Completely unreliable controller

My Vera Secure has been horrifically unreliable at consistently running scenes since I bought it.
I also get frequent “Controller Up/Down” messages, but my internet connection is fine. I’ve kept it up to date the whole time.

I deleted the ergy/datamining plugin that apparently caused the controllers cache to fill up (according to support). Support setup a scene that purges the cache and reboots the controller and told me to run it whenever I have “problems”. This is a terrible workaround. I have problem all the time and I can’t rely on it to run anything important cause it’ll stop working randomly until I reset it.

I have a scene that runs every night at 9:30 that hasn’t been consistent for the past few weeks, just out of the blue. It seems like one scene after another bites the dust and I have to overhaul them, while other scenes run more reliably, but no scene is ever 100% reliable.

What causes a controller to not consistently run scenes like this?

Various things.
It might be construction of a scene, general lack of controler stability, some problem with one/more z-wave devices…
Difficult to say without any data.

Hey there,

As kwieto says, there are many reasons for this behavior.

Would you please log a ticket with our Customer Care, so they can have a look at this ? Contact details in my signature.

Called support again, the rep said some files were missing that was causing the controller to malfunction. This afternoon a scene that was supposed to run did not.

Called support again and am getting no answer. Also they still haven’t returned my voice message from yesterday. They never return voice messages.

This is my story today as well. Finally had everything working properly after an utter disaster of an upgrade, hundreds of dollars in upgrades, nearly every device is now new and latest models.

Today vera plus just won’t send commands, nothing seems to get through and if it does it could be 10 minutes later. reboot, reload, unplug…same result.

Not sure why i’m still here anymore

Support doesn’t answer the phone

Emailed tickets are responded to 3-4 days later

What am supposed to do with this POS?

Finally got through to support today. said my vera is unstable because it is polling too much. He updated the zwave chip firmware and said to give it a day or two to work itself out.

He mentioned that all my devices were set to poll every 60 seconds when that shouldn’t be the default. I never changed any setting related to polling, is he correct? Why is it suddenly such an issue? I asked whether I should manually change them all but he said to leave it be as the new zwave chip should fix the issue.

Anyone with a similar experience?

M

[quote=“resq93, post:6, topic:198510”]Finally got through to support today. said my vera is unstable because it is polling too much. He updated the zwave chip firmware and said to give it a day or two to work itself out.

He mentioned that all my devices were set to poll every 60 seconds when that shouldn’t be the default. I never changed any setting related to polling, is he correct? Why is it suddenly such an issue? I asked whether I should manually change them all but he said to leave it be as the new zwave chip should fix the issue.[/quote]

If he means the default 60 seconds, that has been the standard since at least UI5. It is a “no more often than”, which rarely comes into play in networks with multiple z-wave devices. It is the default both in the z-wave settings and on wired z-wave devices.

Default Z-Wave settings

Number of seconds to wait to start polling: 20
Only poll a node if the Z-Wave network is idle at least: 10 seconds.
Unless specified otherwise, poll each node at most once every: 60 seconds.
Poll a node every: 30 seconds.

So no, I don’t feel that alone is a good explanation…

Its been a few hours now and things seem to be much better. Lets see what happens.

M

[quote=“resq93, post:6, topic:198510”]Finally got through to support today. said my vera is unstable because it is polling too much. He updated the zwave chip firmware and said to give it a day or two to work itself out.

He mentioned that all my devices were set to poll every 60 seconds when that shouldn’t be the default. I never changed any setting related to polling, is he correct? Why is it suddenly such an issue? I asked whether I should manually change them all but he said to leave it be as the new zwave chip should fix the issue.

Anyone with a similar experience?

M[/quote]

Never had an experience like that with my own units or the ones I have installed.
Do you play with any of the Z-Wave settings?

No, I haven’t changed anything. System went from quick and responsive to nearly unresponsive literally overnight.

