Am I the only one that would love to get ride of Vera ? I mean, always having some issue with my entire setup that Vera stop “working” with some Z-wave device for a couple of reason that I always need to deal with the Vera support to take care of it!
The only reason that I’m keeping my Vera it’s for some plugin that I can’t find anywhere for example, NEST, DSC and the Smart switch plugin that handle light switch + DSC motion to turn a light into a “smart” light!
I already have a Z-Wave.me UZB stick and also the Raspberry version of it.
Anyone already use this UZB stick to handle his entire Zwave network ?
I’m thinking to move all my z-wave device that don’t need the smart switch plugin into UZB…
Every day I wake up, I forget I ever used that thingamajiggie you call Vera. Then I head over to this website and it hits me … VERA (fist banging on the desk) !!! So yes, I was ever so glad to have that this thingamajiggie is behind me… Now, please keep in mind that even ZWay has it’s issues from time to time. What brings me bliss is seeing my AltUI/openLuup installations running strong with their heads held up high.
UZB, no - don’t have one. But there are a few of us that use the Razberry ZWave Plus GPIO board.
– CN
[quote=“DesT, post:1, topic:197445”]Hey guys…
Am I the only one that would love to get ride of Vera ? I mean, always having some issue with my entire setup that Vera stop “working” with some Z-wave device for a couple of reason that I always need to deal with the Vera support to take care of it!
The only reason that I’m keeping my Vera it’s for some plugin that I can’t find anywhere for example, NEST, DSC and the Smart switch plugin that handle light switch + DSC motion to turn a light into a “smart” light!
I already have a Z-Wave.me UZB stick and also the Raspberry version of it.
Anyone already use this UZB stick to handle his entire Zwave network ?
I’m thinking to move all my z-wave device that don’t need the smart switch plugin into UZB…
Yes, I run the latest Raz at my home and the previous version at my parents house. As for the kind of issues, it really varies from device support to server crashes (latest). I personally don’t see the server crashing on my network but others are but every install is different based on devices. I have a fairly large z-wave network in a 2000sq ft home and I’m running the latest (v2.3.6) which calmed an issue of excessively large log files (v2.3.5).
I use the UZB in one location (no Vera at all there) with openLuup. It works fairly well. As @CudaNet noted it is not bug free, but it works well enough for me. I solved the DSC issue by also running openHAB which has a DSC plugin. It’s fairly easy to interface between openHAB and openLuup. The Z wave support in openHAB has been weak, but Chris is very rapidly improving it. There’s a massive amount of interest there and it could be a viable option. However I find the rules language (kind of a Java-like extension) to be very obtuse; I much prefer Lua. So for the moment I use openLuup at both locations, one location with Zway and the UZB and the other location with a Vera for the Z-wave communication.
Am I the only one that would love to get ride of Vera ? I mean, always having some issue with my entire setup that Vera stop “working” with some Z-wave device for a couple of reason that I always need to deal with the Vera support to take care of it!
The only reason that I’m keeping my Vera it’s for some plugin that I can’t find anywhere for example, NEST, DSC and the Smart switch plugin that handle light switch + DSC motion to turn a light into a “smart” light!
I already have a Z-Wave.me UZB stick and also the Raspberry version of it.
Anyone already use this UZB stick to handle his entire Zwave network ?
I’m thinking to move all my z-wave device that don’t need the smart switch plugin into UZB…
Any advice… comments…[/quote]
I left to HomeSeer some time ago for same issues, but what your asking to do (turn on a light from an alarm panel sensor) is a very easy task and you shouldn’t have any problem finding other solutions. I have already been in a few I’m leaving threads. So no need to start a new one. Just do some research.
With A UZB all you are doing is moving the devices to a seperate piece of hardware, not changing the OS.
Why not try Z-Wave.Me with AltUI and see how you go? The difference you notice might just be in the radio, it might not be either.
Personally, I like the idea of having all of your devices seperate from whatever you are using for a Hub and have the freedom of moving the UZB between different systems, with a Raz Board you are limited to using a RaspPi.
