Massive #FAIL MCV! - UI5

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices Vera Controllers & Cameras
1

I - in my view - being pretty forgiving about the very first Vera2/UI5 upgrade troubles (floating point fix that broke “everything” on V2/UI5) am now completely out of patience and forgiveness. My initial forgiveness was partially because it was something I could fix with a “simple” “reset to factory settings” downgrade and restore of backup.

Then I attempted to upgrade (again) to UI5 once v1.5.322 was released. That has been an unmitigated disaster and my Vera is presently unable to communicate with any z-wave device in my house. This one I can’t reset to factory defaults and restore a backup because you decided to limit the restore upload size (I understand why) without checking, warning about and preventing the downloaded/saved backup file size from growing beyond the max upload size limit hard coded in restore.sh… (Free product requirement advice & there will be more free advice below)

I have ~45(ish) Z-wave devices installed, so a pretty significant investment made in Z-wave and my Vera (not just materials, but also in terms of time). Additionally, I have recommended Vera to a number of people, including people I know have invested on their own. Don’t I feel great about that recommendation…

The debacle that has been UI5 on my Vera2 has seriously shaken my confidence in MCV as an entity and I will from now on, actively recommend against deploying MCV products to my friends.

@MCV, if you cannot afford to hire product testers and deploy a reasonable & comprehensive QA matrix, or you cannot afford to have a support organization with the resources in place to “cover” for the fact that your QA team is either lazy, incompetent or both, the viability of your company is seriously questionable (and it’s frighteningly visible!)

I have waited for 5(!) days with no substantive feedback on my “My Vera2 is now a brick” support case. This leads me to one of two conclusions (neither which helps instill any confidence in your company!); You’re either so swamped with high priority support cases after rolling out UI5 you’re incapable of responding to another high priority support case (that’s terrible from both a product release management and resource allocation perspective) and/or you do not prioritize “Vera down” as being an important support case.

You did respond to my “Powering off a light with an auxiliary GE/Jasco switches does not update the UI or fire an event in UI4” case within 48 hours (wow, color me impressed… Sarcasm, just in case it isn’t clear). That ticket was reported within 10 minutes of my “Vera Down” ticket, so obviously there is a prioritization problem in your support team. Let me elaborate: one case is “this is annoying and you should look to fix it”, the other is a “Service Unavailable” case. You, in your infinite wisdom decided the “this is annoying” case was more important to resolve… Let me guess, your techs are measured by call resolution volume and there are no internal SLA goals or penalties for ignoring higher priority cases - assuming you - like every other support organization out there - do prioritize the response to your incoming cases based on severity of the issue (and if you don’t, see above)

@MCV: 5 days without addressing a “product down” support ticket is completely unacceptable! And just to be clear: I don’t see how I’ll ever again recommend the Vera as a product!

But I can promise you, me being unhappy and sharing it with the world is not going away!

PS: Just a suggestion… By writing this post, I have presented you with an opportunity to “turn me around” (some people would not need this obvious of a hint, but a face-palm seems to be as subtle as it’s possible to be for you to “get it”). Not everybody understands that the true sign of a good organization is not that they have zero issues (quality and otherwise) - research Apple & “antenna gate” or any number of issues around their iPhone launches if you didn’t learn this in business school (they let you down, ask for your money back!) - it’s how they respond when they have those problems that defines how good they are. Obviously, based on having been a MCV customer since the early(ish) days of Vera1 and seen plenty of examples, I’ve also seen you guys continuously fail to “rise to the occasion”, so I’m not expecting this to be any different. But, I am - actually - a “glass half full” kind of guy and as a result, ridiculously forgiving. Until you stretch it too far. Fair warning; You are very close!

2

I agree in so many points:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,9472.msg64183.html#msg64183
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,9616.0.html

And as you say " ridiculously forgiving", I am sometimes asking my self why I am still using that device, and why I am still active in this forum. I do it for all the other users, trying to solve what mcv isn’t solving, trying to influence mcv in a positiv way, trying to prevent some horrible experiences I had for other users, trying to improve the vera by providing all kinds of info, trying to make mcv communicating, trying trying trying…

I also stopped recommending the vera to any of my friends. Only engineering-freaks like me which are basically annoyed by any system without problems will find joy in the vera, that might be another reason I am still here.

