I tried UI7 about 2 or 3 months ago and it was just horrible compared to UI5 (which is no where near perfect). It was slow, inefficient, lacking features, and overall just sucky. There have been a couple updates since. Do you guys think it’s ready for prime time now?
I don’t think anything you have described has changed (look at the change log). UI7 was a big software change, servers, looks, and where everything is located.
I was holding out on ui5 with my LITE for months even after owning an EDGE. I made the change and am happy now. I think the problem is people don’t like change and after you do it for a month you get used to it and I have now upgraded all my older VERA’s to ui7 anyways.
To anwser your question your probley going to feel the same today as you did 2 or 3 months ago if you make the change.
I upgraded all 3 of my veralites at 3 locations from ui5 to ui7 and all is well and good here.
I too have upgraded both my units to UI7 and am happy that I went through the upgrade.
I have given up hope that my veralite will ever run well with UI7. I use GarageDoor, Nest, Sonos and VeraAlerts, with several PLEG automations. The baseline memory consumption seems to not allow too much wiggle room for apps to run, and I think it’s why it was always a glitchy when I tried it with 7.0.3 and 7.0.2. Downgraded to UI5 and have been glitch free for nearly 2 months now.
If asked 2 weeks ago I would have answered “yes migrate” however after a bad experience last weekend my advice would be to hold back if there is no real need. Overall UI7 is okay however there are still issues (which is not uncommon). The issue I ran into last weekend concerned moving a plugin from the “no room” to a room. This change made my veralite end up in an unuseable state. I had to go through the whole cycle reverting back to ui5 upgrade again upgrade and restore backup (it took much more time than described here as I had to repeat it several times :-[). So I’ am back on UI7 but I don’t dare to move any plugin.
Unfortunately, it is a BIG NO for me. I downgraded from UI5 to UI7 yesterday. After nothing but problems I am trying to do a factory reset and get back to UI5.
There was a lot I liked about UI7, but reliability is important to me. There servers were down this morning so I couldn’t log into my Vera. I work in IT and know servers go down. I can live with that. After the servers came back on line and a couple couple of calls to support I was finally able to log into my Vera Lite. That was a couple of hours ago. Now it says my username or password is wrong.
I copied and pasted my password. Not on just one computer, two Macs and a Windows 7 PC. I had successfully logged in on each computer this morning, now I cannot. I clicked on “I forgot my password” and it sent me a new one. That didn’t work either.
I liked UI7 for an hour or so but I don’t want to be an beta tester on something I depend on. I am going to wait until the bugs are out before I try it again. 
Chris
[quote=“ChrisK, post:7, topic:186796”]Unfortunately, it is a BIG NO for me. I downgraded from UI5 to UI7 yesterday. After nothing but problems I am trying to do a factory reset and get back to UI5.
There was a lot I liked about UI7, but reliability is important to me. There servers were down this morning so I couldn’t log into my Vera. I work in IT and know servers go down. I can live with that. After the servers came back on line and a couple couple of calls to support I was finally able to log into my Vera Lite. That was a couple of hours ago. Now it says my username or password is wrong.
I copied and pasted my password. Not on just one computer, two Macs and a Windows 7 PC. I had successfully logged in on each computer this morning, now I cannot. I clicked on “I forgot my password” and it sent me a new one. That didn’t work either.
I liked UI7 for an hour or so but I don’t want to be an beta tester on something I depend on. I am going to wait until the bugs are out before I try it again.
Chris[/quote]
Servers are still down and have been since 6am (see their post), I know they have been up and down but they are still working on it. There is an official announcement in that thread on it. You password is not wrong they are down.
You been on ui7 for less then a day and your complaints in the post above (I’m sure you can come up with more but that’s what you posted) are only with the servers down.
I also have not confirmed that ui5 servers are still up.
Fair enough. I knew the servers were down earlier, but was unaware that they went down again. My timing to try UI7 probably couldn’t happen at a worse time. :-\ Like I said, there was a lot about UI7 that I liked. I am completely down now. I will wait and see what happens for the rest of the day.
[quote=“ChrisK, post:9, topic:186796”]@integlikewhoa
Fair enough. I knew the servers were down earlier, but was unaware that they went down again. My timing to try UI7 probably couldn’t happen at a worse time. :-\ Like I said, there was a lot about UI7 that I liked. I am completely down now. I will wait and see what happens for the rest of the day.[/quote]
I been up and down all morning, I’m actually currently up right now, but as it’s been going all morning not surprised if I go back down. There was 1 or two times before they posted server problems, but lucky for me those times didn’t seem to affect me. This is actually The first I had an outtage on ui7, but I know this won’t be the last. I had a few on ui5 but I did use it for over a year and non of those lasted to long either. Sh*t happens I have a windows computer I use for Blueiris, PLEX media server and such. I have remote client installed on it and can access it from anywhere, open a web browser and local connect to VERA if I really need anything.
VPN could also be setup on my phone and home router running DDWRT which I haven’t done but might look into it soon.
There is options.
UI7 does have problems but the first week is the hardest for anyuser coming from ui5. ( I did it myself on two LITEs and went to two EDGES) Everything is different, misplaced, or what you assume is stupid compaired to what you had before and were used to using in ui5. After some time it kinds of grows on you. It’s not great but you know how to use it and it functions. You learn how to do restarts and browser refreshes and it becomes the new “normal”.
With UI5, I don’t need their servers to be up is the thing, I just VPN in to my router and I can access it directly from the webUI, or with AutHomeationHD on my phone.
