So I’m thinking about purchasing the Veralite (i already have a wireless router so no need for Vera3) and had a few questions to ease an regret after purchase.
From the videos I’ve seen on Veralite you input 4 AA batteries but then you have to hit the battery button on Vera for it to boot off batteries…so if you lose power it doesn’t fall back on the batteries unless your there to physically hit the battery button?
Will this continue to work even when Mi Casa Verde goes out of business? I’m a little worried about that since all How To’s suggest going to “findvera.com” or “micasaverde.com/setup” page to access your home automation. Does the Veralite not have an inbuilt webserver so i can continue to control my home and receive email notifications and access my home automations remotely(iphone for instance) if the company goes out of business?
3.LAN logins? From the security forum it seems people asked this question and were told local authentication doesn’t work and to not bother. Currently is there a way to secure local network. With the recent WPS attacks that more or less leave every wireless router wide open (even with WPS disabled) it would seem that anyone can get into my router and control my home automations to unlock a door or even just disable the alerts before they broke in. I have tested this WPS hack out on a few neighbor’s routers and confirmed it worked so hopefully someone can tell me that local authentication works now?
4.From the Wiki it sounded like each sensor forms a mesh network, is this true? If so then i assume i can get by with one base station as long as sensors are nearby each other with at least one sensor by the home base (veralite) to make that final connection?
Will veralite work with emails accounts such as Gmail? I’ve seen FAQs on other devices that send email alerts and they typically mention which providers they don’t work with (such as gmail or yahoo).
6.Since there is a USB port on the VeraLite could i use a flash drive to backup config settings or store log files? The wiki mentions doing this on Vera2 device but no mention if Veralite can handle mass storage devices or if that usb port was specific to the Zwave dongle only?
7.Is there a limit of how many “Scenes” i can configure? Limit on how many “Events” i can configure for a scene?
8.I want to always be notified when a door is opened, whether i’m home or not. It doesn’t seem like a scene would be able to do this as i’d have to login to the site and then choose the scene to run…is this correct? Would i instead configure a timer and tell it to run indefinitely? If so how many timers can i have running, for instance i will want it to run indefinitely for the 5 doors in my house to know whenever they open or close.
9.If the Veralite loses an internet connection will it store the alerts in a queue until the internet comes back online and then send those alerts/emails out? Or will they just fail with no indication (other then looking on the logs locally after the even has come and gone)?
10.Is it only Vera3 that comes with OpenWRT or does Veralite come with it installed as well (though obviously missing features such as Wlan)?
I will probably have more questions as i research more into this but thanks to anyone that can help me out. This looks like a good product for what i want to accomplish (knowing if someone breaks in my house, or even if forgetful me leaves the garagedoor open) so I hope i’m not wrong.
1 ) I have a Vera2 and can’t answer.
2 ) You do not have to ever use the Mi Casa website after you set it up. With Vera 3 I think you need it to get the root password for the unit.
3 ) Who uses WPA anymore … You will not crack WPA2 easily. It has been around for a number of years. ANY and EVERY device connected to a WPA network is vulnerable.
4 ) There is a maximum hop limit in the mesh network … somewhere between 2 to 4 hops. That limits the distance.
5 ) You can use the MCV notifications that use SMTP mail or SMS. Or you can use many of the others out there. I use VeraAlert and it never sees a MCV server.
6 ) I believe the USB drive is formated as a linux partition. So you could move it to a linux box. But you can also scp files from vera to any other box.
7 ) Memory and computer resources are the only limit.
8 ) You do not poll devices (actually Vera probably poll internally). You attach your scenes to evens like a light is turned on or off … a motion sensor is tripped … or timers like sunrise or sunset or margarita time at 5:00 … or any complex combination of all of these at your whim …
9 ) I believe that with most of the notification services available they are lost.
10 ) At least from Vera2 and on they are based on OpenWRT systems. I am not sure about earlier versions.
You might want to have a REAL alarm system if you are worried about break-ins. Of course Vera will be able to interface to this.
I didn’t say WPA, google WPS hack and you’ll see that your WPA2 encryption is useless as it bypass’s all encryption to grab the SSID and key from all routers even with WPS disabled. So again i ask, is local authentication available?
