Owning a Vera Lite is like owning a boat.
Happy day when it is first purchased
Happier day when it is returned for a refund.
My VeraLite running UI7 (my devices didn’t work at all in UI5) was absurdly buggy. Support was extremely slow to respond to inquiries and made promises to help that they did not deliver.
My device was adding 2 “Motion Sensors” every day that didn’t exist on my network. I would delete them and the next day they would be back. Today I logged in to see what phantom devices would be there and there was nothing. ALL my devices were gone. It was like a new device out of the box.
Sorry Micasaverde, I am switching to SmartThings which I already purchased and found to be far superior to VeraLite. My veralite has some nice features that I liked more then the SmartThings but it NEVER works, resets itself, has a list of alerts on the home page that can’t be cleared, randomly fails making it completely unreliable.
I hope the product gets better for those of you who are past your return period.
sorry to hear this. My story starts out similar but changed immensely when i went to UI5. Since mid-december I have added 52 devices not counting PLEG’s (kick-ass program) and virtuals. I keep waiting for the Lite to slow down but it doesn’t. I am having a blast playing with this. The VeraProximity program works great. I too looked at SmartThings, wink, etc… but i am convinced I wouldn’t be happy when their server went down or my internet especially when i was traveling.
My problem is that I started on UI7. I have a Garage Door controller which was a significant part of why I wanted the system, that only worked in UI7 GD00Z. But it didn’t work well and UI7 is HORRIBLE. But the really issue was the complete lack of interest in mios support in helping me. I emailed three issues with no reply for days. Then I sent a private message to a forum moderator about the foscam app they had written and it turned out to be a mios support person. He said he would help if I opened my system up and emailed him my password to both my vera and my camera’s. That’s crazy so i replied that I could be reached during most daytime hours. I was told the hours I provided were not compatible with support hours and that they could not help. This was after a 4-5 day wait on every email. I was feed up so I reverted my device to UI5. It is a horrible interface and really non-intuitive. So I was frustrated that i had to start try to learn how to use this device all over. My Garage controller would not work. So I went back to UI7 and tried to fight with it. But it kept adding devices i didn’t add. it added apps that I didn’t add, i have not idea how that could happen. Then the whole system went blank today as if it had been reset. That was the last straw…back it went.
I bought a ST hub, my Garage Door works 100%, my zxt-120 didn’t work but I was able to write the device driver for it and had it partially working in 1 day. Add a few smart apps and it was up and running doing what i needed. I still need to improve the driver but being about to write drivers is very powerful.
There are a lot os aspects of the veralite that I preferred over the ST which was why I bought it. But it was way too frustrating. The ST is a pleasure to manage. As a developer for 30 years I thought the power of the vera lite and the ability to get to the unix system would be nice but every thing I tried failed and when i checked on the forum i would see posts that the issue was known. They should have held back UI7 until it was ready and they should be adding new devices like the Garage Door controller to UI5 as well as UI7 until UI7 is stable. It is apparent that vera developers don’t have a good plan so I bailed before my return window ended.
@desperado I’m sorry that you had less than a positive experience. The GDO is now working well in UI7 and the January update will include an update for Foscam. If you decide to return to our platform and ever have an issue please bring me into the loop and I can help get things resolved for you quickly.
Smart things coming out with a new product in a few months. Your using a product that has been out for a while unlike UI7.
Smart things also is very limited and needs to have internet connection to even do the basics. Nothing is controlled locally all the power is down offsite. So internet out your automation is out.
No one product is perfect and all have some limitations/issues. Hope everything works out.
I can’t even log into my Vera3 when our Internet connection is out… “Please wait loading”. I’m hoping the smartthings new device works without an Internet connection, it would be goodbye vera for me too.
I have a Vera3 running UI5 and a Vera3 running Ui7. I can access both if the internet is down as long as I am on my home network.
This is a strong reason for me to use this platform. I don’t want to lose my home automation if I lose my internet access. I believe Samsung got that message and that is why their new SmartThings hub is stated to be able to work without an internet connection whereas the current one is cloud based.
I have a Vera3 running UI5 and a Vera3 running Ui7. I can access both if the internet is down as long as I am on my home network.
