I have Homeseer Pro for my home and find it works great. But I want to add automation to my shop, and frankly it’s pretty expensive for what I want to do at my shop. Vera looks promising, I just want to control some lights, climate and video cameras. The one thing I am hung up on though- as far as I can tell, you have to rely upon the Mios website in order to be able to operate your Vera system from a remote location??
Am I wrong about this? With Homeseer I do not rely upon a third party’s website to use my own equipment. Can somebody please clarify this? I am not some troll trying to spam for Homeseer, I am honestly seriously considering purchasing a Vera unit. I can get the unit itself and all the devices I need for my shop for the cost of a second Homeseer software liscense, and I like the idea of not having to leave a PC running 24/7
You do not have to use MicasaVerde’s website for remote access. There are many other options to allow for remote access to the Vera’s UI. You can use a vpn or an ssh server to securely access Vera’s UI. I would not recommend that you open ports on your firewall to have direct access to Vera. There are topics scattered on the forum that discuss these solutions in more detail. Including one topic in the last 24 hours.
- Garrett
[quote=“Automann, post:21, topic:166688”]I have Homeseer Pro for my home and find it works great. But I want to add automation to my shop, and frankly it’s pretty expensive for what I want to do at my shop. Vera looks promising, I just want to control some lights, climate and video cameras. The one thing I am hung up on though- as far as I can tell, you have to rely upon the Mios website in order to be able to operate your Vera system from a remote location??
Am I wrong about this? With Homeseer I do not rely upon a third party’s website to use my own equipment. Can somebody please clarify this? I am not some troll trying to spam for Homeseer, I am honestly seriously considering purchasing a Vera unit. I can get the unit itself and all the devices I need for my shop for the cost of a second Homeseer software liscense, and I like the idea of not having to leave a PC running 24/7[/quote]
I see this is an old thread being revisted, but FWIW I’d like to share my $0.02. I just started w/ Z-wave & Vera this year, after a 20 year hiatus from home automation I was convinced that the flakiness of what was state of the art x-10 would be gone, and this stuff would run like a dream. Long story short, I have been wildly disappointed. It’s just like 20 years go, but more complex. Vera is so/so, it runs rather erratically with a shaky UI that is difficult to use fluidly (I have copious notes scribbled down if anyone wants them), it relies almost exclusively on fellow users to write and share code scripts (where was the necessity to know “Lua” mentioned when I bought this thing?), and the support seems to rely on one smart, but over-taxed guy (who we should all cross our fingers never gets into any kind of an accident or we’ll all be stranded on Vera island). I bought Vera for one reason at first - to control some ventilation fans in my house that regular thermostat switches or timers couldn’t do on their own. . .on this it has been erratic. I then stepped it up with switches and outlets to do lighting and also a thermostat. . .things are going 80% ok, but when it’s your lighting and your HVAC that’s not really acceptable. Oh and the iPhone app sucks too, most of them as far as I can see. I’d throw down $50 is there was an awesome and pretty one available that had some common sense and stability.
I should have looked at these forums first and I never would have bought a Vera - for it not to be badged a “beta” seems to be disingenuous or dishonest.
It saddens me that there are competing, floundering standards for home automation that never seem to go anywhere in terms of having their act together. Tivo defined the DVR circa 1999 because it was reasonably priced and had an interface anyone could use without instruction, and ran like a champ 24-7. Now there are other DVRs that emulate the same style, but just saying, why can’t one standard and a few hardware/software companies band together and really do this right. Crestron seems to dominate the super high end residential and commercial market, which leaves 99% of American homes without a defacto standard to go to.
If a Hometroller was $1k but worked as well as my first Tivo did, I’d buy it tomorrow. . .but theoretically once I get my current support issues solved, and I learn some Lua skills, and post more questions to the forums, and buy some more z-wave components that I didn’t think I’d originally need, if all that happens maybe it’ll run ok.
Last week I hooked up my Vera to a $5 automated power cycler that rebooted it every morning at 3am, just to see if that would make it more stable - and it did. Which is sort of sad that I had to hook up a $5 thing to accomplish a function that shouldn’t be needed, the closest thing to it is a manual reboot function hidden under the network config options.
Sorry to rant, but, one can only pull up to one’s house so many times when a scene should be running and it’s not and not smash his Vera with a bat.
