A friend recommended the Vera Edge to me and more fool me but I did;t really look into it much, just jumped straight in. I am lightwave right now and control my lightwave stuff with the RFX usb controller. Anyway I happened to come across the Smartthings in Currys the other day and it was setp as a demo and I have to say it “looks” much more polished than the vera does. I have not gone into any great automation setup yet as I am slowly doing away with the lightwave stuff (which I really like but hate lack of state being reported)
The idea is to just covert my switches back to 3 point reactive switches and place Fibaro Dimmer 2 behind them all (expensive project but will like most do it a bit at a time). The dilemma I have now is should I return the Vera and get the SmartThings hub instead, it seems that StartThings is going in the right direction although the compatibility right now doesn’t seem that great in the UK (but for what I need Fibaro dimmer 2, fibaro motion sensors all that stuff is supported).
Anyone converted from Vera (I have the edge model) and how have you found the Smartthings experience?
There’s been quite a few discussions around Vera vs SmartThings. Would hate starting it all over again. Just use the search button and you’ll find your answers.
I converted from Edge to Smartthings. Over the last 5 years I’ve also had the Vera Lite and the Fibaro Home center.
My main reason to moving from the Edge was its delay. Motion sensors instructing lights to turn on were slow, app controls were slow. Essentially it was like living in a smart home which had the IQ of 2.
I chose Smartthings as an attempt to sweeten up the other half again (Well design app, easy for her to use, advertised as reliable).
The Negatives from the move have been:
oAuth - Its such a shame it took 2 and half months for it to be fixed. I have nothing but praise for the community app developers themselves and the lengths they went to resolve quickly once they could but damn… 2 and a half months. I hope nothing else stops working.
Reliance on cloud, I’ve been quite unlucky with my smartthings hub loosing connection to the cloud atleast once a week for hours on end (If there’s anything I miss its the complete local processing of the Vera/Fibaro controllers).
Device types, Coming from purely z-wave controllers Its a bit of a mind bend getting your head around device types. If I didn’t already have a good grasp of programming and there wasn’t such a strong community quite a few devices would be useless. The biggest grip I have on this is z-wave parameters, What is a 5 second on the Vera/Fibaro controllers of applying a value to a parameter turns into (at least initially) hours of times.
Your set-up
I use Fibaro Dimmers behind switches and certainly have quite a few fibaro cat eye motion sensors… so I have no doubt at all you’ll be able to set-it-up exactly as you want it. Where I don’t have the Fib dimmers I’ve nabbe dup a number of the osram lightify devices and connected them directly to the hub.
I can’t really comment on if I’d convert again if I had the chance… I’ve converted, I’ve sunk hundreds more into the current system to do it and introduce different supported devices. I don’t want to think about what pains I could have saved myself - But I’m always an early adopter and I imagine I’ll switch onto another controller in another year so.
