Guys, the best possible answer is to make our home automation setup work the way we want it in reliable and efficient manner, with or without our EOL veras but with each other's help. That's what we are seeking after all. While keeping our minds open, exploring all the novelties and discussing what we can do to continuously innovate improve and optimize. The vera had an awesome forum with tremendous community of developers. I sensed the end of an era and as much of our time and energy we have spent there, it was not all wasted. The best answer is to move on, not only for the sake of answering but also to refocus on what we aim to do: A community to grow, develop, debate, explore smart home technologies.
R
rafale77
@rafale77
Following on from my last thread, some progress has been made over the weekend.
With 18G of spanky RAM in my Synology DS224+. I've jumped into the murky world of virtualisation and already eliminated the need for two Raspberry Pi's from my system.
Home Assistant: In theory they provide an OVA file which is supported by the Synology. I couldn't get it to work, however, so grabbed a copy of the .img file they supply, renamed it .iso and imported it as a VM. Restored from my full back up and that all seems fantastic.
Minidnla Music server: Trivial. Grabbed a Debian .iso for Bookworm and copied that onto the NAS. Created a new machine which mirrored the specs of the Raspberry Pi, booted from the ISO then did an expert install. Once that was all stable with a basic core of stuff and networking, I've made a copy of that as a good base system. Then fired up minidnla on it, mounted my media and that's also woking. Not bad for a short weekend's work.
Still not sure about the main NUC though. I'm thinking of buying a new USB stick so I can mess around getting it working on the Synology before I do anything drastic.
Once that hurdle is sorted I'm torn between:
Using a brand new install of Bookworm, re-installing Z-way server, OpenLuup, AltUI, MSR and HA bridge, then restoring across or Making an ISO of the current system, importing that and upgrading in place (which will be pretty risk free since I can snapshot everything before I make any changes.)Decisions, decisions.
C
Afternoon, all.
In my continued attempts to virtualise my system, I'm in the last (I hope throes)
I don't fancy relying on Synology not to break more USB activities, so decided to set up ser2net on a Raspberry pi and plug in a spare Z-wave.me stick
So on the Raspberry pi: ser2net. yaml
catman@Zwave:/etc $ cat ser2net.yaml %YAML 1.1 --- # This is a ser2net configuration file, tailored to be rather # simple. # # Find detailed documentation in ser2net.yaml(5) # A fully featured configuration file is in # /usr/share/doc/ser2net/examples/ser2net.yaml.gz # # If you find your configuration more useful than this very simple # one, please submit it as a bugreport define: &banner \r\nser2net port \p device \d [\B] (Debian GNU/Linux)\r\n\r\n connection: &zwave0 # Bind to TCP port accepter: tcp,4000 enable: on options: kickolduser: true # Ensure mDNS is disabled mdns: false connector: serialdev, /dev/ttyACM0,115200N81,nobreak,localAnd if I telnet to it from anywhere:
catman@ChrisMBP15-2018 ~ % telnet 192.168.70.128 4000 Trying 192.168.70.128... Connected to 192.168.70.128. Escape character is '^]'.Which makes me think that ser2net is doing its thing.
Now in my virtualised Z-wave server I have this:
Screenshot 2025-04-10 at 17.36.52.png
(I've tried with a colon and a space between the ip and the port)
The result:
An unexpected error occurred during loading data. Try to reload the page. Please check 1.) if the controller is plugged in correctly, 2.) that in the app 'Z-Wave Network Access' the right port is entered (UZB: '/dev/ttyACM0', RaZberry shield: '/dev/ttyAMA0', UZB-Windows: '\\.\COM3', Z-Stick: '/dev/ttyUSB0', embedded boxes: '/dev/ttyS0' or '/dev/ttyS1') 3.) the app is aktiv. If not you could activate it under Menu > Apps > Active or add a new one under Menu > Apps > Local. The Setting 'Expert View' needs to be active under Menu > My Settings.Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong?
TIA!
C
Hi guys,
Just wondering how you guys organize your rule sets and rules. I wish I had an extra layer to have some more granularity, but my feature request was not popular.
Maybe there are better ways to organize my rule sets.
