Vera Box Dead

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Quite frustrated here… I have had success with:

3 Wayne-Dalton thermostats
1 light switch and
2 dimmers

3 sections with 6 rooms, uncomplicated scenes.

Adding 2 HSM 100 sensors was too much to ask so I took them out of the devices mix.

Two successful days of 4 am chron reboots, I felt really confident this was going to help me manage my life while away. Blech… Yesterday, I noticed the reboot happened at 5 am instead and the usual 9 pm “vera is down” occurred at 8 pm.

Mmmm…

Ghosting devices wouldn’t go away (I read, I reset the devices, deleted, removed dead nodes… rebooted, double tapped black button to reset – I tried everything in the book), so I created a “dead devices room” and assigned them there out of my way.

Last evening, after starting from scratch again, I was able to connect locally, remotely, and FINALLY got everything to harmonise. Then I goofed. I upgraded from 1.0.918 to the lastest:

1.0.939

I lost remote and local access. That was last night. Brand new day today.

I connected vera direct to my laptop (L1) in hopes of accessing 192.168.xxx xxx. The goal was to plug vera back in and reset this afternoon.

The lights on the front of the unit are flashing (4 times per second). Nothing is solid or even “thinking.”

I do appreciate what the MCV team is developing, but anything in Beta should not be advertised as ready for prime time. I don’t mind being a test subject as long as I know that’s what I’m buying into. I knew “works out of the box” was not going to be that way. Nothing is that easy. I simply didn’t expect living with this to be a(nother) full-time job.

Patience is getting veeeeeerrrry thin around here. Which direction am I supposed to go in now?

Cobette

edit: corrected 193. to 192… adding: Wish I could restore from the backup I made. The box is there; nobody’s home…

2

It’s pretty much impossible to kill this box - just search the forum

3

You may not be old enough to remember a margarine (masquerading as butter) commercial with the tagline “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” [insert lightning strike here].

Do you know where the answer is within the forum? Are you wondering when I’ll stumble upon it searching for terms (within this forum and Google) like, oh, I don’t know… this:

dead
blinking
flashing
inaccessible
vera box
black button
unit flashing
out to lunch
dead
no access
no remote access
no local access
upgrade
reset
dead
restart

Mmmm?

I plug it in. The box flashes/blinks quickly nonstop. The dongle is dark (but can be woken when removed and button depressed). Plug in the dongle and it’s dark. No movement. The patient is in a c-o-m-a.

If you have an answer for me or an idea of what’s wrong, it would be loads more helpful than implying I came here for help before trying to ‘just’ help myself.

Cobette

Edit: Adding that my dongle was not part of the recall.

4

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=306.0

5

Thank you for pointing me to that thread. :slight_smile: I did read it but the conditions didn’t fully apply to me. I did not reboot or power cycle vera during the upgrade.

I backed up
I began the upgrade and walked away
When the upgrade concluded, I refreshed the browser as instructed.

In the end, I hope the rescue.exe puts vera back on track. I’ll be sure to post back here with the results so others may benefit from my experience.

Cobette

6

Update: All wireless connections on a laptop with XP are disabled. Vera is connected to the laptop from LAN 1.

Static IP address of 192.168.1.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 in place.

At the point of #7…
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Firmware_Flash

On clicking UPLOAD, The following message show:

Status
Invalid IP address

Any advice would be appreciated :slight_smile:

7

It took about 20 try’s when I did the rescue and then all of the sudden it worked. I tried waiting and timing it different (ie- waiting 10 seconds longer before telling it to start the rescue) and that worked once. I’ve done it a few times now.

8

Thanks for your reply :slight_smile:

Just so I understand you - you got the “Status: Invalid IP address” and you ignored it? You just kept trying and eventually the Upload began? Did you also keep unplugging vera, holding the black button, replugging, release black button?

If I remember right, in one of your posts, you actually did the unplug, held the reset, replugged, released the reset, then clicked upgrade – and that “order of things” worked for you. Yes?

How long did you wait between tries?

Cobette

9

Yes I unplugged and replugged while holding the black button. Then released it waited different amounts of time before hitting upgrade. But at one point I just did the exact same thing over and over and one time it started working. I don’t understand it either but I was just glad it finally worked. One of the times it worked I waited 10 seconds before hitting the upgrade button after releasing the black button. I believe if it’s going to work you will know within about 15 seconds of hitting upgrade button on the computer. If it hasn’t started by then start over.

10

Just thought I would send a quick update on the progress. I’ve determined that vera is indeed bricked/fried/dead and have shipped it back for a replacement.

Looking forward to getting restarted when the new unit arrives. Thanks so much for all the help. :slight_smile:

Cob