls to z-way, I started by using z-way as a diagnostic and correction tool on my zwave network. To do this, I included it as a secondary controller to the vera and I would go fix some device configurations in ways the vera would not allow me to.

[Pabla]

@rafale77 Ah okay that makes more sense. So basically I cannot use the USB stick itself as a the primary Z wave controller for my Vera.

The thing is I am only really have issues with my z wave network, surprisingly my Vera runs pretty well I only get a LUUP reload maybe every 6-7 days. I guess if I do move to OpenLuup it could help with my network since my Vera isn't handling any plugins anymore.

I think I had it backwards, so the possible configs are

Vera (Z wave device hub) - OpenLuup (plugins and automation hub)

or

OpenLuup (plugins and automation huub) - Z way (Z wave device hub)

[rafale77]

@pabla said in Why Migrate to Z-way from vera and how?:

@rafale77 Ah okay that makes more sense. So basically I cannot use the USB stick itself as a the primary Z wave controller for my Vera.

Actually you can! But that doesn't buy you anything. The problems with the vera is not the hardware. It's the firmware. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with the hardware. My research actually led me to discover than a german company is running the z-way library on a custom firmware on the same hardware as the vera plus quite successfully. I was curious as to why z-way had somehow a ramips (the hardware platform of the vera) release of their software. But I digress.

Yes you understand it correctly now. Migrating all your scenes to openLuup, if you don't have any plugins, would prevent your scenes from being interrupted by luup reloads and potentially extend the interval between luup reloads. openLuup just doesn't crash on its own. Doing it this way I had intervals of 16-20days between luup reloads. The next step is z-way which never crashes.

[powisquare]

+1 for zway

[PerH]

Just chiming in about z-way. I've used it for a good while now, and my only issues have been with functionality that vera never had anyway, and mostly due to my own settings.. Finding the expert panel, and the sheer amount of adjustment possibilities and overview you get of your network was quite a revelation compared to the more "dumbed down" z-wave settings in vera. And it just works, haven't had a crash yet!

The smarthome UI still needs some work to be good in my opinion, but thats a more subjective thing i guess.

[rafale77]

@perh

Yeah the UI is not that great... if you have openLuup/ALTUI, there is no reason to use it. I avoid running anything on that API actually and it is important to understand the original philosophy behind that UI... It was a demonstrator of how one could use the Smarthome API to create an interface and their purpose was to sell the library and the API for other hub/controller to test the capabilities. It has become more over time. There are definitely some quirks/incomplete things. One that comes to mind is the fact that "remote access" is not supported on non ARM platforms... but I don't need or want it to begin with.

Quite a game changer to never have to worry about luup reloads and having to check / maintain the zwave network, looking for communication failures etc... isn't it? Battery operated devices have also seen a dramatic increase in lifetime. My Yale doorlocks for example went from a 6 week average battery life to 10 months. My zooz/monoprice 4 in 1 sensors have gone from 3 weeks to over 1 year... including one I am keeping outdoors. Granted the modifications on the latest vera firmware managed to double-triple the lifetimes but this is just something else...