I give up

Community Playground General Discussions
#81

[quote=“kigmatzomat, post:78, topic:199599”][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.[/quote]

now I am depressed too :frowning:
Now I will use this list to start building a department that can take all these and get it resolved and report back to you…
Please do keep it coming …

#82

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?[/quote]

I tried to answer as much as I can in this thread http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,102841.msg412403.html#msg412403 .
Happy to answer any other questions you may have.

“Why are you starting out in the forum by hiding behind a semi-anonymous username?”
:slight_smile: just type “melih” in Google…its NOT a “semi”…try www.melih.com …and so on…

I am here to try to make things good for you guys! I am on your side! Your happiness is the only way I get return on my investment!

#83

[quote=“melih, post:80, topic:199599”][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![/quote]

That’s sounds promising so. You do have a large mountain to climb to achieve your goals. A lot of long standing customers with a lot of time and energy invested into Vera will hold you to that promise. Clearly many of them have been let down badly.

Remember it costs a lot more to attract a new customer than it does to maintain a current one.

#84

[quote=“peterxbmc, post:83, topic:199599”][quote=“melih, post:80, topic:199599”][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![/quote]

That’s sounds promising so. You do have a large mountain to climb to achieve your goals. A lot of long standing customers with a lot of time and energy invested into Vera will hold you to that promise. Clearly many of them have been let down badly.

Remember it costs a lot more to attract a new customer than it does to maintain a current one.[/quote]

Accountability is only expected and we welcome it.

#85

Hello Melih…I hope you can lead us out of the wilderness.

My biggest frustration with Vera? I have to “walk back” or “dumb down” my controller to achieve stability denying myself promised/advertised features.

Fix it and you are my hero.

That is all.

Keep your head down. Always move forward. I’ll see you on the beach.

(yes…owning a vera is the home automation equivalent of being told your going on a beach holiday only to learn you are really participating in a amphibious landing under enemy fire…)

#86

Melih,
So I have to ask…

What does eZLO buyout of Mios have to do with Vera? Micasaverde is just one company using Mios (actually Vera Control, Ltd) So indirectly you can improve Vera buy improving Mios but I think the implementation on top of MIOS is still in someone else’s hands. So the crappy (outdated) UI7 will still be crappy. Unless I am missing something here… or reading information online that may be old…

It looks like a bunch of other companies also use MIOS like honeywell, actiontec, behome247, trick tv… the list goes on. So I don’t think micasaverde and vera are unique here.

So can you help clarify what involvement eZLO with actually have in the complete Vera package? Just MIOS improvements or everything Vera?

#87

[quote=“Inzax, post:85, topic:199599”]Hello Melih…I hope you can lead us out of the wilderness.

My biggest frustration with Vera? I have to “walk back” or “dumb down” my controller to achieve stability denying myself promised/advertised features.

Fix it and you are my hero.

That is all.

Keep your head down. Always move forward. I’ll see you on the beach.

(yes…owning a vera is the home automation equivalent of being told your going on a beach holiday only to learn you are really participating in a amphibious landing under enemy fire…)[/quote]

Been on that beach myself! I too had my very first Vera…
We are identifying the problems. The main thing is Vera did not have enough developers and resources to create a more agile capability to respond to the needs. We are bringing the resources (doubled the development overnight by joining forces, of course it will take time for the teams to gel together etc). We are also bringing all the processes to get everything moving smoothly. Things should just work!. Of course sometimes we have to live with the shortcomings of the protocols we use, for example: something that happens in the zwave protocol is assumed to be our problem etc, but we have no problem taking that responsibility and elevating it to the people who are in charge of the zwave protocol.

I am hell-bent :slight_smile: in making sure there is an amazing home automation platform so that everyone can create a home automation product! In 2018 we should be able to easily automate our homes at minimal cost without going to this vendor, or that vendor and be an engineer to get things working!

So my journey is to build the platform (not just the product) so that the whole industry can use this platform to provide an amazing home automation capabilities to their users that simply work and very cost effective!

@Inzax: please pm with exact issues you are having. We are now collating all the issues so that we can create a development roadmap and push it to dev teams for solutions. thanks.

#88

[quote=“randya, post:86, topic:199599”]Melih,
So I have to ask…

What does eZLO buyout of Mios have to do with Vera? Micasaverde is just one company using Mios (actually Vera Control, Ltd) So indirectly you can improve Vera buy improving Mios but I think the implementation on top of MIOS is still in someone else’s hands. So the crappy (outdated) UI7 will still be crappy. Unless I am missing something here… or reading information online that may be old…

It looks like a bunch of other companies also use MIOS like honeywell, actiontec, behome247, trick tv… the list goes on. So I don’t think micasaverde and vera are unique here.

