I am stumped. I have 4 Vera’s in my home (1 Vera3 as main and 3 Vera2’s as slaves) I want to access my office vera lite (10 miles away) and bridge it to my Vera3. I can access it through my mios login (it is part of my login group). However, I cannot find a way to bridge it. I added a smoke detector to my office and want a zwave siren to go off in my home if there is a fire at my office.
I believe they have to be on the same LAN - possibly the same VPN would do - for them to discover each other?
Surely someone has done this without a VPN. My Square Connect veiws/controls the remote devices from home. I have never used it for scenes and triggers. Not sure if it can do that.
When Vera’s are bridged, they talk with each other via TCP/IP, directly. They do not speak with each other through the MCV servers or SSH tunnels.
Do you have firewalls between your two sites making it impossible for Vera’s to talk to each other? You definitely should!
What I’m trying to say is that, unless you create a tunnel between sites, such as @akoober stated, then bridging will not be possible.
Edit: Expanding @akoober’s statement; bridged Vera’s do not have to be on the same IP subnet, but they do need a route to be able to talk with each other. Additionally, when creating the bridge, the Vera’s try to discover each other using multicast. This can fail if there are one or more routers(not necessarily firewalls) between them, as most routers filter multicast traffic by default. Once the Veras are configured in a bridge, they are no longer dependent on or limited by multicast reachability.
thank you. I am working on a VPN tunnel.
Just curious but what are you using that requires a separate location to be bridged? I have a vacation house miles away and I don’t run mine Bridged… What am I missing out on?
I can access my Office Vera from home through my MIOS login and it is linked to my mios account with four other Vera’s in my home. The 4 vera’s in my home are “bridged” to create a more stable “mesh network”. My main Vera 3 dashboard sees all my devices from the other three vera’s. These other vera’s are paired with devices in in their closer proximity (Main Vera3 is in middle of my home -I have one upstairs, and two others at oposit ends of my home ). I wanted to “bridge” the remote office vera like the others, so I could add a zwave siren at my home to trigger if there was smoke at my office. I am concerned about the security of setting up a VPN tunnel myself as I am not advanced in networking (nor do I have the time to learn). Hope someone can think of another way. I have two smokes paired at the office and a strobe/siren paired at home waiting on me.
For those who think this is overkill and want to ask me why 4 vera’s in my home…My house has two stories and almost 4K sqft. The meshing of vera’s makes my home very reliable and stable. I am a Vera Reseller as well, so they were “on hand” to test with.
http://docs5.mios.com/doc.php?language=1&platform=3Lite&page=multiple_units
There is no way to bridge two Vera’s remotely unless you create some sort of tunnel between your networks. This is called site to site vpn. Also note when you bridge your Vera’s, you are not creating a bigger mesh network. Each Vera is it’s separate zwave network that only that Vera can control. The bridging simply tells the other Vera that this device has done something over the network. Similar to how you use an app to control your vera and check a status of the devices.
- Garrett
Spitballing…
Could it not work to have OfficeVera notify you via VeraAlerts or some mobile app. You could then have a Tasker script on the phone that triggers HomeVera-Siren or something similar.
With this chain, the phone becomes a point of failure in triggering the siren, which I don;t regard as being ideal. But, the advantage would be that you would receive notifications even if you weren’t home.
You’re probably already doing most of this and are just missing the Tasker link.
Very good suggestion, Ty. I will try the “tasker link” idea. Thank you Garrett for the explanation and confirmation that a site to site is my only option to do this as I have been doing with the other Vera’s. I am also going to try to learn how to get my Asus N66U routers (same at work and home) to tunnel securely. If I am successful at this, I will post the “how to” for others.
Tasker Script.