[quote=“Domoworking, post:20, topic:191135”][quote=“kwieto, post:19, topic:191135”]This is what I’ve got from support some time ago:
The missing ?Bluetooth Settings? and ?Other Bluetooth devices? is related to the latest update, they got removed in the latest build as we are working on a different type of integration that is BLE enabled and we had to remove those, we do not have an ETA for when the new wizards and settings would be released.
[/quote]
Is there any news? I cannot see any bluetooth menu in Vera Plus[/quote]
At this time Bluetooth is no longer supported/available in any form. There have been no updates or information provided by support on ETA for availability.
Actually non working bluetooth and partially working Zigbee is a perfect solution to decrease it’s market price.
You see that this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work and you don’t want to pray full price. Not that it’s not worth the money, but you expect some compensation for not working features.
As a result, I’ve recently bought Plus for an outlet pice less than 50EUR, full warranty included.
Maybe there it is some kind of a strategy behind?
Actually non working bluetooth and partially working Zigbee is a perfect solution to decrease it’s market price.
You see that this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work and you don’t want to pray full price. Not that it’s not worth the money, but you expect some compensation for not working features.
As a result, I’ve recently bought Plus for an outlet pice less than 50EUR, full warranty included.
Maybe there it is some kind of a strategy behind?[/quote]
As for compensation, I doubt I’ll get any but I would like an “official” response besides the support people that keep telling me “not supported” and “in a future release”. I still have the box that says Zigbee and Bluetooth on the box.
Zigbee is barely real with very limited device support.
Bluetooth is non-functional. That is false advertisement.
I agree with the posts. If zigbee has been around for such a long time, I’m confused as to what the impediment to get it working reliably actually is.
As for Bluetooh, I read an article how it was poised to take over home automation some months or year back. I don’t see that happening in any platform, maybe it was just marketing.
About the only bluetooth home automation I have seen worth buying is the My Smart Blinds product. It is kind of sad to buy a device with 2 out of 3 advertised functions either partially working or non-working.
[quote=“tomtcom, post:26, topic:191135”]I agree with the posts. If zigbee has been around for such a long time, I’m confused as to what the impediment to get it working reliably actually is.
As for Bluetooh, I read an article how it was poised to take over home automation some months or year back. I don’t see that happening in any platform, maybe it was just marketing.
About the only bluetooth home automation I have seen worth buying is the My Smart Blinds product. It is kind of sad to buy a device with 2 out of 3 advertised functions either partially working or non-working.[/quote]
Lack of intent/interest from the vendor. SmartThings has Zigbee implemented well. Simply because they have all their Device Handlers in the cloud making it fast/easy to deploy new devices. Hue and Osram and others doing ZLL have control of the types of devices so they do it well. Same with Control4 they are all Zigbee but they control the types of devices. Zigbee can be done well but the supporting vendor, in this case Vera has to put real intent behind supporting it which also for a local system means pushing updates more regularly. Which comes to another question. I prefer the all local, but why not split system updates and device updates? Allow new device support to be added outside of system upgrades. Then new devices can be made available very quickly and without killing the overall system.
[quote=“jeubanks”][quote=“tomtcom, post:26, topic:191135”]I agree with the posts. If zigbee has been around for such a long time, I’m confused as to what the impediment to get it working reliably actually is.
As for Bluetooh, I read an article how it was poised to take over home automation some months or year back. I don’t see that happening in any platform, maybe it was just marketing.
