MIOS Acquisition

PLEG:
without doubt he single most valuable PI available.

I’d like to see the native scene builder expanded to include the sort of functionality needed to make most things possible to the average user without having a reliance on plugins. Enabling AND / OR logic is an obvious start!

Is there any specific plugins you think we should take and integrate natively?

AltUI: UI7 is required for device pairing and general system setup but AltUI does the job very well on all other occasions.
openLuup: Vera and openLuup work extremely well together.

Neither of which can be “taken”. May need to rephrase that a little.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,102141.msg412743.html#msg412743

As much as I've had issues with my Vera, I do not want or intend to stop using it. I reckon it's a brilliant device, albeit with some issues. The problems I've seen people describe can generally all be addressed by tracking down the root cause - such as a faulty app or device.
spot on! There was a mis-management issue with development where it was allowed to release software with bugs in it...major and critical bug....this is simply a NO NO for us the owners! We do NOT tolerate this kind of development environment and putting the processes to eliminate this kind of outcome

There is no denying that some plugins need “some work” probably including some of my own!

I’m told (but have never tested this) if luup.sleep() is longer the about one second, it can cause luup engine restarts. Have a scan through the plugins in the store. You will find many plugins that run this function for than one second.

luup.chdev.append is problematic as well. An errant plugin or code in development can put the luup engine into a loop of continual of restarts adding many children as it goes. Needs better error trapping or a user abort.

You have access to thousands of Veras and their logs. One should be able identify plugins causing problems using a programmatic search of the installed user base.

Hi melih,

Can’t speak for others, but I’m glad this is happening. I’ve been using Vera for years, and while most of the time it does what I need, I really don’t like using it and I don’t really trust it. It always feels like it’s hanging on by a hair and could crash and burn any second. And it’s always felt like this. It’s always been pretty flaky, the UI has always been basic and honestly pretty ugly, and I generally just never feel confident that things will actually work when I want them to. As such I’ve basically moved over to HomeAssistant and use that to manage all my vera related stuff. HA isn’t without it’s problems, but it’s constantly evolving and innovating, something which can’t be said for Vera.

It’s long overdue for something like this to happen, and I hope the new blood and resources can bring these products (to be fair the hardware seems fine, it’s just the software) up to scratch and modernise everything a bit.

I’m a Ubiquiti user, so I’ve been completely spoiled on the software/UI side since switching all my networking gear over to them. It’s a pleasure to use, but I always feel like I’m back in the 80’s on Geocities website when messing with my Vera stuff :smiley:

Looking forward to seeing what you guys can do, and fingers crossed it’s finally a positive revamp for the Vera software.

I have been using Vera for 6 years. I selected Vera because it supports Zwave, it has/had a good community, it is only a one time entry fee (I hate monthly fees), it offers the option to develop some code using luup to build some logic not standard in the box. Started with some easy light control and by now do lights, shades, heater, sonos and Alexa. My VeraPlus is performing well, showing a CPU usage on average 20% and memory (with some tweaking) to be okay. I started this with the idea to give it a try and if I liked it I could switch to another platform if needed. So far I didn’t need that. I want to control my HA by only one controller and not managing different systems to do different tasks (I see many people going to other environments but still keep using Vera).

To make it accepted by my wife I needed to buy Imperihome as a frontend (like many others do) because the Vera app is to slow and not offering the nice and easy functions Imperihome offers.

What I have learned is that the plugins are crucial for me. I gladly pay some money for these if it is guaranteed they keep working. Important plugins to me are: Sonos, RFXcom, Honeywell wifi thermostats, samsung tv and Milights. Some other plugins should be part of the firmware like multiswitch, ping sensor, countdown timer. These are very handy to build some common logic. There are more plugins like these to compensate for missing scene logic in Vera firmware.

Curious where this goes to, (I wonder what the business model will look like).

@Melih:

How will the two brands merge? eZLO and MiOS/VERA seems to be competitors, will both be kept as brands?

The intention to my question is: Will the Vera framework will stay backward compatible to existing work (plugins, etc), or will the framework change to an extent that a lot of the work is lost?

