Verasecure death

Hello soon, the death of veraedge, veraplus, verasecure boxes, no more updates, no longer sell on the site except verasecure what to think of buying another brand ??? :sleepy:

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Surely Ezlo does not seem to be a stable company, patches of approximations in a system to be developed on the shoulders of Vera customers.

In my ideal reality, all of the all-stars from this forum that have been developing stuff for free here would band together and create a free, open source project that is just like HomeSeer, but without the part where the user gets milked dry. The hardware could be left up to the users – it’s not that tricky to find Intel NUC systems and cheaper ones on ebay and other sites like it, and it would be good to be able to decide exactly how much you’re willing to spend and for what speed/quality on your own.
The only problem would be that it would need to be coordinated so that installation is simplified for less tech-savvy individuals.
Anyway, I know I’m dreaming.

I would argue that maybe they could leave out the less tech savvy individuals. At least for a beta period. Find a way to fund those all-stars. and actually, I would prefer that some of them or someone else offer some platforms that are already pre configured with the base software and connections. I would be all over that. My needs have grown simpler and simpler every day as I let Alexa do what she is good at and reactor and pleg do what they are good at. And frankly, once I can replace my adtusb connection to my alarm system, I may not need much at all from vera. I am actually getting to an age where I am a little concerned about the spouse being able to deal with an installed but unsupported vera system when I die. Nice idea, I do appreciate the all stars.

You know a homeseer pi is $130 right, less than veraPlus? And there are now >100 free plug ins? And the $400 homeseer plus is an x86 nuc?

Yep. Did my homework (more or less). Pretty much a hundred free plugins that I don’t need or want. The pi is a nice cheap solution, but I was hoping to get something with a little more muscle that could also simultaneously be used as a music server, etc. Homeseer seems to get universal praise, but I find it too expensive and I don’t like the cost of the plugins, even though I’m all for paying developers a fair fee to use their work. Something to consider is that after the one month trial is up, you are stuck with whatever solution you are testing whether you like it or not. As someone that has wasted thousands on emerging HA tech over the years that ended up in a dusty box somewhere, I’m very wary about spending more than I have to on stuff that usually turns out to be a huge disappointment.

Edit: My bad – I noticed that they have since created a LIFX plugin that is free. That is a definite plus.

Like, you know, openluup? :roll_eyes:

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Interesting. Not sure why I’ve never really heard about it (or maybe I have but it was never explained and seemed quite obscure). Skimming through an intro, it seems that it’s geared towards very advanced users and programmers.

It’s not as easy as attaching a network cable, but it’s not that difficult. You’ll need your own hardware.

Definitely worth investigating. Thanks for the pointer

I’ve switched from vera plus to Home Assistant (Hassio) 2 month ago. Very happy with it.

can strongly recommend that you let HA control your vera, that mix is ​​incredibly stable and fast, (can turn off lights a couple of times a second, everything goes very much faster than with usb stick to ha) I hope / dream that new ezlo secure will have the same good integration with HA.However, do not forget to turn off polling, etc. in vera. //Regards

This is the stuff that amazes me about HASS. How in the heck can it be faster to make a call to an external OS+app than it is to run a USB stick? Is OpenZwave just that atrocious?

it’s not good. then I do not think these usb devices are made for a large number of devices.
Ha is not as stable as vera as Ha is updated frequently, which causes problems from time to time. so for me vera works as an extra protection when ha is down i can still control the base units with vera.

As suggested, the evolution of Vera in the language of its current OS seems to be coming to an end. But that is not necessarily a problem, depending on how the Vera is used. I and many others use Vera strictly as a Z-Wave modem, leaving all the intelligence to a controller app that provides far more functionality and options than Vera as a controller offers. If you are an Apple Mac user, the take a look at the XTension home automation application. The XTension community is world wide and the app is used in homes and industry - and it is not limited to Z-Wave. Take a look. Macintosh Home Automation With XTension [Mac Home Automation]

I have to agree with the openluup route. I am in no way up on all of this and have no idea what I am doing with Raspberrypi but I was able to shift away from my sole reliance on vera to openluup and Home Assistant running on a Pi while using the vera as a lightly loaded backup. Home Assistant is very fast and easy once you get it all setup, not to mention reliable. Reactor on Altui can handle scenes and I have email setup for notifications. The only thing that would make it better would be if Home Assistant was able to see and utilize the scenes that were create on Altui/openluup. I haven’t figured that part out yet.

If HA can send an HTTP request, then that’s straight-forward. In fact, running a scene on openLuup these days is as simple as sending the request:

http://openLuupIP:3480/scene/123

where 123 is the scene number you want to run,

I didnt know that and thats certainly good info. Like I was saying before though, the way to make this seamless would be if there was a way for the scenes to automatically populate in HA, like they do in openluup (from vera to Altui). Also devices like switchboard switches automatically populating in HA again, similar to the way openluup Altui is able to retrieve that from vera. I really love openluup for its simplicity, speed and reliability but I also like HA for its app and visuals. Perhaps there are better ways of looking at this but this is what I have come up with considering my extremely limited knowledge of all of these systems.

Just curious – what is it that HASS can do that openLuup cannot do with Reactor (I’ve never used Reactor, but I’ve heard about it a little). Is it strictly for the app and the esthetics?

I have started with Vera Plus … later jumped onto hassio… still use vera as a secondary controller for out of range devices (have two dwellings)
main difference…
Hassio is much faster… and much more stable… Vera is a great concept… but the major letdown of vera is hadrware (not enough space and memory)
Hassio can be installed onto different hardware… and even when running on raspberry pi 4 … the hardware is much better than what is in vera edge (more memory, faster cpu)
as such it can support other integrations smoothly…
yes Vera can do the same… but due to limited resources having more integrations would mean very slow performance…
Vera reboots constantly… Home assistant … unless you do updates… is rock solid…
Speed…
if I trigger switch (lets say turn lights on / off) in rapid succession…
Vera slower…but after several on / off’s it would actually freeze due to luup queue issue…
hassio just churns like nothing is happening…

Dont get me wrong … I really liked Vera… and it was an excellent starting controller… but hardware and performance issues as well as lack of proper updates put me off it…