Additional reading on the WPS hack though there are hundreds of articles online with step by step instructions to do the hack against your router or neighbors.[url=http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/hands-on-hacking-wifi-protected-setup-with-reaver.ars]January | 2012 | Ars Technica
It is a little disappointing that the batteries don’t act as a backup so i guess once i finish tagging all my zwave devices i’ll remove the batteries to prevent corrosion. Also disappointing that it won’t queue up alerts if the internet drops as there could be a hiccup in the connection at the same time a garage door opens and i’ll never know. Do you think if that garage door is left open when the internet comes back online that Vera will poll again (whenever the standard polling time is) and see that its open and send an alert again…basically will it continuously send alerts until action has been taken to close the garage door for instance?
Also, from looking at a few forum posts it seems that there is an active support from the technicians to update the firmware but it all involves browsing to a site that autoinstalls the firmware. Can i just download the firmware updates and then apply them later offline? Is there a way to downgrade the firmware? I’ve noticed a few people post up regretting updating their device because of bugs experienced.
Thanks again, i appreciate the answers i’ve gotten so far.
For #1 if you lose power what are you going to control with the Vera on battery if it did automatically switch to the batteries? Other than door locks most Z-wave devices (not sensors) require AC power. About the only thing you would be able to control running from the batteries would be a door lock (at least that’s all I can think of). So it’s really not that big a deal.
For # 3 VeraLite doesn’t support WiFi so the WPS hacks shouldn’t apply.
[quote=“MasterChi, post:4, topic:170811”]Thank you all for the answers but to follow up:
I didn’t say WPA, google WPS hack and you’ll see that your WPA2 encryption is useless as it bypass’s all encryption to grab the SSID and key from all routers even with WPS disabled. So again i ask, is local authentication available?
Additional reading on the WPS hack though there are hundreds of articles online with step by step instructions to do the hack against your router or neighbors.[url=http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/hands-on-hacking-wifi-protected-setup-with-reaver.ars]January | 2012 | Ars Technica
Running dd-wrt / openwrt should be a good option if you’re a) running an affected linksys router and b) either of these support the specific hardware revision of your router. I am running dd-wrt personally. Another option would be to ditch Linksys gear altogether and go with something like an Apple Airport Extreme / Express / Time Capsule. These don’t seem to be vulnerable. Or this might be a compelling reason to go with the Vera 3 versus the Lite and use it as your AP, provided WDS is disabled (it is by default on dd-wr, I would guess default for openwrt as well, but I am not using my vera 3 as an AP so I am not sure)
This is especially disappointing on the vera 3 since it has a rechargeable battery pack. I guess the tricky part is the switching mechanism that would have to kick in when going from AC power to DC power. Then again, this should be much easier since it’s DC to the device, whereas in a “real” UPS it has to have complicated switching mechanisms in place because batteries are DC, and UPS’s provide AC to the devices. Running those transformers all the time would generate unnecessary heat and load on the system in the case of a “real” UPS. But since this is all DC, it would be fairly easy to just have the battery charging (or not) the whole time and then have the battery in-line with the vera, so if charging stops it’s powering the device. Oh well, all this being said, IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer).
As far as queueing alerts / emails, basically you’d only truly get this functionality if there was a local mail relay running either on the vera or on your local network (I have sendmail), and even then I’m not sure that you could easily configure vera to use it (I haven’t tackled this yet, would love it if someone could chime in here).
Good question. I’d be curious to know that myself.
Unfortunately, if you buy a vera 3 or a vera lite, you will not be able to go back to versions before UI5, at least that seems to be the consensus. If you bought a vera 2 (they seem to be still available), you could stay at UI4 and make the jump to UI5 whenever it’s fully cooked, but the newer veras do seem to be a bit better spec’ed hardware wise. That being said, you can always go back to whatever the previous version of the firmware you were already running by restoring from a backup. So even though you can’t go to a version that is older than the firmware that came on your vera initially (at least major version-wise), you could go back to a version that seemed to be working for you.
