Can I trust my VeraEdge ?

Community Playground General Discussions
1

My VeraEdge worked more or less well so far or at least, I thought of it.
Since the last firmware 7.0.10, my Z-Wave network is rickety. I’ve reverted on several firmwares, and for now, I’m on 7.0.9.

Yesterday the UI seemed to work : the orders were passed on and the return of state was shown well but ineffective physical.
My lights did not ignite in fact and the door sensors were ineffective, but without a warning.
I’ve tried a network healing during the night, and it seems to work now.

So my question is : How can I trust my VeraEdge ?

  • All Z-Wave message during a LUUP engine reload (very frequent) are lost.
    There is no queue of untreated message, allthough Z-Wave chip management and LUUP engine could be two separate things.

  • There is no tool to have information about the Z-Wave network.

  • The Z-Wave network can be blocked without any warning.

It seems that you can’t do anything that could be critical (management of door locks, notifications of fire detection, …) and I’m not sure that everybody is aware of that.
Is it a limitation of the Z-Wave protocol or of the Vera ?

2

You cannot trust Vera, not for anything critical. It is a limitation of both Z-Wave and Vera. Frankly, I don’t feel that you can trust any home automation(HA) system, especially one based on wireless devices. That is why you should build your HA in such a way that it is a convenience and that its failure is non-critical. Light switches should still work as normal switches, door locks should work keys or local pins, when the controller fails. A Vera/Z-Wave failure should be no more than an inconvenience.

Every time someone asks about using Vera as an alarm system, on this forum, they are told that they should use a dedicated alarm system and not Vera/Z-Wave. If notification is critical, then one should use a dedicated monitoring service with cellular backup, not the internet.

That being said, a properly setup Vera and Z-Wave network can be highly reliable and provide a great deal of convenience, as is evidenced by so many people on this forum.

3

I’m aware of the limitations of Z-Wave protocol, specially that it can be jammed.
But it’s normally a robust protocol with return of the state and management of the collisions.

My point of view is that it is the Vera which is the weak link and sometimes misses some messages.
I don’t know the other HA systems and if they have the same behaviour.

Is it possible to have a second controller which can check that all messages have been well processed ?

4

Anything is possible, but Vera has no such capability built in.