I give up

Community Playground General Discussions
#41

rafale77,
yes, I believe that was your post. Good thread there. I especially liked the stuff about the servers phoning home. I will be not only dumbing down my vera as far as the devices it handles but also securing it and stopping it from doing god knows what.

…and it is not that I am sensitive, I was just more curious on what on earth I said that caused a downvote. Seems silly to me to “smite” and not have the reason… but I guess I am just full of opinions lately… :slight_smile:

#42

I think there was alcohol involved. I try to be helpful but I have more smites than applauds.

#43

now you are 50 / 50 :wink:

#44

I keep coming back and finding these threads. Oh the memories ::slight_smile:

Home Assistant is a really cool platform. I’ll jump in and second that Python is great also.

#45

Someone should dig up the old smite thread…no wait…

lol.

It was brutal. Fun. People got pissy. Some LOL’d. I just said F**k it and started asking for smites.

#46

I found myself with a bunch of smites and have no idea why. Don’t really care though, in the big picture…

#47

All of us who are still here after such a long time probably deserve some… :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

We are all rambling about leaving while hoping that mcv reads this and fixes these gross issues while we are stuck after being too invested on this platform… I just added a 4th controller to my network to play with: An aeon z-stick. Pretty nice to be able to include secure devices all around the house without having to unplug the primary and move it.

#48

Yeah, someone “smote” me somewhere along the last couple of days, I think. I LOL’d. This isn’t Reddit, and modeling that platform where trolls and brigades trash unpopular opinions to mute open debate and high-quality community support, both of which this forum has in abundance. That system is irrelevant here, IMO.

#49

Is there a zwave primer someone can go to read up on zwave? I have lots of old devices as I mentioned earlier on this thread. Since I moved I am putting in some newer ones and those are gen 5. I understand zwave plus does cool things like OTA updates, has a longer range, and is secure. I am not sure how to configure the secure (is it automatic if the controller and device are both zwave plus?). Any pointers to some resources for learning would be greatly appreciate (may even get you an applaud… :wink: )

And on another note: So I said I was frustrated with UI7. And after playing with HA for a couple of days, I become more disappointed with UI7. Well, I was reminded what frustration was last night when I set up my Vera plus (upgrade from vera lite). Since I am using HA, I didn’t see a need to connect Vera Plus to their servers IOT get to my Vera. BUT… apparently you have to connect to there server to get to any of the configuration pages like setting the location, timezone, etc. That just downright sucks. Once I get it setup, I will try to disconnect it and look over rafale77 post again on the phone home stuff. That kind of forced online activity to use a bridge in my own home is WAY more frustrating than the UI.

So that makes me curious on using the Aeon stick also. On the up side I get their OTA updates for devices. Has anyone used just the a Zwave USB stick and HA to add devices? Can that be done? What other combinations of hardware / software work well for managing device inclusion / exclusion? Maybe I will end up completely away from vera at some point.

#horribleUI #horriblePhoneHome

#50

Z-Wave is a communication Protocol. Vera uses LUA programming language to talk to devices on your system. You need to learn Vera or use something like PLEG or Reactor to do the heavy lifting for conditional Boolean Logic.

#51

I am happy to report that after fussing and fixing and excluding and including then re-doing scenes my Vera Plus no longer says it cannot detect the device for any device. Now to find that wood to knock on in this concrete and steel office…

#52

If you want to learn more about Z-Wave, I’d recommend going to the Silicon Labs website. You can see the full spec there and there are some other helpful resources. Just keep in mind that Vera does not necessarily implement and expose everything that you see there.

#53

Another link that helped me understand the zwave network structure

https://www.vesternet.com/resources/technology-indepth/user-friendly-z-wave-network/

My networks now has one primary and 3 secondary static controllers. (+ a bunch of scene controllers like minimotes and leviton in wall 4 button controllers too but they are working mostly by direct associations so I am not counting them). Some really do not like being secondary. i.e the platform was not designed to support it: hubitat is one of them. It is possible that the husbzb firmware is not allowing it since I have not been able to do a controller shift with it with openzwave. I am able to include devices from all 4 controllers but secure devices only get included correctly by openzwave and the aeon z-stick. In order to give all controllers the ability to include devices, you need to establish a SIS in your network. To do this I only found Zway to be able to assign it to another controller. I think openzwave is capable too but since it is now my primary, I did not try. hubitat, vera are not. In order to give secure device inclusion capability with the same key as my original network which was the vera, I had to be able to extract the key and insert it in the other controllers. Only openzwave(home assistant) and the aeon stick through their save tool on windows gave me this capability (and I think vera if you are willing to dig into it). Hubitat and zway are not able to do it. This is why I am using this many controllers and hubitat, at least for now is out. I am not going to post how to get the secure key from the vera here. Can PM me if one wants to know. This all gives me a lot of redundancy in the network and if the vera can die tomorrow and I could replace it in a whiff. To be absolutely sure that there is no mess in my network, I had to do a lot of monkey business to have only one primary controller since most of these guys want to be primary.

Edit: Forgot to add that I am now forced to include secure class devices with another controller than the vera because a number of them ate failing to exchange secure class keys. I then get an update of the vera from the SIS and configure the device in the vera manually. The inclusion process on the vera was broken some time ago for several device types. (Zooz 4in1 sensor is one of them). I am now including them with Home assistant and the aeon stick.

#54

Can you unplug the Z-Stick and do secure includes or does that have to be done from within the main application. I’m getting ready to move my locks to HA and I’m using a Z-Stick. I love this thing…

#55

The aeotec z-stick has an embedded battery and application specifically for inclusions. You have to setup the secure class key on the stick using a windows app (the backup software). You can then unplug the stick and go include devices wherever you want. A short push of the include button start a non secure inclusion. A long push (red flashing) starts a secure inclusion.

#56

I’ll look for the software…

#57

sooooooo, quick question…

if you guys are using Home Assistant, which I just recently started using (this week) and LOVE IT coming from just using UI7… AND… you guys also have an AEOTEC ZStick which I am led to believe has more the zwave protocol than most other controllers (including Vera), why are you still using Vera?

I was planning on using Vera as the zwave bridge from HA, since I don’t have a Z stick. But it is less than $50 and doesn’t phone home?? hmmm, very appealing to me to drop Vera all together. But so that I don’t rush into anything blindly, I thought I would ask the above question :slight_smile:

I assume because you guys want redundancy (secondary controllers)… or are doing a full transition but are still in the process… Please, share “why vera?” in today’s environment when you already have HA and Z stick

(this is meant to be a serious question and in no means a bashing of Vera. I have used Vera for ~10 years and am actually sad to have to go out and find other solutions)

#58

^^^ Not sure you got the idea that the AEOTEC has more protocols?

If you use a UZB with the latest SDK, then you have all the protocols (Command Classes) that are currently available, however some may not be supported by HA software.

I believe (but stand open to correction) that the only HA software that supports the most Command Classes is Z-Way.

I pretty sure that I’ve left a lot of gaps here but it’s a starting point for a discussion.

#59

Sorry if my comment was overly assertive. To retract it and make it less so: Aeotec supports advanced features like OTA updates and Vera does not.

But to the point of other controllers out there, say like the UZB :wink: , why use vera? Is it just because we have all been using it so long?

#60

^^^ I agree why use it, I guess it’s because it has a radio and a lot of people would rather use what they already have rather than buy another toy.
If anyone has gone down this track they would most probably have upgraded to RasPi (or better) and used HA software of their choice.