I use the rule sets now primarily for rooms. So a rule set per room. But maybe grouping by functionality works better. Any examples/ suggestions would be appreciated.
I have installed MSR on a RP5 bare metal and then copied the config and store files. Everything seems to be on the RP5 but I am missing all global expression and I don't see the controller time.
Screenshot 2025-04-06 201446.png
My browser is Microsoft Edge Version 135.0.3179.54 (Official build) (64-bit)
I have probably done something stupid or missed a step but I am stuck.
Thanks for any help.
Hi,
It seems that the widget deletion does not work. I tried to drag the widget to the left (as explained in here https://smarthome.community/topic/1071/deleting-widgets?_=1744037333660)
but it does not delete it. Anyone else experiencing the same problem?
Also the landing page after login is empty and seems be have some JS issues on the dev console:
Screenshot from 2025-04-07 18-06-19.png
fd7f0424-debb-49d3-86d8-9a3b09ad3868-image.png
Using dockerized version of Reactor (Multi-hub) latest-25082-3c348de6 on Chromium 135.0.7049.52 (Official Build) snap (64-bit)
br,
mgvra
Good day all,
I have an notification set up for my washing machine to let me know when it's complete. I have a templete sensor set up in HAAS to let me know if it's Washing, in Standby, or off, based upon the power consumption (Shelly 1PM on outlets)
The MSR code is relatively simple. I have a built in false positive attribute for if MSR gets rebooted, because I would suddenly get tons of notifications when I upgraded MSR.
6774565a-06cc-443f-99c1-e71301b33d83-image.png
What I'm trying to introduce, is a way to verify that I just didn't bump the knob on the washing machine when transferring loads from the washer to the dryer, which turns on the display and brings the power above the Standby threshold.
The power goes up to 3.7W for about 4 minutes if the selector knob is bumped/turned.
What would the best way to do this be? I have most of my MSR code set up for a couple of years now, and my coding logic is struggling a bit.
I think I need a power threshold to be substained for a minimum time period (say 2 or 3 minutes, above 10W), before the other triggers can act. What would the best way to do that be?
Running: latest-25082-3c348de6
Fedora 41 Server
HAAS:
Core
2025.3.4
Supervisor
2025.03.4
Operating System
15.1
Frontend
20250306.0
Build 21228 has been released. Docker images available from DockerHub as usual, and bare-metal packages here.
Home Assistant up to version 2021.8.6 supported; the online version of the manual will now state the current supported versions; Fix an error in OWMWeatherController that could cause it to stop updating; Unify the approach to entity filtering on all hub interface classes (controllers); this works for device entities only; it may be extended to other entities later; Improve error detail in messages for EzloController during auth phase; Add isRuleSet() and isRuleEnabled() functions to expressions extensions; Implement set action for lock and passage capabilities (makes them more easily scriptable in some cases); Fix a place in the UI where 24-hour time was not being displayed.I have the following yaml configuration in local_mqtt_devices file
x_mqtt_device: set_speed: arguments: speed: type: str topic: "command/%friendly_name%" payload: type: json expr: '{ "fan": parameters.speed }'While this works fine, I'm wondering how this could be changed to "fixed" parameters, as in this case "fan" only accepts "A", "Q" or a numeric value of 1-5?
Hi!
I get this message when I'm on the status tab:
System Configuration Check
The time on this system and on the Reactor host are significantly different. This may be due to incorrect system configuration on either or both. Please check the configuration of both systems. The host reports 2025-04-01T15:29:29.252Z; browser reports 2025-04-01T15:29:40.528Z; difference 11.276 seconds.
I have MSR installed as a docker on my Home Assistant Blue / Hardkernel ODROID-N2/N2+. MSR version is latest-25082-3c348de6.
HA versions are:
Core 2025.3.4
Supervisor 2025.03.4
Operating System 15.1
I have restarted HA as well as MSR multiple times. This message didn´t show two weeks ago. Don´t know if it have anything to do with the latest MSR version.
Do anyone know what I can try?
Thanks in advance!
