[quote=“opel-oleg, post:38, topic:200353”]Since the advent of the plug-ins that the respected rigpapa has created, I have no thoughts of leaving Vera
This controller mostly suits me[/quote]
I agree 100%!!
[quote=“HSD99, post:41, topic:200353”][quote=“opel-oleg, post:38, topic:200353”]Since the advent of the plug-ins that the respected rigpapa has created, I have no thoughts of leaving Vera
This controller mostly suits me[/quote]
I agree 100%!![/quote]
No argument there either… I am making good use of Site Sensor. ;D ;D
I think Philips (Hue) would disagree 
And the likes of Osram, Innr and SmartThings too. Xiaomi Aqara are another one to watch as well - the previous and current ranges aren’t quite ZigBee compliant (but are close enough to work) but the future versions are supposedly ZigBee 3.0 compliant. Ikea have also recently launched their own Smart Home range which is ZigBee based and good value (and is rumoured to be built by Xiaomi).
And Amazon seem to be backing ZigBee in a pretty big way, it wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually put a ZigBee chip in the entire Echo range, not just the higher end models. Amazon don’t often make mistakes, you can bet they looked at what the most sold Smart Home devices on their site were and went with a ZigBee radio to instantly become compatible with those devices (if not immediately then certainly eventually). I can’t believe they’d bet on something they didn’t think was going to be a winner.
I wonder in terms of quantity, how many ZigBee devices are sold worldwide compared to Z-Wave … sure people like us probably have 100’s of Z-Wave but I would guess that we’re the minority. Whereas I can count a dozen people I know (friends and family) that have Hue or Ikea lighting … OK maybe only a handful or so devices each but the point is that ZigBee may become the technology of choice purely by the fact that it’s already in mainstream devices.
^^^
I wonder how many of those people actually know they have brought ZigBee?
Few would be my guess, but they all know it’s WiFi, they just don’t know the protocol and would care either as it’s all Plug & Play.
Depending on marketing WiFi is strongly used as the sales lead. Nearly everyone identifies WiFi, outside of the tech world who identifies Z-Wave (or ZigBee)?
Indeed, I get the feeling that at least mid term Zigbee is here to stay. It has been used in customized stacks by several big companies and as the HA1.2 stack was released, has picked up a lot of momentum. The advantage of the HA stack is to have a common protocol and assigned endpoints for all vendors to use so the devices can all work on the same network, very similar to the zwave stack. What is interesting is that Silicon Labs also acquired Ember which owns EZSP. The EmberZNet Serial Protocol making controllers basically talk through a serial API… just like zwave. This is what the vera uses as well for zigbee. Unlike Zwave though, Silicon Labs requires users to have purchased a dev kit to get access to their SDK. Zigbee is achieving very low power consumption through using very narrow channel width and pulsing… it is not transmitting all the time unlike wifi. What I dislike though is that it is on 2.4GHz and so very prone to interference: I was able to kill my philips hue communication with my Sonos (wifi) and with my microwave. Of course I changed channel but the choices available with the RF emitted by neighbors is just not very large.
The downsides of zwave (testing, validation, mandatory sdk) are also in many ways its strengths. All zwave devices have security tests and compatibility tests.
No such thing exists for the others right now. (Though I seem to recall ZigBee 3 might add some of that). It’s much cheaper to simply claim you meet a standard than to not only do it but prove it.
I don’t expect BT mesh to really take off. Or more accurately, I expect it to crash and burn when the protocol needs to be extended and people have to buy new bridges. I have not seen a single Bluetooth protocol change that could be done as a firmware update. Zwave controller chips shipped with enough reserve capacity for many controllers to upgrade in place.
Wifi will last because it’s too useful and it’s a way to get montly recurring revenue by tying a device to a cloud system. And for people who only want 3 or four smart doodads, it’s the most cost effective. But I expect the next AWS outage/DNS poisoning/National ISP backbone failure to result in a lot of people realizing their smart gear is super fragile.
Wifi, BT and ZigBee also suffer heavily in urban settings where the power of wifi is as much weakness as strength. I have friends whose condos can see two dozen access points. If each access point has 2 cellphones, a wireless printer, 2 laptops/Xbox/ps/Nintendo/smartTVs and a GHome/Alexa, that means the 2.4 & 5Ghz spectrums have 150-ish devices chattering away in range.
Now add smarthome stuff to that. I have more than 30 zwave devices in my house. Apartments are smaller but imagine if each of those 24 networks added 6 smart devices. If they were 100% ZigBee wouldn’t be an issue but wifi will dominate and it will make those spectrums a noisy, horrible place.
Yeah, zwave has some noisy neighbors in the form of baby monitors and wireless phones but there are 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz versions of those too, so that’s a wash.
