UI7 ▾ Vera Software Update ▾ 7.0.30 - Nov 20, 2019

Company Talks Release Notes
#342

I would call it neither: There are many ways to manage a product and software release and a number of us have been advocating to go for a fixed timeline release with variable content. Basically whatever is completed and fully tested makes it into the next release which is committed to a timeline.
The way vera approaches it is the opposite, they seem to have a fixed (and huge) feature set they target for each release and try to kludge it together, test it internally with very insufficient means and are not yet quite familiar with the concept of beta builds which requires a lot more discipline. I am sorry to say but so many times I have seen vera’s beta firmware releases being more stable than their final public releases.

Now the solution I have proposed is very simple… go back to be as close as possible to the last alpha version we tested which was promising and got us all excited. 7.30 should never have taken so many new features since the alpha and the build we tested should have been released to beta as is and then to all of you. Instead, at each step, more insufficiently tested commits were made, and as the beta testers reported problems, not only did they not get fixed and get tested again, they got further untested commits before the formal release. This is a product management and discipline problem.

As far as I can tell, all you lose from running the old kernel and OS is the storage redistribution, which is important but not to the point of risking the catastrophic we witnessed from day one but also all the time lost leaving customers stranded, support work hours going bonkers and eventually losing customer trust and customers period. That’s just my opinion…
If build 47xx would have been released (build which passed our preliminary testing with flying colors for the most part) instead of 4833, ezlo would have bought a lot of time to finish the kernel and have it beta tested/fixed, gained a lot of trust and goodwill from all of us. And it could have been 1 month earlier…
When the disasters were reported, a same day release of 47xx could still have saved it. But no… I don’t know how it looks like from the inside but I know I would be out of a job if I was managing my products this way. Sorry for being so crude. I just don’t know why they are sabotaging themselves when they did such great work.

3 Likes
#343

As you said, we do not know the internals, but having @Sorin, @melih and @edward disappeared we can only complain from the enduser side and conjecture about the status, the future and what is happening in Vera/Ezlo.

If I were Ezlo, I would not be happy about the progress made. Many enterprises release products and software on a quarter basis because they need to show inverstors the progress they are making (and this often result in beta products release as a GA), but generally speaking I agree with @rafale77 wishing fixed release timeframe with dynamic feature/fixes.

#344

So… Is the advice still for Vera Secure and Vera Plus to hold off the upgrade and wait for a new release?

If so, anyone have any guesses as to when such a release would be available?

#345

There is no official upgrade available as far as I know, so I’d suggest that’s the best advice. Unless you want to run the Rafael special.
I have no issues (other than disappearing devices once) and it’s not quite as stable as Rafaels (mine LuuP reloads about once per day, but I’m messing around with it so often it’s not entirely surprising if it’s not 100% solid. I also have some kludges of my own which probably don’t help :smiley:

OTOH I’m pretty technical so have no fear of diving in on a terminal and paying the price if I screw it up. YMMV

C

1 Like
#346

:point_up_2: What he said…

Unless you are extrooted and are a bit technical, I would hold off.

2 Likes
#347

Closure on a VeraSecure bricked by the 7.30 install:

While I’m obviously not pleased with my VeraSecure getting bricked by an update, I am pleased with Vera Customer Support’s response and the product I got back.

The timeline between the long phone call where customer support couldn’t remotely recover my VeraSecure and receiving a replacement (refurbished) unit was 10 days, and in the middle of that was the Thanksgiving weekend.

The refurbished unit is in perfect physical condition, and I ran down the internal battery a bit and it’s healthy. For me, it’s a newer unit – about 5,000 higher in serial number than my original.

So now I have “factory installed” 7.30 firmware. It has been perfectly stable, and I have had no issues when I reboot (hope I didn’t just jinx myself).

The only transition issue on my devices was now the Zooz ZSE-18 sensor is implemented differently than before, so I had to reconfigure the four that I have and make some scene/Lua changes. And I have yet to go in and relocate some of my home-brew device icons to the new directory.

I did see the Christmas Tree issue when I tried to go into Network Settings and disable the WiFi, but that was quickly resolved with the 3X reset button network defaults restore. Instead, I just put os.execute(“wifi down”) into my startup Lua and no further issues.

I’m pleased (and somewhat surprised) that during my time without a VeraSecure, I was able to load its last backup onto an old VeraPlus, continue to evolve my code on that, and then restore the VeraPlus backup back onto the new VeraSecure.