Let's Be Careful Out There (Hill Street reference...) 🙂
/Fanan
I have a very strange situation, where if InfluxDB restarts, other containers may fail when restarting at the same time (under not easy to understand circumstances), and InfluxDB remains unreachable (and these containers crashes). I need to reboot these containers in an exact order, after rebooting InfluxDB.
While I understand what's going on, I need a way to reliable determine that InfluxDB is not reachable and these containers are not reachable, in order to identify this situation and manually check what's going on - and, maybe, in the future, automatically restart them if needed.
So, I was looking at HTTP Request action, but I need to capture the HTTP response code, instead of the response (becase if ping is OK, InfluxDB will reply with a 204), and, potentially, a way to programmatically detect that it's failing to get the response.
While I could write a custom HTTP controller for this or a custom HTTP virtual device, I was wondering if this is somewhat on you roadmap @toggledbits
Thanks!
Hi ,
I'm on
-Reactor (Multi-hub) latest-25067-62e21a2d
-Docker on Synology NAS
-ZWaveJSUI 9.31.0.6c80945
Problem with ZwaveJSUI:
When I try to change color to a bulb RGBWW, it doesn't change to the RGB color and the bulb remains warm or cold white.
I tryed with Zipato RGBW Bulb V2 RGBWE2, Hank Bulb HKZW-RGB01, Aentec 6 A-ZWA002, so seems that it happens with all RGBWW bulb with reactor/zwavejsui.
I'm using from reator the entity action: "rgb_color.set" and "rgb_color.set_rgb".
After I send the reactor command, It changes in zwavejsui the rgb settings but doesn't put the white channel to "0", so the prevalent channel remains warm/cold White and the bulb doesn't change into the rgb color.
This is the status of the bulb in zwavejsui after "rgb_color.set" (235,33,33,) and the bulb is still warmWhite.
x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor={"warmWhite":204,"coldWhite":0,"red":235,"green":33,"blue":33}The "cold white" and "warm white" settings interfer with the rgb color settings.
Reactor can change bulb colors with rgb_color set — (value, ui8, 0x000000 to 0xffffff) or rgb_color set_rgb — (red, green, blue, all ui1, 0 to 255) but if warm or cold white
are not to "0", zwavejsui doesn't change them and I can't find a way to change into rgb or from rgb back to warm white.
So if I use from reactor: rgb_color set_rgb — (235,33,33) in zwavejsui I have
x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_targetColor={"red":235,"green":33,"blue":33} 14/03/2025, 16:43:57 - value updated Arg 0: └─commandClassName: Color Switch └─commandClass: 51 └─property: targetColor └─endpoint: 0 └─newValue └──red: 235 └──green: 33 └──blue: 33 └─prevValue └──red: 235 └──green: 33 └──blue: 33 └─propertyName: targetColor 14/03/2025, 16:43:57 - value updated Arg 0: └─commandClassName: Color Switch └─commandClass: 51 └─property: currentColor └─endpoint: 0 └─newValue └──warmWhite: 204 └──coldWhite: 0 └──red: 235 └──green: 33 └──blue: 33 └─prevValue └──warmWhite: 204 └──coldWhite: 0 └──red: 235 └──green: 33 └──blue: 33 └─propertyName: currentColorIn zwavejsui, the bulb changes rgb set but warm White remains to "204" and the bulb remais on warm White channel bacause is prevalent on rgb set.
x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor_0=204 x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor_1=0 x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor_2=235 x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor_3=33 x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_currentColor_4=33Is it possible to targetColor also for "warmWhite" and "coldWhite" and have something similar to this?
x_zwave_values.Color_Switch_targetColor={"warmWhite":0,"coldWhite":0,"red":235,"green":33,"blue":33}Thanks in advance.
Good day all,
I have a reaction set up, that I use for both troubleshooting and changing home modes when one of my family members either arrive or are leaving. I use the companion app for HAAS on our iPhones, and HAAS reports if the person associated with the iPhone enters or leaves the geofenced area around my home. I'm sure most MSR and HAAS users are familiar with this.
I use this rule set mainly as a condition for other rules, however, as part of troubleshooting, a notification is sent through HAAS to the companion app when the rule becomes true. The problem is that I'm getting notifications now for both arriving and departing simultaneously.
