Migration from Z-Cloud

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Hi all

Something of a Z-Wave newby here, but long time nerd :slight_smile:
I’m experimenting with Z-wave, and currently have a very basic setup running.

I’m not overly impressed with Z-Cloud running of a USB dongle, and want to compare with Micasaverde, so I have a Vera 3 lite on order.

My question is this, can I ‘Migrate’ my set up? That is add the Vera and then remove the dongle as a controller from the setup?

Or am I going to have to exclude my devices and start again with the Vera? The latter would be a bit of a PITA as one of my devices is buried in a wall :wink: Not insurmountable, but if I am going to have to start again, I’ll probably stop development now.

TIA for any advice.

2

Would you mind sharing your experiences with the Z-Cloud?

3

Happy to

I’m moving frmo X10 using Indigo to Z-Wave (X10 just refuses point blank to work in the house I moved to in December)
I’ve been in IT for about 20 years now (groans from the assembled) but am nothing like as technical as I used to be, but am used to things like compiling kernels, running macports of OS X, pretty comfortable with a command line.

This is all my opinion. Others will have other opinions :slight_smile: And I’m fully aware that it’s a free product, so my expectations are not as high as they might be.

Basically I think Z-Cloud is best described as ‘optimistic’.
The documentation is light. There’s very little about troubleshooting.
The Interface(s) are rather confused. For example, I had a similar timezone issue as many have experience with their Vera’s. The fix on mine was not to access the Z-Cloud interface, but change a profile setting (on a tab marked edit) on the account management page of a totally different website.

I couldn’t find this documented anywhere.

I’m reasonably sure the guys that do the support forum aren’t native English speakers. That’s fine, but it doesn’t make for a great support experience. Also the forum is much much lower traffic than here.

There seems to be some pretty useful functionality missing. For example sunrise / sunset timings. They are mentioned explicitly in an example in the ‘user manual’ but I’ll be damned if I can find out how to do it. I’ve come to the conclusion that it just doesn’t exist.

I think the biggest thing for me is the total reliance on the cloud. Don’t get me wrong, I’m Head of Operations for an ecommerce / cloud company (and for the non-english speakers most of my staff are in Bulgaria:)) so I recognise there are benefits, but frankly I’d rather have a local solution, so that if my broadband fails, I can still control stuff from home.

Of course, there is no local solution as yet.

Oh, and the last release is late, apparently.

And I spent ages trying to get the ‘It won’t need any drivers’ USB stick working, but that’s hardly Z-Cloud’s fault.

I don’t want to be too hard on the guys, as I know it’s free, and everything else, but at the end of the day ‘if you’re not paying, you’re the product’, I don’t want that product, or to be that product.

Make sense?

C

4

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the Z-Cloud.

Some suggestions for a migration strategy:

  • Just connect the Z-Cloud dongle to your Vera V1, Vera V2/V3/Lite (change the Z-Wave port [tt]/dev/tts/1[/tt] (for V2) to the dongle USB port).
  • Do a ‘Z-Wave Controller Shift’ from the Z-Cloud to your Vera.

It might be easier to start from scratch …

5

Oh, that doesn’t sound good :slight_smile:
I’m not massively keen on option one, it strikes me as inelegant :wink: Having two Z-wave devices where you only need one. I was also sort of assuming that I could use the dongle as a repeater if necessary :slight_smile:

I’d found option 2 in the menu eventually.

I’m a little be afraid of option 3 as one of my Fibaro modules is buried in the wall gap, and getting it out will be irritating to say the least. I know you should be able to get it to include by flicking the switch, but I could only get it working by using the tiny little button.

Thanks for the heads up, though.