About the only bluetooth home automation I have seen worth buying is the My Smart Blinds product. It is kind of sad to buy a device with 2 out of 3 advertised functions either partially working or non-working.[/quote]
Lack of intent/interest from the vendor. SmartThings has Zigbee implemented well. Simply because they have all their Device Handlers in the cloud making it fast/easy to deploy new devices. Hue and Osram and others doing ZLL have control of the types of devices so they do it well. Same with Control4 they are all Zigbee but they control the types of devices. Zigbee can be done well but the supporting vendor, in this case Vera has to put real intent behind supporting it which also for a local system means pushing updates more regularly. Which comes to another question. I prefer the all local, but why not split system updates and device updates? Allow new device support to be added outside of system upgrades. Then new devices can be made available very quickly and without killing the overall system.[/quote]It’s a good idea and faster deployment. I suppose there are tradeoffs. Google’s router had cloud updates that kicked people offline. I kind of like letting others see how the new firmware is before taking the plunge. In the cloud model you might get pushed an update that didn’t work reliably.
I’m not sure the best method but I do like Vera but it’s now been maybe 5 years with them and updates are 50/50 at best.
The interoperability is ridiculous in this day and age. Lack of device support or even wifi devices is something I would expect in early 2005. Now we can bring back ibm compatible and use Vera compatible I place of it.
[quote=“tomtcom, post:28, topic:191135”][quote=“jeubanks”][quote=“tomtcom, post:26, topic:191135”]I agree with the posts. If zigbee has been around for such a long time, I’m confused as to what the impediment to get it working reliably actually is.
As for Bluetooh, I read an article how it was poised to take over home automation some months or year back. I don’t see that happening in any platform, maybe it was just marketing.
About the only bluetooth home automation I have seen worth buying is the My Smart Blinds product. It is kind of sad to buy a device with 2 out of 3 advertised functions either partially working or non-working.[/quote]
Lack of intent/interest from the vendor. SmartThings has Zigbee implemented well. Simply because they have all their Device Handlers in the cloud making it fast/easy to deploy new devices. Hue and Osram and others doing ZLL have control of the types of devices so they do it well. Same with Control4 they are all Zigbee but they control the types of devices. Zigbee can be done well but the supporting vendor, in this case Vera has to put real intent behind supporting it which also for a local system means pushing updates more regularly. Which comes to another question. I prefer the all local, but why not split system updates and device updates? Allow new device support to be added outside of system upgrades. Then new devices can be made available very quickly and without killing the overall system.[/quote]It’s a good idea and faster deployment. I suppose there are tradeoffs. Google’s router had cloud updates that kicked people offline. I kind of like letting others see how the new firmware is before taking the plunge. In the cloud model you might get pushed an update that didn’t work reliably.
I’m not sure the best method but I do like Vera but it’s now been maybe 5 years with them and updates are 50/50 at best.
The interoperability is ridiculous in this day and age. Lack of device support or even wifi devices is something I would expect in early 2005. Now we can bring back ibm compatible and use Vera compatible I place of it.
Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk[/quote]
Several months ago I switched from SmartThings to Vera in the hope/attempt at a local stable system. I got half of what I was looking for. The stability has been iffy once I started adding plugins and trying to expand the system. I found doing more than device control and a couple say less than 5 simple plugins causes Vera to run out of resources really fast and causes all kinds of issues. So final opinion is for device control z-wave and limited zigbee it’s a good controller. PLEG is nice and powerful but still limited to inside Vera. Trying to add in a bunch of other plugins kills the system. Which I think is why people move off to openLuup and become happy that way.
After several months of learning the Vera and limitations I have decided to move on. To what I’m not decided on yet. I do plan to keep a Vera in the mix for local device control, just no plugins and then Vera should be nice and stable.
Not that way.
I see drop of the prices and interest on Vera over time, at least on my market.
I track internet auctions of Z-wave equipment and I can see decrease of prices over time. It is especially visible for offers starting from around 1 EUR - last year, Edge on such auctions easily were reaching 70EUR level, Plus was reaching 100EUR and more. Now it is hard for Plus to reach 70 EUR level.
And it is not justified by the progress on the market: main competitors (Homeseer, Zipato, Fibaro, etc.) still offer same products as year ago. Still more expensive even if having similar functionalities.
