One Vera controlling another Vera's devices NOT over the same LAN?

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I have a situation that I believe to have a solution but it might require some outside-of-the-box thinking.

I run a wedding venue. The main building uses a VeraPlus to control all lights, fans, blinds, firepit, AC’s, etc… (140+ devices at the moment). Everything is great!!

Now, I am about to add some decorative lights by the front gate of the property (about 1,000-ft away from the main building). I would ABSOLUTELY love it if they could be controlled by the same scenes on the main Vera. As the new lights are clearly too far away to be part of the Z-Wave network, I have come up with only 2 ways of controlling it directly from the main Vera:

I would need to run a low-voltage line all the way down to the gate and use a contact/relay setup to control the lights directly off of the main Vera. ( >:(Definitely not the preferred method)

OR

Install an additional Vera down by the gate to control the lights. (There is a building that is nearby the gate that could provide Wi-Fi and I could setup the new Vera with Wi-Fi Bridge Mode). The issue here is that the main building and the building by the gate are on 2 COMPLETELY different networks (even 2 different ISP’s). I know that Vera’s can be setup in “Bridge” mode so that the Main Vera could control the Gate Vera but I am under the impression that they MUST be on the same LAN.

So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, my question is:

Is there ANY way for the Main Vera to control/trigger devices on the Gate Vera over the internet? Is there a plugin that can be implemented or some kind of protocol that can be utilized to allow one Vera to be triggered by the actions of another over the internet?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

-Ryan

2

You can’t bridge on different networks because bridging uses upnp for device discovery which doesn’t work outside of the network.

Expensive solutions would be WiFi range extenders which need outdoor ratings and a power source.

The same for zwave range extenders which need power and outdoor ratings also.

A directional wifi antenna might be able to help you based on power output for the range. You would have that antenna where the primary Vera is or internet and mount it facing your gate.

I have never tried this so other than my idea you would have to research.

Have you considered the 3g backup dongle for Vera units? I have no experience on that and you probably couldn’t bridge anyhow. So that might not be worth looking into anyhow.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

3

Is it line of sight? If so a Ubiquiti NanoStation at each end would give you connectivity between the Ethernet port on each Vera for quite a few kms/miles.

I have implemented NanoStations between two buildings previously - nothing to do with Vera just LAN connectivity, but the results were fantastic!

4

This is not a way that I would recomend doing, but:

You can command a different Vera from another Vera by using HTTP commands. It’s documented how in several threads.

The problem is that you have to open up your second LAN to allow these HTTP commands to reach the second Vera (by using router Port Forwarding). That would also open up that Vera to being hacked.

5

If you can go low voltage option a is the preferred.
You just need a simple relay.
That’s my favorite option when dealing with garden lights.