Vera has been my home automation hub of choice for years now, and my Z-Wave network has been rock solid. Especially with the Virtual Switches plugin, my scenes are pretty complicated and I love it.
But I have never been pleased with Vera’s interface. I feel like the app has always been buggy, and while the mobile web-interface actually has a few more features (and less headaches) than the app, it lacked the granularity of permissions I needed for my household. I also have dozens of Tasker tasks on my Android phone, and I really wanted my phone to automatically trigger events around my home.
I created PiVeraProject: an open-source interface that uses a RaspberryPi to control almost all the Z-Wave devices of the Vera. I also wrote a super light-weight Android app used to send commands to the RaspberryPi.
Solutions provided by PiVeraProject:
- Activate scenes as if they were switches.
- Use a switch to toggle between scenes [where on/off translates to “run scene1”/“run scene2”].
- Create custom permissions for EACH user in your household. Every switch can be enabled on a per-user basis!
- Fingerprint authentication (from the mobile app) can be required for ANY switch or scene.
- Create Tasker ?shortcuts?, to initiate Vera scenes with a single tap.
Not only is it open-source, so you can contribute… I’m also invested in keeping this updated since I use it every day.
Try it out, let me know what you like or what you’d like to see improved.
Warning: it involves a little bit comfort with the command line, but the instructions will guide you.