There are people out there that love IOS and others that love android… this is no different than what we have here. I have the VERA secure and love it and I come to this blog to learn from other VERA users. I think the anti-VERA users should move on.
Most people come here not to bash but rather try to make their system work. The vera is falling short to many of its promises and at least for me, I really wished that it did what it says it should do but working through several versions of it through the years, it has never really lived up. The stability and speed are the two main issues and people come to share their problems and frustrations hoping to find a solution but since most often get frustrated and vent. It is actually a good thing for mcv and users to be able to share this, it means that people haven’t given up hope to make the system work yet. People who have just through the thing in the trash and move on.
Hi, I’m not sure if it was my post that motivated you to make this post. If it was then I did a poor job of wording.
It was not my intention to Bash VeraPlus. It was simply to tell those folks who helped me over the last year or 2 why I was moving on.
Quite honestly my VeraPlus was relatively stable. My major motivations was that Vera can not work without the internet (at least for timed event). And even more so that a Vera staff member told me in a pre-purchase email that it could.
I hope running timed events without the internet is not an issue for you, and I wish you the best with Vera 
(not meant to be sarcastic).
Also note there are many HA solutions currently on the market. Each one has its pro’s and con’s it is the users goal to pick the best one for their needs.
Regards
JohnRob
I have not seen anyone post anything bashing Vera. I have seen and posted myself on the issues I have had with my Vera Plus. Some have no issues with their Vera and some do have problems. Those that do post here. Sometimes it is out of frustration with the same issue week after week. I myself have moved on with Homeseer but I still come here to see how Vera is doing. I am hoping of one day of returning to Vera.
Jim
Because Vera is not living up to its potential.
It could be so much better, software wise and hardware wise, but it seems they continue to use the minimum amount to get by.
I like my Vera but there are so many issues that could be remedied with a little code and a little more memory.
I have 5 VeraEdge and 2 VeraPlus deployed, rarely do they run 48 hrs without rebooting. None of the other computers in my life crash or reboot.
I like others have moved my primary work duties off of Vera. But I still have 2 Vera Plus’s still active and running things.
First… LMFTFY…
Re: Why do people come to this [b]FORUM[/b] to bash vera
I would imaging that it is more appropriate to do it here rather than in a forum dedicated to the use, maintenance and repair of snowplows.
[quote=“Drigosu, post:1, topic:199544”]I have the VERA secure and love it and I come to this blog to learn from other VERA users.[/quote] You do relize your learning from the experiences of others (and grass is not always green)… And I hope you realize that you will learn not only from your own mistakes but others as well. My mistake was not switching from vera sooner yes it might hurt. But hope this helps you somewhere down your path. Truth is what makes a forum better then a one sided always sunny review is that it’s open, free for everyone to post and comment and share. You go to a website and read their reviews on their own website that they have hand picked and posted, how much are you gonna believe it? You skim past it and don’t put to much value in it. If you read all over here how great it is, you’ll love it. If you read the forums of all the problems it has, your current logic is that you wish you didn’t see that, rather then maybe I should take note for when I run into that problem down the road if you don’t already.
You should thank them for sticking around and giving you a rounded review not only filled with hugs, hearts and rainbows of a perfect land which it really isn’t unless its your first love. Until you really explore options you truly don’t know what your missing out on.
That the company allows discussion of the negative aspects of the device is one of its more endearing qualities.
If you’re not seeing venting on the forums of other platforms, it doesn’t mean that platform is perfect. It may mean that they moderate the negatives away.
If they were to moderate and drive away people who are frustrated, I think they’d lose their reputation for good support. Better to allow venting here, than elsewhere where they cannot respond.
I used to prosletize vera as a great fully local controller. But now…it has issues without access to vera servers. And the luup engine hits some mysterious tipping point and it just flakes out, restarting repeatedly. And it doesn’t uninstall apps correctly and sometimes installs excessive foreign language files, both of which results in it running out of space and flaking out. Phantom devices will appear and there’s no method to remove them short of wipe and rebuild from scratch.
Why post here? Because there are folks from Vera here like Sorin to hear it. If I post on Twitter it may or may not get noticed. It might get more attention but not from the right people. Here there is the chance it could actually get better.
Why? Because I DO NOT LIKE HAVING TWO VERAS IN THEIR BOXES BECAUSE I CANT TRUST THEM. I upgraded from a vera3 to a Plus to make my ui7 migration easier. Irepurchased plugins because I planned to give my vera3 to friends. Now I won’t because I LIKE my friends and don’t want them to suffer.
Maybe I should tweet or Facebook and see if public shaming works where “keeping it in the family” hasn’t had any visible impact the past 6-9 months.
I keep coming here because part of me hopes a magic firmware will come out and my veraplus will become as stable as my UI5 vera3 was.
Here Here!!!
There is a significant difference between being critical (ie ‘bashing’) and being constructively critical (pointing out where there may be issues, and potentially offering suggestions on how those issues may be addressed). Most of the posts I’ve seen have actually been constructive. People are encountering issues, but they also sincerely hope that those issues can be fixed. There is a lot to like about Vera, and most - like myself - want to continue to use it and see both the issues fixed and the overall system improved with enhanced features such as IFTTT and Google Home support.
Thanks for the mention @kigmatzomat.
Things are getting better, even tho not at the pace desired by everyone.
I’m mostly staying on the side and only intervene when is totally necessary, but TONS of useful reports and feedback is gathered from the community which is served to the R&D team. Many things I see here hurt, but I guess people are not only here to rejoice the amazing constructive content built by the community, but also to express frustration, which is OK. When things are not working as expected, this is one way of being heard.