[quote=“TheAce, post:23, topic:166688”][quote=“Automann, post:21, topic:166688”]I have Homeseer Pro for my home and find it works great. But I want to add automation to my shop, and frankly it’s pretty expensive for what I want to do at my shop. Vera looks promising, I just want to control some lights, climate and video cameras. The one thing I am hung up on though- as far as I can tell, you have to rely upon the Mios website in order to be able to operate your Vera system from a remote location??
Am I wrong about this? With Homeseer I do not rely upon a third party’s website to use my own equipment. Can somebody please clarify this? I am not some troll trying to spam for Homeseer, I am honestly seriously considering purchasing a Vera unit. I can get the unit itself and all the devices I need for my shop for the cost of a second Homeseer software liscense, and I like the idea of not having to leave a PC running 24/7[/quote]
I see this is an old thread being revisted, but FWIW I’d like to share my $0.02. I just started w/ Z-wave & Vera this year, after a 20 year hiatus from home automation I was convinced that the flakiness of what was state of the art x-10 would be gone, and this stuff would run like a dream. Long story short, I have been wildly disappointed. It’s just like 20 years go, but more complex. Vera is so/so, it runs rather erratically with a shaky UI that is difficult to use fluidly (I have copious notes scribbled down if anyone wants them), it relies almost exclusively on fellow users to write and share code scripts (where was the necessity to know “Lua” mentioned when I bought this thing?), and the support seems to rely on one smart, but over-taxed guy (who we should all cross our fingers never gets into any kind of an accident or we’ll all be stranded on Vera island). I bought Vera for one reason at first - to control some ventilation fans in my house that regular thermostat switches or timers couldn’t do on their own. . .on this it has been erratic. I then stepped it up with switches and outlets to do lighting and also a thermostat. . .things are going 80% ok, but when it’s your lighting and your HVAC that’s not really acceptable. Oh and the iPhone app sucks too, most of them as far as I can see. I’d throw down $50 is there was an awesome and pretty one available that had some common sense and stability.
I should have looked at these forums first and I never would have bought a Vera - for it not to be badged a “beta” seems to be disingenuous or dishonest.
It saddens me that there are competing, floundering standards for home automation that never seem to go anywhere in terms of having their act together. Tivo defined the DVR circa 1999 because it was reasonably priced and had an interface anyone could use without instruction, and ran like a champ 24-7. Now there are other DVRs that emulate the same style, but just saying, why can’t one standard and a few hardware/software companies band together and really do this right. Crestron seems to dominate the super high end residential and commercial market, which leaves 99% of American homes without a defacto standard to go to.
If a Hometroller was $1k but worked as well as my first Tivo did, I’d buy it tomorrow. . .but theoretically once I get my current support issues solved, and I learn some Lua skills, and post more questions to the forums, and buy some more z-wave components that I didn’t think I’d originally need, if all that happens maybe it’ll run ok.
Last week I hooked up my Vera to a $5 automated power cycler that rebooted it every morning at 3am, just to see if that would make it more stable - and it did. Which is sort of sad that I had to hook up a $5 thing to accomplish a function that shouldn’t be needed, the closest thing to it is a manual reboot function hidden under the network config options.
Sorry to rant, but, one can only pull up to one’s house so many times when a scene should be running and it’s not and not smash his Vera with a bat.[/quote]
Not intended to disagree but I am curious as to what plug-ins you have that might be causing your instability. I have 4 Vera’s running flawlessly and I like the iphone (sqconnect) app a lot, so just curios as the the differences your system has from mine… (Vera 3 pro, 3 Vera lite bridged). 150+ devices, sonos integration, ELK integration, yale lock, schlage lock 1.5.408 FW.
While my exposure to Vera has been limited, I do think it’s a really good product with great potential, however it’s still buggy in places, and it still lacks (what I would call) as ‘production level’ documentation; oh and there can be a lot of DIY work required to get the best out it - which for some is their idea of hell.
A recent case in point for me is that i’ve just starting working with the RFXRtx433 tranciever from RFXCOM, to allow Vera to work within the 433mhz spectrum. The Vera plug-in is really good, however it’s still in an Alpha release, whereas the Homesteer plugin alone looks to be only final and sells for approximately $35.
