Direct Vera access

Apps & Remote Access Home Buddy (Android)
#1

Any chance of adding the option to connect directly to the Vera, instead of using the cp.mios.com page? It has been up & down lately, but if I had direct access I could still talk to Vera.

Thanks,
Mike

#2

Let me start of by saying, I do NOT recommend this, but since you asked, here’s one way to do it.

  • open up a port on your firewall making your Vera accessible via a public IP
  • set Home Buddy to Local mode (even if you’ll be accessing remotely)
  • put your public IP and port in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:yyyy in the IP field

Again, I do NOT recommend that you open up your firewall to expose your Vera to the public (for obvious reasons). The best thing to do would be to send feedback to MCV/Mios about the availability of the service to help them improve it.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck!

#3

Thanks for the info!

#4

Hi Rakstar, thanks for the great app, it’s really nice. I do have a question about HomeBuddy and the method you use to control a Vera. My Girlfriend recently got an iPhone and I set her up with IVera and it’s better than mine droid at controlling Vera and seems more reactive and almost real time.

When I try to control with HomeBuddy, it’s much more sluggish to get into my Vera (even locally) than her IPhone. Any ideas on why this is the case? I tend to grab her phone instead of my droid since it’s so much faster.

Thanks for any help you can provide

#5

@myhomeserver Thanks for the feedback. Honestly, I could only guess at this point because i have no idea how iVera is implemented. I pretty much followed MCVs developer guidelines – I assume the iVera guys did the same (I could be wrong).

What phone do you have? Could it be that your phone’s hardware doesn’t match the iPhone’s? The iPhone does have pretty beefy specs. Also, what apps do you have running in the background? That could be slowing your phone down as well.

Here are a couple of tips to get the best experience from Home Buddy:

  1. When exiting out of Home Buddy, use the HOME button instead of the BACK button. The reason for this is, when Home Buddy first starts, it downloads ALL your user data (could take a while). Once the data is in memory, it does incremental updates for each request (much faster!). Exiting via HOME keeps the data in memory for when you reopen the app later on, while exiting via BACK exits the app disposing of all in-memory data.

  2. Use scene shortcuts. Here’s how to add one (screencast was taken using a MUCH older version):

Hope that helps.

@ALL is anyone else experiencing the same thing? Does anyone know the secret behind iVera’s magic? Any input would be appreciated.

#6

I have a few theories. I believe ivera is polling Vera every so often. Not sure how often. My father has the app for his ipad. I’ll have to look at it more the next time I see him. But from memory, it automatically polls. So the information is always current. Also, not sure if ivera stores data in a database?

I am working on an android tablet version and I am using the newer way, lu_sdata. It is much faster to poll then using user_data. I am also using a database to retain information. Getting the initial data takes about 10 seconds. All additional updates take a second or less.

  • Garrett
#7

@garrettwp Thanks for the input. I’ve never heard about lu_sdata, I’ll look into that. I decided to avoid polling for power and data plan usage reasons.

For your app, (you probably know this already but) be sure to refresh the database when new devices are added/removed.

#8

rakstar,

Yup, I already have all that code in place for the backend. It has been a huge learning curve as I am new to java and on top learning the android api’s.

Have a look here:

http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/UI_Simple

This explains the lu_sdata. It only give you the import things and not every single nook and cranny of vera when retrieving user_data. I have both options to refresh manually (requires you to hit the refresh button or runs after commands are being sent) and also the auto refreshing with the option to set a desired refresh rate. I now have to work on the gui portion of the code. I will be contacting you with some questions.

  • Garrett