good questions really usefull for potential buyers
i have bought an vera light as i have wifi enough in my home and it has local network authentication when u select extra security in settings. it works after reboot . it has 4 hops maximum for the mesh network which is more then sufficient (range about 600 meter)
runs on a wifi stripped version of dd-wrt
there is a plugin that allows one to send messages direct to a android phone. even as a google talk buddy
there is 1 usb port on the vera light which one can connect a hub to and put a lot of other usb pheripal like rs-232 and ir
you can check doors 24/7 with the door sensors with a little code even put a floorplan on ur desktop with allmost realtime info. mind that every devices adds a 10 seconds delay to the stream of devices vera has to handle so if you have a lot of them it will take longer to respond to all the stuff u want it to control
there is no limit to scenes in the sense that one comes across it. maybe if u run a hotel with a lot of inhabitants but for the normal home it is allready overkill i guess
firmware can be updated with a local webserver or winscp
offline you can still manage all the devices only the storage,remote and message options dont work that case, local network is fijn
For the power i was really thinking about the sensor, in case we lose power throughout the block and some stupid teenagers get a bright idea to start checking houses now that power is knocked out for the block. Mainly just to get notified if a door has opened (i have my internet on an UPS so in theory that would still have access on a power outage).
As for #3 you are kind of correct. My main router has WPS and unfortunately can’t accept DD-wrt (i did have ddwrt installed on an older router previously though) so i’m thinking if they get into my router and realize i have a vera (or make a very good guess) they can than access the IP address through telnet or simple http and control things that way. I realize this is extremely out there and almost not plausible to have someone so dedicated to steal from one house but there is a possibility of a simple wardriver who runs these hacks on routers to see whats open (i ran the WPS hack against 3 of my neighbors a few weeks ago just to see if the hack really did work) and once they are in my network they find the device called vera and some googling later realize it can control many things in my house…Anyway, Dajojo answered my question and it does have local authentication.
Thank you Da_jojo and Boingolover for your answers as they did help a lot. I do have one last question which i really don’t expect an answer to but as a just in case.
How much bandwidth does Veralite (or vera) take with sending the email alerts or with users sending it commands? It was my understanding that Vera creates an SSH tunnel to the MiCasaVerde servers so is it always live with a constant stream of bandwidth going? Are the email alerts just small little 2kb text format or full blown images and 3-4megabyte html email alerts? If my ISP has a bandwidth cap for how many gigabytes i can use per month will Vera greatly use up my limit? Will the veralite (or vera in general) continue to work on less than broadband internet, such as dial up speeds in case my internet gets flooded with traffic from Netflix streams or big downloads or even just network faults on the ISP’s end which drastically slows my internet down?
I understand that the normal users might not be able to answer those questions without running a network scanner on their lan so hopefully staff peruse these forums??
np
only thing which uses a lot of bandwidth is the video archiving
the remote part works on https tunnel to mios and from there over ssh encrypted… strangely the remote login and username and serialnr of the vera get send in a https url link… bit strange but ok it seems to do it from mios server to the device so it shouldnt matter security wise. not 100% sure though
for the rest the commands it sends are a few kb and i use it with my mobile internet and it reacts sometimes instantly and sometimes it takes a few seconds depending on several factors which u probably know about allready.
if you let it run allday it consumes as much as msn or any other social prog would do… probably even less…
[quote=“MasterChi, post:8, topic:170811”]- How much bandwidth does Veralite (or vera) take with sending the email alerts or with users sending it commands? It was my understanding that Vera creates an SSH tunnel to the MiCasaVerde servers so is it always live with a constant stream of bandwidth going? Are the email alerts just small little 2kb text format or full blown images and 3-4megabyte html email alerts? If my ISP has a bandwidth cap for how many gigabytes i can use per month will Vera greatly use up my limit? Will the veralite (or vera in general) continue to work on less than broadband internet, such as dial up speeds in case my internet gets flooded with traffic from Netflix streams or big downloads or even just network faults on the ISP’s end which drastically slows my internet down?
I understand that the normal users might not be able to answer those questions without running a network scanner on their lan so hopefully staff peruse these forums??[/quote]
as a vera user for all of one week now, I will do my best to help with regards to the tunnels question. It looks like the tunnel stays open 24/7, but the only traffic you see on that tunnel seems to be keepalives unless someone is accessing the system from outside of the local network. should be relatively minimal overall. And if you want to run your own tunneling / fowarding, you can disable the tunnels from the command line (there is a recent thread in here regarding this). as far as email alerts, I don’t know yet, haven’t delved into those. that will be my next project.
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