Is it time to "upgrade" to UI7?
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Background - I have a Vera 3.
Skimming for UI7, mostly I see posts about problems, and some (old) comments about not much useful in the upgrade. But they are trying to get people to switch, reducing support for UI5.
Is it time to switch to UI7? Have the problems been well enough addressed? Have any advantages (other than ongoing support) come to light since then?
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The biggest change was really a new interface and the addition of house modes: home, away, night, vacation. Whether everything works depends on what devices you have. If it's mostly MySensors you're after, then all should be well, although are you using serial or Ethernet interface?
The UI7 interface is rubbish. Just use the fabulous ALTUI plugin instead.
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I'm still sticking to UI5 on my Veralite but are following the discussions about every UI7 release. The latest release 7.0.10 seems to have caused problems in z-wave networks for allot of people since they removed the Heal/Repair process. ( "Starting with the 7.0.9 release the Z-Wave firmware on the VeraLite and Vera3 controllers was upgraded to a newer version" )
More about the changes here -> http://support.getvera.com/customer/portal/articles/2078473-ui7-▾-version-7-0-10-1-7-649-1-7-1320-▾-july-30-2015
The 7.0.10 discussion is here -> http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,33201.0.html
The next monthly release should be out any day now.
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Thanks for the input so far!
Serial, but I was thinking of moving to an ethernet gateway - is there something I should know about that in regard to UI7?
It sounds like I should at minimum wait a bit before moving to UI7, since I do also have Z-Wave devices.
EDIT: Yowsa - reading the forum link above makes the latest UI7 release sound like a disaster!
AltUI sounds very good, great tip. Apparently it can replace the UI per se for both UI5 and UI7. Any advantage to using UI7 over UI5 underneath it?
Reading so far on AltUI, it says "Plugin authors should be able to control the display of their device using a simple javascript functions , even on the dashboard page. Should not be limited to a VERA Box api or any complex undocumented json behaviors. Just a dynamically loaded javascript which can make full use of bootstrap & useful libraries provided"
So how well does MySensors work with AltUI? Does it take advantage of the above?
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Serial: It probably works just fine, but I've always had a little trouble with serial devices on a Vera.
UI7 Latest release: Yes, a disaster, but the previous version is good.
ALTUI: Yes, it's excellent. Only difference UI5 vs. UI7 is the aforesaid house modes and the icons are a little different.
MySensors plugin: I've modified it to be ALTUI friendly: currently it displays the IP address of the gateway, but I will add number of nodes and sensors - this seemed like the most useful information?