Firmware update related? I’m of the opinion that 1.7.3535 messed with ours . . .

Firmware update related? I’m of the opinion that 1.7.3535 messed with ours . . .[/quote]I don’t think so, I hadn’t updated that firmware until after the problem started

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Hello there,

Giving my humble few years in the field and MiOS company, I can tell you for sure that controller unreliability cannot be ever associated with ONE single reason or event(in this case a firmware upgrade). And almost never, things have started going bad all of a sudden, without no intervention or recent changes intended or unintended. Of course, all of these things can be diagnosed/troubleshoot by our Customer Care and most of the time, they also come with a solution, or, if it’s a more of a “core” issue, it will be reported and fixed in an upcoming update.

The community is here to help up to a certain extent, or if enough data is provided to understand the situation. Otherwise, you can rely on our CC team. They are here for you and 100% free for the duration of the life of your controller: support@getvera.com.

I can tell you for sure that you are wrong on this one. A few years ago, on three separate occasions, Vera stopped working entirely without having been messed with. Just as sudden, and for unknown reasons she began working again a few days later right at midnight…and did everything that had been commanded over the days of inoperation all at once. Reboots, Vera Support Logging in, Restoration of backups, etc didnt work at all the first time, and then it just started working dead on at midnight after 3 days. The next 2 times it happened, I just didnt do anything to try to resolve it and a few days later AT MIDNIGHT it fired every command.

This of course was right after my wife had moved in. She was not very happy about things not working for a few days. She was less happy about all the lights flashing on and off, and the front door locking and unlocking, and the fans spinning up and shutting down…over and over at midnight.

Those problems never repeated after those 3 incidents. Vera Support never had an answer (that they gave me) as to why.

This of course was right after my wife had moved in.[/quote]

There is the culprit 8)

It’s been 3 days. Still no response to multiple tickets sent in. Customer care hasn’t answered the phone all day today and yesterday. Same issues remain. Scenes not reliably running. Multiple scenes didn’t run tonight that ran fine yesterday. Doesn’t matter how many times they tell me “we fixed something” or “we’ll have to investigate” the same… issue… remains.

And they NEVER, not once, have returned a single voicemail.

This controller, this company, is turning into a big joke. Can anyone recommend another controller … from a competent company?

@goltoof We’d love to make things faster and we’re sorry if sometimes takes longer than expected.
Support is free for the entire life of your controller. This is a big thing to stand behind and the team is trying to get to everyone the fastest possible. Issues are never the same, some require a 10 minutes work, some require days or weeks, but they are ALWAYS resolving tickets.

I have checked, and someone has worked on your unit today.

[quote=“Sorin, post:13, topic:198510”]Hello there,

Giving my humble few years in the field and MiOS company, I can tell you for sure that controller unreliability cannot be ever associated with ONE single reason or event(in this case a firmware upgrade). And almost never, things have started going bad all of a sudden, without no intervention or recent changes intended or unintended. Of course, all of these things can be diagnosed/troubleshoot by our Customer Care and most of the time, they also come with a solution, or, if it’s a more of a “core” issue, it will be reported and fixed in an upcoming update.

The community is here to help up to a certain extent, or if enough data is provided to understand the situation. Otherwise, you can rely on our CC team. They are here for you and 100% free for the duration of the life of your controller: support@getvera.com.[/quote]

I can honestly say I have not made a single change to my system for a few weeks or more. Last few days I notice many failed schedules. Logged in this AM and found 24 devices not connected! Most are z wave plus and all are brand new. I have been on the new chipset for some time now and things were ok. I will have to find the time to reach support but please don’t tell us things don’t just change…this isn’t the first time for me.

I too have after 2 years of reasonable reliability have experienced this as well, with no recourse on my veraplus.

I have uninstalled everything not being used including altui and other devices, and it happened as recently as today.

This is unacceptable as is the unavailability many times of the previously very available customer care center.