Placing an order now for the Vera Edge. I have had smartthings for over a year. I have a good sized system with about 80 connects devices. The last four months has been terrible. I am really hoping this system will be much better. Any advice or comments you can give? I’ve been using my Staples connect hub for the last several weeks. It’s not a bad system and it is very reliable. It definitely does not offer the flexibility of the other systems. I definitely miss geofencing and energy management is a huge deal for me. Anyway, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Welcome. I have had an edge now for about 2 months and it is my first steps into HA. Reading through the forum it seems that no matter which system you decide upon, it has it’s own problems/quirks which you need to mitigate in order for things to work out well.
I like the community here and I see that a lot of talented people have contributed to the forums, but also a lot of people seem to have left as well and abandoned Plugins and applications. However, I think this is also the nature of IT/HA that people tend to commit to a platform for a certain period and then move on to other challenges. Luckily it is also a circle so people like yourself come over to this platform etc.
As for your Energy Management. I am not sure what you intend to do, but I have a focus on this as well and for these purposes it seems the easiest way for now, for me, is to upload my consumption to EmonCMS, but ultimately I will do that with an EmonTX device as well. I like the look of Ergy in Vera, but it seems like that is having some kind of hiatus due to changes in MicasaVerde, so I am not sure about that one for now.
Another cloud platform to use may be Thingspeak via AltUI.
The main issue I have with these is that the Luup engine seems to develop faults intermittently and I lose data due to that. The faults may be related to the fact that I am currently all over the Vera with changes left, right and center and that may cause instability.
Otherwise I look forward to using Vera for years to come (until something “better” comes along)
There are many options for geofencing with Vera, most successful setups include [phone] apps which are not the native Vera apps. Check into Vera Proximity for Android and VeraMate for iPhone.
Several of us use multi-faceted GeoFencing… Looks for a post I did a year’ish ago on how I combine Router scripts, Ping plugin, and PLEG plugin. I’ve also used Tasker and/or Vera Location and/or AutoLocation to ‘alert’ the system when I was approaching the house but I found it is not needed as long as your Wifi can extend to your front & back yard. But you can use those to add some features if you need.
My GeoFencing automatically turns on/off my Honeywell alarm system… and has been 100% reliable on Arming, 99% reliable on Disarming (detecting when home after being away)
Placing an order now for the Vera Edge. I have had smartthings for over a year. I have a good sized system with about 80 connects devices. The last four months has been terrible. I am really hoping this system will be much better. Any advice or comments you can give? I’ve been using my Staples connect hub for the last several weeks. It’s not a bad system and it is very reliable. It definitely does not offer the flexibility of the other systems. I definitely miss geofencing and energy management is a huge deal for me. Anyway, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks![/quote]
Just so you know the VERA plus was just announced and is out for pre order but not shipping yet. I own two edges myself (for a year now) and that’s fine to start with, just wanted you to be aware the new controller was announced. It’s around 40.00 more then the EDGE (99 vs. 139) and offers more RAM (which is a huge issue on reliability when you add alot of plugins/apps and devices) it also has not only z-wave but bluetooth and zigbee to offer more options for sensors vs. just z-wave. But all this new stuff may cause new problems when it’s first released.
What phones/tablets do you use to control the hub? That will make a big difference on what apps you can use. geofencing, push notifications and such can be way different depending on which app you use. And if your ios or Android will make a big difference on what your able to use. Stock apps are limited and don’t have the options/looks you can get with other free to 7.00 apps.
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