Migrating from SmartThings to Vera Plus

I’ve been focusing on my zone base Security SmartApp lately, but I’ll try to squeeze that in along with reversing the order of the items on that page within the next couple of days.

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Are you sure about that? Because implicitly you are saying that ST is awesome because you can actually build awesome apps on it…muahhhaaahhh

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Aspirationally accurate.

I wouldn’t be here if there was another system that I thought showed the same promise. I’ve cop’d to this repeatedly. It probably gets drowned out by my totally awesome call outs about failures.

But, again… if I didn’t want ST to succeed by delivering the system they aspire to be, I’d be gone. Remember, I never once said I was going to another system. There are others that have left. There are others that have said they were then backed out. I am not one of them. There is nothing wrong with doing so, don’t get me wrong, but I still don’t see enough somewhere else to justify it yet. The day may come though.

For now, at the least, I’ve invested a ton in ST. No, not the 75 hub… time, commitment, etc… and I’ve done so twice. ST completely nuked any value in my system after months of programming, and so I re-did everything which took at least a month to do. I won’t rebuild like that again however. I’ll just go without until something else shows promise.

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I use Simple Device Viewer also. The problem is if it’s a light switch or something you manually operate, it actually doesn’t generate events and gets flagged as not communicating. It still helps me monitor the devices I use frequently and care about the most.

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Loool nothing wrong with testing the water…I am actually thinking again if I should try out Vera before I migrate to a new ST v2 hub that’s being delivered…It will be the perfect opportunity, wouldn’t it?!

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Two things here.

First, it’s not Zwave. There are known issues with GE light switches regardless of the controller that you are using. There’s a forum topic about that if you’re interested. Not sure what happened with the linear. But it’s not a Z wave issue. Cooper’s and Leviton’s shouldn’t have this problem.

Second, one of the things that happened in the last year is we’ve added “quick browse” lists to the community created wiki which make it much easier to search for community created smart apps and device type handlers.

One of the lists is for “wellness checks” and there are a couple of smart apps there that can tell you if a device has not had log activity over a specific time. These are very clever because they are not polling the devices so they don’t add any weight to the network itself. They just check the log entries.

Simple Device Viewer is the most comprehensive, but there are some others as well. As always, the community remains very creative and generous in providing solutions to comment requests.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

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Wait, you’re on v1?

Anyway… the more brave soles that go to vera and build up the eco, the better off it will be for me in the future!

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Actually, yes it is. You can do a partial trial install of the most common use devices… That should tell you everything you want to know.

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If you separately set up polling once a day that should generate an event that then simple device viewer would capture.

You know I’m not a fan of polling but for an instance like this where it’s limited to just some of your devices and it’s literally no more than once a day it shouldn’t be an issue. :sunglasses:

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I forget that I’m not the only one left on v1 :slight_smile: – Still have not ordered mine.

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No, I am on v2…

For reference I have my SDV set to poll once every six days, and threshold for devices to 20 days.

I find that 6 days for polling is often enough because devices that don’t respond to polling won’t wake up after 365 days of polling either… so I just have to wake them up manually and there are just a few.

If I ever have problems with devices dying I can adjust but this seems to work well in my setup.

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Yes. THIS was what gave ST so much promise. In fact, it was the reason why I stuck it out (and pushed so hard for things) early on. It’s also why I spent so much time doing device type and app code. However, after v2 came out and it became obvious that promises were being broken… and then API’s were dropped for various reasons… and user-devs were all being treated poorly… I had to step away.

A year later, and nothing much has changed… None of the promises from ST were kept. I’m moving on.

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Why are you getting a new v2 hub then?

To see if it fixes an issue with my hub rebooting randomly…

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So your schedules run… as long as your hub is up when they are supposed to?

:yum:

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I don’t have problems with schedules, really. I used to have a lot of problems with zigbee devices dropping like flies but it has gotten a lot better. Still, happens when the hub reboots. It could be packet loss at play, I am replacing cables, hub and got a managed switch to monitor the network.

Looks like some of my Zigbee devices are supported now officially:

GE Link Lights
Centralite Appliance Module (not sure if ST and IRIS will just work even though they appear the same)

And all the usual Z-Wave stuff:
GoControl/Linear/etc motion/contact sensors
Garage door opener (GoControl/Linear/etc)
Kwikset locks
Aeon HEM’s
Aeon Minimote
Aeon Smart Power Strip (minus watt readings!!!)
Aeon Smart Switch
Wall switches of every kind it seems

Still nothing official with Cree Connect. Assuming the ST and IRIS stuff will never be official, the gen 1 ST motion is the same as the Centralite they DO support…

I’m almost tempted to order one just to compare to ST, but is there a robust rule machine like plugin? I can’t live without CoRE at this point!

I did see a generic IP cam plugin so that would probably work with my LA View security thing and Foscam’s.

I think that almost covers my needs, but doubt on the ST/IRIS stuff is kind of a no go, that would be expensive to replace all those.

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My problem is the lack of Alexa integration. My system is very in depth with voice control… Even the automations can be ran and overridden using voice control…

I would have to have a completely different system… And the family would not be happy.

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Crap, very good point. I’m not as involved as you on that front but we still use her daily…