Bottom Line- I think MiCasaVerde would love to do more and start making money for things like the plugins" etc. but for now, I think rhey’re happy for the service to evolve organically .
[quote=“TheAce, post:23, topic:166688”][quote=“Automann, post:21, topic:166688”]I have Homeseer Pro for my home and find it works great. But I want to add automation to my shop, and frankly it’s pretty expensive for what I want to do at my shop. Vera looks promising, I just want to control some lights, climate and video cameras. The one thing I am hung up on though- as far as I can tell, you have to rely upon the Mios website in order to be able to operate your Vera system from a remote location??
Am I wrong about this? With Homeseer I do not rely upon a third party’s website to use my own equipment. Can somebody please clarify this? I am not some troll trying to spam for Homeseer, I am honestly seriously considering purchasing a Vera unit. I can get the unit itself and all the devices I need for my shop for the cost of a second Homeseer software liscense, and I like the idea of not having to leave a PC running 24/7[/quote]
I see this is an old thread being revisted, but FWIW I’d like to share my $0.02. I just started w/ Z-wave & Vera this year, after a 20 year hiatus from home automation I was convinced that the flakiness of what was state of the art x-10 would be gone, and this stuff would run like a dream. Long story short, I have been wildly disappointed. It’s just like 20 years go, but more complex. Vera is so/so, it runs rather erratically with a shaky UI that is difficult to use fluidly (I have copious notes scribbled down if anyone wants them), it relies almost exclusively on fellow users to write and share code scripts (where was the necessity to know “Lua” mentioned when I bought this thing?), and the support seems to rely on one smart, but over-taxed guy (who we should all cross our fingers never gets into any kind of an accident or we’ll all be stranded on Vera island). I bought Vera for one reason at first - to control some ventilation fans in my house that regular thermostat switches or timers couldn’t do on their own. . .on this it has been erratic. I then stepped it up with switches and outlets to do lighting and also a thermostat. . .things are going 80% ok, but when it’s your lighting and your HVAC that’s not really acceptable. Oh and the iPhone app sucks too, most of them as far as I can see. I’d throw down $50 is there was an awesome and pretty one available that had some common sense and stability.
I should have looked at these forums first and I never would have bought a Vera - for it not to be badged a “beta” seems to be disingenuous or dishonest.
It saddens me that there are competing, floundering standards for home automation that never seem to go anywhere in terms of having their act together. Tivo defined the DVR circa 1999 because it was reasonably priced and had an interface anyone could use without instruction, and ran like a champ 24-7. Now there are other DVRs that emulate the same style, but just saying, why can’t one standard and a few hardware/software companies band together and really do this right. Crestron seems to dominate the super high end residential and commercial market, which leaves 99% of American homes without a defacto standard to go to.
If a Hometroller was $1k but worked as well as my first Tivo did, I’d buy it tomorrow. . .but theoretically once I get my current support issues solved, and I learn some Lua skills, and post more questions to the forums, and buy some more z-wave components that I didn’t think I’d originally need, if all that happens maybe it’ll run ok.
Last week I hooked up my Vera to a $5 automated power cycler that rebooted it every morning at 3am, just to see if that would make it more stable - and it did. Which is sort of sad that I had to hook up a $5 thing to accomplish a function that shouldn’t be needed, the closest thing to it is a manual reboot function hidden under the network config options.
Sorry to rant, but, one can only pull up to one’s house so many times when a scene should be running and it’s not and not smash his Vera with a bat.[/quote]
I wanted to add my 2 cents and state that HomeSeer has it’s own set of issues as well. Automation is not for the faint of heart. The simpler solutions you see like Verizon, Nexia, Comcast, and Iris are very limited and paid for services. HomeSeer does not have an api for third party app development. So if a user wanted to create an app for the iOS or Android platform your out of luck. Most of the plugins from HomeSeer require you to pay for the additional features. All of the plugins offered for Vera are developed my this great community we have here.
You never mention what vera you have. There can be many reasons why your vera is not operating correctly. I have owned vera for several years and have not had any major issues.
You mention that the iOS apps suck? Which ones are they? There are a few really good apps for that platform and each one has their strong points and audiences. Same for the Android platform. I like the fact that their is a choice on how I can control my Vera on the phone and tablets. With HomeSeer you are stuck with only one option and that costs additional money!
