Considering upgrading VL from UI5 to UI7

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices Vera Controllers & Cameras
1

I have about 70 devices working reasonably well with UI5. I’m intrigued by the new interface of UI7 and would love to give it a try. I realize there are probably dozens of discussions and how-tos on upgrading, but I can’t seem to find any that address my basic (noob) questions:

  1. Is there a way to do a complete system backup (like an Acronis image of a PC) that will allow me to install UI7, but then return to UI5 using a simple restore feature? I dread the idea of having to rebuild the network by re-including all of my devices if I screw it up.

  2. Is the transition from on UI to another seamless, or does the entire network need to be rebuilt? That is, can I simply “upgrade” and not have to start with a clean slate?

I apologize for the newb questions. If someone has found documentation or a discussion written for the novice, a referral to that link would be much appreciated.

2

1-Backing up your Z-wave network followed by a system backup will give you a file that can be used to restore Vera to its original state of anything goes wrong.

2-The z-wave network remains unchanged, however, the transition to UI7 is not seamless. If you look around on the forum, you will find plenty of posts talking about what does and doesn’t work in UI7. In the event that upgrading to the new software doesn’t work, it is easy to switch back to UI5(old software) using a backup.

3

Along these lines I recently got a Vera3 and I haven’t set up much yet. Is it worth upgrading to UI7 at this point? I’ve read too many posts with people claiming that upgrading bricked their vera to not have some reservations.

4

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, I’ve ready through quite a few threads that list all of the compatibility issues - and it’s giving me plenty of pause. But, if simply restoring the system and z-wave files will get me back to where I am now, then I would feel a whole lot less reluctance to give it a go.

Just to clarify, does the system backup file contain the OS/firmware image? In other words, if I’m in UI7 and I restore the system file from the UI5 backup, it’ll come up as UI5? Or will I have to actually downgrade the firmware to get back to UI5?

5

The backup file does not contain the Vera software. In order to go back to UI5, you can download the firmware image from http://download.mios.com/rt3662_betafirmware/rt3662_Luup_ui5-1.5.622-en-mios.squashfs . You would then downgrade Vera to a factory default UI5, and then restore from backup. If you need more specific instructions, a simple forum search will yield some good posts on downgrading.