Things I can do with Vera that Ezlo doesn’t feature

Would love to hear what exactly these are so that we can prioritize these for the development.
Could you please list them one by one, Thank you!

Geofencing
Netatmo
Wemo
Nest
Harmony
Dark Sky (although this will end at some point)
Reactor or a way to export and import already created reactor sensors

Just a few off the top of my head that I use that I don’t see on the Ezlo compatibility list or listed in the plug-ins section
I’m sure in time it will get there it just can’t replace my Vera quite yet.

Geofencing: Should be coming soon…
Reactor: because its a third party plugin, we don’t have a “migration” script. But we have https://ezlogic.mios.com/ which is an automation platform.

Netatmo
Wemo
Nest
Harmony
Dark Sky
Are all plugins…
All the Cloud based plugins (eg: cloud services are provided by NuCAL integration we have…NuCAL is a competitor to IFTTT) and here you can see Netatmo, Nest etc…

re: Harmony, we have recently decided to build that plugin…watch this space…

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  • Geofencing, which you’ve said is coming soon. Like I said, it’s a show stopper for me.
  • Reactor (as others have said. Yes I know it’s a third party pluggin, but it’s particuarlly powerful, and what 90% of my logic rules in Vera are based).
  • Heliotrope ( I use the azimuth of the sun to adjust my blinds, so certain rooms don’t get blinded when the sun is shinning into them)
  • Home Modes I might be wrong, but I remember reading that this functionality isn’t built into Ezlo like it its in Vera. Such a basic concept. Why the heck isn’t it there?
  • NETMON - I use this as a redundancy to iPhoneLocator, which is what I’ve been using for Geofencing, since I found Vera’s native geofencing to be unreliable.

Nest and Dark Sky were also on my list, but from your screen shot, it looks like there are similar functions.

And this is not an Ezlo problem but I do not want to migrate my Nest account to Google for various reasons so I probably wouldn’t move to and Ezlo device for that reason alone until Google totally stops supporting Nest accounts and forces migration.

Does NuCAL run natively or does it have to hit a cloud server and come back? For example for Vera there is plugin for WEMO devices so it runs locally on the Vera and if I lose my internet connection I can still control my devices. What happens if you lose internet connectivity with devices being controlled through NuCAL?

Reactor for Vera plugin won’t be migrated to work on Ezlo hubs.

However it doesn’t need to be, you need to use the replacement instead, Multi System Reactor (MSR), that does work with and supports Ezlo Hubs.

MSR help docs here.

Ezlo are also creating their own similar rules engine called Meshbots, you can create rules in their new web UI here.

You can probably do that in MSR. Azimuth is mentioned in their docs about Sun info here.

Its half there in the Ezlo hubs, however massive parts of it are missing. For example the My Modes - What to do when this mode is selected? is entirely missing which isn’t good.

Nucal stuff is all cloud based I believe. Someone correct me if I am wrong. Its going to be kinda like IFTTT apparently.

NuCAL is ONLY for Cloud based applications…which means you need internet anyway in order to be able to use the service…(its an IFTTT/Zapier competitor).

Our philosophy is that whatever can be done locally should be done locally…as an FYI

MSR: Patrick has done a good job with MSR and has been working on this longer than we have been on Ezlogic , however MSR requires another computer to run automation whereas Ezlogic runs on the controller itself. (btw, Ezlogic has weekly releases!)

If you want to run another computer then you can always download our SoftHubs for free

Where they even have full blown CCTV and AI capabilities along with full Automation.

One other thing which I’d like to see, but may be there, may not be. Google Calendar integration. I currently use Gcal3, which is no longer maintained, but I use it for some automation such knowing it it’s a Federal holiday, blinds don’t open super early, so I can sleep in.

I’ve seen some demos from Patrick on MSR, but like you said, it has to be run on another computer. I’m sure I could stand up a Raspberry Pi to run it (if I could find one at MSRP).

Im’ not sure how I would run something like Heliotrope from MSR. Currently Reactor doesn’t have that capability, so I don’t know how MSR would, aside from keeping Vera running just to keep Heliotrope up.

I think Nucal has a Google sheets integration maybe calendar as well @melih will know.

Did you see my edit above?

Azimuth is mentioned in their docs about Sun info here.

Never heard of Heliotrope so dont know anything about it.

I’m running MSR on a second hand £20 HP Thin Client low powered machine with a 16GB SSD and running a terminal only version of Debian Linux.

I proabably wouldn’t want to run it on an SD memory card however, but some do with Raspberry PI’s.