I expect all of these to continue for quite some time as the various strengths and weaknesses become visible to the masses. I expect 90% of “smarthome” will be in that 1-6 device category dominated by wifi.
Bluetooth has burned too many techies over the years so I think it’s going to be a weird land of niche products.
I expect ZigBee will remain a favorite of the “built it myself” crowd and the vertically integrated custom device companies.
Zwave will likely remain supported by security systems (who want a certified, tested platform) and the time-is-money prosumer who wants something they can count on to work without building it themselves.
Insteon is the tech I will not be surprised to see die in the next decade. I can’t see a single source technology even as good as Insteon, surviving.
For me I’d rather use something like Z-Wave as I now have only the controller that could be attacked/exposed to the big bad Internet. With Wi-Fi (IP) that is every end point and we all know the lower the price, the few attention to security has been given. Grandma won’t notice if her lamps are being used in a DDoS attack. I rest better if I know mine cannot.
Cheers Rene
[quote=“opel-oleg”]Since the advent of the plug-ins that the respected rigpapa has created, I have no thoughts of leaving Vera
This controller mostly suits me[/quote]
I would also like to second this and the reactor app has completely stabilised my system and automation. On top of this Rigpapa has developed in a short time period several additional apps that add needed extra functionality into a vendor supported stalled/paused ecosystem (while other echo systems are charging ahead at an increased rate of change and functionality).
I considered moving from VeraPlus to a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with HA and indeed I built out a system (32GB flash card, Aeotec Gen 5 zWave stick) with the latest Hass.io over the past week. My main reason for considering this is my Yale (Series 300) locks on Vera have a battery life of maybe 2 or 3 months (max) - even locks that are never actually used. By comparison I have this same lock on a Honeywell Lynx Touch 5100 system and the batteries last well over a year. There were other concerns as well (sluggish performance on the VeraPlus, and those damned “backups” that run every 6 minutes and fill the log file with junk), but Vera killing my lock batteries is one of my biggest concerns.
I went with Hass.io over Hassbian because I wanted a simple, reliable, easy to use system and end-user interface. Unfortunately, I did not find Hass.io to satisfy these requirements. It was fairly easy to install and get up and running, but the interface was “klunky” and unfriendly. Things that are done easily and quickly in Vera UI7 were convoluted and often involved editing yaml files in HA. The relationship between HA and OZW likewise was hard to understand, and deleting a device using the HA UI (which is the current supported method) would not delete ALL references to the device, I’m not sure what areas were not being updated, but I didn’t care to spend hours figuring it out either.
Something as simple as switching between Wifi and Ethernet will drive you crazy. There are tons of posts out there from users having trouble doing this, most often the USB volume was not labeled CONFIG, or the Wifi configuration file was not placed in a subdirectory named “network” - but I did all of those things and NEITHER documented process (the Import From USB UI procedure, or the procedure to boot Hass.io with the USB stick installed) worked. After numerous attempts and wasted hours I stumbled upon a post suggesting the Ethernet cable should be disconnected first (this obviously rules out the Import From USB procedure since you need an active network connection to communicate with Hass.io!), but doing this and then booting Hass.io it FINALLY read the wifi configuration from the USB folder and came up on wifi. Compare this to the Vera procedure of simply clicking on Connect->Through a Wi-Fi access point and choosing an SSID under Settings->Net & Wi-Fi - Vera is intuitive, easy and works 100% of the time.
I tried moving an RTOA CT32 thermostat from Vera to HA. On Vera the device pairs and configures VERY easily with ONE device instance in the UI (well, two technically since the Humidity sensor gets its own “box” in the UI). On HA this same device paired easily BUT created a total of 8 separate devices in the UI (two each of apparently 4 sensors, all “part” of the thermostat). In searching old HA messages I found other users reporting this problem with CT32, CT100 and other RTOA thermostats YEARS earlier with no solution.
The bottom line is while Vera is imperfect, I found the HA alternative to be far more time consuming and frustrating. I’ll keep the Raspberry/HA device to play with in my spare time - but in my opinion for intuitive UI and ease of use Vera wins hands down. I’ll stick with Vera and hope that UI8 resolves my concerns SOON.
-MC
The Vera is an established device aimed at entry level users. Without the various plugins, it would have near zero attraction these days to anyone looking to do much. HA on the other hand, is still technically in beta. It is being updated almost weekly with new features and fixes. As for different sensors showing up as their own entity, that’s how it works. It’s the “pretty device handlers” that group them together for you in Vera. In HA, if you don’t want to see a device, you mark it hidden. You can still use it’s data, it just doesn’t show in the interface. Also, the best method I’ve found to run HA is in a docker container. A little more effort to set up, but updates are effortless after that so long as you check the “breaking changes” first. Lately, some of the breaking changes have required slight reworks to keep things right with the configuration files. The more advanced you chose to go, the more effort you’re going to have to put into getting things set up.
