I just got my Veraplus…but it’s till unpacked !
I read so many issues from a lot of users that I ask myself if it was really a good idea to upgrade (even if my Veralite UI5 is rebooting frquently). I’am still waiting to a robust and deeply validated procedure delivered by Micasaverde to play with my new box !
I am asking several questions :
do I need first to upgrade my Veralite with UI7 ?
what about account (new one, old → see issue on this topic !)
what is better : start a fresh install (but very complex when you are facing a large configuration with a lot of devices, scenes , luua code, etc.) or propagate configuration from Veralite to Veraplus…but how to proceed ? What are the known issues ?
and certainly a lot of others questions when I will decide to start this new aventure !
I need to trust very quickly on my Veraplus because my configuration is managing so many thinks in my home (lights, heating, security, etc.)than I can imagine to be locked with a new perfect box…not able to manage my configuration ! Please Micasaverde help your customers with detailed and robust process to upgrade easily and safely !
I just went from veralite UI5 to veraplus. I ran into a problem, and vera customer support did the initial transfer. Some things break (hue, scene controllers) and battery operated devices need to be woken up to configure.
But I think a clean install is unnecessary. What is necessary is to understand the problem areas and plan to spend some time re configuring.
You do not need to upgrade to UI7 before the transfer.
[quote author=dzmiller link=topic=36596.msg272351#msg272351 date=1456770679]
I just went from veralite UI5 to veraplus. I ran into a problem, and vera customer support did the initial transfer. Some things break (hue, scene controllers) and battery operated devices need to be woken up to configure.
But I think a clean install is unnecessary. What is necessary is to understand the problem areas and plan to spend some time re configuring.
You do not need to upgrade to UI7 before the transfer.
[/quote
The issues you were facing will be very boring for me, if they will happen ! Most of my lights are using a Hue hub. Some scenes are really critical (security, heating, etc.). I don’t want to be obliged to Uninstalle battery operated devices, some of them (mainly security detectors) being quite difficult to be accessed.
I don’t understand why a simple, robust and fully automated process for migration isn’t provided by Micasaverde !
Hue shouldn’t break if you’re running the latest version of the plugin (1.7). In fact it is more or less the only thing that didn’t break during my migration. You will have to pair your new Vera with the Hue hub again, and reboot Vera. Your original light devices will work as before, and have the same device IDs if you followed the published procedure for this migration (http://support.getvera.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1840699-to-veraedge-from-ui5-on-veralite-vera-2-or-vera-3). However at this point you may want to consider migrating to the official Hue plugin by Vera Ltd. It works more or less the same and will be kept up-to-date. I no longer support my old Hue plugin for UI5
By the way, I ran into a problem during the migration as well, and Vera Support took over. They spent 4 hours yesterday and when their shift ended, the network was in a state where almost nothing works (including the heating). The Hue lights do work though Hopefully they will be able to fix things today, but it does seem that these migrations are anything but seamless.
Boy you guys have me really nervous now and considering canceling my VeraPlus order. I have a Vera 3 running UI5 and a highly complex network and a reasonable amount of scenes (118 Devices, some created by plugins for Wink, Elk and Harmony and about 50 scenes). Current system is stable and runs reasonably well, maybe I will hold off upgrade.
You’ll have to bite the bullet at some point. Problem with the support guys fixing these problematic migrations is that we never learn what causes issues, how to avoid them or how it fix them
My experience so far with my migration from Vera3 on UI5 to VeraPlus (not including my first attempt which temporarily bricked the VeraPlus)
I followed the published procedure but that left my Vera Plus in an endless Luup reboot cycle. Support stepped in and fixed that, and offered to look at a few other issues. I’ve asked them for a report of what they did exactly but haven’t had an answer yet.
After the migration, things seemed very unstable, with frequent reboots, unresponsive devices and slowness. But this gradually got better as I started to clean up the system. It also seemed that some of the traffic was still flowing through the old Vera3, so I did not disconnect that unit right away.
Battery operated devices: woke them up to ensure they got configured correctly. At the start this did not work all the time and I had to hit “configure now” in the Vera UI while waking them up. After things stabilized, Vera noticed the device waking up every time, and started the configuration process automatically. Maybe that detection process is not fully reliable if there are still a great many devices waiting to be configured.
Minimotes did not work anymore. For a while they worked by going through the old Vera3; if I disconnected that they stopped working. At some point they just stopped working. Reconfiguring always failed at the same stage. Excluding and re-including fixed this (takes just a few minutes per remote to reassign scenes to buttons again, so no biggie)
Two out of two Fibaro door sensors refused to be reconfigured. One of them appears to have been dropped from the network and I reincluded it. Jury is still out on the other 1.
Four out of four ZME light switches (the ones with D?wi hardware with modified firmware) got dropped from the network. One of them failed in a weird way: I could turn it on but not off from Vera (even though the off command showed a successful transmission). After power cycling, the unit indicated it was not on the Z-Wave network. Reincluding these devices fixed the issue. (By the way, these devices have a history of dropping from the network once a year or so)
One Danalock isn’t working. It may need to be reincluded or reconfigured; currently a reconfigure command fails. This may be because it is at the edge of radio range; I noticed that this unit needs to be close to Vera in order for it to configure correctly.
All Danfoss TRVs and Horstmann thermostats required a “Configure now” before they would work correctly.
Still need to test the smoke detectors
Other than that, all plugins and devices work correctly. My take away is that it’s critical to ensure that everything (especially battery operated stuff) is reconfigured, if necessary using “configure now”.
My experience with the Plus is that you will continue have stability issues until you resolve ALL of the Z-Wave connection issues.
The Z-Wave chip firmware and/or the Vera Z-Wave software does not handle the inability to talk to devices well.
One solution is to remove anything that is NOT working … and then start adding them back … one at a time.
At this stage starting from scratch might have been as fast… although with this many devices I’d probably need a day just to include them, let alone set them up with scenes.
Anyway, at this moment the only non functioning devices are one Fibaro door lock sensor that refuses to be configured/ paired, and one Danalock that I factory reset and tried to pair without success (even after moving the Vera to within 3m of the lock). At the moment I have a green board, no devices reporting issues.
Also, I hate UI7 It would not even let me include the D?wi / ZME switches, it would find the node and then fail to pair it after supplying the name and room. Thankfully my app can put Vera into plain inclusion mode, and that did work.
Has anyone gotten the GE45600 handheld controller to work under UI7 (and vera plus). I’ve tried removing the batteries, and re-configuring it. I’m running out of ideas. This is my wife’s main interface with Vera and I’d like to get it working…
Finally managed to include the Danalock. In this case putting Vera in inclusion mode did not work and always resulted in some error with security keys. I was able to include the lock using the wizard, after a couple of tries.
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Hopefully they will be able to fix things today, but it does seem that these migrations are anything but seamless.