I give up

Community Playground General Discussions
#61

[quote=“randya, post:57, topic:199599”]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)[/quote]

Shamelessly linking my other thread where I explain why I am keeping the vera. If unlike me you are willing restart then it would make sense to me to do away with it.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,101078.0.html

[quote=“zedrally, post:58, topic:199599”]^^^ 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.[/quote]

If for anything the Aeotec z-stick would support less. It’s SDK version is only 3.95 vs. 6.1 for the vera.

#62

rafale77,

I read your thread the other day. It is very good. I will re-read it. And then re-read it again in a couple days. :slight_smile: I agree that if I have a Vera Plus that has radios in it then, might as well use it. But I am just setting up the Vera Plus as an upgrade from vera lite and for $50 might as well do it with Aeotec and get the OTA feature. I don’t have as much invested in custom Lua code as you do. So time to walk away??? Feels weird…

I know a lot of you guys like having secondary controllers. Do you feel it necessary? Have you had a time where it saved you somehow? I never needed it. But maybe, since I have it, I use the Vera Plus as a secondary or something. Maybe sell it. Well like I said I will read your great thread a few times before making a decision.

Thanks for all the info so far :slight_smile:

#63

That’s nothing, look at mine.

#64

[quote=“randya, post:62, topic:199599”]rafale77,

I don’t have as much invested in custom Lua code as you do. So time to walk away??? Feels weird…[/quote]

Sorry to say this on this forum but I would say yes. If you want to build fresh, I would run and fast.

For me having a secondary is for redundancy and a lot for testing and troubleshooting. As I say in my other thread, I would only have 2 and all under home assistant: Primary would be the HUSBZB on homeassistant so I can have both zigbee and zwave on Hass and I would build all my logic code in it and maybe attach openluup to it as if it was a vera for the very few APIs which I think are better integrated on openLuup than on Hass. You may not have any of these. The secondary would be the Aeotec stick for troubleshooting and remote inclusion (using zensys tool).

As I am having new findings of design flaws and work around them on the vera, I keep on finding new ones behind it. It is not a viable “production” or “consumer” system to me. It requires way too much expertise and modifications to work very precariously. It is attempting to do too much, too automated the wrong ways (in unnecessary areas). It is taking away important controls from the users trying to automate them and it is lacking automation functionalities which are sorely needed (compensated by plugins like PLEG). Latest in date, I am suspicious of a very slow memory leak. People might not see it because the vera usually crashes much before it can be a problem but I think it is there. Not having an option to disable the nightly heal, not having an option to run the vera completely without access to the mios servers are amongst the very fundamental flaws of the system I have not been able to work around.

#65

For reason unbeknownst to me, my Vera Plus has become quite stable and very snappy now that devices are reliably connected even though one of my relays for my pool pumps becomes disconnected but still gets the commands.

I mean responsiveness is night and day now on my tablet control panel using ImperiHome or via the web GUI…

#66

[quote=“Sammy2, post:65, topic:199599”]For reason unbeknownst to me, my Vera Plus has become quite stable and very snappy now that devices are reliably connected even though one of my relays for my pool pumps becomes disconnected but still gets the commands.

I mean responsiveness is night and day now on my tablet control panel using ImperiHome or via the web GUI…[/quote]

This is only the start…we aim to have the fastest, smallest controller for you guys!

#67

Welcome, Melih 8)

#68

[quote=“melih, post:66, topic:199599”][quote=“Sammy2, post:65, topic:199599”]For reason unbeknownst to me, my Vera Plus has become quite stable and very snappy now that devices are reliably connected even though one of my relays for my pool pumps becomes disconnected but still gets the commands.

I mean responsiveness is night and day now on my tablet control panel using ImperiHome or via the web GUI…[/quote]

This is only the start…we aim to have the fastest, smallest controller for you guys![/quote]

Yeah!!! I have been waiting for it for 5 years… What is the plan? Seems so far the community has done more work that your team. What is new?

#69

I wish I understood what that means considering I am about to walk away after 10 years Vera.

And, honestly, being the fastest and smallest should not be the top goals.

Be reliable, private (stop the too much phone home stuff), and adopt a good front end.

Fast? yes. Fastest? Who cares?
Smallest? Who cares? Already have a spot for Vera on the shelf.

#70

I wish I understood what that means considering I am about to walk away after 10 years Vera.

And, honestly, being the fastest and smallest should not be the top goals.

Be reliable, private (stop the too much phone home stuff), and adopt a good front end.

Fast? yes. Fastest? Who cares?
Smallest? Who cares? Already have a spot for Vera on the shelf.[/quote]

for me stability is a given!

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/globe-newswire-ezlo-announces-acquisition-of-mios-to-accelerate-time-to-market-in-smart-home-sector.html

First thing we will do is to bring “stability” into Vera products ASAP! We are bringing a huge amount of engineering resources into Vera. The development team will literally double now!
We will also create a better communication between our users and development. Speed up our development cycles and make sure we handle any issue quickly (by providing SLAs).

#71

^^^
We have heard it all before.
Seeing will be believing and so far your track record is dismally poor.

Incidentally, coming to this forum and giving yourself 100+ karma reeks pure elitism.
Karma is something that is earned over time not given to you over a 8 hour period.