This is a strong reason for me to use this platform. I don’t want to lose my home automation if I lose my internet access. I believe Samsung got that message and that is why their new SmartThings hub is stated to be able to work without an internet connection whereas the current one is cloud based.[/quote]
@tbubbs
BOFH gave you a good path to go down. If your vera doesn’t work from home with the internet down then you have a problem. You should be able to enter the IP and bring it up. More importantly all your z-wave devices, mobile apps and automation still works without internet. Lights auto turn on when I get home, closet lights and such turn on when I open the doors, my outside low voltage lights comes on at dark. All this would stop working if my internet (router, modem, provider) went down and I was on a smart things. With vera everything continues to work. Smartthings 2.0 (if they call it that) may fix that issue, but the current one is no bueno.
I was fiding many aspects of the veralite did require login from web portal in UI7 so internet was required. Even just selecting “devices” so I could look at status of my devices.
That siaid I think the automation would have continued working. Assuming it ever worked in the first place which mine did not.
I don’t love that the smart things requires internet but honestly I am doing less automation then and more monitoring. In addition my internet doesn’t go down very often. If smart things fixes this one issue they will win for sure.
I read many saying the smart things can’t do as much. I find it is doing much more then my veralite. This is because they let you code devices and apps in groovy. I have written my oen device for my ZXT-120 and added great features that I could not add to my veralite.
Both products have limitations but vera can’t stand on “it works offline” alone. They need to fix the issue that it has as well.
Good luck with Samsung. Had several of their devices in the past (DVD-BLU-ray players and phones). Not impressed with their business model or support.
[quote=“desperado, post:9, topic:185526”]I was fiding many aspects of the veralite did require login from web portal in UI7 so internet was required. Even just selecting “devices” so I could look at status of my devices.
That siaid I think the automation would have continued working. Assuming it ever worked in the first place which mine did not.
I don’t love that the smart things requires internet but honestly I am doing less automation then and more monitoring. In addition my internet doesn’t go down very often. If smart things fixes this one issue they will win for sure.
I read many saying the smart things can’t do as much. I find it is doing much more then my veralite. This is because they let you code devices and apps in groovy. I have written my oen device for my ZXT-120 and added great features that I could not add to my veralite.
Both products have limitations but vera can’t stand on “it works offline” alone. They need to fix the issue that it has as well.[/quote]
It supports so many no z-wave products and has a ton of plugins. From my roomba, sonos, A/V receivers, Direct TV, alarm panels, blueiris, choice of phone/tablet apps and so many more things last time I tried to switch I found half of what I have now wouldn’t work.
For someone just starting out and have a door lock and few light switches it works just fine.
I have not been happy with my veralite …It has been buggy from the start (had it for many many years) -really slow UI . Painfully slow. I am running it under UI7. I am going to try vera one more time and purchase the veraedge. If this unit still dosent do well I am done with Vera. I am running on 4 devices on the veralite and about every 3 time the devices will respond. Just very inconsistant operations-on all devices short or long distances!!! My home automation system has not grown due to what i see as a weak platform.
I too hated my Veralite, nothing but issues. But I gave MIOS another shot and purchased a Vera Edge about a year ago, not a single major issue since. I think the lite is way under powered and very low on memory which may be causing many users issues.
My vera 3 became absolutely unusable. I think it just couldn’t support the number of devices. I got a plus about 6-7 months back and outside of the firmware update breaking a ton (which did get fixed by support) it has been really solid. However the interface is absolute garbage. As ugly as the original interface was, it was functional and easy to use. The new interface is pretty, but is terrible. So much scrolling and clicking to get anything done. I could add scenes in the old interface in no time. In the new interface it takes forever. Maybe ui8 will balance looking terrible and being terrible.
I had the Vera 3 first had a few issues but nothing to write home about, most had been something I did BTW. I received the Vera Plus on preorder and was ready to give it a WELL… After reading this forum and support from Vera i have it working almost the way i want, yes i would like to see other items that i can control like my SinopeTech Thermostats a few cameras and my DVR. However, when you call other larger companies is the support really their? I am not always happy with Vera but feel they are doing the best they can. Hats off to them and the members of the forum. Thanks
Good luck, but my recommendation would be to reach out to forum members and get the problems resolved. Remember every problem you get fixed is one less for others to worry about. My suggestions to vera, take the 500 notes and place them in a one pager. noted as fixes to problem A,B and etc/ Saves the reading time that most people don’t have.