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Current Hardware: Vera Plus, HA in Synology Docker
Firmware: v.7.0.31
Available SW / HW: Multiple RPi's, Z-Way UZB w/lic, Z-Way Razberry board
ZWave Devices: 30-ish early gen GE/Jasco light switchesIssue: I've gotten myself into a spot that I'm not quite sure how to safely get out of, and I'm hoping someone on this forum can help me. I would ultimately like to get to a point where I'm using Home Assistant in Docker on my Synology as my UI for turning on/off lights, but I've read the "Pyramid" post and am open to other options. I can currently ssh to my Vera Plus, but cannot access the web UI (get a 403).
How I Got Here:
Back in Feb'19, I followed @rafale77's instructions to take my Vera off the grid. At the time, it looks like I was running version 7.0.26. This worked great.
I installed HA in Docker w/socat on my Synology NAS, and things were running perfectly for a long time, but I was forced to upgrade HA in tandem with an upgrade to the iOS app. So, I chose to use a Docker build that already had socat built in.
Then, I saw that there was a new version of firmware for Vera, and decided to upgrade to Firmware v.7.0.31 around Apr'20. This was a mistake in a big way, and I sought help on the new version of the Vera forums, which eventually led me here. I also re-ran @rafale77's mod files on the newer firmware version, and I think I shot myself in the foot there. I knew it was gamble, and take full responsibility. I've learned a lot and have benefitted greatly from his work.
I tried to run the Nuke Vera script, as that sounded exactly what I needed my Vera to do - take commands from HA and nothing else. This seems to be working, but I'm unable to control my network with HA.
Additional things I've done / tried / worry about:
Validated that HA is sending and receiving responses via socat from the Vera in the HA openzwave logs. I see logs that seem to indicate that a message is sent, and a message comes back from the Vera, but lights don't turn on/off. I've clicked the Heal Network, Test, Network, and Soft Reset buttons in the HA UI too.
I purchased a razberry. Then, I ordered a UZB, after seeing this post about migrating, assuming that it was best to try to follow that guide verbatim and not have to exclude / include a bunch of devices. I'm leaning towards completely divorcing myself from Vera.
I'm not 100% sure I have a valid backup of my zwave config. There are no dongle.dump files in /etc/cmh whch may make sense, as I was using after an external drive w/extroot. I do have some in ./mnt/sda2/etc/cmh/. It looks like I've got extra, actually, as it looks like I probably made backup copies some where along the way.
I shutdown the Vera and removed the extroot drive, reversed all of the changes Nuke-Vera made to the init.d start up files, and rebooted. I did this because the migration guide mentions to set the path of the z-way UZB in the UI settings, and I couldn't find how do this over ssh. I also don't know how to backup the zwave config from the CLI and was going to do this via the UI. As mentioned previously, I'm getting a 403 "Access Denied" message. Looking at logs and the config for lighthttpd, I think it is trying to follow some symbolic links that no longer exist, but I'm hoping I can get out of the mess I've made without troubleshooting and solving the HTTPD issues. I think I just need to know how to follow the steps to clone the Vera to the UZB via the CLI?
I found a command online method that allows me to view the zwave keys with hexdump. The keys on the device are different than the keys in on the drive that i was using for extroot, and that concerns me a bit.
If you've made this far, thanks for your time! Does anyone know the best way for me to get myself out of the mess I've got myself into?
All the best,
Michael -
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
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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 FirmwareI 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:
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??
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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 rafale77/Nuke-VeraScript to neuter the vera and broadcast its zwave and zigbee serial ports - rafale77/Nuke-Vera
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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?
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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
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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:
Screen Shot 2020-04-24 at 10.29.50.png
It is what the UI calls to interface with the zwave dongle.
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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:
Aug 16, 2020 MiOS Application - early Beta enrollment MiOS Application - early Beta enrollment
The topic:
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…
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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?
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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.