The one point I don’t agree is “… research Apple… …it’s how they respond when they have those problems that defines how good they are…” => They don’t have good customer support, they have dumb customers (like me) which buy there product even when they know it has serious issues (remember the iPhone 4 fail during the presentation from steve jobs where he continued with an iPhone 3GS. or remember that piece of “I will not swear” called iTunes). But that is an irrelevant topic in this matter.

But basically I can only agree with you, I don’t have any solutions for your serious issues. :cry: I hope after your post you get the priority you need. I know this want help you, but wanted to let you know that you are not the only unsatisfied user.

EDIT: lol, nice swear prevention!!

3

@sjolshagen,

I hear you and I don’t know why MCV folks haven’t responded. They should be able to map this to something that has come up before (i.e. I believe this is fixable). I’ll send them a PM.

So your backup is over 2MB?

Edit: PM sent to MCV staff.

4

I have had the Vera2 since shortly after it was released. Honestly it looked better on paper than my actual experience has been. I really like the z-wave (and have a bunch of devices) but I spent less time in the 80’s on an X-10 system run by a computer. Back then I “wanted” to tinker around. Today I want features to work, a nice interface and reliability. I feel than this is a step back in time. I want another controller. Like others I have recommended zwave to friends and they are far from technical persons. They truly want to plug in the toaster and get toast. Sadly unless you are willing to spend time well beyond what is reasonable for most homeowners or are an engineer or technogeek MCV is NOT for you. I am the aforementioned and I’m tired of messing with it. It’s like the company is a guy in his basement, doing work on an internationally launched product in his spare time aside from his normal day job. Heck the support for free apps for jailbroken iPhones gets an immediate response from the developer. On my tablet I had a problem with a .99 game and the dev contacted me back in 4 hours, said they hadn’t noticed the issue and issued a fix the next day - a .99 game…

5

So your backup is over 2MB?[/quote]

Thanks for your support and the PM to MCV on my behalf @oTi!

No, it’s 1.1MB which is .1MB above what the haserl --upload-limit value in restore.sh is set to: --upload-limit=1024 - (I am back down to 1.1.1338 at this point in time).

I’d “patch” restore.sh for a higher value (i.e. 2MB) and possibly (temporarily) redirect the upload/restore unpack location to the USB stick but AFICT, the script is read only and there’s no version of restore.sh on a writable file system on my Vera2.

6

Of course, being able to restore the backup may not fix my problem with the vera2 being unable to communicate with any of the Zwave devices (since they’re all “red” and unreachable now while my vera runs after having being “factory reset”).

7

I sure would like to hear what the alternatives in this price range are… I have been frustrated as well but have solved most of my problems with a large zwave network by breaking it up to three units. If you look at homeseer then you can drop $1000 bucks getting it to do what Vera is capable of doing. (Carefully chosen words around capable). I think a lot of problems and why this type of solution is not DIY friendly yet is that there are an infinite number of problems that can arise if you dont know what you are doing. We have a beta software stack that is evolving, (powerful, flexible but immature), you have RF issues with zwave, you need to be an electrician to install some switches (GE 3way!?), network knowledge for Wifi and connectivity. You can’t just go to Lowes and buy this solution for a reason. If any one here in the forums thinks this is ready for mass distribution (the reference to Apple) then you were mis-led. It is not. I continue to recommend this product to NOT the Apple crowd, but the geeks, nerds, engineers, adventurous people that want to learn, play, invent. As a professional I see people frustrated because they have clients that bought a solution from them and are expecting a certain level of stability. As far as I know the UI4 stack was pretty stable. Just my thoughts, open to feedback and criticism…

