Long time stalker… First time posting… But people HAVE TO KNOW!!
I recently purchased a VeraPlus Home Controller to see if I liked the user interface any better. I’m dissappointed with the UI of SmartThings, but after this week found out this new VeraPLUS controller has been a nightmare! If your thinking of trying it, DON’T and here’s why! After this week, I eagerly took my SmartThings out of its box, kissed it, apologized and plugged it back in!
1). The first issue I’m having is with the System Alert’s in the yellow bar on the dashboard page. I cannot get these to ever clear… They’ll clear and come back, or clear from the logs under Settings, but not from the dashboard. They’re annoying, and make me think that something’s wrong with a device, when it’s reporting some nonsense.
2). The energy card on the dashboard shows no information. I have added my home energy monitor from aeotech (which you claim to support) and it shows up with the 3 different devices (also annoying and creates a lot of clutter) on the devices tab, reporting the information, however when I click energy, I get “Ergy gateway serial is not present in user: No cookie”. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app; uninstalling then clicking on energy, accepting the user agreement then installed again; installing through the apps menu; uninstalling, rebooting, accepting and reinstalling but nothing works. When I go to the ergy website, it says that they don’t currently support the Vera platform due to changes in the UI. This is ESPECIALLY frustrating because that’s a big selling feature, and it’s yet another thing that doesn’t work.
- The weather in the upper right hand corner rarely shows the correct information. It’ll bounce back and forth between what is actually is and weather from someplace a lot warmer than my house… I have to go back in settings and update the location information and restart the box for the information to update.
4). You have a very limited database of truly compatible devices. I can pair a device as a generic z-wave or zigbee device, however half of the functionality either doesn’t work, or it shows up incorrectly in the Vera. Examples being, the motion sensors I have are Zigbee Motion sensors, but also should relay temperature… The temperature does not relay and there’s no way to change the settings of the device to add it (without cracking open a programming book). One of the GE Switches I have installed is ACTUALLY a Fan switch not a Light switch, and there’s no way to change the device icon to match the device. One of my plug-in Jasco dimmer modules won’t turn on half the time because it keeps saying the battery in it is dead (when it’s PLUG IN module and contains no battery’s) The Garage Door opener I installed showed up as a door lock, so everytime I clicked on unlock all, my garage doors opened as well… NOT something I wanted by any means…
- Your app integration is not reliable. I had applications crash, or mysteriously delete themeselves, and they all show up under the DEVICES menu under apps cluttering this interface even more.
6). The Bluetooth radio serves no function apparently. I could never get it to find devices, nor I find and pair with it from any device.
Smartthing’s IDE backend was more user friendly, allowing you to create custom applications and device types easily. I have kind of read up on how to do it with Vera, however, it’s going to require a lot more time than I’m willing to spend learning. The UI is slow and laggy… I have problems with adding devices because the configuration screen times out or the device will be added but the page never continues forward. Support has yet to get back on these issues (48 hours later) and I posted something similar that was sensor out in they’re forum…
So the moral of my post is this… Yes we all have frustrations with SMARTTHINGS and the platform HOWEVER, SmartThing’s overall functionality is 10x more reliable, it works with more modules (or there is an awesome community forum with reliable easy solutions) and the interface, both front and back, is more user friendly… DON’T CHANGE ITS NOT WORTH YOUR GARAGE DOOR OPENING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT BECAUSE YOU WENT TO CLOCK YOUR DOORS AND IT THE EXACT OPPOSITE, unlocking all my doors, and opening my garage door, and I had no idea till the morning.