Beware of Vera firmware upgrade

[Chuck]

Jack,

I am running both Z-wave and X10 and quite a few Oregon Scientific sensors. And I have James’ new wired temp sensors that are fantastic. I am getting away from X10 at it just isn’t all that reliable. I was in the process of removing all the X10 sensors since I have the ZW3008 wired Z-wave wall sensors. Glad I decided to keep them up for a bit longer because they are now the main source of movement in the house. I have decided to keep them as a backup system problem till I die. Redundancy is good and relying on one system is not.

The Z-wave switches are very reliable and have never failed me with the exception of the first generation ones that would lose there address and had to be re-paired with the controller. This usually happened during a power failure or a breaker issue. The newer ones come right back on line and have never been an issue.

Since the switches/dimmers have only one form of communication I had to pick one and Z-wave is way more reliable.

Now I am upgrading the X10 sensors and they all run the same script for each unit. So I have an X10 sensor, X10 security sensor and the Z-wave wall sensor (the one that Vera quit talking to). All of them have write log “Name of the unit” and execute script “Whatever” in each of the on scripts. So they all run the same script. In that script is has 

if status of “the light” is false then
turn on the light
end if

This way there aren’t 3 sensors flooding the network with “on” when the light is already on.

Since I have the Oregon Scientific sensors and all the interfaces for them having X10 is relatively minor. If the X10 sensors remembered their addresses then I would never change sensors. I have found those sensors to be the best sensors I have used in the 35 years I have been doing HA. The only drawback is that they require regular battery replacement.

I broke my rule. If it works don’t fix it. I allowed the upgrade to the new firmware. I never should have done that. I will never do that again as long as it is working. Vera screwed me over big time and anyone who is using the same sensors. What is interesting is that i did the upgrade and it took hours for it to start to ignore the ZW3008 sensor. I am guessing that it was upgrading the network.

I get it when you don’t want to deal with this 2000 miles away. My vacation home stays just like it is until I am going to be there for a few weeks and then I will upgrade one issue at at time to make sure it works. And I have two Vera units that can take over if one fails. That is also good and I should have had one here at my main home. My mistake.

Chuck

> On Mar 8, 2020, at 1:26 PM, Jack Stewart <jacks at amug.org> wrote:
> 
> Chuck,
> 
> If you replace Vera with something else, you have to do it 2X don't you for multiple systems?
> 
> This hardware/source proliferation has been the singular thing keeping me from going Z-Wave. I have wanted Z-Wave for a long time now. It looks wonderful but I don't want the multiple sources for my systems. I can't imagine dealing with this kind of problem from 2000 miles away.
> 
> Jack
> 
> On 3/8/20 12:02 PM, Chuck wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 8, 2020, at 11:33 AM, James Sentman <james at sentman.com <mailto:james at sentman.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Restart the Vera interface and try again, if still nothing then restart your physical vera box and try again and let me know what happens.
>> 
>> James,
>> 
>> I have tried everything I can think of and still nothing. The units are more than likely responding to movement but Vera is not acknowledging it. I have tried to reinstall several different units and they pair just fine like always. Vera creates 3 units and without any more manipulation on my part the sensor will not activate on movement. I change some parameters to get the sensor to act like a sensor and still nothing. I have unpaired the units, did factory resets and Vera still won’t acknowledge them.
>> 
>> Let me know as soon as you have some other options as I want to get away from Vera.
>> 
>> Chuck
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 7, 2020, at 3:07 PM, Chuck <xtension4osx at mac.com <mailto:xtension4osx at mac.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> James,
>>>> 
>>>> Nothing happened. No files saved and no response from Vera. I tried it on 3 different sensors. It’s pretty clear that it is a problem with Vera.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>>  James
>>> 
>>> 
>>> James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org <http://www.planetarygear.org/>		http://MacHomeAutomation.com <http://machomeautomation.com/>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
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