Upgrading Two Vera3 to Two VeraPlus

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices Vera Controllers & Cameras
#21

With Multiswitch manual, you mean clicking the actual button on the Ui7 dashboard? Or via HTTP/LUUP? It works for me under Ui7 on my Vera 3. (I don’t have a multiswitch on the Plus yet) Both manual and HTTP/LUUP.

Makes sure for HTTP/LUUP to use the below syntax.

http://VERA_IP:3480/data_request?id=lu_action&DeviceNum=DEV#&serviceId=urn:dcineco-com:serviceId:MSwitch1&action=SetStatus1&newStatus1=0

Where VERA_IP is the IP of your Vera and DEV# the device number for your multiswitch. SetStatus1-8 and newStatus1-8 set the buttons. 0 = off, 1 = on.

#22

BOFH

The MultiSwitches work under program control. It APPEARS that the manual control problem was related the Microsoft Edge browser, in subsequent testing with FireFox the manual operation works fine. Microsoft :slight_smile:

#23

Today was the big day, converting the “Big ZWave Vera” to VeraPlus and for the most part it all came over without to many glitches.

PLEGS
I updated the PLC and PLEG Plugins and purchased new licenses for this VeraPlus. After a restart I was able to register and they came up with only two hitches, due to the Temperature and Light level sensing function of the Fibaro Motion Sensors and the Fibaro Contact sensor as below

Fibaro Devices
There appears to be a significant problem with Fibaro devices in UI7
** Motion Sensors
The Temperature and Light Level functions of the Fibaro are apparently not working. The main device, the motion sensor shows “Unable to get any information” but it is providing motion detection to the associated PLEG. However none of them are reporting Temperature or Light level information and as far as the PLEGs are concerned those devices do not exist so the logic fails.
** Door/Window Contact
I have one Fibaro Contact Sensor that is used to provide only Temperature data from the attic. The base unit continues to show “Unable to get any information” and the Temperature data is not available.

A minor irritant, the UI does not display ROOMS alphabetically. I have things arranged as
1A PLEGS
1B Misc Sensors
1C Vera 2 State
1F Room 1
1F Room 2
etc
1Z Applications

but the UI insists on jumbling them up, displaying 1F, 1A, 1B, 1Z, 1C …
I guess I can fiddle with retyping the Room names to see if it fixes it but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Right now all the battery operated devices as still showing “Waiting for wakeup to configure …” so once it gets through that step there might be other problems but for right now its mostly working, the primary glitch appears to be the Fibaro devices.

Frankly I was expecting a major problem but it appears almost everything came over without a hitch. The longer term of course remains to be seen. The first conversion I did 36 hours ago still appears to be holding together without problems.

[UPDATE]
Room Display Order
As suspected the Room Display order was corrected by fiddling a few of the names. UI5 allowed longer names that UI7 and once I got all the names within the UI7 allowance the display order straightened out.

Fibaro
Contacted Customer Support

[UPDATE]
It now appears that ALL Door/Window Sensors of ALL brands, have failed to come over correctly. They are present in the display but they all either stay in “Waiting for Wakeup to Configure” forever or they APPEAR configured but do not actually do anything.

In addition to the Fibaro Motion Sensors it now looks like the Schlage Motion Sensors have failed to initialize

All Smoke Detectors have apparently failed to come over properly

All Virtual Motion Sensors have failed to come over

The inaccessible devices I was most concerned about, the Aeon Switches and the MonoPrice Dual Relay Switches are working fine. It figures.

So the bottom line is that as of now
ALL the light switches are OK
ALL wall outlets are OK
ALL Aeon and MonoPrice Relays are OK
The PLEGS and VeraAlert are OK
The ImperiHome, EventWatcher and AutoVera Plugins are OK
ALL Smoke Detectors are NOT
Almost all Door/Window Sensor are NOT (only two MonoPrice units initialized OK)
ALL Motion Sensors (Fibaro, Schlage, Everspring) are NOT

Time to Fall Back to the Vera 3 and regroup

#24

In the fallback to the Vera 3 from the previous post I encountered two Door/Window sensors that did not initially appear work after moving back the Vera 3. Attempting to poll them Vera responded “Cannot send command to node.” Yet, the sensor tripped and triggered PLEG exactly as it should. I suppose this might be a product of the Vera 3 still sitting in Secondary Controller mode without a live Primary but I’m not sure.

I found three others that would not configure but I got them back by sending the configure command and immediately removing the battery and tripping the sensor with the tamper switch. surprisingly they recovered and are again functioning.

Anyway, it looks like Richard Schaefer was right again folks :o

I’m not sure where I’m going now. I still have the VeraPlus in situ as it was after the attempted cutover. Its online with a different address and all the PLEGS in bypass (I have no logic or schedules independent of PLEGs) All of the failed ZWave devices are fairly easily accessible so coaxing them into working one at a time might be a practical approach. I haven’t tried the “configure/battery/trip” sequence that got them back on the Vera 3 as yet with the Vera Plus so I may end up having to delete and reinstall them and adjust the PLEG definitions for the new DeviceIDs. Similarly the Smoke Detectors are accessible so they may not be too big a deal to delete/reinstall and adjust the PLEGs.

