Alternatives to Vera

It has been about four weeks since my Vera2 quit working. I have been patient and I’ve tried to the understanding. Now, in spite of making backups, the system still isn’t working and tech support has said that it is over their heads. Now, they will not return my calls. My vera2 shows a power light and an Eth1 light.I have no Z wave light. I have tried to reset the network in order to load everything back in and rewrite all the scenes .
After over a year, 50 devices, a e bunch of money, and hundreds of hours, I’m about ready to give up on Micasaverde, Vera 2, and Mios. But, I do not know where to go next. Has anyone had any experience with Homeseer? How does it compare in ease-of-use, flexibility, and installation? Is there some other alternative that anyone would recommend?

when my vera 2 had the same symptoms I was able to restore it with a “factory reset” then restore, sorry to hear of your frustration, been there!

Homeseer.

JOD.

maybe you can do the recommendation of wseverino as quoted below:


As most of you guys know, I have been on this forum from the beginning. I recently had a huge network issue where my devices weren’t responding and the network seemed to crash. I would try and reconfigure a device and it would tell me unable to obtain information on the node. I immediately suspected a problem with Vera. So I reset Vera and reset the network. I spent several days trying to get the network back together with no success. I bought a new dongle from ASI Home. No luck…I was experiencing the same issues with the new dongle.
So I powered the whole house down from the breaker box. The devices are now acting like they are supposed too. Ok, so I am getting my network back up and running.

I learned a lesson this week. If you network is acting wonky, power the whole house down and bring the power back up slowly. Nodes that I was not able to configure, I now can configure.

Its as if one of the beam devices I had was acting as a jammer blocking all the zwave traffic. This was not a vera issue!

I learned a lesson this week. If you network is acting wonky, power the whole house down and bring the power back up slowly. Nodes that I was not able to configure, I now can configure.

Interesting… last week my windows on my house all showed blue window of death… i rebooted my house and everything worked again. My furnace is running slow… may be a virus.

Seriously though, My vera2 works perfect… I have about 60 devices (lights, sensors, locks, cameras, etc) currently with about 60 more leviton switches and dimmers going in next week and no issues so far. House is about 8000 sq feet… my battery on vera2 doesnt charge which may become an issue one day but for now i still can walk around with power. I’ve been very pleased with performance.

I dont like the lack of public mcv response on here though that is concerning… JOD keeps screaming homeseer in just about every thread now but I cant see where he actually addresses the merits of said system over vera… maybe he just purchased some homeseer stock over the counter :wink: Where is the link to the post where JOD expands on his opinion?

What is the deluxe zwave controller that everyone wishes they could have but chose vera since it was dirt cheap? i’m interested in knowing in case vera2 (my second vera now) dies like the first one and no results help from support… at least i got it cheap with the serial # from my now dead vera1 setup but that option is now gone if this one fails. I am heavily invested in zwave devices (more than $8k) and would like to stick with it with or without vera ultimately.

I am really happy with vera2 and UI4 so far… hope it lasts, as really my only complaint has been dead hardware (my z-stick bit the dust)

Shoot…My house is only 5000 sq feet… :cry:

would you please describe with your words how to do “factory reset”.
I cannot accomplish anything following the insruction provided by Micasaverde

Has anyone tried the Houseport yet? It looks pretty slick but I haven’t ready any actual reviews or seen any forums on it to see what the pitfalls are.

Oddly enough, I hadn’t even heard of it. Gosh, for $100 I’d be crazy not to at least try it out. Heck, it even comes with INSTRUCTIONS!

I cannot find Houseport. Does anyone have a link? Is it the Wayne Dalton thing and if so is that just for Mac?

I would go back to Schlage Link if they supported Multi-channel devices.

Yes, they have a PC and Mac version and comes with a USB dongle

http://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/wayne-dalton/Item/WDUSB-10MAC/

Lz : I am not sure where you are stuck but if you can log on to your vera2 go to dashboard>advanced>Backup, there you will have a chioce to save your network configuration (save backup) on your local computer, if you have a network set up do so, if you have never gotten started it is not necessary (make sure you enable popups from this site or you will not be able to save backup). When that is done on the bottom of the same page you will click “restore to factory defaults” Vera may not give you much info on what she is doing now but I would give her a good long time without interuption (perhaps 30 min?) unless she says she is done. by that time unplug the power wait several second and plug her back in. if successful you may want to go to the vera2 setup page and upgrade to the latest firmware before restoring from your backup, or before building your network if you are starting from scratch. If you can not log on to Vera I believe there is a way to “factory reset” using the buttons but I am not sure how, Anyone want to chime in?

[quote=“lescombs, post:1, topic:166941”]It has been about four weeks since my Vera2 quit working. I have been patient and I’ve tried to the understanding. Now, in spite of making backups, the system still isn’t working and tech support has said that it is over their heads. Now, they will not return my calls. My vera2 shows a power light and an Eth1 light.I have no Z wave light. I have tried to reset the network in order to load everything back in and rewrite all the scenes .
After over a year, 50 devices, a e bunch of money, and hundreds of hours, I’m about ready to give up on Micasaverde, Vera 2, and Mios. But, I do not know where to go next. Has anyone had any experience with Homeseer? How does it compare in ease-of-use, flexibility, and installation? Is there some other alternative that anyone would recommend?[/quote]

les,

I am appalled that MCV has not chimed in on this thread and offered to help your situation in over 2 weeks. I don’t know the whole situation… but from your post it seems like it is a vera specific problem and tech support has given up on you.

I don’t usually bump these threads, but the fact that there has been no resolution to this problem and apparently no intervention by MCV (despite the negative impact to the reputation of their product) is completely unacceptable in my book.

Have your problems been resolved or are you still not seeing a zwave light on vera?

Does anyone know more about the D-Link solution and the Z-wave add-on coming? [url=http://www.cocoontech.com/portal/articles/news/18-z-wave/354-dlink-dhm-101-z-wave-usb-dongle]http://www.cocoontech.com/portal/articles/news/18-z-wave/354-dlink-dhm-101-z-wave-usb-dongle[/url]

It has been about four weeks since my Vera2 quit working. I have been patient and I've tried to the understanding. Now, in spite of making backups, the system still isn't working and tech support has said that it is over their heads. Now, they will not return my calls. My vera2 shows a power light and an Eth1 light.I have no Z wave light. I have tried to reset the network in order to load everything back in and rewrite all the scenes

Can you please copy/paste exactly what was said? If you reference the specific trouble ticker, or copy the specific email, I can know who said it and take corrective action. The problem I have now is I go to all the support guys and ask each one “Did you say this?”, “Did you?” and the answer is always ‘no’, ‘no’, etc. I’m not disputing that you’re having problems that haven’t been solved. It’s just that when I search in our trouble ticket database and search through the support emails, I can’t find the issue you’re referring to.