Vera Plus Curtains / Blinds in Alexa?

On a Vera firmware hub, can you not add curtains and blinds into Alexa ?

They are listed and ticked on the Vera portal page, but don’t show up in the Alexa app, even after rediscovering devices.

Curtains and Blinds do seem to appear and work in the Google Home app however.

This is still not working in VERA?

No it won’t work in Vera. If the original Vera skill for Alexa didn’t properly support devices like blinds and curtains then it won’t ever work.

Not sure if the new Ezlo hubs and their Alexa skill supports them now ?

Only possible work around I can see would be to create a virtual switch or virtual dimmer device and have some scene (might not be possible with bog standard Vera scenes) or use a Reactor rule, to make that virtual device operate your blinds.

Then you could add that virtual switch or dimmer in to Alexa.

I still can’t comprehend after all these years that this is not supported?! I can connect door locks, but not blinds :slight_smile:

Vera hubs are end of life they are not further developing the original platform.

The new Ezlo hubs replaced them, however I would have to check if those allow roller shutter devices into Alexa.

Its down to their (Vera and Ezlo) Alexa skills / integration and what type of devices they supported.

The voice assistant integration isnt so great on the Ezlo platform either tbh. They were meant to be updating it all but I never hear any news about it.

I just tried it on an Ezlo hub and I was able to add a blinds device into Alexa.

I just got a dimmer slider in the Alexa app though but moving it to 0% did operate and close the blind.

Do note however this was not a real paired blinds device on my Ezlo hub, it was a virtual bridged device that is actually paired to my Vera Plus.

Regarding adding a roller shutter device directly from a Vera hub to Alexa I dont think it works. But I’ll double check that also.

Actually another easier work around just create some Vera scenes.

One scene that opens the blinds and another scene that closes the blinds. You can then add those scenes into Alexa and then ask Alexa to run those scenes etc.

For the Vera hub direct to Alexa, I just checked my “Manage Alexa” page on home.getvera.com and I already had my roller shutter devices selected in there.

However in the Alexa app those devices were not present. So I think it doesnt works for Vera hubs as I said.

I recommend you use Vera scenes instead.

It does seem to work on a basic level however for Ezlo hubs.

1 Like

They did work in Google Home via a Vera hub.

But id stick to Alexa as Google Home is shite and wish Id never bought it and gone all Alexa devices instead.

It is strange the the same work with Google but not with Alexa??!! and yes, we see them when we check our devices from the portal, but if you open the Vera Skill in Alexa, you can’t see the blinds!

Creating scenes is really tedious and inefficient…

Is it worth it to replace my Vera Secure with Ezlo? do we have some comparisons?

If other than this issue, you are happy with your Vera Secure I’d stick with it for now.

The Ezlo Secure is also US Z-Wave frequency only, no EU or other regions. Their Ezlo Plus is EU though.

The Ezlo platform is promising but still heavily under development currently.

It has good and bad points, the new rules engine “Meshbots” is better than the old bog standard Vera scenes, but its still missing key aspects when compared to something like Reactor.

The new Ezlo dynamic dashboard is also work in progress you cant currently customise it easily and create a stand alone dashboard app, like the various 3rd party dashboard apps that Vera had.

Not as many plugins and no 3rd party devs are really making them.

The web UI Ezlogic is cloud based only, not local like on the Vera hubs and its not as fully featured yet, for example you have to use the mobile apps to add and pair devices whereas on Vera you could configure everything in the web UI.

The Meshbot rules once created however are processed and run locally on the hub. They claim the mobile app (Mios) connects locally to the hub, but mine always says Relay Connected and not connected locally for some reason.

You also have less device control in the Ezlo web UI meaning you cannot see and change as many settings and device variables as you can in the old Vera UI7 web UI. Probably only an issue for advanced / power users.

I am sure the Ezlo platform will be feature parity with Vera in the future (except having local UIs) and will likely improve its features and functionality over the old Vera platform.

But it’s not there yet it seems.

Many thanks for the very useful answer CW-Kid…it looks like Ezlo is still work in progress…

Any other upsides over the current VERA please?

as for the US and EU versions, I know that Ezlo use 700 Chip which were you can change the frequency from EU to US and back?

I thought that also. I have a US Ezlo Secure here and I didn’t realise when I got it that it was not EU. I asked them if it was possible to reprogram it to change the Z-Wave frequency and I was told that it was not possible. How true that is I am not sure.

@Oleh Is that true ?

The EzloPi stuff is quite exciting where you can create your own cheap sensors based on ESP boards and add them into the Ezlo eco-system with no coding or programming needed.

Better support for Zigbee devices I believe when compared to Vera hubs, although I don’t have many Zigbee devices so probably need to ask someone else about that.

In-built easy way to create Virtual devices in the Ezlogic web UI.

They were also doing something called Nucal Cloud Integrations it was said to be like IFTTT, which could be good for connecting some devices like Tuya and eWekLink into the Ezlo eco-system, nice idea but there doesn’t seem to be much development work happening in that area, is it now dead? Or maybe its not cost effective for them, as they would probably have to pay to access these other companies cloud APIs.

They have a fairly decent “IP Device Generator” plugin for adding virtual devices on the Ezlo system that can then control other IP / WIfi devices on your LAN via HTTP commands. It also support MQTT but I’ve never used MQTT. I have used the HTTP command side of this plugin a bit though with my Hikvision IP cameras.

They were building their own stand alone software NVR for CCTV cams called Vidoo (Like BlueIris) which looked interesting, not heard much about that lately though. The cams added too Vidoo then also fully integrated into the Ezlo platform, cam streams on the dashboard and motion sensor devices etc. Although you can do that anyway without the need for the stand alone Vidoo NVR.

There are some positives for sure, but they still need to fix some of the core features and functions first, before they get too carried away with all this other stuff.

2 Likes

This was the last new thing I tried, its a UI for an Addressable LED strip based on the ESP board (EzloPi). I’ve never used an Addressable LED strip before, just bog standard RGBW ones. Its quite funky has lots of Effects and Animations on it.

I bought a 1m LED strip to try it out, ended up putting that strip on the back of the PC monitor in my child’s room for them to play with. Looks good all the colours washing up the back of the wall.

image

3 Likes

by Addressable LED you mean Digital strip? If so can you tell me how you connected it please?

Addressable LED means you can “address” (control) each and every LED on the strip as a single LED vs strips are controlled as one and not individually.

2 Likes