A Raz or RasPi has much more processing power and a windows server is better again (try HS on windows and you will see the diff).
In the end it’s really horses for courses and there is no right or wrong and everyone will have their own opinion.
I have been looking at Home Assistant on an Odroid XU3, only using Vera to handle Z-Wave comm. All scenes, plugins, and device control functions are done with the XU3. HA people say the XU3 is perfect for this, but only have details on running it on a rasberry.
I tried Home Assistant last night, in fact, just on a whim. I brought it up on an Ubuntu VM on a home machine. Everything installed flawlessly on the first attempt. I did the two-line Vera component configuration and restarted HASS, and all of my devices from the Vera popped up. Before I turned in, I implemented two automations, one with a sensor trigger, and one with a sun/sunset trigger. Other than struggling a little on my first attempt at the automation configuration, not knowing all of the details and having to find the pieces to put together, everything went together pretty smoothly.
A few days ago, I tried openHAB2, and it did not go together as easily–I have yet to get the Vera and openHAB talking, and after yesterday’s experience, I’m probably just going to leave it that way and continue poking at HASS.
[quote=“rigpapa, post:11, topic:197445”]I tried Home Assistant last night, in fact, just on a whim. I brought it up on an Ubuntu VM on a home machine. Everything installed flawlessly on the first attempt. I did the two-line Vera component configuration and restarted HASS, and all of my devices from the Vera popped up. Before I turned in, I implemented two automations, one with a sensor trigger, and one with a sun/sunset trigger. Other than struggling a little on my first attempt at the automation configuration, not knowing all of the details and having to find the pieces to put together, everything went together pretty smoothly.
A few days ago, I tried openHAB2, and it did not go together as easily–I have yet to get the Vera and openHAB talking, and after yesterday’s experience, I’m probably just going to leave it that way and continue poking at HASS.[/quote]
I couldn’t get openHAB to talk to Vera either. My two university Java classes have apparently gone to waste. I had no problems installing Home Assistant.
So Home Assistant seems like a good possibility? I would like to try it on my XU3 but need nore info specifically how to install it or what image I should use on the XU3. So far not much help.
Just started having some fun with RaZberry + openLuup and for the moment, looks like more stable on a zwave stand point compared to Vera!
I just order the new RaZberry v2 to test it and I will probably move all Zwave device that don’t need a vera plugin to work to the RaZ to offload the zwave network from Vera!
@AK, are you planning to do some update in the Z-Way plugin? Like having the room in sync with openLuup ?
If people are starting to use it then, yes, I can look at doing some updates. There’s a number of things that certainly do need doing. It was never actually my intention to write a Zwave plugin for openLuup, and I have to say that it is fraught with difficulties in rather different way than openLuup itself (which also needs, at least, all the changes to be rolled up into the latest master.)
It is nice being totally independent of Vera and I’m moving more that way myself as old Veras begin to die. Whilst lights and dimmers and security sensors seem to work OK, the idiosyncrasies of the many varieties of sensors make that more of a challenge. With my choice of using the simpler ZWay API, there’s a limit to what can be achieved. I dont know if @amg0 is going to get back and work on the RAZB plugin that we both had a hand in originally - that uses the more comprehensive API so could, in theory, do just about anything.
The only main point why I keep Vera for now, it’s also 'cause of the DSC plugins, as I don’t want to have another thing in the picture except if z-way-server will have a plugin directly for that.
It would be great to have this because there are some significant capabilities that we can’t get now with the Zway plugin. For example, the double, triple, long press of a switch that is the central scene class. You can see this in the Zway GUI interface.
I think mcv is leaving me no real choice at this point and I am sadly going to start to move on as well. iobroker, HAss, openluup and almost any open source platform is more stable and can be run on superior hardware. Definitely would looking to transfer everything to Openluup first.
I don’t think that this can work, since there’s not a one-to-one mapping between devices in Zway and those in Vera (if we try to maintain the ‘look’ of compound devices in openLuup.)