The first Vera I converted to VeraPlus is running fine, there have been no glitches, unexpected failures. I have seen one unplanned restart this morning. This unit has no Door/Window or Motion sensors attached, the only ZWave devices are a dozen or so outlets and Jasco switches all of which are working fine. The original Vera is preserved in situ but off the LAN. Memory usage is running around 59% and CPU running 1-5% which is a significant improvement over the load on the Vera 3.

The only problem thus far is the inability to change button names on the MultiSwitch PlugIn

#25

In an attempt to make my life a little easier I tried an experiment this morning. Reasoning that some of the devices missing from the Vera Plus conversion were still “attached” to the Vera 3 I deleted one of them, a Vision smoke Detector from the Vera 3. I then polled it from its icon in the Vera Plus and it reported SUCCESS Polled device. I polled it several more times just to be sure and it reported success each time.

So I thought that it had recovered the device in the Vera Plus but about two minutes later it suddenly reported “Can’t detect device.” So it appears that this is also not a solution but I do not know why.

At this point all seven smoke detectors show Can’t detect device." I then set them to “Disarm” and the Vera Plus reports “Sending Command” and the "Can’ detect device’ cleared and the device reports “Waiting for wakeup …”

I ran a stress test from the Vera Plus to the device and it reports all sent, all received. Then it reports “Can’t detect device” Frustrating

#26

Well! I’ve got most of the new Vera Plus working and BOTH my new VeraPlus units are online and functional.

Removed each of the missing/inoperable devices from BOTH the Vera 3 UI5 and the Vera Plus UI7.
Added back a new device to the Vera Plus UI7
Changed deviceIDs in the PLEGs
Armed/Disarmed/Armed each of the new devices
Rearmed all the PLEGS
Took the Vera 3 UI5 offline
Changed the IP of the VeraPlus UI7 to the earlier address

I have a half dozen non-critical door/window sensors yet to do, closet doors, mailbox, and one motion sensor in the laundry. Tonight and tomorrow I will finish off the sensor and the smoke detectors and everything should be back to normal … or as normal as it can be with Vera.

#27

Thanks for showing me a complete device unpair from my Vera 3’s and then re-pair with the Plus and Edge seems the safest way to go.

Luckily all my MonoPrice PIR sensors are mounted with 3M command velcro strips (For easy battery changes) so they are easy to bring to the controller.

#28

Another update on the progress of my upgrade.

  1. Very few of my PLEG notifications are working. On one VeraPlus I removed and reinstalled veraAlerts thinking that might be the problem but it didn’t change anything. So it appears that the problem is with the PLEG notifications themselves. Looks like I’ll have to remove and recreate them.

  2. I noticed something strange on the PLEG editor. On some but not all of my PLEGs when I try to run the Logic/Status Report I get a blank Popup, on others it works fine. I surmise that this may be doe to one or more errors in the devices of logic due to devices that did not transfer over and have not been corrected as yet.

  3. I have, or tried to, reinstall my smoke detectors and of the seven only two installed without a hitch. Three of the others said they configured properly but were not in fact correctly installed on Vera. On all of them I was able to get them to “look right” by manually doing “Configure device now” but I had to do it several times before they actually appear to be working (I’ve yet to run actual smoke tests to see if they alert Vera properly, that’s probably a Tuesday project.

  4. I still have a few low-priority sensors, power fail, mailbox, etc., that have not been corrected. I’m getting to them as I can.

  5. I have not verified the Vera<=>Vera heartbeat function as yet but I can see the semaphores coming over to each Vera.

  6. The Wi-Fi Camera LOS logic still works triggered by the Blue Iris Camera Watchdog.

The major outstanding problem is fixing the Notifications. I’m going to pick a PLEG that has few Notifications assigned and try deleting and recreating the Notifications to see if that solves the problem. I’ve sent test messages to Syslog, Pushover, and Twilio from VeraAlerts and they all see to be OK and the Notification list is all intact so I suspect the problem is with the PLEG Notifications not being fired properly after the transition.

#29

The blank status report is due to references to deleted devices … I have a fix for that … but I am still waiting for MCV to audit the previous fix … I guess they are on summer vacation.

I will test PLEG notifications …

#30

[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:29, topic:193107”]The blank status report is due to references to deleted devices … I have a fix for that … but I am still waiting for MCV to audit the previous fix … I guess they are on summer vacation.

I will test PLEG notifications …[/quote]

Thanks for the update. I had planned to print out the PLEG notifications so I could deleted them and manually reenter them to see if that was the problem.

#31

The latest in the saga of converting to VeraPlus UI7.

Vision Smoke Detectors
I had removed all seven smoke detector “phantom devices” from the UI5 => UI7 conversion. I then installed the seven Vision smoke detectors that had performed flawlessly for a year under Vera3 UI5 in one of the Vera Plus UI7 controllers. I had the same kind of glitches in the installation to UI7 I had experienced with them in UI5 but I have long suspected that Vera simply has little interest in smoke detection. Eventually they all installed and configured properly. I was able to poll them and do stress tests once they installed. Everything was rocking along.

