A very comprehensive IFTTT. however there are also many 3rd party (Developers) who have contributed powerful plug ins.
A fact overlooked is that it was primarily designed as a Home Automation System 10 years before Z-Wave and as such has many different system Integrations.
Good old PLEG! I used that for a long time and skipped using Reactor plugin for Vera all together. MSR is so much better than PLEG though.
Interesting using MSR and MQTT to integrate with HA platforms that MSR doesn’t directly support.
Any update on when Envisalink / DSC will be integrated?
DSC plugin is in the works…this month fingers crossed…
I’m thinking about migration paths like fixes to the current issues of adding an Ezlo controller as a secondary controller to the Vera primary controller.
Or easier shorter term solutions like the planned newer and improved and easier to use Vera to Ezlo bridge plugin based on what Rene created.
I have to say without Renes Bridge plugin Ezlo hubs for testing would of been very much less attractive.
His bridge plugin works extremely well but is not so easy for every user to setup and implement.
Any news from Ezlo on either of these fronts?
Thanks.
This week I finally gave up hope for a reliable Ezlo Plus mesh environment any time soon. Time to put 2 of my 3 Ezlo Plus hubs aside for now. Just too many thing aren’t available now or just don’t work. I’ve just ordered a Hubitat C7 hub and will start testing it out. Don’t get me wrong though as I’m not giving up on Ezlo, just replacing it while it is under development. I do like the direction Ezlo is going in but I need a reliable, full featured system now as my main hub. I always said that the legacy Vera hubs should have been supported until the Ezlo firmware and plugins were fully developed that way we don’t have to go through all the growing pains we’re experiencing now.
I have had my logs take many times in an attempt to fix various device and reliability issues but many are still pending.
The main missing services and device issues that prompted me to move to a competitor are:
- No DSC alarm plugin that supports the IT-100 interface board. Current Ezlo plugin gives a “failed to get file data” error during install
- No TTS support
- No working voice assistant integration
- Can’t program negative temperature values in scenes
- Unreliable scene execution
- Many devices stop responding until hub is rebooted and even then they don’t always work. (main issue)
- Many Zooz device still don’t work or work sporadically even after the firmware update that was to fix the issues.
- No Big Ass Fan plugin (Haiku)
- Some device still refuse to respond to the delete command
- Controlling devices from multiple Ezlo hubs is not possible even using cloud MeshBots
- Smart Start does not work
- Exclude function does not always show the proper LED status
I’ll keep following the progress and test new releases out on my one remaining Ezlo Plus hub. Going to keep my Vera hubs running until I have something to reliably replace them with. Maybe some day I’ll get all three Ezlo Plus hubs running without issues.
Also following the development of the new “Matter” IP based mesh system. No word from Ezlo if there will be support for these devices.
Hello @JimMac
Yes.
We will have a Matter compatible Hub.
Regards,
Jonathan Botero.
Customer Care Tier 1 Support.
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Will that be a new expense for us or a firmware update for our Ezlo hubs?
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@JimMac I just gave up too. This is the most frustrating piece of technology in my home and it is supposed to make life easier but it is making it more difficult for my family and I.
I’m a tech addict, I have everything and this is the worst.
I just can’t spend the time on it anymore.
so many promises of fixes and things seem to be getting worse instead of better.
My move to Hubitat is complete and running solid. It was quick and mostly painless even with old zwave devices. At least I have the house and grounds automated again and the family is happy once more. My next task is to migrate the devices on my Vera Secure and Vera3 hubs for a total of 87 devices.
Now I have time on my side and I can sit back and watch what happens with each firmware update for my Ezlo hubs.
It’s unfortunate that this is happening and probably avoidable by Ezlo if they extended the life of the Vera hardware.
I’ve been with Vera even before the very first hub was released to the public and owned at least one of every hub version. This may be history for me now.
I’m going to have to investigate Hubitat more myself. My Vera plus is still going strong, and I like the vision that that the Ezlo administrative staff has expressed for the Ezlo devices, but the fact is that it has been several years since the Ezlo devices were initially in “beta” testing, and yet they still are not a viable replacement for Vera.
I’ll probably stick around, and keep hoping that eventually they get there, but for now, having an alternative in the back pocket seems prudent.
Hi @ibrewster , @JimMac , @meathead88
we are sorry about seeing you moving away, we are working hard on bringing the platform to a level where “no automation enthusiast is left behind” as @melih said.
And we are working on multiple initiatives in parallel to achieve that.
So let me re-state any topic you are not happy with and try to address those asap.
