Where to go from Vera

Melih,

have I missed something? Do you have a shipping product?

Yes we do.
But wait for Version 2 that is coming with the Beta, I personally love the version 2 and its so close…

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Melih,

As I said in my original post, I’m looking for a more reliable replacement for my Vera Plus I don’t see that in your links. Perhaps “version 2”, whatever that is, will do it but I haver my doubts about something that is in beta. I want something that’s in production, is end user friendly (I’m not looking for a new hobby) and has proven itself.

Thanks

-Ray

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I often read complaints here about instability and other issues with the Vera. My experience have been very different. With about 20 Z-wave devices which are mostly Fibaro, Aeotec and Qubino (and now even Shelly’s). I also have a DSC alarm system so in essence there are also ~25 PIRs/door sensors which is part of the Vera system. So this is not a small system, I think? My system is stable enough that I never have to fiddle with it and it works like I envisage home automation should. The VeraPlus has always been my preference as it allows for a setup and forget configuration for the most basic tasks with the ability to extend functionality via LUA and community plugins. It has had some issues re firmware upgrades etc. but I quite like my Vera!

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Well, 20 physical devices are what Vera is able to handle. I was almost good until 50. Crossing that threshold had opened a pandora box. This week I had a reboot (complete reboot) every 20 minutes, exactly that, for 4 days in a row. I had to wipe the unit and restore a backup to get it stable again.

I’m 100% sure this is related to ZWave, since I added 10 new devices this month (well, you know, because I need them…) and I reach its peak, at about 70 devices. There are forum members here with 100+ and they all report horror stories. All that said, I’m about to switch to ZWay+openLuup while I’ll also evaluate the new eZlo hubs. I don’t mind thinkering, but while I’m not I want the system to be stable.

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A little info from experience that may help someone…:

My ZWave network also opened Pandora’s Box as it got larger. When I reconfigured it onto Home Assistant I could look at the activity on the ZWave network, which was very revealing.

Most of us are used to LANs, and wired or wifi networks that easily achieve 100s of millions of bits per second. ZWave operates at (I think) about 9600 bits per second. Anyway, it’s thousands of times slower. That means every ZWave transmission is significant.

As my ZWave network got bigger (more devices) I could see the traffic increasing. Sometimes commands would wait a while before even being sent - causing things like lights taking forever to turn on. As traffic increased, I started to see timeouts in the logs - when the controller gave up on getting a response to a message it had sent perhaps several times.

In my case, I traced this behavior down to the main culprit being the polling required by my older ZWave devices. HA/OZW exposes detailed configuration choices, which made it possible to disable polling for all devices except a few that I cared about, and to reduce the rate of polling. That fixed the problem; long-term I’ll replace the culprit devices.

I didn’t try this with my Vera installation because I don’t know how to do it or even if it’s possible. But it may help others with large-network problems if they can figure it out. Do whatever you can to reduce ZWave traffic.

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A Distributed hub architecture is the right architectural solution.

Polling is disabled, of course. It doesn’t matter, since zwave engine is not stable and full of strange behavior.

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No … ALL the people on this forum with 100+ devices do NOT report horror stories. As of today I have 159 devices and my VeraSecure is rock solid, a program and forget box that runs for weeks without a reload when left untouched.

As I’ve reported many times in this community, my horror stories ended with the total abandonment of plugins, and implementation of all operations in Lua.

And my system also runs on my old VeraPlus, as I learned when 7.31 bricked by VeraSecure and I awaited a replacement.

I’m not for a moment claiming it’s all bad plugins, as I can’t distinguish that from issues that the Vera’s plugin environment might create on its own. But for me, the plugin/no plugin difference is night and day.

I find that if I run almost nothing at all (ZWave devices or plugins) then my Vera Edge stays up for really quite a long time, over 45 days most recently…

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Just for clarification: I wasn’t comparing plugins to nothing, I was comparing plugins to my own Lua code that does everything I used to have plugins doing.

But that certainly shows the difference between your system with “almost nothing at all” and my system with 159 Zwave nodes, 386 total devices, and 63 Lua packages that run a total of 185 variable watches and 19 timers that I use in place of triggered scenes. All without the “Zwave nightmares” that I see all over this community.

I suspect you are quite an accomplished coder, then?

C

I imagine you’re the exception rather than the rule here. You certainly have your controller maxed out by the sounds of it. From reading the majority of posts here their wouldn’t be too many others here that could make the same claim. With your apparent coding skills in Lua coding which I imagine many others here wouldn’t share you must find this environment a little restrictive.

Honestly, my #1 Vera-related aversion is having to compose even a single line of Luup code.

Having learned BASIC in the 70s, Ada in the 80s, HTML in the 90s, CSS in the naughts, and finally JavaScript in the teens, my brain doesn’t want to work any more that way.

You’re the lucky exception. I reset my Vera edge lately because it started to reboot every 20 minutes. Exactly that. I reset it and restored a backup and it’s now going at 4 days with no luup reloads.

I don’t know if you look at your logs or monitors the reloads, but it could not be my code that stops the zwave engine for 1 sec in case it detects a nonce report and can’t just ignore it, as other controllers are doing, or handle the zwave queue not in an optimal way, with the infamous tardiness and the execution of code 20 minutes later.
I run nest and alexa (built by them) and harmony, so my crash are all related to zwave. When I have a lot of activity (like multiple sensors triggering, or 20+ lights/blind to operate, it’s quite sure a crash or hang will happen.

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I know many users in this forum are US based, and all the suggestions partially reflect that.
The question I have is: did anybody tried the Fibaro hub? As many European users, I mainly have fibaro devices and few qubino as well.

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Do you think it is necessary to throw away old Zwave devices that are not Zwave Plus in order to have a stable system? Some of my devices like a water cutoff would be a total pain to replace. I also have some Radio Thermostats CT100’s and Aeon Labs smart energy switches. I use the Aeon Labs smart energy switches as repeaters. I wonder if that is a mistake using them as repeaters.

Use homeassistant and install the openzwave addon. It is built on ozw1.6 and hell(!) all devices that were problematic with Vera work there instantly.

Probably this post will also be removed quickly.

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I wouldn’t throw them out. If you’re willing to wait for the Ezlo firmware, you may find they’ll work better there.
The Vera Plus never did well with Zwave for me.

I rely in evidence, not rumors. “They’ll” is too uncertain. Vera Plus is primarily a zwave controller… why did it not work out well? Due to the ignorance of the device supportiveness?

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