96b3f7db-ba09-499e-a78c-86903b603857-image.png
36903cdd-a87f-473b-82ef-af9ef96d3c44-image.png It used to work fine as intended. I'm not sure exactly when it changed, but now I'm getting two notifications when either of these conditions change.
Any idea what could be happening?
Edit:
Running: latest-25082-3c348de6, bare-metal Linux
ZWaveJSControllerr [0.1.25082]
MSR had been running fine, but I decided to follow the message to upgrade to 25067. Since the upgrade, I have received the message "Controller "<name>" (HubitatController hubitat2) could not be loaded at startup. Its ID is not unique." MSR throws the message on every restart. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
I am running MSR on a Raspberry Pi4 connecting to two Hubitat units over an OpenVPN tunnel. One C8 and a C8 Pro. Both are up-to-date. It appears that despite the error message that MSR may be operating properly.
Similarly as for local expressions, global expressions evaluate and update fine when getEntity(...) structure is used. However, at least when certain functions are in use, expressions do not update.
Consider the following test case:
Screenshot 2025-03-13 at 16.29.42.png
Even though auto-evaluation is active, value does not change (it changes only if that expression is manually run). MSR restarts do not help.
Screenshot 2025-03-13 at 16.31.43.png
Note: Tested using build 25067 on Docker. I have also a PR open (but couldn't now get details or PR number as my Mantis account was somehow expired?).
Trying to understand what cause a local expresssion to be evaluated. I have read the manual but I am still not clear about it. Using the test rule below, I can see in the log that the rule is being automatically evaluated every time the temperature entity is changing. That is great...
What I am trying to understand is why the expression is not evaluated based on time as well since the "case" statement has time dependencies.
Any help would be appreciated
I have the following test rule:
eba6a3ea-ff61-4610-88c9-9b9864f11ff8-Screenshot 2025-01-21 095244.png
2d9c1ff5-7b73-4005-b324-9029c2709db9-Screenshot 2025-01-21 095302.png
Here is the expressioncode:
vFrom1 = "09:25:00", vFrom2 = "09:30:00", vFrom3 = "09:41:00", vTo = "10:55:00", # Get current time (format HH:MM:SS) vToDay = strftime("%H:%M:%S"), #Get current house temperature CurrentHouseTemp = getEntity( "hass>Thermostat2 " ).attributes.temperature_sensor.value, case when CurrentHouseTemp <= 19 and vToDay >= vFrom1 && vToDay <= vTo: "true1" # From1 when CurrentHouseTemp <= 20 and vToDay >= vFrom2 && vToDay <= vTo: "true2" # From2 when CurrentHouseTemp < 26 and vToDay >= vFrom3 && vToDay <= vTo: "true3" # From3 else "false" endI am getting a Runtime error on different browsers when I click exit when editing an existing or creating a new global reaction containing a group. If the global reaction does not have a group I don't get an error. I see a similar post on the forum about a Runtime Error when creating reactions but started a new thread as that appears to be solved.
The Runtime Error is different in the two browsers
Safari v18.3
Google Chrome 133.0.6943.142
TypeError: self.editor.isModified is not a function at HTMLButtonElement.<anonymous> (http://192.168.10.21:8111/reactor/en-US/lib/js/reaction-list.js:171:34) You may report this error, but do not screen shot it. Copy-paste the complete text. Remember to include a description of the operation you were performing in as much detail as possible. Report using the Reactor Bug Tracker (in your left navigation) or at the SmartHome Community.Steps to reproduce:
Click the pencil to edit a global reaction with a group.
Click the Exit button.
Runtime error appears.
or
Click Create Reaction
Click Add Action
Select Group
Add Condition such as Entity Attribute.
Add an Action.
Click Save
Click Exit
Runtime error appears.
I don’t know how long the error has been there as I haven’t edited the global reaction in a long time.
Reactor (Multi-hub) latest-25060-f32eaa46
Docker
Mac OS: 15.3.1
Thanks
I am trying to delete a global expression (gLightDelay) but for some strange reason, it comes back despite clicking the Delete this expression and Save Changes buttons.
I have not created a global expression for some times and just noticed this while doing some clean-up.
