Saying Goodbye To Vera

Community Playground General Discussions
41

I’m running a Vera 2 and considering my options. I am thinking of either the smartthings hub ver 2.0, Vera Edge, or possibly the Staples Connect. I tried the Wink but returned it after it had trouble identifying my Intermatic light switches. Any feedback experience with any of these options would be helpful. All of my zwave devices are Intermatic switches and I have a Nest Thermostat.

Thanks! Ed

42

I used InControl back in 2012 (v3) and it was super BASIC - the rules/logic could not do much. Has that changed?
… Things that did work, worked well but there were many bug and the company was 10x less responsive than Vera and released updates almost as frequent as Earth’s ice ages occur. I sure hope they are better now, but I doubt it given the way things were back then.

Indigo has been a very solid app for a long time, I tried it back in 2012 also. They didn’t support much back then and while they support more now, looks like they are still WAY behind with plugins. For me they are missing EVL3, Wink (Zigbee), Ecobee, Blue Iris, MyQ and maybe more .

I hope OpenHAB will soon put a GUI on the rules engine that provides an easy way to convert my PLEGs to OpenHAB. I just have way too much stuff, and not enough time, to convert them all to code.

I use Vera 3 w/ UI5 as UI7 has proven (from what I’m seeing on the forum) to be nothing but problems for 100% of the power users.

Vera Plus will be barely more than VeraEdge in performance and capabilities. The “Plus” is ZigBee… WhoopTdoo! I’m fairly sure VERA staff/CEO/etc (I did talk with a few of them at CES… Ca-Lou-Less) doesn’t have the capacity to understand real HA is or requirements for such. Looks like they simply hire the cheapest labor/coders and let the suckers on this forum test their code.

43

InControl is a lot different than that now. It is still an evolving product, but it does have one important feature - it works. They definitely are a small company and the community isn’t nearly as robust as that of Vera, but they have been fairly responsive to questions and suggestions in the short time I have been working with it. They still need to implement better control over scenes (there actually are scenes now and rules are being phased out), and they have added room support.

Plug-ins are sparse for those that operate outside the ZWave format. They have X10 and WeMo but as far as I know none of the others. They have added Camera support but I haven’t experimented with it yet at all. For those that program, ICHA is probably not the best way to go. I don’t do any programming at all other than the scenes so that wasn’t a personal consideration for me.

VeraPlus is still underpowered crap. It’s going to be the same engine (with Zigbee support) and have all the same shortcomings - no network healing, device support months or years behind the curve, lack of resources, etc. It will be the same alpha-level finicky software mated to overpriced hardware with a fraction of the capabilities of a Raspberry PI2.

44

Another 10 month have passed by ince I last came to the forum to try to figre out what the state of vera and UI7 is. After reading for only 10 minutes I decided to stick with UI5 ;D

I am also still looking for an alternative to the vera 3, but I am looking for something more intuitive the vera is, and I guess OpenHab needs quiet some learning…

45

@chixxi
same for me here. I did look into alternatives, but it doesn’t seem there is anything as capable and with a great community as Vera. The only option seems to be openhab, but as you said, it seems quite a steep learning curve. I had a look to see if it is doable, but gave up after reading a little… but that seems to really work and you can still keep all the Vera benefits. Maybe in another year of development, maybe there will be a sort of click and install option for dummies like me…
In the meantime I am waiting to see what Vera plus might bring… although there were some specs on one of the threads, if they were to be correct they would be rather disappointing.

46

Hello @chixxi!

Good to see you back, if only briefly. Yes, progress is glacially slow, and often backwards.

You might take a look at AltUI, the alternative interface to either UI5 or UI7 - a fabulous piece of work by @amg0. Also, take a moment to consider openLuup, an open-source emulation of the Luup environment which lets you offload all your plugins to any software/hardware platform of your choice.

47

Glad do see some “old folks” are still around :wink:

To bad, I really hope to come back her sometime and beeing surprised about the progress of vera or an alternative. I will have a closer look at altui, openhab and openluup…

48

I had a look at AltUI as well, it looks really good and not too complicated to install and understand. The only downside for me is I think it doesn’t give any performance advantage, and that’s where I struggle. Also openLuup looks brilliant. But again, for me its way too complicated for me. On the positive side, you can stay with Vera, but you need to invest a lot of time and rely heavily on the forum for help if you want to go openLuup or OpenHab

49

…and you don’t for Vera ???