8

I had Homeseer when it first came out. Left it completely operational at a house we sold. Due to 3 years of traveling and 3 years one year rentals before purchasing another home I went with Vera as it “looked good”. I do agree with you on most parts, and I am of an engineering, and technical background. The perception from their website is far from the reality. The website portrays a happy household with smart phone integration and happy campers. That couldn’t be farther from reality in my mind. I can put ANY internet DVR camera system in ANY place with HSIA and my friends can have a system that just works. My point about the iPhone app is that even if you have a jailbroken unit, the devs of those apps respond as quickly as sanctioned app developers. I believe that Vera is under priced based on it’s potential capabilities and because of that price point, the company does not have the resources to fine tune the product. Although I don’t speak for them and don’t know their situation, this is my perception as a user. I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s not a bargain price. But in the same sentence. If it doesn’t perform then where is the savings. I’ve gotten plenty of free beach / ski resort house use by putting in a few cameras and a DVR, friends want to “be able to do what I do” with automation. But there is no way that I would open that can of worms even as a friend. I can’t imagine anyone automating for a living using MCV and putting themselves in that position. Is is “fun” to play with, sure, is it ready to hit the street. NO why would they release V3 with such a buggy firmware. If the free assistance of this forum didn’t exist, you may as well stand in the yard with the Vera in your hand waiting for lightening to hit it and reset it.

9

@sjolshagen We’ve had many support requests lately and while we hired more people it takes time until they learn enough to be able to help the customers without any additional support. We have people currently on support level 0 replying to the tickets that are coming from our website (e.g. your ticket about the GE device) which are usually not requiring much intervention on customers units, but instead requires researching and giving advices on what the next step would be.

We also received the tickets that you submitted from your Vera unit and as you probably saw, starting with UI5 we’re trying to categorize and prioritize the tickets in a more fashionable way, but we’re still currently a bit behind and while we’re trying to prioritize them for people at support level 1 to take a look, it still hard to follow up with all the tickets that require us to log in on customers units and check the logs to see exactly what happened.

The issue you encountered with the backup is very uncommon and rare. The backups shouldn’t exceed that limit in normal circumstances, but on your unit there were some files backed up when you previously encountered issues with the plugins that were causing a memory leak. Those files got included into the backup and the filesize exceeded the limit.

10

So, just for clarity, I fully agree (and I’ve never recommended vera to anybody who isn’t essentially a seasoned software engineer because most of the truly interesting things you want to do with a Vera requires a little - or a lot - bit of programming).The point on the Apple reference was to illustrate one way of delivering a superior customer experience (which isn’t a reflection of my personal opinion as much as it’s the reflection of every customer satisfaction survey I’ve seen, participated in or managed myself over the past 2-3 years).

I’ve spent more than a decade on the engineering side of a couple of large hardware and software manufacturers, so I believe I’m qualified (I could be wrong) to tinker my way around the Vera when things aren’t working “just right”. But the level of failure I’ve had this time around was way beyond “tinkering my way around” (a non-responsive Z-Wave network, unable to access and build my own sandbox/“distribution” which would have let me update the restore.sh script & fix the limit-size bug myself)

11

I saw a post about the Fibaro Home Center 2 (http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,9615.msg64350.html#msg64288). It is currently only available in Europe but it’s supposed to be released in the U.S. in mid-April. I don’t know the U.S. price yet and it will likely be at least 2x the price of the Vera 3, but if it works as advertised I would buy it in a heartbeat. The user who posted about it is in Europe and has one. So far he says it blows away his Vera.

http://www.fibaro.com/eng/home-center-2

12

I saw a post about the Fibaro Home Center 2 (http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,9615.msg64350.html#msg64288). It is currently only available in Europe but it’s supposed to be released in the U.S. in mid-April. I don’t know the U.S. price yet and it will likely be at least 2x the price of the Vera 3, but if it works as advertised I would buy it in a heartbeat. The user who posted about it is in Europe and has one. So far he says it blows away his Vera.

http://www.fibaro.com/eng/home-center-2[/quote]

Cut and Past from the fibro user forum
" Posted: 2012-03-01, 13:32
Seems That Does not Fibaro reponse in the last days … maybe overload to be ready for CeBIT … "
" Posted: 2012-02-29, 18:55
honestly … i do not care about Lily is much at the moment … and only would like to deploy my ezmotion 3 in 1’s as soon as Possible.

how can i get the beta version? … I mean … i was beta testing from the beginning anyway "

Google translate…

:stuck_out_tongue:

13

to me it sounds like a apple device… cheap hardware sold for the highest price and having a nice fancy interface but does only support ther own products and has probably a lot of ripped ideas from others.