#72

HA! Have to laugh at myself. I just read the link that melih posted… maybe melih works for eZLO and going to work on the MIOS team now. So the comment fastest and smallest could apply to software and not hardware. I mentioned smallest wasn’t an issue for me because I already have Vera with my equipment so I don’t care if they get the size down to a usb stick or not. But if the comment was regarding the software being faster and smallest, as in the footprint on a disk, …nope, wait… still don’t care… LOL…
…it will be interesting to see what “improvements” come of this merger.

and now I am wondering how MIOS and micasaverde are related. I am guessing micasaverde is the product creator for Vera and a reseller of MIOS as an engine. soooooo… not sure how eZLO buying MIOS helps with issues we have with phoning home or the how the UI is outdated or pick something someone else mentioned…

#73

So… there will now be two team members working part time???

There hasn’t been a problem with user to development team communications… You can’t have a problem with something that doesn’t exist…

The communication problem is between customer care and users… Users talk to customer care… Customer care almost always says “we are aware of the issue and it will be fixed in a future firmware update”… And that’s the last anyone ever hears about the issue from Mios…

Sounds like the start of a pay for support system or a monthly fee…

So… Mios was acquired by eZLO… Does that include the 25% that was acquired by Linear last year?? Or is there now two steering forces behind Mios?

#74

[quote=“zedrally, post:71, topic:199599”]Incidentally, coming to this forum and giving yourself 100+ karma reeks pure elitism.
Karma is something that is earned over time not given to you over a 8 hour period.[/quote]

Actually… It’s worse than that…

The user was created, posted a cryptic response in a random thread… then logs off… Total elapsed time - 3 minutes 22 seconds… The account, “Melih” is a user account, not marked as an administrator (although, as mentioned, it is a special account), and make absolutely no statement regarding the acquisition… Then, the only account that is currently known to be associated with Mios, “Sorin”, posts a welcome message… Exactly two words… No announcement… No explaination… No nothing…

Great start to a new era of better communications.

#75

Yes, and as of 7:40 PDT today there were no announcements on either companies webpages.

#76

wow…what a tough crowd!

I think a better starting point is: Please tell us all the problems you are facing. Lets get it all out in the open so that we can start addressing them one by one.

Its day one of our acquisition, we believe in this company and we want to do good by its users.

#77

Are you really surprised that we are a “tough crowd” after years of being treated like alpha testers… When you are treated like a mushroom, everything looks like ****…

Well… Why don’t you start with… A FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT… (and I don’t mean a link to the PR announcement)

Who are you?
Who do you work for?
What is your position?
What is happening with Mios?
What are the plans for Mios?

Why are you starting out in the forum by hiding behind a semi-anonymous username?

#78

[quote=“melih, post:76, topic:199599”]I think a better starting point is: Please tell us all the problems you are facing. Lets get it all out in the open so that we can start addressing them one by one.

Its day one of our acquisition, we believe in this company and we want to do good by its users.[/quote]

Well, you could read this thread before posting.

But I will give you cliff notes:
There is no bug tracking system or you could have just read that.
There is no feature request system or you could have just read that.
I suspect that customer care ticket system isn’t categorized or you could have pulled metrics.
The current OS has memory leaks in poor performance and system failures.
Despite being a “fully local” controller, it has multiple services that always call home. Some of those tasks are very CPU intensive.
If those services fail to call home, the backlog grows, consuming disk and CPU resources until the machine bogs down.
The luup engine that does most of the work is delicate and it’s not uncommon for the engine to fail multiple times a day. Or even multiple times an hour. See issues above.
Luup restarts can take more than a minute to complete.
Automations fail during luup restarts and as most variables are wiped, many scenes fail to start when part of the trigger condition data is lost.
The device management system is prone to getting “ghost” devices that cannot be cleared without a restore or firmware upgrade
Zwave network management is something of a wreck as the system will often flag devices as unreachable that may or may not work just fine.
Enrollment/disenrollment requires a luup restart (see above) for each device.
Device enrollment is too dependent on recognizing a particular product/model rather than using zwave capabilities. As a result, new devices often don’t have the correct capabilities configured.
Logging is much harder to use or access than it should be.
Firmware upgrades are untrustworthy as they often cause more harm than good.
Production firmware releases often include code not seen in the beta releases.
Firmware releases often include so many language packs that devices run out of space and brick during upgrades.
Most of the best features are from user-developers but firmwares often cause issues with apps.
ZigBee is more or less a nonexistent feature
Bluetooth is a nonexistent feature

Geez, I am depressed just writing that.

Btw, I own a Vera3 and a vera plus. Neither is plugged in because see above.

Eternal problems of the Vera app
#79

I’ve a sneaking feeling this acquisition is purely for the customer base. I maybe wrong here but reading between the lines and the negative press on the forum the new owners may well be having a rethink on the whole Vera hardware/software and where it lies in the whole home automation world.

Maybe we could be seeing an end to the current crop of Vera controllers and possibly the Luup environment. Who knows at this stage. As the man said its just Day 1 of a new dawn.

#80

[quote=“peterxbmc, post:79, topic:199599”]I’ve a sneaking feeling this acquisition is purely for the customer base. I maybe wrong here but reading between the lines and the negative press on the forum the new owners may well be having a rethink on the whole Vera hardware/software and where it lies in the whole home automation world.

Maybe we could be seeing an end to the current crop of Vera controllers and possibly the Luup environment. Who knows at this stage. As the man said its just Day 1 of a new dawn.[/quote]

You are wrong.
Vera has a great Cloud platform. The controller needs tuning I agree. Ezlo has amazing controller. Joining forces of these two development team created literally the biggest development team in Home Automation! So now we will use Cloud platform that Vera has, improve the controller, add brand new super fast, super stable, super cost effective controllers, create an ecosystem where anyone can write their own custom home automation product and sell it in our app store. These are our plans. We are not only joining forces of both development teams but expanding them as well!