Mi Casa Verde VeraLite Review

Note: This is a placeholder for our review which is now in progress. You can also find a lot of information about the VeraLite in our initial Z-Wave project.

In The Box

The first thing you notice on opening the box is just how small the Vera Lite is (approx 120mm × 105mm × 45mm). In the box is the main unit, a Cat5 network cable, four AA batteries, a plug-in 12Vdc/1A PSU and a 'getting started' leaflet.

The plug-in PSU is not much use in the UK as it is a European 2-pin version. The VeraLite is also incredibly light.

Setup & Configuration

Initial installation and set up of the VeraLite is quite a painless process as can be seen on this set up video by Mi Casa Verda have a set up video on their YouTube channel:

In Use

We have been using this device for about three weeks now as part of our initial Z-Wave project, where we go into a lot of detail about the configuration and set up we have been using. The device has been very relaible and easy to configure. The new UI5 interface makes it quite easy to set up the VeraLite.

Scenes & Schedules

Using the Vera UI5 user interface, you can create scenes. These are like scripts where things happen based on events or schedules. Scenes also can be run from mobile apps or the other HTTP interfaces. This means our exisign Home Control System (HCS) can run them and we won't need to use schedules in the future. There is more information about scenes on our initial Z-Wave project.

Z-Wave Devices

As you can see from our initial Z-Wave project, we had some issues with the Vera and the Everspring ST814 but, most of these have been worked through now.

Remote Access

If you enter the following URL on your Smartphone: http://mios.com/phone, you get access to a mobile web interface or a list of suitable apps for your device. We installed the VeraMobile app and it seemed to work pretty well giving direct control of appliance modules and a view of our other sensors.

It also enables you to run scenes from your mobile device, an iPhone 4 in our case. We were impressed with the speed and responsiveness of the app and its actions.

Plugins

VeraLite supports plugins, available from the MIOS plugin download area. The Google Weather plugin is a good example and downloads Internet weather data from Google and displays conditions such as sunny, rain, snowing, as well as current temp, high temp, low temp and humidity.

Legacy X10

The Vera controller also claims to provide the ability to control X10 devices and we will be putting this to the test. To use VeraLite as an INSTEON or X10 controller you'll need a PowerLinc Modem - INSTEON USB Interface.

Remote Control

The plan is to investigate remote control of the Vera using the UPnP and HTTP interfaces.

The findvera.com service makes it very easy to access VeraLite from any web browser. When setting up the VVeraLite for the first time, on the findvera.com tab just pick a username and password. Then, from any web browser in the world go to findvera.com and enter that same username and password to be directly connected to your Vera 2 and be in full control of your home with the ability to view your security cameras. The findvera.com website is secure, using the same security as online banks to protect your financial transactions.

Summary

This review is very much work in progress but, so far we've been quite impressed. With no real prior knowledge of Z-Wave, we managed to get basic sensors and some real home automation working in an evening. Within a week we had acheived the core objectives of our initial Z-Wave project.

The VeraLite is capable of doing whole house automation using Z-Wave technology alone but, the main thing we like about it is that it has enabled us to incorporate Z-Wave into our hybrid technology Home Control System (HCS).

Updates

5th March 2012

We had our first glitch with the Vera Lite today. Came home (about 5:15pm) to find that the bathroom fan was on and according to our HCS log had been since 14:26:25. Although our HCS log showed the scenes had run to switch various lamps on, none of them were on either. We tried manually switching on two lamps and only one came on too.

Whilst you can view the live logs on the Vera Lite, you need to telnet into Vera. You can do this using a Windows telnet client but, only if you haven't already set a password If like us you have set a password, then you must use a ssh client like PuTTY.

The problem is that MiCasaVerde don't tell you how to find the root password. After much Googling I found the only way to get it was to create a test scene with the following LUA code and to then look for the password to appear in the Vera log file. It wasn't anything I had entered or that could be guessed!


cmh_conf = io.open("/etc/cmh/cmh.conf")

for line in cmh_conf:lines() do

   local match = line:match("^Password=(.+)$")

   if (match) then

             luup.log(match)

   end

end

cmh_conf:close()

To actually download the log file, I thought I could use a tool like FileZilla. Tried this but it does not work as Vera does not support FTP. I did managed to use PuTTY to SSH into Vera as root though. The log file is found in the '/tmp/log/cmh' directory.

17th March 2012

Had a similar glitch again today, with the same symptoms. The Fibaro module didn't switch off, leaving the bathroom fan running. Still stuggling to get access to the full logs. The way to do appears to use the WinSCP client" class="link" target="_blank">. This worked for me and I got a copy of the LuaUPnP.log onto my laptop for analysis. I was too slow though. Although this file was ~4900 lines long and 857KB, it only had data going back a few hours.