I just linked from Micasverde’s site to the Smarthome site intending to buy Vera but found that it had been discontinued. Does anyone have any info on this? I don’t want to waste another $300 like I did with X-10 stuff. This is the first negative I have heard or read about the Vera product.
It says it was discontinued, not that there is a problem with the device… The Vera has always gotten very good reviews…
I think that this company just wants to sell more expensive home automation solutions… The one touch screen control system they sell goes for over $1,000… A Vera is only $300,… Do the math,… their margin is much lower when selling a Vera,… they essentially have to sell 3-4x the number of Veras as they do these other things…
If you think about it,… The Micro$haft Windoze based software that a lot of vendors sell is about half to just over the price of a Vera,… Software has a very high margin for vendors… and it looks like that particular outfit has sold out to Insteon.
Another point, just a week or so ago Vera was labeled on their website as a Best Seller. Definitely, thank you for the heads-up though. I don’t think there is reason to worry that either MCV or Vera is going anywhere. Especially since Vera is mostly software and the release of the iPhone/iTouch app is just around the corner. With this app I believe it’ll be a killer combo at a great price point (blowing away competition). While Z-Wave has had some ripples in it’s pond, and so has every other technology, it continues to grow. Also a great thing about Vera is that it can adapt to changes in that technology. People continue to successfully buy and use X10 still to this day, so I’m sure there will be similar longevity with Vera and Z-Wave. Hypothetical worst case scenario, if Vera wasn’t being produced anymore, the software would probably be released open source and the established community would continue on. I’m not worried about it, but again, thanks for keeping an eye open.
yeah… I second the Smarthome Insteon theory… They seem to really be pushing that product these days.
Actually, SmartHome is the creator of Insteon…
First of all I’m new to this forum and have only 1 week learning from Vera and Mi Casa Verde.
I do understand that Smarthome won’t be happy selling Vera since they are the creator of Insteon (as stated above) and Vera would be a direct competition to their systems and and will negatively affect the selling of their insteon products.
I’m glad that the Vera MCV (software) is an open source approach, this will definitely accelerate home automation into the main stream. I’m a bit concern though about how the company is doing hardware wise; is the selling of the Vera units generating enough revenue to keep the company in busines for long? so basicly are the contribution margin enough to asure sustainability.
It would be nice to have some inputs direct from Mi Casa Verde on the reasons for the discontinue anouncement on Smarthome and these concerns.
Lots of good info, thanks to all for taking time to reply. I am new to the home automation club but am looking forward to diving in. With all the positive replies looks like Vera will be a part of my family soon.
I do not believe that Vera is open source, I believe I saw it somewhere that it could not be because of the ZWave license and using the proprietary software and such, but only MCV can really answer that one.
Ok, then… No wonders…
BTW, I consider my Vera to be one of the best tech purchases I have ever made… Secondary to (maybe) my Gigabyte M912M (I had to get it as in import from Hungary, of all places,… wacked for a device that is made in China but totally unavailable in the US,… Damn!!! I hate Micro$oft…), or my Nokia N800 (I was heartbroken when I accidentally busted it), or my old Commodore 64 (amazing what you could do back then with a machine with only 64K of RAM and a few upgrades).
Ok, then… No wonders…[/quote]
It’s not that simple - Vera supports Insteon (although, the support is still not finished and buggy)
Amen!!! I had a C64 and an Atari 800XL used to love programming in Basic!
Actually it’s not what it seems. Because we now support Insteon they ordered a larger quantity than normal and we didn’t have enough in stock, and the lead time was over 30 days to get more inventory. So rather than selling them as backorders, they suspended the sales until we got the units stock. We just got them a few days ago and sent them to smarthome.com, so the link should be active again soon.
So many people jumping to conclusions. What good conspiracy theorists you would make. Time to write a novel.
Amen!!! I had a C64 and an Atari 800XL used to love programming in Basic![/quote]
I had an Atari 800. I remember waiting months on back order before if finally came. Cost about $800 which was almost all my savings as a 14 year old. Used to mow lawns and save my lunch and B-Day money. Had to love those cassette tape drive load times.
Yeah and the old single density floppy drives that if you replaced the code in the EPROM with the hacked code you could make it a double density drive!!! Oh not mention the Hayes 300 baud modems!
Atari 65XE with XC12 tape drive…
So what happens when the platform (Asus WL-500) is no longer made? Do you guys at MCV have an alternate platform that we can use? I assume maybe something like a Linksys WRT54GL? This has me concerned since it appears that this WL-500 OEM platform can’t be made forever…
Comments?
Their code isn’t tied to the specific [ASUS WL-500] platform. From what I’ve seen, it would be fairly trivial for them to build/toolchain for another box, even if a different CPU, since all the components are readily available.
They specifically reference this in the OEM verbiage in the original Luup Press Release.
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Press_Release#Cross_platform_for_OEM_use
The WL-500 is probably overkill for HA, since it’s got a ton of Memory (etc) that a normal router wouldn’t have.
So what is to be done in the meantime as the stock of asus is dwindling? I cannot beilive that you can just load the firmware and your’re good to go no testing no bugs.
Companies come and go, but the underlying tech changes very little.
The core components of OpenWRT (which Vera is based) I have running on Linksys (2 widely different generations), an ASUS 520g and of course Vera itself. So I have very little concern about porting of the HA “core” that layers atop this. The techniques for writing this type of Portable code have been around for a very long time.
If there was to be a HW transition, I suspect we’d see a very short transition period to something new. My assumption here is that they’d likely use the same CPU/Chipset combo from any one of a number of other Vendors. When you look under the covers of these boxes, there’s a surprising amount of similarity.
Now, if the Chipset vendors (like Marvell etc) were to go under, that would be a different beast.
Rather than starting another rumor chain, perhaps we should wait to see what announcements and changes CES brings… 