I won’t give up of neither ZWave or Vera.
I think wifi is just a cheap alternative to the 860-900MHz band. I don’t see the security companies quitting this frequency and switching everything to 2.4GHz. Beside the range advantage of the lower frequency, this is also less crowded then 2.4 or 5GHz and probably will be like that for many years.
I have 3 Vera controllers in my home. One on the first floor (VeraPlus), one on the ground floor (VeraEdge) and another outside in a shed (another Edge). On the ground floor I also have a wireless security system with 6 sensors. The sensor that is farthest from the security controller has delays in communication. Also devices that are farthest from the Edge controller also sometimes lose connection with the controller.
My Edge controller from outside my house works flawlessly. Fence lights light up as soon as I hit the switch on my phone. The gate opens instantly. I also have an outside wifi AP for my wifi doorbell and I see that the doorbell has offline periods for a few seconds from time to time. Even though I live in an area with houses, I still see more then 10 wifi access points outside my house.
You don?t have the same range of devices available now with wifi to give up zwave. I have some zwave bulbs that are the same size as a regular candescent ones. I had a hard time finding led bulbs to fit the light fixture a few years back. Now I have led bulbs that have also a zwave controller integrated. I can light my hallway differently during the evening and night.
The only problem I have with zwave is the cost of devices. But I would still pay 50$ for a zwave light switch instead of using a sonoff. I wouldn?t connect every switch and every wall plug with zwave. That would be a setup for a wired protocol.
As for Vera, I’m a pretty happy user. Except an update that almost bricked my VeraPlus maybe a year ago, I never had issues. I’m not very happy that I can only link my controllers by bridging. I would love to have a virtual controller in the cloud that would display all devices in the same place when I need that but to be able to also operated every controller independently.
I'm not very happy that I can only link my controllers by bridging. I would love to have a virtual controller in the cloud that would display all devices in the same place when I need that but to be able to also operated every controller independently.
Perhaps take a look at openLuup which can pretty much achieve that without going to the cloud.
I ought to spin up an HA container just to play with it. I run the HA-Alexa bridge in a Docker container on my Synology NAS, so already invested there. But in truth I can make Vera do just about anything via PLEG, and so staying with Vera for now…
I’m running it on my Synology NAS as well. I too found PLEG to be what made Vera into a usable platform but it just got too unreliable with reboots and all. I had too many issues with reboots and data corruption and it seemed like I relied more and more on third party plugins. Still using my Vera Plus, but it’s a slave to HA and only used for one device and Alexa integration…
[quote=“Florin, post:51, topic:200353”]I have 3 Vera controllers in my home. One on the first floor (VeraPlus), one on the ground floor (VeraEdge) and another outside in a shed (another Edge). On the ground floor I also have a wireless security system with 6 sensors. The sensor that is farthest from the security controller has delays in communication. Also devices that are farthest from the Edge controller also sometimes lose connection with the controller.
…
I’m not very happy that I can only link my controllers by bridging. I would love to have a virtual controller in the cloud that would display all devices in the same place when I need that but to be able to also operated every controller independently.[/quote]
One interesting thing Homeseer has is ZNet, essentially an Ethernet connect USB host you plug a zwave dongle into. Then one Homeseer controller can manage a half dozen zwave radios scattered over a large property with only a little more latency than if connected directly by USB. It is effectively one controller in every way that matters.
In theory, one HS controller could run multiple houses, if you had rock solid internet. But that starts to get smarthing-y.
[quote=“kigmatzomat, post:55, topic:200353”][quote=“Florin, post:51, topic:200353”]I have 3 Vera controllers in my home. One on the first floor (VeraPlus), one on the ground floor (VeraEdge) and another outside in a shed (another Edge). On the ground floor I also have a wireless security system with 6 sensors. The sensor that is farthest from the security controller has delays in communication. Also devices that are farthest from the Edge controller also sometimes lose connection with the controller.
…
I’m not very happy that I can only link my controllers by bridging. I would love to have a virtual controller in the cloud that would display all devices in the same place when I need that but to be able to also operated every controller independently.[/quote]
One interesting thing Homeseer has is ZNet, essentially an Ethernet connect USB host you plug a zwave dongle into. Then one Homeseer controller can manage a half dozen zwave radios scattered over a large property with only a little more latency than if connected directly by USB. It is effectively one controller in every way that matters.[/quote]
Yup, super easy to have Z-wave antennas anywhere on your property linked by the network (LAN).With Vera I had issues with a large detached workshop/garage dropping off the network due to range issues. After dropping VERA I ended up with on Z-net out in the garage, one on one side of the main house and a Zwave USb dongle on the other side of the house in the Homeseer unit. So 3 networks all run as one on a single controller.