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How to overcome the vera's storage limitations:
rafale77/vera-extroot rafale77/vera-extroot
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.Scripts to extroot the vera edge-plus-secure. Contribute to rafale77/vera-extroot development by creating an account on GitHub.
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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.
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I am used to errors, but never seen this before on altui on vera. keep getting this now all the time, any clue?
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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 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.
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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%!!
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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?
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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.
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Is there a way to remove a vera app and keep the devices it created?
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As the tiltle describes :-). Is this possible in android via a browser? Mine doesn't allow me.
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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...
The death of a thousand cuts
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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.
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I can assure you that your Vera will have had at least 10, if not 100, times that number of restarts already.
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Right now everything is very stable after removing every app except day/night, system monitor, and virtual switch. I may just learn zway for a while before I break whats working. The manual is 300 pages ffs. The alexa, siri and hue integrations are working perfectly and hard fought if you know what I mean. The writing is on the wall and there will come a day, and very soon that my alexa, remote access, and ios app stop working. When that happens I hope to be ready at least with the new hardware. Ill leave it to ezlo to determine my schedule. Honestly I would pay a reasonable monthly fee to keep those services going.
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The 300 pages are really for developers. I think you can browse around and figure out how it works. The interface is pretty intuitive.
As for your integrations, they all work perfectly on openLuup so you can just toss the vera out an keep them. Did you see my post about the local integration of alexa and siri? They are faster, more reliable and more secure than the native vera one by a long shot.
Your network size is right at the edge of where things get iffy on the vera. If like me you had notication setup to be sent every time the luup engine reloads you would really know how often that thing crashes. It is not reliable under any condition by any stretch of the imagination. It is a matter of not catching it when it crashes because you don't have it do anything at that moment.
Kind of what the forum manager in the other place was saying: As long as you don't make it do much you won't feel it to be unreliable... and likewise I would add the new platform is lightning fast as long as it does nearly nothing. -
@rafale77 said in The death of a thousand cuts:
As long as you don't make it do much you won't feel it to be unreliable...
Absolutely! Here’s what happened to my Vera Edge when I stopped asking it to do anything ZWave-related...
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It is just such a big job to move everything over. I have no doubt I can do it and it will be better. I would rather defer the large time investment and do more productive things. Even if I use the zwave backup method it will still take a considerable amount of time. What is going to be the best replacement for my native ios vera app? Altui is nice on the web but not as nice on my phone. My vera app has current image from camera in each room that has one. Ive not seen that on openluup. I Haven’t tried impirihome. I’m loath to upgrade things that are working. I do automated forced vera reboots every night and I believe that has helped keep my system more stable I have been doing this for the last few years at least
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Have you tried HomeWave? The developer @intveltr uses openLuup. Actually, we should invite him to this forum.
Yes, you can get camera images in openLuup (and email triggers.)
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@akbooer said in The death of a thousand cuts:
Have you tried HomeWave? The developer @intveltr uses openLuup. Actually, we should invite him to this forum.
Yes, you can get camera images in openLuup (and email triggers.)
+1 on Homewave and inviting @inveltr over. It is basically what eZLO is trying to sell with their mobile app and their dashboard and is already ages old. It much better than the vera app in terms of configurability and can be run completely locally, bypassing the cloud servers.
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I think that @prophead is referring to the ability of the Vera's native app to run with nothing exposed from the inside. I have my automations and my own bot, but my wife is using the app a lot, because - of course - automations are never what they really want at that precise moment.
So I have the same problem and I'll probably just expose my openluup installation via a reverse proxy, authenticated. This and the amount of work necessary to migrate the scenes/Vera features (like status associated to home mode changes) is holding me back as well. I will complete it because my Vera started a reboot cycle every 20 minutes since sunday and it's frustrating, and I'm wondering if this could be easily done or not. I will know it soon, I guess
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@therealdb said in The death of a thousand cuts:
I think that @prophead is referring to the ability of the Vera's native app to run with nothing exposed from the inside.