I have upgraded Reactor to 25067 from 25060 and the behaviour is still there. I have restarted Reactor (as well as restarting its container) and cleared the browser's cache several times without success.
Here's what the log shows.
[latest-25067]2025-03-08T23:50:22.690Z <wsapi:INFO> [WSAPI]wsapi#1 rpc_echo [Object]{ "comment": "UI activity" } [latest-25067]2025-03-08T23:50:26.254Z <GlobalExpression:NOTICE> Deleting global expression gLightDelay [latest-25067]2025-03-08T23:50:27.887Z <wsapi:INFO> [WSAPI]wsapi#1 rpc_echo [Object]{ "comment": "UI activity" }Reactor latest-25067-62e21a2d
Docker on Synology NAS
Hello all, after seeing Catman's posts about their disaster recovery and move to Docker I took that as a sign to migrate everything (aside from HA) to Docker. After a small learning curve I had Docker+Portainer up and running in a few days.
Instead of using named Volumes I opted to use Bind Mounts so I can easily edit conf files and any other file needed. I do understand the nuances that come with bind mounts, such as migration to a different host may require changing file structures, the possibility of someone editing the bind mount files and permissions but to me those aren't too big of a deal.
My question is what is the best way to keep a back up of these bind mounts? I currently have them stored in the /etc directory in another directory named on a per container basis. I was thinking to move it all to a /home/user/docker/ directory so that I can use a simple cp command to my mounted SMB share to backup all the container data files. Anyone else do it differently?
Side note: I finally got to flex the benefits of Docker with updating Reactor.. it was dead simple. I had no idea what I was missing out on lol!
Morning, experts. Hard on learning about the internet check script in MSR tools, I was wondering what suggestions anyone has about a local (i.e. non-internet dependent) notification method.
This was prompted by yesterday's fun and games with my ISP.
I've got the script Cronned and working properly but short of flashing a light on and off, I'm struggling to think of a way of alerting me (ideally to my phone)
I guess I could set up a Discord server at home, but that feels like overkill for a rare occasion. Any other suggestions?
TIA
C
Posts
-
Vera account suspended for a 1000 years -
Forum Mission StatementWho are we, what is our purpose? A community of smart home user or fans who felt the need for an independent place to share our experience, discuss novelties and ideas and test/develop better tools for home automation. Many of us come from the old Vera community but feel there is a space for non-partisan space to discuss the technology.
Everybody from any platform is welcome to discuss and share even though many of us are starting from the Vera and its much improved derivate, openLuup. We would only ask to for everyone to remain respectful and courteous to one another. Yes! even technical discussions can become heated as opinions can conflict. We respect everyone’s opinion and decisions and expect the same from others.
This forum is hosted benevolently by long time Vera community member DesT.
-
Not so quiet around here :)@perh said in Not so quiet around here
:I've asked for them to delete my account, but they say "the jury's still out" in the case of the "SHC mutineers".
Did they actually use the term "mutineers" there?
Are they actually serious? Do they still think that we are properties/employees/soldiers they should have any sort of control over? I hope not.They are booting the most loyal customers, ones who are willing to spend their time providing free customer support to others, sharing their fixes and findings to the community. Customers who are also providing them feedback to make their products better... He forced the creation of this forum with censorship then accuses people of all kinds of things and now is surprised that people are leaving?
Trust me only a very small number of those who have left are here. Many more are on many other platforms ranging from Homeseer to Hubitat to Home Assistant. And the cold hard truth is, that everyone has been much better off after leaving, has a much more reliable and capable system and for those who rely on community forums, have a place to discuss and have fun learning again.
-
openLuup IconsThis is a set of openLuup icons to replace the ones which you normally would transfer over from the vera. The only thing for the dimmable lights is that one needs to use a new json file to replace the original light bulb with an vector graphics type which I am also sharing.
icons.zip
D_DimmableLight1.json.zipThis is a sample of the icons on ALTUI:
-
zwaveserial -
Not so quiet around here :)Been trying to refrain myself from replying but here we go...
Instead of repeating what I have said in the past, my view is that ezlo and its leader have a very different view of the market and possibly do not understand what they bought by merging vera.But the basics are:
"But what can you do. Both sides have done things to upset the other."
