I’ve been thinking alot about my home automation journey and what may be coming next for me over the last few months. I’ve been a Vera / Ezlo user now for over 10 years. I have three Vera devices continuing to run in my properties and one Ezlo in my most current property. I am a technical person by nature but not a programmer or computer geek (although I did learn and implement some Lua to fully utilize my Vera’s!). I utilize the home automation systems for pretty simple things - turning porch lights on and off on a smart schedule, turning on lights when doors are unlocked at night, remote access for HVAC and lighting control, leak monitoring and turning on lights to make the property look lived in when I’m not there. I’ve lived thru the evolution of Vera over the years and now see many similar growing pain issues with Ezlo. I am concerned with my three Vera units nearing EOL with little to no remaining support hence my focus on this topic. If life were perfect I would simply buy more Ezlo units to replace the Vera’sin the next year or two but I’m not sure that is a viable solution in my case without some changes by Vera / Ezlo so here is my personal wish list for Ezlo -
- Be a more professional platform / business / operation. I know you are trying but you need to take major steps now. Communication is spotty at best, commitments are made but not kept, update schedules are not published, documentation is missing / wrong or difficult to find. Your branding is very confusing - still some Vera, some Ezlo, some Mios. Never sure what to call what. Frankly it feels that I hitched my automaton future to a very small outfit that may or may not be around tomorrow. We, your current user base, are your best potential brand ambassadors but we need information to do that.
- Fix the documentation - where can I find the right info? How is it accessed? Are the links accessible and working? I know for a fact some of the documentation that is out there right now is not correct or the functionality described does not work. Speaking of not working, why not publish a list of known issues and target dates for correction. Be more transparent about the platform and your progress. I, for one, can deal with missed deadlines if there is communication and transparency about it. What gets really frustrating is missed commitments with no explanation and no new commitment dates.
- Fix the community - this used to be a very active and robust community. Now there appears to only be a few users left. This could be a huge asset for Ezlo. Take a leadership role in developing and encouraging the community. Actively drive use and value of the community by sending links to users and providing reasons for people to go there. Tell us what you are striving to do with the Company, what your strategies are, what your challenges are. Share with us the good and the bad. Provide how to’s and examples of ways the platform is being used. How about a library of example meshbots for common automation scenarios. And I hate when support responds to a post only to take it off-line - I want to know what the issue was and what the fix was because I might be next with a similar problem!
- Specific Capabilities - I’ve been trying to implement a meshbot to control a device based on outside weather conditions and inside temp sensors. Right now there doesn’t seem to any working method to fetch local weather data - Open Weather and Ezlo weather apps both return errors. And even if I could get weather data, local meshbots don’t currently support simple math comparisons to support the logic i want to implement (simple stuff) and while global meshbots do the math, there is some sort of undefined error according to support that causes them not to function correctly. Said to be rectified in the next update but no word as to when that will drop.
- Apps - I use the Deus Ex Machina II app on my Vera devices to provide a lived in look by randomly turning lights on and off in the evening. As far as I can tell there isn’t a substitute for this that works on the Ezlo platform. This is a critical need for me. Perhaps someone in the community can write a similar app for Ezlo, I know I can’t.
- Simplicity and robustness - no one else in my family is interested in dealing with home automation as a hobbyist. If this platform is going to survive it has to be simple and just work day in and day out with good solid troubleshooting tools available for the novice when problems do occur. This also means that as improvements are made to the firmware, existing meshbots and devices must continue to function without intervention. Not the case today as often meshbots have to be deleted and reentered when something changes.
- User Interface / Apps - maybe should have been number one but I’ve gotten used to dealing with the mess. I primarily use the old Vera app for my daily needs since it still supports simple on/off and monitoring of both platforms, Vera and Ezlo. I have the MIOS app on my phone but find it buggy and slow to work and it only accesses the single Ezlo device I have. There seem to be things you can only do with the phone app and other things like meshbot editing that you should only do on the web site. Is there a list of recommended activities on which UI anywhere? Can I edit the dashboard on the website and if so, is there a user guide? Last time I looked the documentation for this was blank. By the way the simple user in particular wants to be able to use Alexa to get the job done. Most importantly, what are your plans in this whole area and when should we expect implementation?
@melih I hope you take this in the spirit intended. in my professional career, I considered feedback a gift. I hope you will do the same.
I really hope Ezlo is the go-to solution for home automation into the future and I hope Z-wave is the communication platform of choice but I fear neither of those may come to be.
I would be remiss if I didn’t call out the great job I think the support team does. My sense is they are a very small team and probably working in difficult circumstances but every time I have reached out they have responded quickly and tried to do what they can within the current limits of the programming.
I would also encourage the community at large here to add to this list - I know many of you have provided similar feedback in the past and clearly many of you have much deeper technical knowledge and needs than I do. Let’s try and rekindle the conversation and drive some positive change here.
