How many ex Vera owners are here?

[jeubanks]

@dJOS

I only started out with Vera because I was new to HAC's and it appeared to be a good learning platform (and it has been).

What is "HAC's"?

@dJOS

Im quite surprised to hear anyone call Vera a "great z-wave platform" - it has to be one of the worst I've come across due to all the non-standard things they've done to it. eg, nightly network heal's, aggressive polling, aggressive wake-ups of battery devices and massive issues with z-wave collisions and "stray node" reports (whatever the heck they are).

Depending on what your experience is with Z-Wave platforms and how they are implemented there's a lot of things Vera did really right and a few things they did wrong.

1. Nightly heal was a legacy item from Z-Wave before Z-Wave Plus. This was done due to bad mesh's and user problems.

2. Aggressive polling. Same thing. Pre Z-Wave plus and was done the same as many other platforms (including SmartThings) to poll those older devices. Not friendly to newer Z-Wave Plus devices but was necessary for "User" appeal when they are looking for a control solution and not automation. They want to see the little Icon flip on/off when they change a switch and they want to see it NOW.

3. Vera has a bad issue with "device offline" and still does. This is flakey with them and never got to the bottom of it.

4. "stray node reports" What's this? Please expand on it.

Some other things Vera did very right was their backup/restore of the system and z-wave DB. It worked. Also they had one of the first working implementations for a multiple radio connected solution. Today HE has this with HubConnect but it's native with Vera, Fibaro, HomeSeer, and many other systems.

@dJOS

Same but imo the new Vera owners have been putting too much effort into their mini "Ezlo" controllers and not enough into their full size controllers like the Plus and Edge.

I have not been impressed at all with what Ezlo is trying to do. They are trying to build a cloud based system and have for the most part ignored Vera Plus and local needs. I did see they have a newer Vera Plus in beta and still local. However I'm not holding my breathe just yet

@dJOS

TBH it's quite bizarre that in this day and age most hub type HAC's dont have 5 cent RTC's in them!

I KNOW RIGHT!?!?! Mind boggling really!

@dJOS

That's quite true, Vera support have been historically rubbish and every time they've touched my Plus they've made a mess! Luckily the Vera community is really good and very helpful.

Vera support was either really good or horrible never an in between. The community used to rock! Just like the HE community. Then most left....