Last week I attempted to upgrade from UI5 to you IU 7. To cut a long story short, it was an absolute disaster and even following all the various tips on this forum even after downgrading it took me a few days of frustration to get my system functioning back to where it was before I started. I do have a fairly extensive system with quite a few apps as well.
Can someone please tell me what the benefit of the new UI is? I would attempt again, maybe with tech support leading the effort, if someone could tell me what the gain with the upgrade is. I already use PLEG and probably would not change that even if better scene function were available in the UI.
I’d be interest, too. I’m currently running UI5 on a Vera2. It’s been very stable over the past 2 years. I have about 25 devices (locks, thermostat, dimmers, garage door openers, light switches , fan controls, PLEG, etc. There’s a special on a Vera Edge for $99.95 thru July. Other than being able to use Z-wave Plus devices, and use more devices in total, I don’t see any advantage for me.
Running Vera’s with both UI5 and UI7 here’s a few points on whether to upgrade or not.
UI5 is no longer being developed or bug fixes done for it. It is however still supported.
Not all plugins are Ui7 compatible.
Not all new(er) plugins still support UI5
UI7 supports geo-fencing and app notifications. UI5 does not.
UI7 supports newer Z-Wave devices that UI5 does not. Eg. some garage door openers.
UI7 is on a monthly update release schedule. This can be a good or a bad thing.
My setup:
My existing devices are still on my UI5 Vera 3 as they run smooth and stable there.
Any new z-wave devices are added to my Ui7 Vera 3 and if there are issues I’ll move them to the Ui5 one. So far that has not been needed.
Both Vera’s are interconnected using amongst others HTTP calls on Vera A to execute scenes on Vera B and vice versa.
The future. Eventually the plan is to upgrade the UI5 Vera to UI7 and either run everything on 1 Vera 3 and use the other for backup/testing/QA (ideally) or run the same dual setup I run currently but with both Vera 3’s on UI7.
If you have a moderate setup that is stable and don’t need any of the new features offered by UI7, by all means stay on Ui5.
If you run into issues with devices not being supported on UI5, you may want to consider upgrading to UI7.
BOFH,
Thanks for the comparison. Is it relatively straightforward to have both a Vera2 on UI5 interconnected with a Vera Edge on UI7? It sounds like you’re pretty much doing that now. I figure if that works, I could buy the Vera Edge and slowly move each device over. That way the transition would be on my schedule and I wouldn’t have to scramble if the Vera2 died on me unexpectedly.
You can use HTTP calls in the LUUP section of scenes to call scenes on the other Vera directly. Or even switch devices. I use a Multiswitch on each as well for external inputs that acts as a trigger on both Vera’s to do certain things. I can take this a lot farther than I am currently doing but I don’t have the need for that.
It does allow me to have events on my UI5 Vera to eg run a scene on my UI7 Vera to generate a notification. (Which UI5 does not support)
Example LUUP code to run a scene on a remote Vera. Replace IP_ADDRESS with the IP Address of your remote Vera and SCENE_NUMBER with the number of the scene you want to start on that same remote Vera.
I have some new PIR sensor & smoke / gas sensor with Z-wave 500 series chip, so I try to upgrade my Vera3 to UI7. However, the devices do not report " Failed at: Getting the version " as in UI5, the devices appear as Generic I/O. Then I rename it as MotionSensor / SmokeSensor. At the end, the devices do not work at all but the vera3 does report any errors. My question is whether to wait for another update to see if they work eventually or I should buy a new VeraEdge ?
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