- Garrett
Thank you for your input guys. . .I will post a more detailed post w/ my setup, plug-ins, devices, etc. in the next day or two. I am certainly open to any and all suggestions as to how to iron out the kinks!
[quote=“garrettwp, post:26, topic:166688”]Automation is not for the faint of heart.
- Garrett[/quote]
It should be for the faint of heart. I don’t want to start a big fight here but this is the problem with Vera. Home automation is only going to go mainstream when it is easy to use and reliable. No one would have a home alarm system if it was a fraction as unreliable or hard to use as Vera. You shouldn’t have to be an engineer or rocket scientist to get your lights to turn on and off automatically. The idea that resetting the Vera every night makes it more reliable shouts poorly written code. I work on real-time systems that need to run 24/7/365 and I would be shot if they had to be rebooted ever, never mind daily.
If Vera is ever going to be anything more than a hobby for nerds it has to get easier and much, much more reliable.
My $0.02.
In the several years that I have owned Vera, I have never had to resort rebooting it every night. With the Vera 3 and Vera lite extra memory, it should solve many of the stability issues.
- Garrett
I own both.
I’ve got my original Homeseer license key from about 1998 when it was called Keware. Each upgrade has cost as much as a vera. It is powerful, but it has had many issues over the years. The HS2 conversion a few years back (.net) was a nightmare and took about a year to get it stable. It is now a fine product, but I like the simplicity of Vera.
When I made the z-wave transition last year (thanks, Radio Shack!) I wanted an all-in-one appliance solution. Vera has been able to do most of what I want, and I’ve gone months at a time without changing anything.
They’re both good, but I don’t want the hassles of windows maintenance. Nor do I need the full feature set or cost of homeseer.
Well said.
[quote=“Intrepid, post:30, topic:166688”]I own both.
I’ve got my original Homeseer license key from about 1998 when it was called Keware. Each upgrade has cost as much as a vera. It is powerful, but it has had many issues over the years. The HS2 conversion a few years back (.net) was a nightmare and took about a year to get it stable. It is now a fine product, but I like the simplicity of Vera.
When I made the z-wave transition last year (thanks, Radio Shack!) I wanted an all-in-one appliance solution. Vera has been able to do most of what I want, and I’ve gone months at a time without changing anything.
They’re both good, but I don’t want the hassles of windows maintenance. Nor do I need the full feature set or cost of homeseer.[/quote]
This is the key. In the long run the cost difference is minimal as MCV will release new models of it’s hardware which you need to buy to use the updated software. It boils down to how much one is willing to spend up front and how much functionality one desires.
[quote=“garrettwp, post:29, topic:166688”]In the several years that I have owned Vera, I have never had to resort rebooting it every night. With the Vera 3 and Vera lite extra memory, it should solve many of the stability issues.
- Garrett[/quote]
Sorry to reply to an old thread, but if rebooting improves stability, I’m guessing memory leaks are the cause. If so, adding memory won’t fix it (it will only delay the manifestation of the problem).
I’m new here and sniffing out the pros and cons of the Vera, as a potential refugee from Zipabox, so these stability issues interest me.
I’ve never once had to reboot any vera box I’ve owned, other than doing updates I knew would require a reboot… So the problem isn’t universal…
Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
LordLiverpool - I have had quite a few stability issues and, in my view, the product is very far from polished but as you can see from this thread and know from your own experience there are probably no products out there that dont have their own set of problems. I cant in all honesty wholly recommend Vera (and in fact I continue to review other options on the basis that I might jump ship) but I would add that:
- A lot of the problems that I have experienced (and I’m sure others) seem to be caused, or at least exacerbated, by the fact that the Vera controllers are fairly low powered. The spec of the new Vera Plus controller seems to address this and therefore you would be buying a better spec’d box than I did.
- New releases of software often add new problems but usually fix more than they cause and are fairly often so the product is (slowly) improving.
It depends upon how much hands-on work you can tolerate and what you want it to do. If you just want it to control a few lights and devices it is relatively easy to have it do that out of the box. If you want more sophisticated HA the good news is that there are plug-ins available and a good forum community to help you do that but then it is definately NOT a plug and play product. Hope that helps