UI4 Upgrade notes

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

The upgrade did not work at first because of a Net/Wifi setting. I used Vera2 as a switch with a static IP address connected to my Gigabit router . Vera will not upgrade in this configuration! I reworked my network temporarily making Vera2 the router and the upgrade worked flawlessly without losing any switches rooms or scenes. I then reset the Net/Wifi setting the way I like it with Vera2 as a switch with a static IP and all works fine. UI4 looks great, but I liked UI3.

One problem still exists that has never been corrected with any of the UI. My Leviton scene controllers still will not configure my scenes!!! The configuration page has never been easier to understand but it still does not work. The controllers were reset and added per the directions and the scene buttons configured only after making and testing the scenes. They just do not program. I have tested them with Control Think and they program fine with that program. I was hoping for a fix as promissed with UI4.

#2

Can you go click on the advance tab and then click on firmware and tell us what version you are running? What version of firmware did you come from?

  • Garrett
#3

Running 1.1.1047. Switched from last updated version of UI3. My network is all Leviton products. 28 Switches. 6 Lamp modules. 4 Scene/Zone Controllers. Control Think can correctly configure controllers but Vera does not.

#4

Have you looked at these instructions?

http://docs2.mios.com/doc.php?page=scenes

In the beta forums, There were questions regarding the leviton scene controllers and their proprietary support. Supposedly MCV has added this into the 1.1.1044 release. So 1.1.1047 should be working. There have been users who were able to get their scene controllers to work.

Hopefully others on here can share more information.

  • Garrett
#5

Yes I read that page and I assigned the scenes in this manner:

Assigning scenes to buttons on scene controllers or handheld remote controls

You must create the scene and save it FIRST. After you have assigned the scene to a scene controller you can modify the scene and save changes, but you must save the new scene before you can assign it to a scene controller.

Open the control pad for the scene controller or handheld remote. If you see a scenes tab, and if the scenes tab lists the buttons that are on the remote with a pull-down next to each one, then simply select the scene in the pull-down. Some scene controllers will also let you specify what scene to run when the ‘off’ button is pushed for that scene. This is mainly used for Leviton scene controllers.

But they still won’t work. Anyone that has sucessfully assigned them, help would be appreciated.

#6

[quote=“lastmacuser, post:5, topic:166413”]Yes I read that page and I assigned the scenes in this manner:

Assigning scenes to buttons on scene controllers or handheld remote controls

You must create the scene and save it FIRST. After you have assigned the scene to a scene controller you can modify the scene and save changes, but you must save the new scene before you can assign it to a scene controller.

Open the control pad for the scene controller or handheld remote. If you see a scenes tab, and if the scenes tab lists the buttons that are on the remote with a pull-down next to each one, then simply select the scene in the pull-down. Some scene controllers will also let you specify what scene to run when the ‘off’ button is pushed for that scene. This is mainly used for Leviton scene controllers.

But they still won’t work. Anyone that has sucessfully assigned them, help would be appreciated.[/quote]

The only possible issue that I can see without actually looking at your setup is the Controller’s role in your network. If you use Think Essential with either the Leviton remote or the USB stick then you might experience a problem. I know I did, and the way I got around that was by shifting the controller. Something that is not discussed here in this forum is Z-Wave hierarchy of service. If you use multiple controllers then ideally you want to find out how each specific controller fits into the Z-Wave hierarchy and add them to your network according to that hierarchy from top down. I could not tell why it works that way, it just does. Based on the information I’ve gathered from the few classes I’ve attended there are three classes of controllers.

Static Controllers
Primary Controllers
Secondary controllers

Static controllers are devices that are always present on the network.
Primary and secondary controllers can shift roles but only one can be in charge. That said all controllers should be defined as secondary if there is a static controller device on the network.

#7

My UI4 upgrade was quite the ordeal (made worse by failure of my PC so I had to use a Netbook, and my router stopped working as well).

Somehow, my Vera 2, UI2, suddenly became “disconnected” at the same time my router stopped talking to the Internet. That is, it seemed to be running but there was no way I could get in to it (e.g. hardwired on ETH2 going to 192.168.81.1 did not work). I tried reboots and factory resets and there was just no getting to the webUI or telnet (or determining it’s IP for that matter; I tried the previously DHCP-assigned one before router failed).

