I have HAD IT with my Vera Plus not working with Zigbee devices. I bought it a year ago and have been fighting with it ever since. It works great with Z-Wave devices. I have not tried a bluetooth or wi-fi device yet, so I can’t complain on those fronts. The main reason I purchased the Vera Plus controller was because it seemed to be a one-controller fits all solution. IT IS NOT!
If a device is advertised and sold as “compatible with z-wave, zigbee, bluetooth, and wi-fi” then it should flipping work with those devices, period. No add-on controllers, standing on your head with your toes and fingers crossed, and your tongue sticking out to get a device to add. It’s ridiculous.
Vera Plus simply does not work with any zigbee devices I have tried. One search in these forums gives plenty of evidence that it does not work for anyone else either. Does anyone feel like there should be a class-action suit? (Kidding, not kidding.)
And has anyone found a controller which is truly compatible with any z-wave and zigbee devices? I’m about ready to make another purchase and quite literally punt this one out the window.
I personally have 7 Keen Smart vents which are Zigbee that work great with my VeraPlus. I have one in my garage that closes upon opening the garage door via a scene. I even have the DataMine 2 app that is logging each vent’s temperature. I also have had some success with Orbit’s Garden hose valve. As I understand, the Zigbee devices are not as standardized as we are led to believe. If I were going to be frustrated over this type of issue, I would blame the people who choose to incorporate Zigbee into their products instead of the tried and true Zwave Standard. Just my opinion.
[quote=“VeraBeck, post:1, topic:196847”]I have HAD IT with my Vera Plus not working with Zigbee devices.
…
If a device is advertised and sold as “compatible with z-wave, zigbee, bluetooth, and wi-fi” then it should flipping work with those devices, period.[/quote]
Have you checked to see if your ZigBee devices follow the standards? ZigBee has 2 standard profile sets: zigbee HA (home automation) and ZigBee LL (LightLink =Hue protocol). If it doesn’t support either of those, it is a ZigBee radio but with proprietary commands.
Amazon’s home automation guide says “the ZigBee Certified mark by itself is not enough to ensure interoperability. In most cases, you will need to purchase all your ZigBee home control products from the same brand, because each manufacturer is free to implement ZigBee in its own proprietary way.”
having said that, I don’t know if vera supports the standards, so I am going to ask in another thread.
@VeraBeck, my experience is similar to yours. I threw in the towel with my VP along time ago along with any hopes that they would ever do much with ZigBee.
I consider what Vera has done is deceptive advertising. They could at least provide a link in their to their very limited approved product page. They could change that, but no.
I have tried a couple Zigbee devices and neither one worked. I am also about to say good bye to Vera also. I have a thermostat, deadbolt lock and about a dozen more z-wave devices and a week does not go by with out atleast one device that will stop working for 2 - 3 days then starting working. My echo has a 10 second delay which sucks and I also get the check your hub or device not responding from my echo. I have been using Vera for several years now and I have not seen much if any improvements. Today my account says no controller. The bad thing right now is there is not another controller that is any better on the market. I have heard good things about HomeSeer but that option is not worth the money. I have read that HomeSeer has it’s own problems. I may just give up on Home Automation for a while.
I have successfully paired Iris door/motion sensor which is Zigbee. I had to add it as a generic Zigbee device, so even though Vera recognized it as a motion device, it doesn’t recognize the temperature sensor nor any battery levels (although it does show temperature in the Advanced tab).
It seems pretty reliable in detecting the position/change of the state of the window I put the sensor on. Granted I set it up only 3 days ago, so can’t really comment on long term reliability.
BTW anyone can recommend a way to teach Vera to show the temperature sensor?
Well, my verdict is in. I have tested Samsung SmartThings for a couple months and am officially moving to that system.
Literally every single zigbee and z-wave device I had purchased that would not pair with Vera Plus easily and quickly paired with SmartThings. This included a really persnickety little multi-sensor and some notoriously difficult light bulbs. I have had zero devices drop off the system and am pleased with the routines and automations I have been able to set up. Response time to triggers is noticeably quicker.
I’m sorry to leave you, Vera. I truly believed in your philosophy at the beginning, but I don’t think you have kept up with the technology. Thank you for getting me started in home automation.
We’re sorry to see you going and we hope our paths will cross again at some point.
We all have things to learn from these situations and value them accordingly. Feedback is religiously collected and analyzed. And while I’m not the person to “fix” these gaps, I will make sure your voice is being passed on, to the designated department.
I think y’all screwed up with ZigBee. You have a whopping 15 zigbee devices listed on your supported device list. Iris manufacturers that many ZigBee devices themselves. You don’t even natively support pairing with Hue bulbs, the most popular ZigBee devices on the planet. (Yes, ZigBee LL vs HA, but actual consumer utility beats empty standard). Now people have expectations and you aren’t close.
You would have done better to leave the ZigBee off the feature list, or activate it on the Beta firmware after launch.
Actually, you’d have done way better making sure your firmware updates didn’t brick so many machines but that’s another seventy two threads.
[quote=“John M., post:8, topic:196847”]Hello there,
We’re sorry to see you going and we hope our paths will cross again at some point.
Thank you.[/quote]
Yes, we’re all sorry to see you go … well, not really all that sorry.
John, I think you do a great job here, but in this case there is not much to analyze. He states quite clearly why he is leaving. This shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Here is another sad man that had many expectations from Vera Plus.