For reference, I’ve got 143 Zwave nodes, 314 total devices, 185 scenes, and tons of my own Lua. It made for a slow time when I had to run it on my old VeraPlus :slight_smile:

#348

Glad you got it resolved. While my experience with Support has often been great to excellent, I wish I had not needed them as often. From my testing, know that the Xmas Light mode is unrelated to wifi but is a random event at reboot/reload. The os.execute does not do a reboot while doing it on the UI may.

In terms of performance, the vera secure and the vera plus differ in the fact that the secure has even less available storage for plugins and device data while it has 2X more RAM and truly has a dual core CPU which vera doesn’t appear to make use of. Not sure it was much of an upgrade. 7.30 should address some of the storage concerns though, at the cost of the xmas light mode and losing extroot.

#349

Being the diligent aerospace engineer that I am, I wanted to test how reliable the thing is before I recommitted it to run my home. So I actually sat there and rebooted it 15 times in a row with no issues. The four times that I went in to change network settings resulted in Christmas Tree every time.

No guarantee that my factory installed 7.30 configuration is exactly identical to your post-upgrade configuration, right?

I did see some improvements moving from Plus to Secure, which I then saw in reverse temporarily going backwards. When I originally moved from Plus to Secure, the two most noticeable changes were (1) reduced delay in motion sensor activation of lights and (2) faster UI. When I temporarily went back to the Plus, it took about 20 seconds to load my Devices page, and there was a short delay again in motion sensors turning on lights.

I gave up on most plugins a while back, so I can’t speak to differences there. Back in my Vera Plus days, removing plug-ins and doing code myself is what gave me a stable system that ran on it for weeks without a reload.

By the way when you write a piece of Lua that turns the VeraSecure’s alarm on for 50 mS, it makes a great beeper. That’s worth the price difference, right? :smiley:

#350

I had the same experience. I dumped all the App Store plugins and wrote my own. Three years later, almost every plugin I wrote for myself is now published in the App Store. How’s that for irony? :slight_smile:

6 Likes
#351

And we all see that you SUPPORT your plug ins! Even though I’m not using them, your posts have been really helpful to me as I generated code – thank you!

2 Likes
#352

I seem to experience the ‘christmas lights’ issue even for extremely short internet outages - ie. unplug the WAN cable from my router for a few seconds and the Vera Secure will reliably go into a mode where it is completely offline with all its lights flashing and requires a reboot to come back.

From the sound of this thread, even downgrading may not be possible to fix this :frowning:

#353

4 weeks after…
I suppose fixing this release was much more complicated than we expected!

#354

Not helpful unless you open a ticket with support and they downgrade it for you.
I am also ready to bet they will tell you to wait for the upcoming re-release.

I don’t think the fix is trivial if they wanted to make the changes they wanted to the kernel. (mostly on the storage space redistribution and the server connection failover for vera protect from what I can tell). Going back on these two changes would have fixed the deadly problems but apparently was not considered to be an option. What is concerning is that we are once again not seeing anything in the beta loop so I hope we will have a formal beta test before a release.

1 Like
#355

Yes I have a pending ticket already raised with support. I’ll share what happens there.

#356

Is any roadmap for the FW fix available. We are still waiting from the first day

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#357

I have a ticket open as well . We’re waiting a couple weeks to see if there’s an ETA announced. If not I’m going to ask support to downgrade my controller firmware.

#358

Well I have set up my Samsung smartthing hub, to monitor my vera, and when it goes down, turn off the vera, and the turn it back on…

Works, but I want to retun my smartthing, as I don’t like the UI

So waiting on the fix, but with speed they are working with, maybe 3 month ?

1 Like
#359

4 weeks in, where are we at with confidence in the new firmware?
I have a Vera Edge still running 1.7.4452 with 60+ devices, most powered and 3 or 4 battery.
It’s my home system that I dabble on, my real job is an industrial automation programmer.
Do I push the upgrade button?
Is there a process that will minimise or negate any pain?
Thanks in advance.

#360

It seems that the upgrade problems are in the “other” Vera controllers, they seem not to affect the Edge controller. My particular case (20 devices) and one of my daughters (only 6), both upgraded a couple of weeks ago and no problem at all. Even more, applied Rafale77’s commands and much better, batteries longer time and “device offline” messages disappeared….

But this is my case… and also the case of some other ones with Vera Edge that reported it in this thread.

regards

1 Like
#361

The problems with the 7.30 version seem specific to the openWrt and other OS functions they did change in that version for the Plus and maybe Secure for the security monitoring service, and some other tids and bits.

The Edge did not get those upgrades. They are planned for the 7.31 release we have been told. The (major) improvements in the Luup engine is on both. My Edge systems upgraded fine and are running smoother than ever.

O, don’t shoot the messenger (me) if your experience is different :wink:

Cheers Rene

2 Likes