So I got a new router and everything set up to restore internet connectivity, but Vera refused to go “online” (ETH1 double blinking), nor could I access it from it’s own hardwired ETH2 port or WiFi. I ended up using the Windows-based firmware loader and doing the plug-in-with-reset-held to get load the new firmware.

Based on the instructions and documentation, I assumed this would load the final build of UI2, but it turns out it was fairly recent UI4.

I skipped the wizard and went to the main UI4 page, which managed to talk to the internet and immediately prompted to upgrade to latest public UI4 beta. That upgrade went quickly and smoothly.

Following that, it appeared all my devices and scenes were gone. I tried pairing a single switch twice using the “option 2” method of Vera plugged into the battery pack and walking around. It took a very long time to boot, but then seemed to pair as usual with the fast-blink Zwave light. Returning to the PC, I plugged Vera back in to my router and clicked "Next’ in the wizard. It then showed a red bar saying something like “Make sure Vera is connected” and I tried Next again. I could not ever get past this page.

So I tried the “option 1”, which was to bring the devices to Vera while it was plugged in. Instead of doing that, I tried pairing to the wall switch about 5 feet away. It did the fast-blink on the Zwave light, but no new devices came up in the list on the page. I clicked the “my devices aren’t showing up” link where it said it was trying to reset them, but still nothing showed up…

I clicked the next button anyway, and the little 3D pocketwatch animation starting spewing messages for the next 20 minutes… it seems to have found every device, purged settings, re-associated, and all kinds of stuff through all my 40+ devices.

Finally it took me to the dashboard with all devices there (some names cropped and/or prefixed with _), and no scenes. But the devices all seemed to work great. I created a couple scenes (all off go to bed, turn on switched load in my leviton 4-button controller) and added them to one of the scene controllers. Configured and worked perfectly within a minute.

So the whole upgrade was pretty bizarre, but I think it is working now… I had to go to bed. I will finish recreating all my scenes today, but my Leviton scene controller is definitely working. It also now leaves the LED on when I put in a ‘run this scene when I deactivate button’ in the bottom set of dropdowns. While this makes sense and is probably what it should have done all along, I liked the old behaviour better (light off), as my ‘activate scene’ is “all off, bedside light on”, and my ‘deactivate scene’ is “bedside light to 75%, off after 10 seconds”. Now I have a bright shiny LED on the wall whereas before it went out.

The ‘cp.mios.com’ cannot seem to find Vera on my local network although it looks like my Internet issues are gone.

#8

krfar:
That is interesting. I know Vera2 is the primary because the Zwave device tab shows Role: Suc SIS:YES PRI:YES. I added Thinkstick to Vera and added ThinkEssentials as a secondary controller. It received the devices and scenes. I then prgrammed the Leviton scene controllers from Thinkessentials after Vera would not program them correctly. With this information, do you have any recommendation? Would removing Thinkstick help? Does programming the scene controllers with Thinkessentials change the primary controller?

#9

Man all of these problems give me no desire to upgrade from UI2 version 979. In fact, the only upgrade I’m even considering is maybe a UI2 upgrade to 988-1 for SQ app. I’m still waiting for the next iPod touch to come out before I make any plunge.

It just amazes me the lack of documentation that is generally available on different versions and the fixes and known problems they have. We can’t even get a straight answer on Vera1 vs Vera2. All we have are cobbled responses from various posts that have an unknown expiration date.

I won’t feel remotely confident until the chic on their homepage holds a vera2.

#10

tt55du

Remember that this is only an early beta and it is expected to have issues. My conversion to UI4 has had issues and two tickets were submitted. I hope the resolution of these problems and those from other users will make your eventual migration to UI4 much less painful. You or anyone not technically inclined should wait until it is a final release.

#11

Thanks for the encouragement and i will wait for a final release, then probably wait 3 more months :). It’s not so much of a lack of technical inclination, I’m just tired of running up and down the stairs to troubleshoot. Things work well enough for now. Unfortunately I foresee myself having to rebuild my entire network so I’ll have to set aside an entire day for that :(. I also have custom software on my Vera that gets wiped with every Vera build that takes some time to get on.