How many ex Vera owners are here?

I’ve put my name down to be notified when the C7 arrives and my intention is for it to replace my Vera plus.

Just wondering how many other ex Vera folks are here and how you found moving HAC’s?

PS I have over 30 zwave devices (mostly Aeotec) , Lots of Echo’s, some hue gear, a Honeywell D6 pro + 2 nest thermostats and a Netatmo weather station. I use the Reactor App for all automation logic - which is amazing and the only reason I’ve stuck with Vera for so long.

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I'm ex-Vera sorta, I went to ST in the middle. When I was on Vera it was just 1 lock and 1 thermostat. Ahh the simple days when everything just worked (ask little, you get a lot).

Then I moved to new house bought ST and a ton of Z-wave switches. I didn't have a lot to move over, so I cannot speak much to that transition. However ST outages/lag drove WAF into the dirt. When that got tolerable I found Lutron Radio Ra2 (primary lighting solved!), and HE for the remaining devices/sensors/colored light/etc.

Was replacing/moving all the device fun? No.

Has HE been all butterflies, and rainbows? No.

Are there things "that worked in XYZ" that don't work as well in HE (locks)? Yes.

Would I go back to ST or Vera over HE? No, between the device and the community I would not trade in my HE.

As for processing I have started using node-red, which I personally find "easier" to use for complex rules/flows once you get the hang of it. Having it run on a separate box has removed a load off the HE box and improved our overall "experience".

WAF is now off the charts and I only hear complaints when I am "tweaking" something and screw it up. However the bug has firmly bitten and I find new devices show up on a regular basis.

If I had to say 1 bad thing about HE and this community, it's the fact that it's brings so many new options to the table that I cannot keep up. My list of "I gotta try that"'s is getting longer and longer.

and welcome! :smiley:

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Welcome, I’m still running a Vera Edge along with my HE.
I was planning to fully switch over but have some issues with Hubitat that make me want the second option.

Have you checked the compatibility list, I knew I was going to loose a couple of devices when I switched.

Overall Hubitat is better than Vera. Local architecture, lots of customization, great forum, shorter latency.
On the down side I’ve had my hub crash, slowdown issues, if you just pull power w/o shutting down you can corrupt the DB, no backup from a hub to new hub, poor/no support.
The forum mostly makes up for the support.

Nothing is perfect, Hubitat is still young and growing, I see a lot of potential.

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Welcome!
I used Vera Plus in the old days, with a stop in SmartThings in between. I really liked the User Interface in the Vera App, and in the days before Ezlo things more or less worked on Zwave.
Although it appears to be the same on the surface, Hubitat has a very different design premise than Vera (or others for that matters). If you see here "the mesh is the answer", it's because it's absolutely crucial to a successful Hubitat implementation.
I looked at Reactor some time ago - Rule Machine is MUCH easier, MUCH more flexible, and MUCH more powerful. You will enjoy RM. However, I strongly suggest that whenever you can, use the "simple cousins" first: Simple Lighting Autiomation, Notifications, Motion Lighting. It's not that RM can't do everything - it can. But, the "simple cousins" are faster and more efficient.
At first, you will be appalled at the lack of a mobile app like the one that Vera has. However, after a while, you will realize that with appropriate rules and dashboards, you don't really need it.
Welcome aboard!

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You name it I probably used it. I still have a couple of Vera 3's in the field and haven't convinced them to move to either ST or Hubitat. I will say I don't miss the phone call in the middle of night from the client that would say "my power went out and the Vera stopped working when it came back on". Too many times the darn storage would fill up and I would have to remote in and clean it up. I had to do a lot of tweaking of that platform to get complex rules and Z-Wave parameters set right but once I had a good working model the Vera was very viable. Just seems a bit dated now.

Never had an issue yet with Hubitat other than a errant device driver or connections to cloud services. I have one that has been up an running for almost a year now without a reboot. It's in a client site in Michigan and they have a 4,500 SF home with about 100 devices, two thermostats, 16 rooms with 4 to 8 scenes per room, It's on a UPS and just keeps working. I would say their internet provider is probably the most unreliable link in their home. Put in a Untangle router with cellular backup modem to keep the internet running for them.

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What is C7 ??

Your joking right?

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Nope I wasn't ..... lol, thanks for sharing !

I do not keep up with releases , it's not like i got an email or anything .....lol

Only announced 13 days ago... I am a little slow keeping up with the news.....lol

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You realize that Vera is LOCAL and always has been. There's far more customization options available with Vera than HE which is part of the problem with Vera as user contributed apps, scripts, tools cause instability. Kinda the same with HE.

I have 2 Vera Plus units. I still use them for development against much like the HE platform. Vera is a great Z-Wave platform and has great Zigbee for the limited devices it supports. Two issues with Vera was lack of updates and being really crappy when they did happen which caused lots of bricked hubs. I never had that happen but I think I was lucky. I'm watching Ezlo to see what they do.... The platform is excellent for development against and wide open with direct root access if you want to venture that far. HE is not as open as Vera and you can't see the internals or system resource information or usage.