Sorry but one has to put the context as to who is who back in place here. There is no circumstance under which a business owner should ever treat their customers this way. For anyone running a business, if a customer is upset, you should first asking why. Instead the guy keeps doing what upsets his customers and starts insulting and calling them names. That's unprofessional and unheard of."I think he feels you are all against the Ezlo platform and its future success and you just want your Vera firmware as is, to hack."
Again, instead of feeling this way, he should be asking why? Being the one who tore down the firmware down to the OS level, I think I can speak of it. Certainly "as is" is incorrect. The whys:
- Because it's broken
- Most of the fixes are trivial
- They significantly improve the vera
- They are not fixing it themselves.
Now on the understanding of this home automation market. If you run a market survey, you will see that the vast majority if not all platforms today rely to various degree on community development of external integration, cloud or local, and run on increasingly more powerful hardware. When they bought vera, they inherited a community, a small remnant of hardcore users who have extended the life of the vera to its limits trying to maintain the platform on par with the competition but still somewhat behind. A large number of people have already jumped ship quietly. The most vocal people on the forum are the most loyal supporters of the platform and many stay because of the technical migration barrier to other platforms. I think we were all excited about the prospective of a new hub and an updated platform. I was all in. There are however two bare minimum critical requirements to a new hub:
- Functional equivalency, including all the integrations the plugins supported
- An ease of migration from a vera installation to the new hub.
Sadly what I have observed is a complete disdain of these basic requirements and a development strategy aiming straight down the toilet (excessive focus on mobile app and cloud base processing, disregard of the critical wireless stacks and repeat of past mistakes in conception of the API) while the current product gets increasingly far behind competitive platforms, including open source ones. I kept an open mind, not being an expert on the software side but expressing a lot of concerns. The increasing amount of spamming of the forum with "exciting breakthroughs" and "pure innovations" of things the community has been able to do and better/faster/simpler for years combined with the release of an underwhelming hardware for the new controller, clearly pointing to a focus on minimum cost at the compromise of extendibility and reliability and you can clearly see my disappointment. That was the last straw for me. I predicted last year that the platform would not be ready in a year because of their approach... look at where they are now.
In the meantime, I have moved my zwave network to z-way. Stunningly, the migration is easier than to go from vera to ezlo and it felt like jumping from the stone age to science fiction. Everything became lighning fast... All my secure class problems and latency issues gone. I can no longer find any unsupported devices... etc... And all of my previous integrations are retained and more. So yeah I can see why he is upset but he can only be so at himself. Taking it out on his most loyal customers is... well you're the judge. -
Object Recognition -
System integration roadmap -
Nuke Vera ScriptScript 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.
GitHub - rafale77/Nuke-Vera: Script to neuter the vera and broadcast its zwave and zigbee serial ports
Script to neuter the vera and broadcast its zwave and zigbee serial ports - rafale77/Nuke-Vera
-
Import vera most important topics -
z-way-server 3.1.0 release lol, yes I can imagine. So far I am seeing a few cosmetic improvements on this new version but since I am rarely ever interacting with the z-way UI, it isn't doing much for me. The upgrade went pretty smoothly though it had to be a little manual.
For those who want to do it on debian/ubuntu, the process is to download the file:wget https://storage.z-wave.me/z-way-server/z-way-server-Ubuntu-v3.1.0.tgzdecompress it:
tar -zxf z-way-server-Ubuntu-v3.1.0.tgzremove the default config file:
rm z-way-server/automation/storage/*.jsonand then overwrite the z-way-server installation folder wherever it is. Mine is in the /opt folder which requires root permission.
sudo cp -r z-way-server /opt/PS: One notable improvement is in the noise meter. Now the below detection limit shows up as -95dBm instead of a nil value which made the graph looked like the noise remained at a high level. I think it was one of my requests...
-
Vera account suspended for a 1000 years -
Other Forum feedback -
Vera account suspended for a 1000 years@akbooer said in Vera account suspended for a 1000 years:
Clearly deranged. All I ever wanted to do was support openLuup users, and point out that, under the new regime, that was best done here rather than there!