From the previous post of @JimMac I state those as pain points:
-
No DSC alarm plugin that supports the IT-100 interface board. Current Ezlo plugin gives a “failed to get file data” error during install
We have the DSC plugin working for a long time. Currently we have a technical problem on plugin download from the cloud. We are working on it with highest priority. -
No TTS support
This will be prioritized in our integrations list immediately. Which TTS would you like to see first ? Alexa ? -
No working voice assistant integration
As you may have already noticed we worked on it and it should be working up to a point right now. Do you still have problems on this ? -
Can’t program negative temperature values in scenes
This will be added to our fix list asap. -
Unreliable scene execution
We already are working on it on the long run. Another forum post already mentioned about it. But the situation was on the corner cases (like on the end of the zwave range etc…) Do you have the same situation or is it sth else ? -
Many devices stop responding until hub is rebooted and even then they don’t always work. (main issue)
Can we have example of those devices ? -
Many Zooz device still don’t work or work sporadically even after the firmware update that was to fix the issues.
Can we have the exact Zooz models ? -
No Big Ass Fan plugin (Haiku)
This will be prioritized in the integrations list -
Some device still refuse to respond to the delete command
Can we have an example of it pls ? -
Controlling devices from multiple Ezlo hubs is not possible even using cloud MeshBots
This also is a feature which is available for a long time and is working fine. Can you again give an example , we can get logs from your controller if necessary -
Smart Start does not work
This is also a zwave feature which should be working fine again. Can you tell us the exact model of the device you have problem with pls ? -
Exclude function does not always show the proper LED status
Can we have a specific example to work on this ?
@ibrewster , @JimMac , @meathead88 do you have additions to this list ? Any other immediate areas we can work on ?
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I’ve had multiple support tickets open (with techs in testing my lights in the middle of the night) so if you’d like any model numbers, feel free to jump in my Ezlo and look around.
If you want to start paying us for our work on your system, i’d be happy to get more detailed info.
I haven’t tried the DSC integration as the Ezlo fails to run any scene with more than 1 target device reliably so why bother connecting my 48 DSC sensors yet?
i don’t know about TTS
This is the page to set up which devices Alexa has access to, correct?
https://home.getvera.com/amazon/alexa/ezlo/smarthome/devicelist
After 6 solid months of trouble tickets this page is still out of sync with what is actually added in my Ezlo. Devices i’ve long since deleted from Ezlo are still showing up to add to Alexa.
Not worried about negative temps
Again, the Ezlo fails to run any scene that has more than 1 target device, like 6 in-wall dimmers, reliably. I spent $2000 to have professional Christmas lights installed and Ezlo FAILED EVERDAY to turn on all 5 zwave plugs and switches. One day these 2 switches would turn on and not the other 3, then 4 would turn on but not 1, then none would come on, no reasoning at all. …and if you dare say it’s a range issue…
I have to reboot Ezlo daily to get any kind of acceptable responsiveness.
I threw 5 Zooz plugs away after your tech support said they were causing Zwave network overload. Well my problems remain. If you want the models i still have, connect in to my Ezlo.
Smart start doesn’t work, skips to the end most times after scanning QR code then if you are able to add it correctly, it never really deletes.
The new version of the mobile app has issues too… Some device’s power toggels don’t do anything but make a clicking noise when tapped. funny that if the device is a dimmer, the dimmer slider works while the power toggle doesn’t do anything but click.
My home automation system is going to give me carpel tunnel…
Here is a probably incomplete list of things that come to mind so spontaneously:
- Smoke Sensors are not displayed in the Dynamic Dashboard
- Heating control is unreliable, because not all commands are always executed (ECS-987) and impractical, because you have to create many MeshBots and you quickly lose track. There has to be some kind of special scheduler GUI for that case (ECS-830)
- Devices with negative values are displayed as offline
- MiOS App is very slow and you need a lot of patience if you want to check something or switch a device. It feels like an eternity from the start of the app until you see something in the device tab. Sometimes no devices are shown here at all. Then you have to end the task and restart the app. And if you briefly switch to another app and back to MiOS, you usually end up back at the controller selection and the waiting starts all over again. That’s not fun. This is also completely independent of whether I am local or remote.
- Adding devices usually requires several attempts and seems very tricky. It is also still not possible to add devices via the web frontend.
- Setting Z-Wave parameters is anything but intuitive. It is not possible to read out the parameters. Once the parameters have been added to a device, it would also be nice if you could copy them to other identical devices. And it would be great, for those who are not programmers, if the Z-Wave parameters could be integrated step by step into the corresponding devices in such a way that you only have to set a slider or something similar.
- The " Ezlo Community Feature Request and Bug Tracker" seems to be falling asleep again. There was a momentum again a while ago when I pointed this out. But now it gives the impression that people only look in there sporadically. The idea of the feature request and bug tracker is good and has huge potential to move this platform forward, but it doesn’t seem to be a priority. If you have problems/requests, you get better feedback if you contact support directly or write something here in the forum.
