The Countdown Begins

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to introduce my self and ask a quick question for a first time Vera user. 45mins and counting for my Post Office to open and I’m anxiously awaiting going to pick up my Vera Plus after a couple months of waiting! I’m a bit over excited ;D

Already read through all of the docs at support.vera.com so I wanted to pose a quick question for all of you longer term Vera users. If you were just starting out today with a fresh system, what would you do that someone new to the platform wouldn’t know about (i.e. Any favorite plugins such as AltUI, OpenLuup, PLEG etc)? Any potential caveats I should be aware of when getting things set up (i.e. don’t use Safari…use Chrome)? Any other tips, tricks or recommendations to get myself familiarized and the ball rolling?

A little about my setup…naturally I’ll need some plugins to accommodate it. All light switches in the house are Lutron Caseta Dimmers connected to a Lutron SmartBridge Pro 2. Ceiling fans are also connected to Lutron Dimmers (although recently I heard this may not be a good idea).

Have a Honeywell Vista 20p, 6160RF and Envisalink 4 along with every door/window in the house on sensors. A bunch of PIR’s connected to the Honeywell and about 10 more coming in the mail to set up all my rooms.

A Logitech Harmony Home hub upstairs and downstairs connected to my media areas.

“Whole House” audio set up with a bunch of Airport Expresses and Airfoil.

Lorex HD IP 8 Camera system with 4 PTZ cams and 4 fixed.

Schlage 599NX (I think) Z-wave Door Lock

Two Amazon Echos and a variety of other odds and ends mainly from Quirky/Wink (Power Pivots, Outlinks, Wink Relays).

Anyhow… looking forward to anyones thoughts or suggestions as I get started with Vera :slight_smile:

2

PLEG, VeraAlerts

Do not attempt to run your cameras through Vera. Use a dedicated DVR(you’ve already got this) and a camera app for remote viewing.

You’ve got plenty of fun ahead of you.

3

Thanks a lot @Z-Waver!

Appreciate the tip on the cameras. Was definitely planning on sticking with my current NVR and app for viewing but had considered trying to interface the two somehow to snap a picture when motion was detected via PIR or Door/Window Contact. Is this a bad idea?

If so, I believe that my Envisalink4 has the ability to interface the cameras somehow so I can look into that as another option.

Having fun already!..Thanks again!

4

You can certainly have a motion sensor trigger Vera to send a command to your DVR and “snap a picture”.

My point was that running camera feeds through Vera is not a good idea. Vera does not have the resources to handle more that one or two streams at tiny resolutions. HD cameras or multiple cameras will almost certainly cause performance issues and reboots.

Many people seem to feel that Vera and the Vera servers could be used as a DVR. The marketing literature encourages this thought. Vera is not a DVR.

5

There is a bridge for the amazon echo’s to talk to your vera and harmony hub. Take a look at it here: GitHub - bwssytems/ha-bridge: Home automation bridge that emulates a Philips Hue light system and can control other systems such as a Vera, Harmony Hub, Nest, MiLight bulbs or any other system that has an http/https/tcp/udp interface. This is a compact impl to run on small format computers. This is impl started from this project https://github.com/armzilla/amazon-echo-ha-bridge.

6

Thanks @crush157! I had been hearing about “crush’s bridge” and how great it works. Echo has became a vital part of our HA experience so this is great news that there is a working solution in the interim as I know the other native solution is currently being stalled by amazon.