So I’ve heard - TBH it’s very powerful but it’s let down by the crappy UI. I raised this over on their forums and even the lead developer agreed the UI needs a lot of work. Apparently the main issue is the platform - to redo it to make it user friendly would require them to rebuild the front end in react or something similar.
The old language is Groovy. It’s a weird state they’re in. You can still write your apps in Groovy, but have to follow their new implementation system. Actually, you can use any code you want going forward. It sounds super flexible, but apparently the hoops you jump through to get your code in place is insanely complicated.
They’ve also put the cart before the horse and have failed to provide good documentation on how to port your apps into the new system. Devs are pushing their work into Hubitat and promising to stop support of their existing work in SmartThings.
It’s truly crappy times in the world of home automation.
SmartThings is cloud based and why I never even considered using it. Most of the ST users who’ve migrated to Hubitat, have done so because the cloud based automatons only work if you have perfect internet and the latency is apparently noticeably worse than if locally run too.
If I ever run into something that causes me to dump my VeraPlus I’m going to a regular PC running Linux or a raspberry pi 4 Why continue messing around with underpowered devices?
Vera is only slow due to the poor development decisions and bloated UI. I’ve got more automation and many more devices on my HE C7 than I had on my Vera 2 weeks ago and it’s running flawlessly and it’s fast.
There’s no reason to need a powerful computer for home automation if you optimise your operating system and applications properly.
I have multiple 2MP high resolution security cameras feeding a DVR. The DVR is running Linux and not only is it running motion, it has plenty of disk space and power left over for other things. And who said anything about a powerful computer? My Linux box is a retired Windows XP system.
People are throwing away in the garbage machines that have more ran more cpu cores and a far faster CPU than any HE C7 or Vera Plus because those machines were bought to run a non-optimized operating system (windows) and non-optimized applications and are now considered “too slow” for the latest iteration of that bloated operating system and it’s bloated UI.
The ONLY REASON that devices like the Vera Plus and the HE C7 even exist at all is because they are inexpensive and they meet a price point. So, those companies can sell “Home Automation” devices for $149,99 and newbies will buy them. I was a newbie to HA once and yes, the $149.99 device helped me to get over the hump in the learning curve of HA. But, there is nothing special about a HE C7 or a Vera Plus or even a Raspberry Pi - they are just cheap computers. And cheap computers have limits.
You sit there and criticize “poor development decisions and a bloated UI” of Vera while using the most bloated UI in existence - Windows - to post that drivel. It is standard in the computer industry to throw money at hardware to make bloated code run fast. I can do essentially the same thing by throwing a 5 year old PC at the problem of HA as can anyone with enough experience and smarts to write a reasonably complex HA scene.
Now if HA was built around a Raspberry PI or an Arduino that would be different. Those devices besides being cheap have wonderful I/O all those GPIO and analog inputs. Which would really lend themselves to H/A. Instead of a door open/closed sensor being this $30 device with a radio it could be a simple switch. But the HA industry turned it’s back on those devices because doing HA that way meant running wires. So the upshot is most of the people running on of the 10-15 HA programs out there on a Raspberry Pi are not even using those inputs - and so they are effectively using the Raspberry Pi as a cheap computer. When they probably have a basement full of old PC’s that are far more powerful than the Raspberry Pi they are screwing with.
The entire HA industry is full of horrendous technical decisions that you simply do not see because you are embedded into it. All these devices - the Vera, the HE - run Linux. The code that runs on them runs on a used PC you can get for free from anyone upgrading to a new PC. And if you hate PCs for some reason you can still buy a Raspberry Pi for far less than a Vera or HE because the economies of manufacturing scale set the price of those devices cheaper since so many more of them were made. Or if you hate Raspberry Pis, you can buy a used Netgear wifi router that has the same ARM CPU as a HE and can be flashed with openwrt and used as a platform for running HE applications. The point is there’s far cheaper and more powerful hardware options than a HE C7 or Vera Plus. It’s just a shame the HA industry didn’t take advantage of them.
Trying to run cameras through any home automation system is just silly. Get a dedicated system like a Synology NAS with Surveillance Station and the licences you need.
That’s what I’ve done and the result is well worth it. The Synology app is even wife friendly!
Optimized code is always better but low cpu ceilings cap future features. Look at UDI’s ISY994. It uses a 250Mhz cup with a real-time OS and does a fine job as an automation controller. But it can’t handle making web calls, hence the addition of external Polyglot servers. I can’t say their OS isn’t the constraint but if they had put in 500Mhz cpu it maybe could have handled more external services.
I wouldn’t say that the lack of gpio is why wireless is core to HA.
USB ports have more than enough bandwidth. Homeseer sells a Pi3 based controller but you don’t see a ton of demand for wired homeseer devices or they would be on their store.