- Designing dashboards is not exactly intuitive. You can theoretically do a lot of really cool things with it… if you know how. I once had an online session with Ezlo, where the whole thing was explained/showed to me. Nevertheless, a few days later I couldn’t manage to recreate it. Either the designer has to be rebuilt so that you can do it without studying or we need (video) tutorials with many examples “how do I do…”
For my part, it’s more the ongoing trend rather than anything specific. Back when the Ezlo Plus devices were first released in beta, I was excited - then they came out of beta, without fixing any of the issues I (and others) had reported. Oh well, that would come in time - the main thing was the lack of the DSC plugin.
Then the DSC plugin was released, and I thought I could start switching over. But no, I ran into some problems with the plugin. No worries - those would be fixed!
And so it went. Most recently, I tried to install the latest version of the DSC plugin to see if it fixed the remaining issues I had with it, only to discover (after removing the old version), that I couldn’t install the new version of the plugin. That was four months ago.
Now apparently that problem will be fixed shortly, but it’s gotten to the point I have to wonder: what will be the next show-stopper issue? And how many months will it take to fix that?
This is, of course, all in addition to the ongoing, but not show-stopper, issues, some of which you have no intention of fixing, such as:
- No local Command/control/configuration web interface (EZLogic is cloud-only). Hubitat explicitly lists the local configuration/setup as one of their features.
- False advertising: the ezlo plus webpage states the device (and this is a direct quote from the website) enables “…control of thousands of Wi-Fi devices paired to your Amazon Alexa”. But this feature has been non-functional since time immemorable.
- There still seems to be no easy way to transfer everything from my Vera to my Ezlo. If I’m going to have to move everything manually, it seems to make more sense to move everything to a platform that is stable, well supported (not four months+ for tickets), and actually gives me everything that Vera does (such as a local web interface)
I love the vision of Ezlo. I like the hardware that I’ve seen, and I like the admin staff. It’s just the track record of problem after problem, many of them taking months to fix (if they are fixed at all) that I am getting fed up with.
I have had some of the problems noted by others but my Ezlo is used at a seasonal home I don’t have it working there right now.
My work around for some of the problems:
- I created a daily meshbot that runs in at 3AM to reset Ezlo Plus. I have a 1 minute delay on the action so that it doesn’t get re-triggered if the reset happens quickly. My thinking is if the code has memory leaks and other cumulative problems, it gets a fresh start each day at a time I don’t care about if it goes offline for a minute or two.
action is: os.execute(“reboot”) - For some of the scheduled scenes (date and time triggered mostly) I double up on the actions with a delay. In other-words when I turn on exterior lights I do it again a minute later as a clean up run for those devices that didn’t turn on. I know this is a band-aide but it did help with one node I had.
So in an ideal world you wouldn’t need to do these things but as we wait for the product to get more hardened this has been my stop gap plan.
I happen to be the Vera Plus user that started this particular thread back in September 2021. Every few months I check back here, to see who has jumped in and added their perspectives and, while always interesting/eye-opening, it’s also been discouraging, trending in a negative rather that positive direction.
I’ve been contemplating a move from Vera Plus for some time, but it’s updates like these most recent ones that leave me with the impression we will never get a product as stable/reliable/functional as Vera, at least not before my Vera melts down and is no longer supported (I have an extra Vera Plus in my cabinet just in case that does happen). Based on these latest posts, I think I’m going to look at an alternative. I don’t doubt the folks at Ezlo are working diligently, but this is simply taking too long, and I want a new platform that is stable, supported and being actively improved. Vera isn’t perfect, but it seemed like a good starting point. Why is it taking so long to get Ezlo to a level where Vera already was years ago?
I’ve heard good things about Habitat, so maybe that’s where I’m headed. I’m curious if anyone has used a recent/newer SmartThings hub (like the one from Aeotec, for example). My understanding is that Smartthings has evolved quite a bit, even since the performance comparison done by Ezlo a couple years ago.
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Been “cutting bait” for way too long waiting for Ezlo to get its act together. Some might even say that we hangers-on are home automation masochists. For me it’s time to “go fishing”. I am going to try the new Hubitat. It appears to embody all of what Vera/Ezlo was supposed to become. (Begs the question of whether Ezlo has the wrong architecture.) Need to try something different, after all the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing time and time again while expecting a different outcome.
for the Scene execution reliability, we identified the issue.
we use multi cast, its a zwave protocol recommended by them…
it has no scene execution validation unfortunately…
so our team is re-designing that and adding some of the tricks old Vera used to do.
FYI
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