We don’t moderate constructive negativity even tho sometimes it tends to hurt the brand. And we surely keep our fingers crossed for some positiveness as well 8)
Thanks for the mention @kigmatzomat.
Things are getting better, even tho not at the pace desired by everyone.
I’m mostly staying on the side and only intervene when is totally necessary, but TONS of useful reports and feedback is gathered from the community which is served to the R&D team. Many things I see here hurt, but I guess people are not only here to rejoice the amazing constructive content built by the community, but also to express frustration, which is OK. When things are not working as expected, this is one way of being heard.
We don’t moderate constructive negativity even tho sometimes it tends to hurt the brand. And we surely keep our fingers crossed for some positiveness as well 8)[/quote]
Sorin…
Today’s unreachable devices… Support has been in and out over the last week and then come to the solution that it is my Z-Wave network? Isn’t the Vera at the heart of my Z-Wave network? These devices all worked before the last f/w update and now nothing but issues. The pumps filter my pool and having them not triggering when they’re supposed to will have a detrimental result. I need my VeraPlus to work. ALL THE TIME.
Thanks for the mention @kigmatzomat.
Things are getting better, even tho not at the pace desired by everyone.
I’m mostly staying on the side and only intervene when is totally necessary, but TONS of useful reports and feedback is gathered from the community which is served to the R&D team. Many things I see here hurt, but I guess people are not only here to rejoice the amazing constructive content built by the community, but also to express frustration, which is OK. When things are not working as expected, this is one way of being heard.
We don’t moderate constructive negativity even tho sometimes it tends to hurt the brand. And we surely keep our fingers crossed for some positiveness as well 8)[/quote]
Sorin…
Today’s unreachable devices… Support has been in and out over the last week and then come to the solution that it is my Z-Wave network? Isn’t the Vera at the heart of my Z-Wave network? These devices all worked before the last f/w update and now nothing but issues. The pumps filter my pool and having them not triggering when they’re supposed to will have a detrimental result. I need my VeraPlus to work. ALL THE TIME.[/quote]
ask them to downgrade the zwave chip
Thanks for the mention @kigmatzomat.
Things are getting better, even tho not at the pace desired by everyone.
I’m mostly staying on the side and only intervene when is totally necessary, but TONS of useful reports and feedback is gathered from the community which is served to the R&D team. Many things I see here hurt, but I guess people are not only here to rejoice the amazing constructive content built by the community, but also to express frustration, which is OK. When things are not working as expected, this is one way of being heard.
We don’t moderate constructive negativity even tho sometimes it tends to hurt the brand. And we surely keep our fingers crossed for some positiveness as well 8)[/quote]
Sorin…
Today’s unreachable devices… Support has been in and out over the last week and then come to the solution that it is my Z-Wave network? Isn’t the Vera at the heart of my Z-Wave network? These devices all worked before the last f/w update and now nothing but issues. The pumps filter my pool and having them not triggering when they’re supposed to will have a detrimental result. I need my VeraPlus to work. ALL THE TIME.[/quote]
ask them to downgrade the zwave chip[/quote]
I thought this was integral to the f/w? Can this be done without rolling back the f/w? Have you done it, Richie?
Thanks for the mention @kigmatzomat.
Things are getting better, even tho not at the pace desired by everyone.[/quote]
Gonna let that slide.
My one fundamental issue comes down to quality control during releases. Its like “beta is the version before prod” is treated as a mandate rather than a philosophy.
I have an app development team. Almost every time our stuff breaks, it’s because someone made a change after UAT (beta) and ran it straight to prod. All code move scripts, configuration files, all tools, everything that gets code to prod should be used to get the code from Dev to qa.
Look at Apple’s new laptops. Somebody made some firmware changes, failed to include a thermal profile, and the laptop would flake out under certain kinds of sustained loads.
That’s a post-UAT change making it to prod with notable consequences.
Never release any code that doesn’t go through a full user acceptance test, whatever threshold “full” may be. Any code that fails uat gets fixed and run through uat again, NOT released to prod “because it’s fixed now”. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
Right now everyone in your engineering team should have a plenty of examples to say to each other: “remember firmware x.y.z where we changed the tumteetum, didn’t qa it, and it broke in prod? Let’s not repeat that”.
Somewhere else I wrote that in my opinion lot of users (including myself) are “hostages”. They use Vera rather because they are forced to, not really like the experience.
There are lot of reasons why someone may stick to Vera even not liking it very much.
Home automation systems are not as easy to replace one with another as for example oven or TV set. You put a lot of effort to make your system working (so called “sunken costs”) and consider a change as a big challenge. There is no ideal Home Automation system available, Vera has some advantages over the other sysems too.
Many people here don’t really want to move on, but they feel forced to do such, due to inertion of the company, which makes Vera product more and more obsolete over time.
Complaining users are loyal (If they wouldn’t, they would just move on) and still have hope that their needs will be listened.
Speaking for myself, I don’t really want to spend time for rebuilding my system from the scratch with other controller, learning how to set it up to have similar functionality as I have now. But over time I started to consider Vera as a blind road, as with their current offer (both hardware and software) their product is not up to the changes in the modern world (let’s speak just about integration with other systems, even via a “prosthesis” solution like IFTTT).
I still have Vera and don’t want to change it till it work, so I complain in hope that I’ll be listened.
But If my controller would broke today, I would probably change it for some other solution and as a result stop writing on this forum.
And the hope dies last