So can you help clarify what involvement eZLO with actually have in the complete Vera package? Just MIOS improvements or everything Vera?[/quote]

We bought it all…Vera, Mios etc…So expect improvement in everything from the hardware controller to Cloud services to mobile apps to developer’s ecosystem…

#89
developer's ecosystem...

Ah, interesting. Vera’s attitude to third-party developers, who, arguably have done much to keep users on this platform, has been, to say the least, frosty. Possibly actively obstructive.

Too early, perhaps, to have a strategy on developer collaboration?

#90

Music, sweet music.

#91

[quote=“akbooer, post:89, topic:199599”]

developer’s ecosystem…

Ah, interesting. Vera’s attitude to third-party developers, who, arguably have done much to keep users on this platform, has been, to say the least, frosty. Possibly actively obstructive.

Too early, perhaps, to have a strategy on developer collaboration?[/quote]

Our idea is that we want to be a “home automation platform” …so that every developer who wants to build a “home automation product” can go ahead and build it easily. We have so much capabilities we want to bring to developer’s ecosystem…i can’t wait!!! :slight_smile:

#92

well, I got my RPi and it’s up and running hassos.
I added the vera as a controler and it discovered all my “stuff”
While the documentation is fairly clear, it also assumes a higher level of understanding of their code.
I’m having trouble creating from scratch the equivalent of a scene. I think if I had an example of HA/Vera code I could figure it out.
Mike can show ab example of your code with vera devices.
basicly as and example I’d like to turn on a light for 5 minutes after a door is opened and then off agaon and run this HA code along with the light coming on

so when door is opened
Kitchen_Door 1
Vera Device Id 65
binary_sensor.kitchen_door_1_65

turn on this light
Kit_Eat_Light_Dim
Vera Device Id 14
light.kit_eat_light_dim_14

run this code
shell_command:
playkitchenopen: curl “http://192.168.0.2/sound.php?file=fdo&volume=100”

I’m looking on how to expose the scene code HA has imported from Vera.

#93

BTW, I hadn’t seen all the “melih” following my previous post until after posting the above…

melih; I have the same issues others have. Scenes can take seconds or minutes.
after moving to a veraplus from a veralite, my ca600 switches stopped working after a few weeks (on the plus) and the aeon door sensors go to “can’t detect device” after a few hours of being included or popping them off the wall and hitting the tamper switch to get them talking again.

I never had any issues with the veralite and ui5 other than functionality ( i’m just not interested in leaning programing to make a scene work) but vera made me an upgrade offer to a veraplus and i went for it.
The plus was better from a functionality standpoint but again, I’m not interested in learning luup or pleg to do the things I’d like to do. The HA “scripts” seen easy enough and given a few good example I think I’ll get the hang of it.

What I’d expect from a Vera interface is the ability for an untrained user to be able to create a scene without needing to be a full fledged programmer.

at this point I’m considering stripping the vera(s) down to just device controllers and moving all other functions to Home Assistant.
Several users on the HA community have asked that they support multiple vera hubs and I fully expect it to happen fairly soon. Their open systems developer systems seems very responsive and promptly adds features when requested.

#94

You need to reach out to the remaining key developers. Richard Schaefer, developer of PLEG (the single most useful plug in), veralerts and concierge should be top of the list. The devs for multiswitch, Datamine, datatayours, altui, reactor, dsc alarm and elk alarm plug in should be your short list.

#95

[quote=“RV, post:93, topic:199599”]BTW, I hadn’t seen all the “melih” following my previous post until after posting the above…

melih; I have the same issues others have. Scenes can take seconds or minutes.
after moving to a veraplus from a veralite, my ca600 switches stopped working after a few weeks (on the plus) and the aeon door sensors go to “can’t detect device” after a few hours of being included or popping them off the wall and hitting the tamper switch to get them talking again.

I never had any issues with the veralite and ui5 other than functionality ( i’m just not interested in leaning programing to make a scene work) but vera made me an upgrade offer to a veraplus and i went for it.
The plus was better from a functionality standpoint but again, I’m not interested in learning luup or pleg to do the things I’d like to do. The HA “scripts” seen easy enough and given a few good example I think I’ll get the hang of it.

What I’d expect from a Vera interface is the ability for an untrained user to be able to create a scene without needing to be a full fledged programmer.

at this point I’m considering stripping the vera(s) down to just device controllers and moving all other functions to Home Assistant.
Several users on the HA community have asked that they support multiple vera hubs and I fully expect it to happen fairly soon. Their open systems developer systems seems very responsive and promptly adds features when requested.[/quote]

We are creating an eco system for both developers as well as non developers…for developers so that they can build the next amazing home automation software and make it available to you…non developers so that they can manipulate it without requiring a phd in programming. Few issues we have to sort, but it is our vision to deliver that platform to you.

