Welcome to one of the greatest mysteries of all time!! You have been reading in all of the right places as the forum thread you linked is where everyone goes for information on this topic. Many people have lost days of their life attempting to solve this problem including myself. Fortunately I have the subject fresh in mind as I just gave up 16 hours of my holiday weekend in an attempt to get my system working, but unfortunately I failed at the task. Here are some tidbits of info that may help you:
Whenever any device refuses to pair with either Vera or the AVL300 it typically means it wants to be excluded first. You should be able to use either Vera or the AVL (via “Remove Device”) to reset the item. In some cases I found it was necessary to use the AVL.
Whenever the AVL hangs or refuses to pair/unpair, you can try pulling the battery. That usually doesn’t work for me. I always look for the wireless indicator on the top of the AVL screen as it seems to me I consistently get this indication if it’s actually working and I never get the indication if it’s hung. When it is hung, I often have to perform a network reset on the AVL to get it to do anything again, but that sort of puts you back at the beginning as far as setup goes.
The OmniLinks will show up in Vera, but they will not configure. That shouldn’t be an issue and one of the posts even suggests turning off the auto configure option for the Omni in Vera.
The AVL will appear to pair with Vera, and you’ll know by the message on the screen that wrongfully states it is the primary controller. You won’t see it in Vera because it becomes a hidden device and there is no configuration to be performed with Vera post pairing.
Part of your problem could be related to the ZWave version as discussed in the other thread. For me moving down to the older ZWave version was much more complicated than I wanted to attempt as I have a large network. In the newest UI7 builds the option to change ZWave version has been removed.
Ideally you want everything to be working with Vera first, and then you want to get Vera and the AVL system to communicate, after which you want to identify each device to the AVL. I haven’t tried the opposite, pairing lights first and then trying to identify with Vera. I was able to get all the lights working with the AVL if I completely reset all devices and just pair the AVL straight up without Vera.
This task will make you pull your hair out, but it has worked for me and others in the past. When it worked for me, it was a great system! Unfortunately since I moved to Vera and a new home I have been unable to make this work again. My previous success was with the Schlage (Nexia) system and the AVL. Thinking about that now makes me wonder if I need to somehow get the old bridge and remove it from my AVL…
When all else fails and I cannot control my lights with Vera or the AVL, I simply remove all of the devices with both Vera and the AVL and then pair them again with Vera and give up. It takes a couple of hours to get everything back to the way you started.
I am thinking about moving on to something easier to deal with. RexBeckett seems to have a nice setup:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=14618.0
Best of luck! And if you win please be sure to let everyone know how you got it going!