With UI7, it’s a total crap-out if vera servers are down even on the local access. It’s a big regression when the box can’t operate without some unstable backend server dependency.
sortadan, I am a little confused about your statement. I am using a VeraLite on firmware version 1.7.541. I can still get at my system via the webUI if the MCV server goes down. Are you referring to specific features that stop functioning? That was one of the things I liked about my MCV. It isn’t dependent on an company server to continue working like some HA systems. I hope MCV isn’t going to change that with a future upgrade.
I’m unimpressed so far and I’m pretty sad about the whole Vera experience.
I bought back in the UI5 days, and I got a few random crashes and ERGY was clunky. I didn’t have to look at the UI much because it had great app support via mobile, and my crashes were rare. I was using Richard’s plugins, and I was getting push notifications and I thought all that was pretty darn cool. He wanted $$ for his service app, and I have mixed feelings about that (mostly that Vera didn’t just license the rights somehow to his code or something, cause I felt like it should do that out of the box IMHO) That said, to paraphrase history, “the trains ran on time”.
I upgraded a few months ago. It basically bricked all of my scenes. OK, fine, I went through and rejiggered all my triggers, because that seems to have changed. The use of whitespace in UI7 makes it pretty wonky for mobile devices, and the icons are huge. It’s taken me a while, but most everything is back up and running again.
This morning, I couldn’t set my house into sleep mode as I walked out… I tried connecting via my local area connection, cell network… no dice. Apparently MCV’s servers were down. That doesn’t really work for me.
Stuff like this really needs to run flawlessly for me. I’m sorry if I’m being hard and unforgiving, but really… it’s 2015, not 2008. I don’t have time to get in a fight with my lamps, and I don’t have any more patience to give to MCV. There are zillions of users of Vera… like why aren’t the servers cloud hosted on Amazon S3 with full redundant whatevers in place. The answer is because it would require a fee, just like how Richard needs a fee to keep his servers running (which I’m not advocating against, I just am not sure I’m sticking with Vera anymore entirely).
Futhermore… I feel like one of the biggest issues was lack of documentation. Even in the UI5 days, the wiki was totally outdated. If it wasn’t for lurking in the forum, I never would have figured some of this stuff out. I feel like other solutions exist and are better documented, but it could just be me thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
I was a total champion of this little thing for a number of years. Maybe I’m just depressed and someone can cheer me up, but I have an OpenHAB Aeon Z-Stick and a SmartThings hub in my Amazon cart right now.
You can check AltUI plugin. MiOS Apps
All it needs is a plugin on your Vera and works on ui5 or ui7 boxes
It works 100% local when accessed locally and remote access is also possible.
It covers 90% of ui7 functionality plus some extra that you don’t have on Ui7 ( like event trigger Luna code, custom icons in remote mode, user designed (drag n drop) custom pages ) and it is fast and responsive design ( meaning it adapts to your screen size from iPhone to full screen desktop computer for instance )
Doc screenshots discussion and intermediate versions are discussed here :
Your mileage may vary , let us know your experience with it in this altUI forum thread…
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,30310.0.html
Update to a previous post. I tried UI7 on my Vera Lite over the weekend. I would have liked to have stayed on UI7, but there were two issues I couldn’t live with, the necessity to have connectivity to Vera’s servers to log into the device and the speed of the OS.
The speed is an issue because I have a Z-Wave motion sensor that when triggered, a command is sent via the Vera Lite to a Raspberry Pi that acts as a gateway to a ZigBee network. A Zigbee connected Arduino then turns on an LED light strip along my stairway. With UI5 the light would turn on as I approached the stairs. With UI7, I could be half way down the stairs before the light came on.
Besides all of that, it was a total headache doing the upgrade and getting things to work. So I am back on UI5, as clunky as it looks, it works better for me.
You dont need to have internet or connectivity to login to vera on ui5 or ui7.
This has been said many times. Some of us use vpn to login even when remote so severs are not needed then either. But for most servers are needed for remote login only and for account changes, backups that are saved on vera servers.
Internet is required for several plugins, time zone things and a few others. So for most of us internet really is a requirement for all of our plugins to work, but by stock standards its not needed also.
The first thing I wanted to do after UI7 was up and running was a local backup. You need to authenticate against Vera’s severs to do a backup. When I tried it they were down. Their notification said the disruption was over. I didn’t see anyway to do a local backup when I was able to login. Some won’t care, but I do. I don’t see any value in forcing me to authenticate to a cloud server.
Chris
[quote=“ChrisK, post:17, topic:186796”]The first thing I wanted to do after UI7 was up and running was a local backup. You need to authenticate against Vera’s severs to do a backup. When I tried it they were down. Their notification said the disruption was over. I didn’t see anyway to do a local backup when I was able to login. Some won’t care, but I do. I don’t see any value in forcing me to authenticate to a cloud server.
Chris[/quote]
I’m unaware of this, I know they have server backup now which would require it, but using the check box for local backup I haven’t tested without internet.
EDIT: did you ask or search if this was common practice?
Automated backups go to their server.
When you do a manual backup it is download to your computer via the Browser.
[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:19, topic:186796”]Automated backups go to their server.
When you do a manual backup it is download to your computer via the Browser.[/quote]
Well yes but there is also a check box now on UI7 that asks during a manual backup if you would like to upload to server also.
But he’s saying that he couldn’t even preform a manual backup when the server was down. Have you tried that Richard?