MiCasa Verde Vera 3 Review Part 2

… So after messing with the Vera for a couple of days and figuring out that I was not going to be able to get X10 working properly with my TI103 interface I broke down and ordered an Insteon PM from Amazon after a conversation I had with Doug Gregory from DKC Automation (a very helpful guy and a great site by the way. I’ll post a link in the sidebar when I get the chance, or you can just Google it)

I received the insteon modem and hooked it up successfully as far as I could tell. The logging mechanism on the Vera sucks balls so I was never very sure about what I was doing. Anyway, I added a couple of my devices and managed to get them to each turn off once and that was it. Couldn’t dim, wouldn’t turn back on unless I did it manually.

By this time I was pretty pissed off. It works fairly well for zwave but I only have a couple zwave devices right now and I have an existing Aeon Labs stick for my Homeseer computer for those.

I shipped my Vera 3 and the Insteon modem back to Amazon and have already gotten refunds for them. I’ll probably order a couple of zwave modules now and call it a day.

Overall the Vera 3 is a good idea but definitely not mature enough for a robust home automation system, at least not if you use a lot of diy stuff like a lot of people. If you are strictly zwave and don’t need a lot of events and intelligent decisions it’s not bad. I’d say for the beginner it’s probably even great but it’s frustrating for several reasons :

1. Lack of documentation and help files. The links to the are there in the interface but they are broken.

2. No support for a lot of existing automation hardware except for plugins (that you might or might not be able to access)

3. Tech support that won’t give you a clear answer or help. I was forced to go to an outside vendor for help with items. He’s great but I didn’t even buy the main product from him, just a lamp module (which I’m still using by the way.)

4. A backend in the cloud that is broken and doesn’t communicate well together.

There seems to be a growing community for the Vera and as it matures and grows I’m sure the how to’s and help files will improve but until then I’ll be sticking with Homeseer.