#96

You need to reach out to the remaining key developers. Richard Schaefer, developer of PLEG (the single most useful plug in), veralerts and concierge should be top of the list. The devs for multiswitch, Datamine, datatayours, altui, reactor, dsc alarm and elk alarm plug in should be your short list.[/quote]

Thank you! Most definitely, will try to get everyone’s feedback. Our philosophy is that no brain is better than the other…so the more brains working together the better. We love to work with our community, very closely.

#97

My Oh My! Looks like my departing thread here has helped morphed Vera into a promising future. I do hope melih can pull off what he claims and save Vera. For me it’s too late. My Hubitat hub arrives tomorrow and I’ve been whipped into submission by Vera. I won’t be looking back, but I do wish Vera a bright future and at the least a stable and dependable controller.

Besides having to start all over, I have to fix the tremendous wife factor damage Vera has done.

Good luck to you all, hope it gets sorted.

#98

I’d have more to say but a goodbye thread is probably not the best place but I’m going to say this again anyway.

hardware is cheap.
put some memory and storage in the Vera. I can buy a Raspberry Pi or a Pine64 off the shelf for $40 and have a better computer than what’s in the Vera.

Perhaps we should move this “what can melih do for us” to a new thread like “Suggestions for melih” or “Suggestions for the new owners” or “Suggestions to melih for Vera going forward”

#99

[quote=“RV, post:98, topic:199599”]I’d have more to say but a goodbye thread is probably not the best place but I’m going to say this again anyway.

hardware is cheap.
put some memory and storage in the Vera. I can buy a Raspberry Pi or a Pine64 off the shelf for $40 and have a better computer than what’s in the Vera.

Perhaps we should move this “what can melih do for us” to a new thread like “Suggestions for melih” or “Suggestions for the new owners” or “Suggestions to melih for Vera going forward”[/quote]

Put me in the camp of people that disagree that dialing up Vera’s hardware would do much for performance.

My production Vera Plus (well over 100 Z-wave devices and another half as many virtual/plugin) sits at a one minute load average of 0.2 right now, and is rarely much higher. That means that averaged over one minute, there is 1/5 of a process waiting to run or running. It is effectively idle. It’s also got 124K mem free, which may not seem like much in the absolute by today’s standards, but it’s around 48% of system RAM–that’s quite a lot. There’s plenty there waiting to be used.

Most of the slowdowns I have observed on Vera are the result of bugs or other problems: some people show evidence of memory leaks (and many do not); some people have troublesome Z-Wave devices that bog down the mesh; Vera single-threads too many operations; etc. Who knows what’s going on internally. But based on what I see and my own experience, most of the problems could be addressed by finding and fixing bugs, and optimizing code and behavior, not by throwing more hardware at the problem. Doing the latter, in fact, will solve nothing–it will just defer the effect of those memory leaks until the greater amount of memory is filled, or have a faster processor sitting waiting for I/O at the same clip as the older slower one. Storage would be useful to boost, but that’s about it, in my view.

I’ve so far spent nearly 40 years feeding myself as a software engineer. Over that time I’ve watched the industry become progressively more lazy, and lose the skills that were once vital to doing useful work when the only RAM you had was 64K, or 16K, or 4K. Software engineers and “coders” today are overly dependent on Moore’s Law for addressing their performance problems.

And a big contributor is also constant external and internal pressure for new features, which I’m sure Vera’s engineering team gets in volume, never leaving the time to go back and really review and clean house, unless something is on fire in that area. There’s no reward for going back and making it work better; just make it work and move on, turn and burn. That is what I think Melih should change, because it’s affecting more than just performance.

#100

[quote=“RV, post:98, topic:199599”]I’d have more to say but a goodbye thread is probably not the best place but I’m going to say this again anyway.

hardware is cheap.
put some memory and storage in the Vera. I can buy a Raspberry Pi or a Pine64 off the shelf for $40 and have a better computer than what’s in the Vera.[/quote]

Oh yes this.

A Homeseer Zee is based on a Pi3 and costs $200. A veraplus is $150. Compare the two:
Veraplus single core 880Mhz CPU vs zee quad core 1.2Ghz
Veraplus 256MB ram vs zee 1GB ram

Even a $300 vera secure is only a dual core 880MHz and 512MB ram.

The veras have “unlimited” plug in support, unlike the homeseer zee, but it’s a false equivalence. Homeseer’s rules engine is more powerful then vera as powerful as pleg but easier to use than pleg. Homeseer supports virtual devices natively. Between those two, it makes a lot of the vera plugins unnecessary.