Today, I finished migrating my home automation system to a competitor (SmartThings). It was not my intention to ever leave, but too many errors and security scares led me down a different path.
When coming to Vera, I thought I had done my homework. I reviewed the Mios app store, saw that the Vera Plus had all the radios I’d ever need; what could ever go wrong? Within 6 months I regretted my decision to preorder the Plus, finding it didn’t support 99% of the lights I wanted to install.
No big deal I thought. I’ll buy a Wink hub and use the relay plugin in the app store. One week after installing it and buying lots of Sengled bulbs, the plugin was pulled by the developer, along with many other useful plugins such as the TP-Link setup. I missed installing the plugin by a handful of days.
Not willing to let a ton of lights go unused, I bought a SmartThings hub for less than $60 to use for my lights only and keep it strictly Zigbee. After a dual plug Inovelli switch stopped working on my Vera Plus, I tried it on SmartThings. It worked! It paired up in 5 seconds! I figured for sure the device would fail again, but to my surprise it must have been an error within the Vera. That dual plug still hums along nicely. After having success with the plug, I started moving trouble devices over as well. I found that every device I added worked with very little frustration or modification.
The last straw for me was not being able to open my front door from within the app. It just wouldn’t unlock. I moved it over today and was surprised to see that lock, a Schlage, is capable of instant status and works fantastically in the app and by Alexa voice.
SmartThings is cloud based, but I’ve achieved all but 1 device set up to run local. I really appreciate having local control along with the ability to add nearly any device through use of cloud connections. I’m also able to view my Z-Wave mapping within their IDE online. This is fantastic for troubleshooting and is super easy to follow arrows pointing to different devices.
I decided to post all of this out of my extreme frustration with my Vera experience, but also to note that I am eagerly awaiting the Linux firmware for the Vera Plus. I am hopeful that Ezlo will get it right and let me salvage my overpriced Plus with new firmware. The community plugins were truly the strength of Vera and if they are able to continue with the Linux firmware there is hope that this system does everything the Vera Plus originally promised. I hope to see the ability to link additional Ezlo hubs together as well, such as a ZLL option, as an example. Time will tell.