14

What can I say - my Vera3 works perfect and have had zero problems - mostly because I keep it simple.

15

ditto… i expected problems as i like to poke around and change things and try beta software on the beta ui5 , but they seem minor fixable things. i really enjoy the platform

16

[quote=“PaulMcT, post:14, topic:170828”]What can I say - my Vera3 works perfect and have had zero problems - mostly because I keep it simple.[/quote]I’m glad you aren’t having problems, but if you are going to keep it simple, you don’t need a Vera.

I experimented with just using a Leviton controller, but it was too basic. Sure I could have scenes, but no “leaving” and having lights turn off after a minute, or coming 'home" and having the heat/AC automatically adjust.

17

I said simple. I did not say un-sophisticated. Good programmers make processes easy to use, easy to debug, and easy to maintain. In other words, simple, or, if you prefer, elegant. YMMV.

Cheerios,
PaulMcT.

18

A synonym for simple is actually unsophisticated!

It would appear Vera problem have nothing to do with “simple” or “non-simple” setups. Sometimes Vera just breaks or walks off into the ether, and just doesn’t work.

Remember, because you aren’t having problems, that’s GREAT. But to diminish the fact the a number of others are is marginalizing their experiences.

19

[quote=“PaulMcT, post:17, topic:170828”]I said simple. I did not say un-sophisticated. Good programmers make processes easy to use, easy to debug, and easy to maintain. In other words, simple, or, if you prefer, elegant. YMMV.

Cheerios,
PaulMcT.[/quote]

Since you claim you’ve never had a problem with your Vera, you appear to be assigning the source of fault to us, the end users. And you appear to indict lack of programming skill (“processes easy to use, easy to debug and easy to maintain”) on the end-users part as being part of the problem. I would suggest you go back and look at how Vera/Mios is positioned, then explain to us how the level of programming skill has anything to do with this product from an end-user perspective (hint: The fact that you do not need to be an CS or EE major is a significant - the dominant? - part of the value proposition).

And for the record, none of the problems I’ve personally had with MIOS/Vera have had anything to do with the Luup/LUA code I wrote (which, within the confines of the MIOS environment, are as easy to debug as they can be - i.e. lots, and lots, of log output :frowning: - it’d be really nice with a MIOS simulator, hint, hint, hint!) . It’s almost unequivocally components MCV have guaranteed will work and/or a new Firmware release / the upgrade process. And yes, sometimes that firmware release is “Beta” (often/always - MCV does seem to be in a near constant beta cycle :slight_smile: ) and things are expected to “go wrong” on occasion.

That said, and since I started this thread with a (massive) rant, let me state that I actually enjoy tinkering and writing code. It’s fun! It’s when the core OS fails (completely) and my wife complains that I get frustrated and cranky. I was very cranky earlier this week…

I don’t want to set a precedent, so I’ll state for the record, that it should not have taken that level of frustration (and public airing of it) for me to get the help I got as it will likely mean significant upswing in noise-to-activity on the forums (people will start b*tching here after only a couple of hours/minutes of perceived non-response). We all need to remember that nowhere in the purchase documentation does MCV provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

My primary frustration stemmed from the perceived prioritization of the support cases, not the fact that I had to wait a day or two (I expected that). Once I got help for my more critical problem, the help has been excellent and swift!

Thanks to Daniel @ MCV for that!

(Just hope I didn’t jinx myself now since my Vera isn’t 100% back to normal yet…)

20

ah well we are humans after all and even the most patient get somewhere in the line frustrated about the fact that he (and with him most of his life) cannot continu. so the problem needs solving . presure from other people in the surroundings can make this problem even bigger looking than in reality it most often is. the thing is we put trust in there product and they do there best to prove wurthy of that , even more they constantly trying to improve it even…most companies are not willng to go that far… major problem is the big gap between simple every day users and the highly technical skilled. the interface is the biggest problem in here, as most often it is in real life. to properly fix this problem we would require another humanity …