Most of you who read my blog will know I am a mControl Home Automation user and I’ve done several posts about mControl in the past. I decided to sign up for a dealership with Micasaverde and purchase a VeraLite unit for testing. My plan was always to keep mControl as its integrated in to Windows Media Center on every TV in the house!
I was told by a friend of mine that he had successfully integrated mControl & Vera using the mControl Vera Luup Driver. With my original setup with mControl I was using an Aeon Labs Z-stick as the primary Z-wave controller, this was connected to the back of the WHSV1 server where mControl is installed. The plan when VeraLite box arrived was to use the VeraLite as the primary Z-wave controller and then use the mControl Vera Luup Driver which sends HTTP requests to Vera to control your lights and other devices, thus making the Z-stick totally redundant and no longer required. This all sounded great however now I have got the VeraLite box up and running the integration between the two systems has not gone as smoothly as I would have liked and there are two big problems that are making this integration a no go.
I have done a YouTube video explaining what these two problems are and until I get them resolved my mControl installation is now basically broken!
1. Device status not being correctly updated in mControl UI - Turn lamp on via mControl UI and mControl does not update the status of the device and shows it as still OFF when actually the lamp has turned on OK. Also the dim level stays at 0% when should be 100% (Vera Luup Device Type = Dimable Light).
2. ON button not working properly for appliance modules - The off button in mControl UI does work and the ON button also turns off the appliance. ON button does not turn on the appliance module.
(Vera Luup Device Type = Binary Light)
Watch the Youtube video to see what I mean, this is a call out to any other mControl and Vera or VeraLite users that have got this setup and working for any advise or possible solutions.
There is a 3 page thread I started on the Micasaverde forum about these issues, also one here and one here on the mControl forums. I don’t know who originally wrote the mControl Vera Luup driver? I have contacted mControl support but no reply as yet. I may now contact Micasaverde support as well see if they know anything? Although I have contacted them a few days ago about another question of how to make the Z-stick a secondary to VeraLite being primary controller as I see this as a plan B if I can’t get the mControl Vera Luup driver working, but I’ve not heard from their support either yet! Not sure how long is a normal wait time?
I am really liking Vera however in the few days I have been using it, I bought it mainly so I could have timers for lights coming on and off that will work when the mControl WHS server is in sleep mode. But Vera is showing to be a very powerful and cheap Z-wave Home Automation gateway solution. I will probably do some blog posts about Vera when I have got it all setup and know how stuff works more.