I hadn’t seen your edit, no. That’s good news. If i have to run MSR, so be it. I hadn’t heard anything about Nucal. I don’t mind having to reach out to the cloud for some things, but my primary logic shouldn’t be dependent on it. If Nucal supports Google Calendar, then all I really need is Geofencing in some sort.

One question…. If I buy Ezlo, if there are functions that Vera has but Ezlo doesn’t, can they both be running at the same time? Presumably I’d shift my Zwave devices over to Ezlo, but use MSR to keep some of the functionality from Vera?

I have a file server running Fedora that would more than do the trick if a Pi won’t do.

Yeah you can probably run it on that.

Or take a look at the Ezlo “Meshbots” rules engine.

I have two Vera controllers and two Ezlo controllers all running at the same time and all integrated with MSR rules engine.

You can even create a single rule with devices from several different controllers !

My Vera Plus is still my main controller currently however, where the vast majority of my Z-Wave devices are still paired.

The Ezlo hubs are not secondary controllers in any way to my Vera Plus primary currently.

Mainly because I dont think they have got that working fully yet, where you can have an Ezlo hub as a secondary to your primary Vera hub. Or vice versa

Eventually long term, I expect I will unpair all my Z-Wave devices from the Vera Plus and add them to the Ezlo Plus.

Or migrate and switch roles if they get a working migration path going.

Okay, so it’s not an all or nothing conversion. Good to know.

So are you keeping your devices paired with Vera because that’s where they originated and you just haven’t moved them over yet, or is there an issue with Ezlo importing them? Do you notice a performance improvement with the logic staying on MSR and Ezlo, and not reaching out to Vera’s cloud servers?

In theory, that means I could keep the Geofencing on Vera using iPhonelocator, as well as any other functionality that Ezlo is missing until that functionality exists.

Yes all Z-Wave devices originally were on the Vera Plus and they are still there.

I have a few Z-Wave devices also paired on the Ezlo Plus now.

But effectively they are currently two separate Z-Wave networks.

There is no current working migration path from a Vera hub to an Ezlo hub as I said. Not that I have seen or heard about anyway.

They were working on being able to add an Ezlo hub as a secondary controller to the Vera hubs Z-Wave network and then presumably to do a role shift.

But those on the forum at the time who tried it said it wasnt working. I never personally tried it.

I am in no rush what so ever to migrate all my devices to an Ezlo hub. And happy with the setup I have at the moment.

In time and when all this new Ezlo stuff becomes more stable I will migrate over.

Reaching out to Veras cloud servers? Not sure.

MSR is all local all rules and logic and comms to the controllers is local.

Ezlo’s own inbuilt rules engine Meshbots is also local when using local Mesbot rule creation.

EDIT: Think MSR by default does connect to the Ezlo hub via their cloud. However you can enable direct local access from MSR to the Ezlo hub with a bit more leg work.

And I think by default MSR connects to a Vers hub by default locally, I think. But both connections can be made local for sure.

I just want one controller that has at minimum the same functionality. I don’t want some other PC and this and that.And then try and figure out what is or isn’t the problem. I’m not a programmer I want an out of the box solution that has enough flexibility to tweak it. I don’t want this to be a full time job along with my full time job. It needs to be simple and easy. Maybe I chose the wrong platform because without all the plugins and putting together some simple lua code even getting Vera to do what I need/want was not all that easy.
Also seems like this thread has now been hijacked. It was originally about battery level reporting.

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Well the OP hi-jacked his own thread so thats OK.

I can split the thread into two different ones if he wants.

Vera out of the box was decent enough, although the native Vera scenes and logic were basic.

Thats why we used 3rd party rules engine plugins like PLEG and Reactor. However those plugins all ran on the same Vera box which was good.

MSR is the replacement now for Reactor plugin for Vera and that does require a separate box to run it on.

However plenty of people are still using the original Reactor plugin for Vera hubs quite happily today.

As for Ezlo that is a completely new product and a new platform. Nothing really related to the old Vera hubs and platform in most areas.

They are still heavily under development but things are slowly heading in the right direction.

Ezlo have done massive amounts of development work.

The only thing the two platforms really currently share, Ezlo and Vera, is that they are both still using the original Vera mobile app.

Pretty much everything else under the hood is totally different and new.

New hardware hubs
New Zigbee 3.0 support
Brand new hub firmware built from the ground up
New Z-Wave stack they wrote themselves
All new and different APIs
New plugins framework and APIs, (which is why the old Vera plugins dont work on Ezlo hubs.)
New web UI Ezlogic

And the list goes on and on.

They are effectly two very different platforms.