I tested Home Assistant with an Aeotech Z-stick gen 5 and have to admit that openzwave is full of xml definitions for zwave device that I miss here in Vera.
The UI I really nice, but simply unstable.
Zigbee support lacks of documentation and device support (as kigmatzomat I would expect support for most common devices that are still missing)
Don’t do it. I signed up here just to tell you this. I have been using ST for 3+ years now and it was pretty good up until November 2017 when some update/upgrade came out. I think it was when they tried to change things from remote execution to local execution. Since then, just about EVERY day, some light or sensor doesn’t work and constantly getting e-mail alerts about “Investigating and issue…” My system has become so unstable I don’t even want to fix anything anymore. “Oh… the mudroom light isn’t coming on… oh well, flip the switch then”. I don’t even try anymore.
I am looking for a new system and ended up here. I have to admit, your post is deterring me from trying this system as well. Why can’t they all drop this "cloud’ garbage. Why does everyone want to force you to rely on it? Why can’t someone build a LOCAL system… a nice one and sell it to us and then just do quarterly updates or something. The home automation market started out pretty good but it’s gone downhill in my opinion. I tried Wink, ST and HomeSeer. There jut isn’t any decent system out there. They ALL have issues or shortcomings.
Although I do I agree that the Zigbee support is lacking in comparison to SmartThings there is an upside to this VERY slow increase in device support. All of the devices are LOCAL.
I came from SmartThings to Vera and yes there’s a lot of support for all kinds of devices. Why? Because all of their device handlers are in the cloud. Very little is actually local. This makes it easy for tons of developers to create the devices and make them available at scale. The downside is there is latency to everything and if your internet is down, well… not much works.
Now I’m also not going to say Vera is great. I’ve had my issues with Vera in the few short months I’ve been using it. Is it a good system? Yes. Is it “right” for me? Not quite. But I’m still using it and having added it into my “eco-system”. It is a piece of my “right” system.
I just bought a Hubitat hub…works just like SmartThings (including Groovy and device handlers and apps) only everything is local. It is brand new right now so not feature rich (no phone app yet), but they are quickly adding functionality. They added a dashboard just a week or so ago.
My zigbee Centralite Pearl thermostat never worked right in Vera, even though it is officially supported…just not completely supported, and when I contacted support they were pretty clueless about my detailed questions. Last night I was able to get it to do what I want in Hubitat by writing my own device handler, spring boarding off a SmartThings device handler.
I tried to write a plug-in to track when the thermostat fan was running so I could determine when it was time to change the filter. This was how I found out that the thermostat was not completely supported. The plug-in worked well in the web app, but in the Windows app it wouldn’t show the buttons. This was over a year ago and still not fixed. Maybe the new UI would fix that, maybe not.
I waited for a LONG time for Vera to support changing color temp on my Lightify bulbs, until finally I gave up and bought a Hue hub and bulbs. I don’t even have the Hue hub set up under Vera.
I struggled trying to get the Vistacam 700 to work properly within Vera, and when I contacted support and told them that the web browser interface to the camera wasn’t working because of something missing in the camera’s software package (I was trying to troubleshoot the camera), I was told it was only supposed to be used within Vera and I should use a “modern browser”. I was not very happy about that.
I really do like the Vera interface, but if it can’t support (and properly support) the devices that I have or want to get, then it’s no good for me. Probably the final nail in the coffin was the new UI…I want solid device support more than I want a “better” UI. I almost have all my devices moved over to the Hubitat hub.
[quote=“dagrider, post:16, topic:196847”]I just bought a Hubitat hub…works just like SmartThings (including Groovy and device handlers and apps) only everything is local. It is brand new right now so not feature rich (no phone app yet), but they are quickly adding functionality. They added a dashboard just a week or so ago.
My zigbee Centralite Pearl thermostat never worked right in Vera, even though it is officially supported…just not completely supported, and when I contacted support they were pretty clueless about my detailed questions. Last night I was able to get it to do what I want in Hubitat by writing my own device handler, spring boarding off a SmartThings device handler.
I tried to write a plug-in to track when the thermostat fan was running so I could determine when it was time to change the filter. This was how I found out that the thermostat was not completely supported. The plug-in worked well in the web app, but in the Windows app it wouldn’t show the buttons. This was over a year ago and still not fixed. Maybe the new UI would fix that, maybe not.
I waited for a LONG time for Vera to support changing color temp on my Lightify bulbs, until finally I gave up and bought a Hue hub and bulbs. I don’t even have the Hue hub set up under Vera.
I struggled trying to get the Vistacam 700 to work properly within Vera, and when I contacted support and told them that the web browser interface to the camera wasn’t working because of something missing in the camera’s software package (I was trying to troubleshoot the camera), I was told it was only supposed to be used within Vera and I should use a “modern browser”. I was not very happy about that.
I really do like the Vera interface, but if it can’t support (and properly support) the devices that I have or want to get, then it’s no good for me. Probably the final nail in the coffin was the new UI…I want solid device support more than I want a “better” UI. I almost have all my devices moved over to the Hubitat hub.[/quote]
I also got a hubitat but have backed out of using it. A friend of mine moved to it from SmartThing and has been struggling with hardware issues. (flash memory corruption amongst other things) It is a great platform to move to if you started on ST as you can practically port everything but the current lack of an API to the unit and the questionable reliability of hardware have kept me from starting it. The capability however is leaps ahead of the vera in terms of integration and hardware.