Pretty frustrated that setting up a device that is not in vera’s list is pretty damn difficult.
I have several Fibaro Heat controllers and asked Vera 18months ago for support on this (they configured several Fibaro devices) but nothing happens and seems like nothing will ever happen. My Fibaro single switch is also not supported/configured (even thought the double switch is).
Bottom line is I feel I have a system where, if I want simplicity of use, I am litterally hostage to Vera’s list of supported devices and no way to make any new device supported
On one side I wish vera would just support the full standard zwave stack. It is already doing a good job at it but… the devs have been too focused on doing device specific customizations instead of just focusing on expanding and updating support to the generic stack for both zigbee and zwave.
On the other, we, as customers are also pushing them to support more devices by making specific requests. The result is device makers like fibaro and aeotec increasingly diverge from the generic stack and getting a little too creative with their firmwares which in turn makes the generic stack support insufficient to support their devices for the hubs.
It’s a chicken and egg thing… If we stop buying divergent devices, then they will stop diverging. Most of my devices (more than 140 zwave and a dozen zigbee… out of which 0 is officially supported) are not on vera’s list but they all work fine because I avoid those fibaro customs devices and other similar ones like the pest. Remember that fibaro has their own hubs and in reality are trying to establish their own ecosystem. Customizing their devices is part of their strategy.
If it was up to me I would stop the device specific list and support and just claim zwave certification support. And all these devices with custom command class would be eliminated from that certification. Device Innovations should be in the device hardware, not in the communication protocol.
Possibly rafale77.
But the average consumer does not know if a device is generic or specific.
I have the Fibaro heat controller because I have not found good alternatives in the UK market.
Fibaro, or Aotec are popular devices and do not have that many devices each nor bring to market a new one every month so it is frustrating to see only some of their devices supported and the list remaining pretty static for 2 years with very few or no new additions.
It seems Homeseer has a much more dynamic platform.
I have tried Homeseer and looked around their forum. I have also run openzwave. They all run into similar issues with either the same or other devices… For example my aeotec devices, no matter what they are, are the only ones requiring occasional power cycle because they strangely stop reporting some data if they had some communication errors… I had to tweak my zwave network out of vera’s settings to stop this. Is it vera’s fault? yes… they use some absurd network default parameters. But… only the aeotec devices crash. Others have failed communications too but do not drop off. Aeotec tried to get too smart maybe…
What I said was a general tendency and rather philosophical. You will find very odd devices get better supported by one hub or another requiring a lot of work from the software side. But we are promoting the rat race… One that only a very open platform with a ton of developers can win aka open source which the vera is not. I am not trying to defend them here. Just highlighting the paradox of our requests for device specific support which goes against the need for much improved generic stack device support.
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