A merger could mean that a company is bought, proprietary rights is aquired, and the product is shut down… It doesnt seem to be the intention here, but i’d still like to know. :slight_smile:

I think a lot of good could come from this. Good luck!

Edit: By the way, I’d like to see native support for RFXtrx433, as Vera have no 433mhz interface on-board.

Great to see the warm welcome and candor w/ Melih. Suffice to say, we’re very excited about the acquisition and the expansion of resources that will follow. There is a great synergy in vision and overall outlook on the smart home space.

As previously touched on by Melih, we’ve made a very significant commitment on additional resources. Including those needed to implement our next generation user interface. This will serve to provide a much more extensible and personalized experience, benefiting both the development community/power users, as well as mainstream customers. It’ll help us straddle that fragile balance much more adroitly than we did in the transition from UI5 to UI7.

Have attached some of the initial comps to give a sneak peek as to what’s next, so to speak (user selectable device icons, full theme support, home occupancy, etc).

More to follow. Soon. As always, we value the early feedback.

To that end, as part of the renewed focus on the forums, associated developer community, and our customer base as whole, we’ll round back in the coming weeks on a Product Advisory Board and major overhaul to the beta process, as previously discussed. Lots of exciting stuff in motion over here. You’ll all be well pleased with the changes to come.

Keep the input coming… we’re listening!

Without a doubt! The PLEG plugin is perhaps the most important app to fully automate your home.

[quote=“zedrally, post:61, topic:199656”]PLEG:
without doubt he single most valuable PI available.[/quote]

Vera’s always been a love/hate system for me. It’s like a honor roll kid that goes on to work some lame job because he’s just fine with “good enough”. So much potential but a serious lack of something that’s a little hard to put your finger on…

I’m hoping that many of the suggested changes occur, and that it happens with minimal disruption to my current system. I think the automation and remote access should be free and the apps should be a 1x cost. I also think a priority should be put into getting it to work with Alexa/Google. As my system currently is, I’m the primary user that turns things on/off. When I had it tied into Google using the HABridge, my ENTIRE family used it pretty much evenly (including grandparents!). It was much easier to justify cost and time spent when the entire family benefited equally.

I am very happy to see MiOS getting some additional resources.

I’ve been a user of Vera for about 5 years now and have been fairly happy and not have many issues to be honest. Though; as my system has been growing and gone from a couple of devices to well over 100, I am starting to feel the shortcommings and pain with Vera.

New UI and so is all nice but for me stability and compabillity is the most important thing I think. After that I would like to see proper network tools. Trying to solve z-wave related issues with Vera are pretty much just fumbling in the dark guessing whats going on. I would love to see a proper network graph over which devices talk to each other. What devices are causing issues in a network and tools to properly address issues. Since I am a software developer my self; I would love to see a much more proper way to integrate with Vera than today. Preferly in a way which is not language bound so developers can use any language best suited for them.

Program Logic Event Generator (PLEG) (for real automation)
DSC Alarm Panel Plugin (for alarm system integration)
EventWatcher (for system monitoring - for the love of god why aren’t tools like this native?)
VeraAlerts (for more valuable user notification options than native)

1 Like

Everyone, Poll is opened here: :smiley:

Is there any specific capability or device we should integrate natively?

[quote=“Colin Burke McClure, post:68, topic:199656”]…
Have attached some of the initial comps to give a sneak peek as to what’s next, so to speak (user selectable device icons, full theme support, home occupancy, etc).
…[/quote]

Looks great !

Program Logic Event Generator (PLEG) (for real automation)
DSC Alarm Panel Plugin (for alarm system integration)
EventWatcher (for system monitoring - for the love of god why aren’t tools like this native?)
VeraAlerts (for more valuable user notification options than native)[/quote]

Seems the original comment is gone?

At any rate, MiOS can’t “take” these. They are the works of others. If they want them they need to pay for them and bring on the plugin developer under contract to maintain and improve it.

Everytime I log into the forums that don’t use HTTPS and enter my username and password in plain text I get an uneasy feeling of if Vera has a security first culture. You have an always on connection to my network but don’t follow a very basic best practice. Yes, I get it’s a forum. It’s also a username and password and people are lazy, that’s why they have home automation :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hello @Melih

I’ve only just heard about this news! Which I hope is good news. :slight_smile:

I’ve been a Vera customer since around 2010 and I have purchased several different Vera units.