Back some time ago this also helped keep my 60 something GE switches direct to controller so it would act as if it had instant status (new switches are now not an issue).
One interesting thing Homeseer has is ZNet, essentially an Ethernet connect USB host you plug a zwave dongle into.[/quote]
One ZNet costs 50% more then a Vera Edge. Maybe for a Homeseer user this would be a good feature. I like separate controllers instead of a controller that reaches devices through gateways over the LAN or Internet. This would only increase latency.
I think it would be relatively easy for Vera to make all devices available under a “virtual” controller. They already have the information about all controllers and all devices linked to an account.
One interesting thing Homeseer has is ZNet, essentially an Ethernet connect USB host you plug a zwave dongle into.[/quote]
One ZNet costs 50% more then a Vera Edge. Maybe for a Homeseer user this would be a good feature. I like separate controllers instead of a controller that reaches devices through gateways over the LAN or Internet. This would only increase latency.
I think it would be relatively easy for Vera to make all devices available under a “virtual” controller. They already have the information about all controllers and all devices linked to an account.[/quote]
I think your a bit lost on how it works. Your asking for two vera’s linked together by the cloud or internet all in one place…
That’s exactly what a Znet is but not linked by cloud, but local LAN. A Z-net is a full zwave controller and all Nodes are added to that.
HS3 is only software not a controller that brings everything together. It could be ran on the same device as the zwave controller (a Znet is a Zee S2 when HS3 is added) or it can be run somewhere else on the LAN (technically you could port forward and have it offsite, but that is not recommend or even talked about by HS but I’m sure people have done it)
Latency… That’s a bit of a laugh when you talk about vera. I’ll let you google how much faster things work when you add a proper z-wave controller and software and more powerful hardware.
Pricing, Compare hardware of Znet vs. Vera Edge and what I just wrote above. Your right they are not the same.
You can definitely do the same thing with openLuup with multiple vera all connected to the main controller locally either on the same or a different zwave mesh. That being said, even as a zwave/zigbee device bridge, the vera is not 100% reliable. I have gotten it close but not completely there yet. It is good enough as a toy but not as an home appliance. I can’t even imagine adding all the google home and IFTTT nonsense to it. Let’s get 3 months without a Luup reload and then we’ll start talking. Granted not all the issues are not just caused by the vera and some are due to the zwave mesh handling but the vera has ways to go to handle the errors and recovery better than just showing “device not connected”, “device reported busy”, crash, reload luup or/and force send alerts to their event server in the cloud. The Homeseer price to go from 99% to 100% reliable though is very (too) steep.
Homeseer isn’t that much more expensive, it’s just that their high end is orders of magnitude more computer than a Vera. Their entry level model is only 4x more computer than the most powerful vera.
VeraSecure is MSRP $300, on sale for $250, which is more expensive than a Zee2. Yes, it has 433Mhz , cellular, a siren and built in battery. If you need those, wonderful, if not those are extraneous expenses. Otherwise, it’s a dual-core 880Mhz MIPS cpu w/512MB RAM, 128MB flash SOC.
A Homeseer Zee2 is $200 MSRP, but with the common 10% off web coupon it’s $180. Come May it will be more like $160. No zigbee radio but otherwise better hardware, better software. A Zee2 has
quadcore 1.2Ghz ARM CPU, 1GB ram, 8GB flash and what appears to be a better zwave radio from my personal experience. Veras do have zigbee, which should be a strong counter, but zigbee support on vera is spotty and for the $70 sale price difference you could get a Conbee stick + JowiHue plug-in and have better zigbee support than Vera.
Or you could step down to a veraplus that lists for $150 and is on sale for $99. You are also down to a single core 0.9Ghz cpu, 256MB ram and 128MB flash. From a little digging, the Vera SoCs seem to be using old (aka inexpensive) MIPS32 architectures (1004K), that are >10 years old. The Zee is using a Cortex A53, which is only @3yro.
When UI5 and UI7 weren’t laden with bugs and issues, I advocated people buy Veras over Homeseer. Double the price for no significant performance gain seemed ludicrous. But now, given the units getting overwhelmed under load, bricking themselves when they run out of space, and otherwise showing capacity limitations, it seems that all that horsepower was justified. And, after having lived through the headaches, the additional expense.
Now, if Vera has some ace hot devs, they could get by with it. UDI’s venerable ISY994 controller is running on something like a 250Mhz CPU, but they wrote their own real-time OS where the automation logic has primary access to the hardware.
Maybe they do now. We’ll see.
But the combination of being in the Vera pricing bands, having lots more computing overhead plus the "“it works” factor means that it’s not an open-shut case of HomeSeer being too expensive.