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You can manually take offline backups and the hub auto backs up the last x changes

If your concerned , I would take offline backups

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I have to disagree with your "poor/no support" statement. Quite the opposite, I've never seen better support on any product in my life.

The fact that most of the support is accomplished via the forum is actually a good thing. Whether it occurred by happenstance or design is no matter. Just look for posts by @bravenel and now @bcopeland

JMHO

John

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I left VeraPlus shortly after the introduction of Hubitat. At that time Vera was changing owners and the support it had seemed to be dwindling.
I didn't have as many devices as you have but I could see the platform did not have a lot of expansion capability (due to hardware) and no functioning zigbee capability.

What drove the last nail into my VeraPlus coffin was the dependency on the internet for time based functions! When I first investigated moving from X-10 to Vera I specifically asked Vera if they were 100% functional without the internet. The answer was yes they were. Some months after my Vera system was up and running I found the time based lighting rules would not work if there was no internet! When I queried support I was told this was because there was no RTC in the Vera! When I pointed out the original eMail telling me the VeraPlus was 100% functional without the internet I was told that was a mistake and the author should not have said that.......huh?

It didn't take me long to find the Hubitat and sell my Veraplus on ebay.

John

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IDK the Zooz @agnes.zooz & Inovelli @Eric_Inovelli guys are pretty fantastic too :wink:

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I agree 100%. Both Eric's watch the Inovelli forum very closely and know @agnes.zooz monitors this forum and is right on top of any Zooz related issues.

Awesome how a small dedicated team can completely outshine a large corporation in providing a great product with superior support :grin:

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What? I was running quite a bit of Zigbee on Vera Plus and which is the reason why I developed a HomeSeer plugin integrating Vera Plus into HS was for the Zigbee. The "supported" device list of Vera Plus is small but it's there and functions.

This is the case with most "hubs" including HE.

There is a local solution for NTP now (you must configure it yourself), and time-based calculations like sunrise and sunset have been performed on the hub since either the beginning or very early on in the platform. I'm not sure I'd there's anything else I'm missing related to time or really internet at all besides, of course, cloud features. Firmware updates are the only other thing I can think of that require internet, but of course those are technically optional.

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yes I'm aware that HE (now) has the option to now use a local NTP server. It took a lot of complaints before this happened. Not the point. The point was the reliance on Internet for time services which most "hubs" do. Vera has always supported setting up a local NTP server. This isn't a Vera vs HE discussion.

When I left VeraPlus in April 1998 the Zigbee functionality was practically non existent. Most of the forum users at that time pretty much agreed on this being the situation.

This is the case with most "hubs" including HE.

Absolutely not at least with HE. HE has an internal RTC (no battery back up) that will continue to maintain time as long as power is supplied. I understand it is not super accurate and may drift off actual time if not connected to the internet for an extended period of time but it will work and the timed actions will be triggered.

In my experience with the VeraPlus, once the internet is lost any time related functions will not be triggered.
So if I had lights to be turned on at 6:00PM and I pull the cable on the internet at 5:55PM these lights will not go on. I do not recall what happens when internet connectivity is restored.

This isn't a Vera vs HE discussion.

I agree, I'm just relating my experience with VeraPlus. In comparison HE the only other hub I am familiar with. Ignoring my old X-10 controller which oddly enough has a battery backed up RTC.

I should add my attitude here is not against anyone in this (or any other forum). When I think back on the time issue I had with VeraPlus it brought back a some bad feelings with how Vera lied to me (prePurchase) about the timing and just ho_hum dismissed my pointing out their mistake.

John

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1998? Really? Either way the Zigbee was and still is limited I will agree with you on. However it did and does work well for the devices that are supported.

Uhh yeah. That's why there are dozens of posts about time problems and why the local NTP server option was finally added. Yes there's an RTC and it drifts badly without a NTP server connection.

True with most hubs and time. No different here. Do a search about rules not running based on time.

Oh there's horror stories I have with Vera Plus too... :slight_smile: it had a lot of potential but really was only every a "experiment" from Mios really and they never expanded it. Many users did and OpenLUUP is pretty awesome.

Oh you want bad feelings about Vera try following tech support and they trash your hub and say oops sorry and that's it. Or installing a FW update they say to fix a problem and it bricking your hub AND then not replacing it and making you buy a new one. There's so many horror stories of bricked hubs in the Vera forum it's crazy.

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I was a Vera Edge user for 3 years before I found HE. I will never look back. HE has been rock solid for me. I was able to port all of my devices over to HE and add quite a few new ones. I feel that that HE is easier to use than Vera, and the UI is much faster. Paring devices is better. The Vera was always filling up and hanging, not so with HE.

I have never thought too much about Mesh and I run a mix of Xiaomi devices and some Z-Wave (Fibaro, Aeotec, Everspring). For bulbs I am using a HUE which is connected to HE and a mixture of IKEA and Gledopto bulbs.

And last but not least, the HE community is miles better and more responsive than the Vera community.

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