Overall I have generally been happy with Vera, though its not perfect, it has problems, but with the help of the Vera support team who I cannot really fault, as they have always fixed most of my serious issues, which is the only time I contact them, usually to do with Firmware updates gone wrong. One of the reasons why I stuck with Vera was the good technical support staff.

But there are been issues in the past and still today, the UI5 to UI7 migration several years ago was well a nightmare, I opted to build my system from scratch on UI7 rather than attempt the migration which hadn’t gone well for many others. UI7 firmware updates now are hit and miss, some have updated with no problems, others have gone badly wrong.

The UI7 web GUI in general is functional but needs improvement, as does the Vera mobile app, which I don’t use, on our Android phones and tablets I use the excellent 3rd party control app called Imperihome take a look at that !

Vera is very reliant on 3rd party developers and their plugins to fill the gaps in its product. Community developers of course are what we need, but they are filling in the gaps missing from what should already be part of the core Vera system, which is the problem.

You need to hire Richard Schaefer, without his plugins PLEG for logic operations, VeraAlerts for notifications and Vera Concierge for Google Home integration, my Vera would not be any where near as good. In fact I would have moved to another Home Automation platform by now, if it wasn’t for those plugins alone.

I have considered moving to Samsung SmartThings but their cloud dependency put me off, unlike Vera which runs locally without the Internet. But SmartThings has a larger range of Smart Home devices that it can integrate with, again mainly down to the community developers building device handlers.

Moving forward I would like Vera to:

  1. Work out the stability issues with firmware updates and the core system.
  2. Have a better web GUI and mobile app GUI and one that works with the various 3rd party plugins like the Imperihome app does.
  3. Quicker device integration in Vera for new Z-Wave and other smart home devices out on the market.
  4. Native Google Home and IFTTT integration and improved Alexa integration.
  5. Better support and help from the company for 3rd party developers, to build their plugins more easily and a better plugin market place.

I am happy to pay $100 for a controller hub and much more, if that hub is fast and has a good spec and is reliable and not cloud dependent.

A $20 controller that is slower and cannot support as many connected devices doesn’t interest me. I’ve never heard of eZLO before but I will have a further read of your website.

Thank you for your time and listening to your new customers.

Regards

Program Logic Event Generator (PLEG) (for real automation)
DSC Alarm Panel Plugin (for alarm system integration)
EventWatcher (for system monitoring - for the love of god why aren’t tools like this native?)
VeraAlerts (for more valuable user notification options than native)[/quote]

Seems the original comment is gone?

At any rate, MiOS can’t “take” these. They are the works of others. If they want them they need to pay for them and bring on the plugin developer under contract to maintain and improve it.[/quote]

I fully agree that the authors of these valuable plugins would need to be paid if these are co-opted.

However, I don’t think that they need to be integrated as-is. Most of these address a basic need that should have been included in the Vera core, but that doesn’t mean they should be copied exactly. What should be done is examine the underlying need and see how best to address it, which might not look like any of these plugins or even be a plugin.

Regardless, do consult the authors of these when addressing these issues, and pay them for their time.

While I agree, the functionalities of PLEG really should just be built in already (and now seems like the time to make that happen). We really shouldn’t need to pay for a plug-in to be able to have fine control over the system.

This sounds very promising, and could place my migration plans to HomeSeer on hold. But please, fix the stuff that doesn’t work.
I have invested a lot of time in Vera, but not a lot of money. Four controllers, and another four for my friends. That’s like $1.200 all together.
The total number of physical devices these systems are running is more than 150. Average price of $50? That’s more than $7.500,-, probably more like $10K

So, I do not understand the focus on getting the controller price down. It is a small part of the total cost, how can that be important? Are you looking at another business model all together? Subscription based? Ok, that’s when I leave the building for sure. Rather pay $400 for the controller, easily!
Seriously, I had purchased HomeSeer software for $600 already if I just had the time to migrate. The Z-wave stick and a tiny PC is already sitting on my desk ready for it.
I can understand it if you also plan to launch a bunch of cheaper devices. It is the device cost that is crazy, not the controller.