Vera Plus or Z Stick Gen 5

I am setting up Home Assistant on a holiday home we have bought - and have decided to mainly use Z wave as there is nothing hard wired there. I have bought a bunch of Fibaro window/Door Sensors and DImmer modules as the first step.

But how do I integrate them with Home Assistant - the Vera link to the hub seems straight forward and perhaps easier than using a Z Stick Gen 5 but are there any downsides.

Could someone help me decide the pros and cons for each option.

IF it helps I will be using Node Red to handle the automation and rules side of things.

Many Thanks

Stuart

Do most people just use a USB stick - happy just to hear the pros and cons of a stick if thats what most people use?

Thanks!

Stuart

I was using a Vera Plus before and when I discovered the wonderfulness that is Home Assistant I still kept the Vera as a Z-Wave hub, it’s been functioning very well for me as such.

I also migrated the video cameras from Vera to a Blue Iris installation alongside the HA Ubuntu virtual machine on my PC/server/NAS because I wanted to free up the Vera as much as possible, given its very limited hardware.

This also meant transferring all automations/scripts to Home Assistant, so right now all I do on the Vera is login to do firmware updates.

Of course, the Vera Plus cost me 200 bucks in this corner of the world while a Z Stick is 60, so there’s that to consider.

I also use Fibaro sensors and one of them is giving me a little trouble with sometimes not updating its status…not sure if this was a problem before or not or if it’s a Vera issue or a sensor issue, but since HA gives me the possibility of having its status icon staring me right in the face, it’s definitely more noticeable now.

I am considering getting a stick though, just to remove one extra software layer that currently exists between HA and my Z-Wave devices, but since things are working very nicely so far (except for that one sensor), I’m focusing more on adding extra features that HA now allows me.

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Thanks for the feedback! I too use Blue Iris for my main home system (all my sensors are hardwired and integrate via home assistant).

It is a brave new world for me with Z Wave - think I might start off with Vera as it looks easier - I have 20 door / window sensors and about 15 dimmer/swithc modules to go in!

Cheers

Stuart

What kind of hardwired sensors do you have?

I’m also using the Vera with 30ish sensors & plugs and it really does have a very straightforward setup process, but it’s a shame that by itself the hardware is pretty slow.

This is the one of the main things that is tempting me towards a Z-Stick at some point in the future, because as I add even more Z-Wave devices to the mix (lock, water & gas valves, hardware buttons, a few more sensors) I expect it to struggle.

The Z-Stick also allows (not very straightforward, but still…) firmware updates to any Z-Wave Plus device.

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I use a comfort home alarm system which integrates brilliantly via mqtt.

Does Vera plus not do firmware updates?

I am in a real quandary now - do I go with Vera Plus as its easier or bite the bullet and go straight to the built in z wave…

IF you were starting from fresh what woudl you do?

As far as I know Vera does not do OTA firmware updates for Z-Wave devices, no.

If I were starting fresh (mind, I don’t yet have any actual experience with the Z-Stick, others should chime in on its possible levels of frustration), I would definitely go for a monolith PC server with a Z-Stick, a Zigbee stick and a Bluetooth stick, Home Assistant is so far ahead of any other smart home system I’ve seen (Vera, Fibaro, Homekit) it’s not even funny.

hmmm I have the latest rasberry pi out in the holiday home at the moment - maybe I will start with a z wave stick and try it then!

Be great to hear what everone thinks

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Apples and oranges.

Using a stick means that things are slightly faster overall, but OZW’s support for devices can be spotty at times, and it has known issues. Oh, and restart times for Home Assistant will increase as you add more Z-Wave devices, adding at least two minutes, maybe more.

Using Vera is going to be slightly slower (not a lot, but measurably so), you’re constrained by their device support (which will be better in some cases, worse in others). It’ll have it’s own issues, but restart times in HA will be consistent.

Personally, I think a Z-Wave stick is the way to go. If you run into issues, you can move that stick to another system, and connect that and your HA system over MQTT. If you need a faster system, you can just upgrade the hardware. If you want to upgrade the Vera, or move from Vera to direct, you need to touch every device to Remove and Add them again.

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Thanks so much for the feedback - so do the devices pair with the stick then?

Cheers

Stuart

I originally got the vera, but have switched over to using the stick. It just works a bit better IMHO and makes more sense. I wanted to do some firmware updates, which meant getting the stick, but automation through HA is a bit more consistent and easier, plus AppDaemon looks a bit better for writing automatons than the plugins you need in vera.

Using Vera Plus here, I have had enough with the stick, not detecting, not pairing and and an unusable system.
Switching to Vera solved all my issues, no noticeable delay in operation (for me).
I have few Door and window sensors, Lights, motion sensors from Aeotec, and a Yale Touchscreen Lock - all working good on Vera.

Do you have all the automation I HA? Vera is just a gateway?

Approximately how many devices have you added to Vera?

All my automations are in appdaemon, yes, vera is just a gateway.
Around 10 devices, I still have the in wall switches to install.
When I had issues with the zwave stick I stopped buying zwave and split my devices between zwave and zigbee to not let all my automations fail.

Ok thanks. I very fan of z-wave coming from indigo and its rock solid and super fast but no god integration with HA. Don’t think the problem is z-wave.

Think I need to try the Vera myself.

I’m stuck, fellas. I cannot get Vera connected to Home Assistant, at all. I’ve tried port 80, port 3480, with and without the /cmh (that the local portal redirects to). I have two simple lines of configuration, per the instructions:

vera:
  vera_controller_url: http://10.0.0.6:3480/

Any help would greatly be appreciated…

Keith

Don’t suppose you ever got an answer to this did you? I’m in same boat. Entering the IP for Vera with any port number does nothing so it’s not even recognized in my config yaml file.
Would love an answer from someone who knows… :wink:

@euromem

I did some sleuthing and fixed it myself. At some point, Vera locked down these extraneous ports. Thankfully, they mapped a directory over port 80. So, the fix is entering your Vera url as such:

“http://[your_vera_ip]/port_3480”

Note: no trailing slash.

Keith

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Thank you so much for replying @kmycek . I really appreciate your time.
You are bang on! It worked!
Anyone searching for the same to get Vera integrated with Home Assistant:

vera:
  vera_controller_url: http://192.168.1.XX/port_3480
  lights: [ZZ]
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I’m surprised that is working. The correct format is as follows:

vera_controller_url: http://192.168.0.XX:3480
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