Wireless devices are just cheaper for the common home. Even the security industry moved away from 100% wires. All panels I am aware of support wireless sensors. The expense of retrofitting concealed wires in a small or mid sized house is far greater than the wireless sensor cost.
Wires are cheaper on new construction or houses with a lot of sensors, but thats also the customer likely to be a pro install system (control4).
This is so true! (as a general statement).
1 Like
It is not silly if the HA system is a PC that is doing other things. And with any sort of dedicated surveillance system (such as the Synology) you are paying a huge markup for stuff that isn’t going into the surveillance hardware. And by the way it’s not a NAS it’s an NVR at least Synology calls it that to obscure what it really is. The Synology lower end NVRs are cheap POS devices that use slow processors and slow disks and are no better than hooking an external USB disk to something like an Apple Time Machine.
I have sold and supported a few surveillance systems. The top of the line ones all use PCs as the DVR. Usually rack mounted devices. A high end camera from someone like Axis that can see a blade of grass a half mile away is thousands and when you have multiple ones of those the DVR cost even for a brand new one is a small part of the system.
The reality is that you cannot feed enough video bandwidth over a wifi network for a high resolution high FPS surveillance system with multiple cameras. Commercial systems run cable.
For a 1 or 2 camera setup in a home you can run 1080p USB cameras (not the cheap POS ones people use for Zooming) that have IR emitters and are waterproof and an active USB extension cable to the PC. The camera is completely secure nobody can tap into it’s video feed, and you are not degrading your wifi bandwith. You can run a free motion trigger program and run at 30 fps and if nothing is going on there are no disk writes so the PC CPU is just loafing along doing very little. For a larger system you can step up to ethernet network cameras.
As for “wife friendly” well all I’ll say to that is that if a person cannot spend the time learning a program they shouldn’t be violating someone’s civil rights by getting their jollies spying on them. It’s bad enough to be watched by professionals all over the place but at least someone who is dedicated enough to LEARN how to run a DVR can be expected to have SOME discretion. Do you also hand your chainsaw to your 6 year old? Sheesh!
The problem with buying “siloed” technologies is that you run into problem of trying to get them to work together.
Isn’t that what you are doing with the Ezlo gear 
Time marches on and even the embedded/dedicated single board CPU stuff gets faster and cheaper every year. But the real question is will they add wifi to our headjacks when they start giving us those? 
Remove the word “siloed” from that sentence and you have an accurate description of modern day IT.
1 Like
Haha, No!
That’s why we have our own RTOS
National fire code mandates wired together smoke detectors in new construction. The Ring doorbell cam uses the doorbell wires for power (don’t know if it uses those for data, too) Time was that it was standard to wire new homes with phone jacks in every room. Leviton produces a whole series of in-wall boxes intended for use to hide ethernet switches in between the studs.
The NA industry is really still in its infancy and during that time when there’s a lot of competing companies and standards, they are going to be focused on retrofitting because that is what is available to market to. For example for every 4’ LED fluorescent light&fixture sold at Home Depot they sell 50 retrofit LED 4’ light bulbs But overall I think you will see more movement towards wired solutions in the future with Ethernet cabling being the standard. I’m already seeing higher end homes very interested in having ethernet cable run to different rooms what is preventing more penetration of that is there is a desperate shortage of wire jockies out there - everyone who can run an ethernet drop and terminate connections has full time work if they want it.
2 days ago I replaced my Google nest thermostats with Zen Zigbee Thermostats, then I shut down and removed my last Vera Hub and I couldn’t be happier!
WAF is also much higher on Hubitat and I’ve been able to build so much more useful automation in the last month that I simply couldn’t build on Vera because it was too slow, too unreliable, and lacking powerful native automation capabilities. Reactor is brilliant but even it cant match the speed and power of HE Rule Machine (Global and Local Variables would be a standout feature in HE).
My z-wave network has increased in size by more than 10 devices and they all work great. I can finally use Zigbee devices and they work really well. I was finally able to turf my old school alarm system and move everything to Hubitat (HSM) using a mix of z-wave and Zigbee products (I have a battery backup for the Hub).
@melih you really need to take a look at what Hubitat is doing if you want to stay in the “proper” home automation hub game. Frankly, Vera’s current direction with your new Linux firmware is repeating most of the same mistakes Mios made. The independent Vera dev’s I’ve spoken to seem unimpressed with the direction being taken too.
I’m a big fan of a competitive marketplace, so I really hope Vera can survive and thrive, however, I’m not confident this will happen. Vera was a good place for me to start my HA journey, but Hubitat has passed Vera by in the last year, and by a big margin - as a result, I no longer recomend Vera to family and friends and netzians in general forums.
So long, and thanks for all the fish,
Derek.
PS, FWIW I tried Home Assistant, openHAB and HomeSeer before settling on Hubitat.
4 Likes