Didn't need to explain AK. The guy shows us something green and tells us that it is orange. It's be going on since I was there. Everybody else can see that it is green...
@dest said in Vera account suspended for a 1000 years:
Some people are having way too much free time
And not enough neurons...
Talk about forum rules.. so many he made up to justify banning people giving feedback and expressing their problems and obviously not applying them to himself. Community users are not possessions or employees... they are customers. He is dictating that everyone be happy with the trash and lies he is feeding people without asking why customers are unhappy. Honest customer feedback is essential to success. In my line of work, we don't let ourselves make a single customer unhappy... not one.
Let him be.
-
Vera account suspended for a 1000 yearsAnd I do want to say for the record, the post which got me banned over there was about 2 things:
- 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.
- 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.
-
Vera account suspended for a 1000 years -
Vera firmware 7.32 betaI have been mostly silent on this forum for some time now with the exception of the occasional notifications for questions addressed to me because I just moved to a new house and my system had been rock solid for over a year... mostly since I got rid of the vera.
I now have to re-build everything from scratch in my new house while I had literally zero reliability issues with my previous setup in spite of its complexity (200+ devices integrated running 3 different software platform interconnected between z-way for zwave, Homeassistant for AI/cameras and the rare cloud integrations or integrations not existing on openLuup/vera and openLuup for scenes/automation/control interface.)
I considered long and hard to sell my old home with the automation but at the end I decided to move as much as I could over mostly because I noticed an increasing trend of the industry to go towards wifi for ease of setup but which cannot scale to large installations and have to encroach into wifi bandwidth. It is getting a bit harder to buy zwave and even zigbee devices. I also didn't want to spend the time to go through the learning curve of hubitat which would have yielded no benefit to my setup.
Dumping the vera was the single biggest improvement to my system and please, no ezlo... They are cost reduced and downgraded controllers to the vera in every important practical aspect.My new setup will be much lighter. Probably will not get to 175 zwave nodes, more likely <100 without the window coverings, fewer lights, fewer sensors. Heck I think I will dump the Phillips hue altogether too. I can't recommend enough migrating away from vera and go to openLuup or MSR in combination with Home Assistant for zigbee and integrations and z-way for z-wave while keeping devices as local as possible by avoiding all the wifi stuff which tend to be cloud dependent (with all their reliability and security disadvantages) and less efficient both in power and RF bandwidth. Still a new adventure...
-
Network Key LocationUseful for migration from a vera zwave network to z-way.
Find the vera's S0 network key, close the z-way-server and input the key into the
z-way-server/config/zddx/homeid-DeviceData.xml line 147 at the end of the line networkKey replacing the one z-way created by default when you loaded your uzb on it for the first time.
(replace homeid with your homeid after you already migrated the dongle data from the vera to the uzb and already booted z-way at least once) -
Facial recognition triggering automationI have optimized my facial recognition scheme and discovered a few things:
My wifi doorbell, the RCA HSDB2, was overloaded by having to provide too many concurrent rtsp streams which was causing the streams themselves to be unreliable:
Cloud stream
stream to QNAP NVR
stream to home assistant (regular)
stream to home assistant facial recognition.I decided to use the proxy function of the QNAP NVR to now only pull 2 streams from the doorbell and have the NVR be the source for home assistant. This stabilized the system quite a bit.
The second optimization was to find out that by default home assistant processes images every 10s. It made me think that the processing was slow but it turns out that it was just not being triggered frequently enough. I turned it up to 2s and now I have a working automation to trigger an openLuup scene, triggering opening a doorlock with conditionals on house mode and geofence. Now I am looking to offload this processing from the cpu to an intel NCS2 stick so I might test some other components than Dlib to make things run even faster.
-
openLuup HangsSorry for reviving this @akbooer but I wanted to give a quick update on lua socket.
I realized that the library used by luarocks is very old (3.0 RC1 from 2013) and that the apt debian/ubuntu version is a little newer (March 2015). The library has since gone through 5 years of development and I just installed the latest github version using this command:luarocks install luasocket --server https://luarocks.org/devIt compiles the library from the current GitHub master. I am not sure it will help but so far it has not hurt. Will test further...