Two hours later NOT ONE OF THEM IS WORKING. Vera says “Can’t Detect Device” for devices it was perfectly happy with two hours earlier.

Everspring Motion Detector
In addition an Everspring Motion Sensor that installed and worked without a hitch earlier in the day is suddenly now in “Can’t detect device” mode also.

AutoVera
Minor glitch with AutoVera, it reports the number of Android devices attached as “temperature 4”.

#32

I posted this separately because it isn’t very important to me but I think its interesting. I have both Vera UIs open in my browser right now. Both are set to identical location data including Lat/Long and both have the same Weather Data settings.

Yet on shows the local weather as 96F and Sunny while the other shows it as 89F and partly cloudy. Right now WU shows the local conditions as 91F and party cloudy so one of the Veras appears to be in the same place I am. The other who knows :slight_smile:

#33

I have PLEG notifications working in my setup …

I believe there is a problem with NOTIFICATIONS in general on the latest UI7 release.
Multiple people are seeing problems … no errors … configuration looks correct … just no notifications.

#34

[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:33, topic:193107”]I have PLEG notifications working in my setup …

I believe there is a problem with NOTIFICATIONS in general on the latest UI7 release.
Multiple people are seeing problems … no errors … configuration looks correct … just no notifications.[/quote]

That’s what’s happening here. Everything LOOKS normal just nothing happening on one Vera. On the other I’ve suddenly started getting notifications of when the Alarm system has been Armed/Disarmed and when my Internet connection does Down/Up. Near as I know I didn’t do anything to them but with all the other fiddling I may have clicked the username destinations off/on.

Have you considered, if its even possible, creating your own Notifications inside the PLEGs and integrating them with VeraAlerts, bypassing all of Vera’s notification system? In addition to improving the functionality this might also allow the user to EDIT notifications just as you do the Message Overrides in Vera Alerts. Just a thoughts.

I also see now someone is reporting problems with the Everspring motion sensor in 1.7.2044 so maybe that’s firmware too :slight_smile:

#35

You can already do notifications “INSIDE” pleg.
Add an action for the “Vera Alerts” device … SendAlert action.
I have some of those too … and they are working fine for me.

In this case you can embed the value of Conditions or properties in your message with a message like:

The house temperature is currently {(pHouseTemp)}
#36

[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:35, topic:193107”]You can already do notifications “INSIDE” pleg.
Add an action for the “Vera Alerts” device … SendAlert action.
I have some of those too … and they are working fine for me.

In this case you can embed the value of Conditions or properties in your message with a message like:

The house temperature is currently {(pHouseTemp)}[/quote]

I tried this approach and it works great, since none of my notifications are working anyway and I was planning on re-doing them I’m going to delete them and go this way instead.

Is there a way to mass delete the notifications, I have quite a few and apparently Vera restarts after each deletion.

Thanks.

#37

Hmm, I upgraded my Vera 3 to the latest UI7 about a week ago and it has both ZCOMBO and Vision ZS6101 smoke detectors connected. All still work flawlessly.

I have a Vision ZS6101 smoke detector hooked up to the test Edge (on latest Ui7) and it also is working fine. It did not like being joined and out up a fight so it took s few tries and some language to get the process finalized. 8)

Granted, those were all added under a older FW version.

#38

[quote=“BOFH, post:37, topic:193107”]Hmm, I upgraded my Vera 3 to the latest UI7 about a week ago and it has both ZCOMBO and Vision ZS6101 smoke detectors connected. All still work flawlessly.

I have a Vision ZS6101 smoke detector hooked up to the test Edge (on latest Ui7) and it also is working fine. It did not like being joined and out up a fight so it took s few tries and some language to get the process finalized. 8)

Granted, those were all added under a older FW version.[/quote]

There was a significant language problem in trying to get mine installed :slight_smile: I had a similar language problem trying to get a Fibaro Door/Temperature sensor to attach until I gave up and threw it across the room. There are a surpisingly small number of parts in one :slight_smile:

#39

I got a response from tech support about my Vision Smoke Detectors. According to them they are all responding to Stress Tests and the “Can’t detect device” is a glitch in the current UI (1.7.2044) and has been reported to development. Well, that may have been true when they looked but it isn’t now.

This morning all of the smoke detectors are “chirping” for low batteries … brand new batteries yesterday. Turns out they have been running all night (red LED on full time) so the batteries are dead. Changed the batteries and now half of the one’s I changed don’t pass the stress test. One of them that does never indicates tripped despite it appearing to work fine.

Now a brand new out of the box Ecolink Door/Windows sensor refused to install on one of the Veras.

And I’m trying to delete a bunch of notifications I no longer need and I’m suddenly getting “failed to save system configuration.”

#40

re: Vision Smoke Detectors

Despite the fact that of the seven detectors 6 of them fail the Stress Test, all of them now report to Vera when they are tripped. I have logic in a PLEG to send Pushover, Syslog, and SMS whenever they trip and they appear to be working correctly now.