Greetings all, I have well over 100 devices running on my veralite as well as a handful of plugins. This number increased rapidly for a couple of reasons. I recently added a couple of child device plugins (Netatmo weather station and Nest). I have two separate properties that both have Netatmo weather stations and Nest thermostats and Nest Protects. And these plugins add all these child devices from each property to each veralite because the Netatmo and Nest are on the same vendor’s accounts. I prefer keeping thm on the same account so that native apps for these devices work properly so i can manage them naively as needed (as preferred by my wife!). The downside of this approach is that the child devices show up on both property’s veralites which leads to a virtually doubling of these devices on veralite.
Hence a problem. I am hitting a memory limitation on one of my veralites. My question is, should I bridge two veralites together our should I “upgrade” to a vera 3 because of its increased memory? I am seeing some conflicting information on bridging. Some say it’s to increase reliability on a spread out vera installation (ie, main house with a distant garage) while some say it’s useful if one has a lot of devices. But in bridging, one acts as a master and one acts as a slave. And if the matter has to import devices from the slave, I fail to see how bridging will help with a memory issue.
Does anyone have any suggestions whether it’s better to go to a vera3 or to just bridge two veralites together? Thoughts and possible hurdles are all welcome!
I beleive the answer would depend on how your network is setup. If all of your devices are grouped together, then getting a larger Vera3 makes sense, as the mesh zwave network would be more efficient.
However, if you have two groups of devices (such as a main house and a guest house), then having two separate Veras each with their own zwave network (but bridged together) might be more desirable. Devices in the guest house may have difficulty being reached by the Vera in the main house. The guest house having its own Vera means devices in the guest house are closer to their controller.
It appears from your description that you have two separate houses, so perhaps two Veras makes sense for you.
If it was me, I would purchase a Vera3 for the main house (more room to grow), and utilize the existing Veralite for the other house. Depending on where you purchase them, the price difference is not all that great.
Thanks for your suggestions. I think I am going with the Vera 3 for simplicity sake. I should have mentioned that for me, the two houses are in separate states! The reason the device numbers jumped so quickly is because of the “doubling” of devices due to Nest and Netatmo accounts as all of the devices in those accounts get added to each of my Veralites at both properties. And, for example, if I delete any of the Netatmo devices that I don’t need from the second home, they just get recreated (this is probably a good feature, but would be great to disable with an option).
Thanks for your help. I am ordering the Veralite since it has double the DDR2 memory but will disable the router and wifi features.
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