50

;D you’ve got a point there… I would have not got where I am today without the help from the forum. But it was a long process, and I guess I am a bit worried that switching to openHab or openLuup will render my system not functioning for a while. And at the moment it sort of functions even though there are a lot of gremlins. I have some time on my hand over xmas, so if I do not like the specs of the new Vera I will have to look for alternatives as I cannot stand it any more

51

I know what you mean. OpenHab looked like a big learning curve. The point of openLuup is to have something which will be very familiar to Vera users… same interface (if you use AltUI, and why would you not?), same plugins, same API both for Luup and HTTP, same remote phone apps, … But not the same unreliability.

52

so you would go the openLuup way ? I haven’t done AltUI for the simple reason I was/am planning to upgrade to Vera Plus (if specs are good)

53

Well, I’m biased, since I wrote it. I have no particular motive to get others to use it, I just point out that it’s an option.

I haven't done AltUI for the simple reason I was/am planning to upgrade to Vera Plus (if specs are good)
That's surely something of a [i]non sequitur[/i] since I imagine that UI7 will pretty much be the Vera Plus interface, and it couldn't possibly be as good (or as fast or as lightweight on Vera) as AltUI.
54

Ok, so while its quiet at work now, I am going to start reading up on openLuup… you might have to answer a lot of questions soon in that part of the forum… ;D

And I take it you think I should go over to AltUI anyway and do the upgrade again if I was going to Vera plus ? I did read a little about it and it does not seem to daunting to install. But if its so much better than UI7 (I am still on UI5) maybe worth doing and learn how to use it.

55

Yes, indeed.

56

I’d love to see openLUUP in a Docker container. Then I can run it on my NAS.
Ultimately would be sweet to have it able to run any plugin and make Vera LLC irrelevant

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

57

I think you’ll find that’s been done here… http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,34278.0.html

Ultimately would be sweet to have it able to run any plugin and make Vera LLC irrelevant

Well, it runs lots. Did you have any in mind in particular?

58

I think you’ll find that’s been done here… http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,34278.0.html[/quote]

NICE!

PLEG is what many of us rely on for the bulk of the logic. It is a must to make a migration to openLUUP possible. And I have a lot of other device integration I would require (see below)
My system is split up far too much already I don’t want to run more separate things.
I already have…
ISY for Insteon (I have 30+ Insteon switches - too costly to change out and Insteon dimmers are WAY better than Zwave )
Wink for Zigbee
Amazon Echo
EVL3
Kodi
Harmony Hub
Ecobee
Onkyo
Denon
and a few others

59

What really keeps us together is this forum, amazingly these threads on Vera Alternatives and different OS are tolerated by Vera otherwise where would we be?
I, like others are investing time and hardware into finding a better alternative, so far I believe Open Luup, AltUI and a Razberry Pi (or derivative) will do everything (and more).
I’m delaying the jump until RTS makes PLEG available for OpenLuup, then I’ll wave Vera good bye, but I will always remember it was a great Primer into HA.

60

For those who are concerned that the learning curve is steep for Openhab, it is, but you don’t have to commit to it or do it in a day. You can just kind of slide it in over time like I did.

First I got Openhab up and running the demo code. Then started to build my configuration. I imported the information from my Vera using scripts written by guessed. The Vera was still running as before. I tried a simple rules to see if I could control my Vera.

As I felt more comfortable with Openhab I recreated my scenes and triggers from Vera into rules on Openhab. Today my Vera is just a Z-Wave controller. I can still control it using UI5, AltUI, or my favorite, OpenWave. Openhab has its own web interfaces, but I don’t use them for control much, yet.

Now, I do like my Vera, but I am in a very good position to drop it for a Z-Wave stick if I want to. I can move my installation from a RaspBerry Pi to a Mac or Windows. I am not dependent on any specific hardware platform. If a Vera Plus does come out and look appealing to me, I might buy one, but Openhab will control it.