Vera Lite or Edge?

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

Hi all,

Hoping you can offer some advice. Have a North American Vera Lite, working fine and controlled everything correctly. Sold the house but I kept the Vera to bring to the UK.

I have now realised that the NA and UK zwave frequencies are different which is why I can’t pair the new zwave devices I have bought here in the UK!!!

With that in mind, the question is if I should buy the Vera Edge or use a UK spec zwave dongle. Anyone have any opinions on this?

I wouldn’t hesitate to move to the Vera Edge but I’m not sure the plugins I was using on the Vera Lite are now available on the Edge, these were:

Program Logic Event Generator
Honeywell Ademco Vista Alarm Panels Plugin

…and some others.

Thanks!

#2

[quote=“Latz, post:1, topic:190118”]Hi all,

Hoping you can offer some advice. Have a North American Vera Lite, working fine and controlled everything correctly. Sold the house but I kept the Vera to bring to the UK.

I have now realised that the NA and UK zwave frequencies are different which is why I can’t pair the new zwave devices I have bought here in the UK!!!

With that in mind, the question is if I should buy the Vera Edge or use a UK spec zwave dongle. Anyone have any opinions on this?

I wouldn’t hesitate to move to the Vera Edge but I’m not sure the plugins I was using on the Vera Lite are now available on the Edge, these were:

Program Logic Event Generator
Honeywell Ademco Vista Alarm Panels Plugin

…and some others.

Thanks![/quote]

Both of those are available on ui7.
Edge and Lite run the same plugins if your on the same UI version. If you were on the old ui5 on the lite then it is possible some plugins may be different then ui7. That’s not a Lite vs. Edge thing tho thats a ui5 vs. ui7 thing.

Lite runs half the RAM and after a few plugins you may run into random rebooting. I have upgraded both of my Lites to Edges due to that. The new EDGE uses a z-wave plus chip which is needed to work with some newer devices (might depend on what your buying now) that are z-wave Plus Devices.

Edge is 99.00 right now and the new VERA PLUS is set for pre order in the coming weeks.

I would personally scrap the LITE and atleast get the 99.00 EDGE if not wait for the PLUS which will add zigbee and bluetooth. (not sure if those are or will be important to you)

#3

I’ve got a slightly different view on this.

The Vera Lite and UI5 are no longer being developed, so you could consider them end-of-life. For this reason, I now recommend that people purchase the newer Vera Edge, going forward. However, there are two caveats to this.

  1. An additional newer Vera Plus is due soon. Though I wouldn’t expect it before Christmas, it may be of interest to you and you may prefer it to a Vera Edge, so you might want to wait a couple/few months if the Plus is of interest to you.

  2. You already have a Vera Lite and a good history with UI5.

If it were me, I’d get a UK Z-Wave dongle and use it with my Vera Lite while I decide if I want to move to a Vera Edge or Plus.

Also note that PLEG and the alarm panel plugins do work with UI7. Many, if not most, common use plugins now work with UI7.

#4

Thanks guys, really appreciate the help. Was not aware of the Plus model so I’ll do some reading on that, especially as to what I can do with Zigbee and Bluetooth for automation!

The Vera Lite was running UI5 so stepping (up?) to the UI7 will be a small learning curve no doubt. The Edge having better performance is very attractive.

If I were to go for an EU dongle, do you know of one that will be compatible with the UI5 Lite?

#5

Use an Aeon Z-Stick. The new version is the Aeotec ZW090-C Z-Stick Gen 5, but there is a good chance that you can find an Aeon Z-Stick II for less or even used.

#6

I was afraid of that. for me here that z-stick Gen 5 is like 50.00 with shipping or tax. That’s nearly or is half the price of a new VERA Edge.

If it was me I might just skip that step unless you can get something like 30.00 to hold you over.

All depends on what you want to spend, but 50.00 just for a temporarily solution is probley more then I would spend.

Vera PLUS was 149.99 when it accidentally popped up on the website for a short time.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,32031.195.html

#7

I would add that I recently moved from a Lite to the Edge and all my problems with flakey operation of distant or hard to reach devices went away. I know the OP said the Lite was working fine but moving to a new house with new environmental conditions it could be different.

#8

Good luck on finding information to read up. I do not believe there is any info yet. Hopefully by end of the year?

#9

It already hit their website for preorder once. I don’t think it will ship before the 1st but I think it will available for sale before then.

#10

I saw it on their website but it was gone before i could get my credit card. Even then, it didn’t actually have the specs listed.

I was still going to buy it, even without the specs because i can’t help myself. :stuck_out_tongue:

#11

[quote=“Slartibartfast, post:10, topic:190118”]I saw it on their website but it was gone before i could get my credit card. Even then, it didn’t actually have the specs listed.

I was still going to buy it, even without the specs because i can’t help myself. :P[/quote]

I’m in your same shoes, but I’m afraid the specs are not going to jump. I paid 150 for the EDGE when it came out. This is 150 now and edge is 99.00. I see them adding Bluetooth and Zigbee and not changing much of the rest of internals. All ports and connections, z-wave chip and maybe even processor I see probley staying the same. Everyone would love more ram and faster processor, but I don’t see VERA listening.

#12

It’s a sickness. No cure in sight.