The problem is that there is no “golden” solution here. I’m also considering moving, more “passive” than “active” (like: I someone will offer me HS for 100EUR then why not, but not that I’m actively searching for such offer).
Recently I was talking with a guy who owns Fibaro, to whom I sold TKB TZ69 switch. It perfectly works for Vera, but on Fibaro it doesn’t report power consumption. The point is that with Vera in such case you can play with the system and tweak it to get full functionality (I did such tricks with some Devolo or D-link devices), while on Fibaro it is not that easy.
For HomeSeer you have similar things - there is a lot of people moving there from here, but this migration also goes the other way around.
I still have 9 days to return my Vera Plus with Amazon.
I choose this device because the datasheet was say it was able to handle zwave, zigbee and Bluetooth.
I already own a raspberry with an aeotec zwave gen5 usb stick, so if I have to use software like home assistant to aggregate several controllers, I do not really need Vera plus. Am I wrong?
I have tried them all and here’s my opinion for what it’s worth.
Vera Pro’s: Good Z-wave controller
ehh, somewhat ok Zigbee support
Local “Scenes” for automation
Better PLEG Plugin for automation
PLEG is VERY powerful
Great HTTP API Interface
Works as a GREAT Z-wave controller for things like Home Assistant
Vera Con’s: Limited Zigbee support
NO Bluetooth (but really? I don’t care)
NO Wifi device support (would be nice with new devices ie wemo, tp-link etc)
Limited Plugin support for new devices
App store is horribly out of date of what actually works and makes finding working plugins hard
Native Scenes are VERY limited and you will require PLEG for anything useful
PLEG is VERY Powerful, which also means complex.
Horrible Web User Interface
Basics: If you are thinking of Home Assistant, keep the Vera because you will need a z-wave controller and with Vera you get the bonus of also have a Zigbee controller all in one.
If you are thinking of anything other than Home Assistant then return the Vera and you’ll have to figure out a workable solution for your needs. Suggestion is really to pick your PRIMARY technology whether it be Z-wave, Zigbee, Insteon, UPB, X10, Bluetooth etc etc and choose a controller for that PRIMARY tech. Then you will be happy and can always add to that (if whatever software you use supports addons).
That’s only partially true. You can have WiFi devices support via plugins, although it is a matter of luck if someone will integrate device you’re interested in (if you have enough skills, you can try to do it by yourself).
For example there is plugin for WeMo, and it works more-or-less fine with switches. There is plugin for Netatmo Weatherstation or thermostat device, but you don’t have support for Netatmo cameras.
Broadlink RM plugin has a long story (first plugin was removed by developer, then the project was re-started by someone else), and so on, and so on.
As a pro’s I would count that Vera is standalone solution, not a software installed on some computer OS, which makes it probably less troublesome at remote locations.
[quote=“jeubanks, post:32, topic:191135”]I have tried them all and here’s my opinion for what it’s worth.
Vera Pro’s: Good Z-wave controller
ehh, somewhat ok Zigbee support
Local “Scenes” for automation
Better PLEG Plugin for automation
PLEG is VERY powerful
Great HTTP API Interface
Works as a GREAT Z-wave controller for things like Home Assistant[/quote]
[quote=“jeubanks, post:32, topic:191135”]Basics: If you are thinking of Home Assistant, keep the Vera because you will need a z-wave controller and with Vera you get the bonus of also have a Zigbee controller all in one.
If you are thinking of anything other than Home Assistant then return the Vera and you’ll have to figure out a workable solution for your needs. Suggestion is really to pick your PRIMARY technology whether it be Z-wave, Zigbee, Insteon, UPB, X10, Bluetooth etc etc and choose a controller for that PRIMARY tech. Then you will be happy and can always add to that (if whatever software you use supports addons).[/quote]
So you would reccomend Vera agains a Aeotech USB Z-Stick with HA…
But is Vera Plus worth the price difference against Vera Edge for this purpose?