A bit more work but there is VPN for that (also with a dynamic DNS). It enables you to access your entire network so it can be used for a lot of other things. I undertand using a mirror server from the outside to tunnel in through your vera is convenient but it really isn't all that secure and not under your control. That's how I view all my cameras and access my NAS along with a bunch of other things remotely.
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Yep, I know, since part of my job is to deal about security. But the tunnel is convenient and while I can build it on my own, it's another thing to maintain...
Thus, it's very complicated for the average wife
For my NAS/Cameras, I use Synology's built-in tunnel and it work OK. Files are mostly in cloud, so no need to use the VPN anyway.
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@akbooer how do I do room images from cameras?
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My bridged cameras from vera don’t work
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@therealdb said in The death of a thousand cuts:
work necessary to migrate the scenes/Vera features (like status associated to home mode changes) is holding me back
openLuup has a tool to migrate scenes, moving trigger and action references to the local device instances.
It also supports house mode, is able to mirror a remote Vera's modes, or get a remote Vera to mirror its own house mode (or, indeed, sync the modes of multiple Veras.) The openLuup plugin itself has an action to set house mode which can be used in a scene, and also a mode variable which can be used to trigger scenes...
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@prophead said in The death of a thousand cuts:
My bridged cameras from vera don’t work
No, they don't. But I assume that they are IP devices, so can be accessed directly. openLuup has a built-in implementation file for cameras which supports images and also creates a child security sensor which can be triggered by email (without the need for any internet access, since openLuup implements its own SMTP server.)
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Do i create new device? What do i put as the device and implementation files?
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@akbooer said in The death of a thousand cuts:
openLuup has a tool to migrate scenes, moving trigger and action references to the local device instances.
It also supports house mode, is able to mirror a remote Vera's modes, or get a remote Vera to mirror its own house mode (or, indeed, sync the modes of multiple Veras.) The openLuup plugin itself has an action to set house mode which can be used in a scene, and also a mode variable which can be used to trigger scenes...I now, I played with openluup a lot, because it's the best dev platform for plug-ins hands down. But, as you now, moving from staging to production is always challening. Your customers are always there to point their fingers you if something goes wrong. And when you share the bed with your customer, well, things can get pretty intense
BTW, I was referring to Vera's ModeSetting variable, as we discussed with @rafale77 on Vera's forum. I know this is a bad implementation, but that's what I used because it is in front of you and it's easy to play with. I planned to write a plugin for it, but I'm busy at work and I postponed. It's a one-time effort to migrate, but another thing to add to the TODO list nonetheless. What I'm saying here is that I understand @prophead position and I know it's just anxiety, but not so complex to do. Probably just time consuming, as you need to
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@prophead said in The death of a thousand cuts:
Do i create new device? What do i put as the device and implementation files?
Yes, one native to openLuup, rather than bridged from Vera.
I'm not a big user of video (or audio/TTS) but I have a Foscam camera that a very nice person in Australia sent to me for helping them with their HA setup. I've just fired it up on my RPi system and all is working (as I expect it to, at least.)
D_DigitalSecurityCamera1.xml
I_openLuupCamera1.xmlJust tried to post some screen snapshots, but the forum is throwing an error...
...anyway, suffice to say that a thumbnail appears on the AltUI devices page and on the control page itself you get a larger image.
This is after having set the URL and DirectStreamingURL variables of the device, plus the IP attribute, including port number.
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...I should also add that the ArchiveVideo action works for individual snapshots (using Format = 1) with the files being stored in the images/ folder and available to browse from the Images page in the openLuup console.
On the openLuup console Sockets > SMTP page you should see the camera IP as a registered email sender, along with a count of the number of emails received. You obviously have to configure the camera to send these. On the POP3 page you can actually browse the messages sent as triggers, but the child security sensor should also behave as expected (if armed.) I have an old iPod touch set up to browse these internal emails via the POP3 server using the Mail app.
If you have lots of messages/images being sent, you can configure timed scene to use the openLuup plugin's SendToTrash and EmptyTrash actions to enforce file quotas based on filetype / age / number of files.
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