Out with the old, in with the new

I alluded to this in a previous post but now let me clear this up a bit . I've removed my Vera 1 (using Z-Wave) and the last of my Insteon (with Misterhouse). I really never liked the Vera, the UI was terrible and the limited amount of RAM made doing too much troublesome. I did like the reliability of the ZWave but the reliability of the Vera required me to write some code to reboot the router every once in a while. The Insteon also had it's problems. Every few weeks (months?) we'd get a power hit and the PLM would hang. It required that I pull the plug on the PLM (and then plug it back in). I also had some issues with reaching devices on the other 'phase' through the Insteon wireless bridge. The newer Insteon PL/Wireless may have fixed that but it require me to swap out what I already have. After looking at the current technologies available I decided that ZigBee and ZWave were the less expensive and more flexible route. So I've gone with SmartThings and for a short period of overlap found it to be more reliable. I also have the Hue and TCP bulbs but I'm not sure I'll purchase more of either. I prefer to go the external plug and, in some cases, switches rather than more hubs. The ZigBee plugs at least don't have the nasty white LED that the Insteon devices had. Oddly enough, my friend has Insteon and has had no issues. So he'll inherit my older Insteon devices.

On the other side of the software suite. I now have Misterhouse sitting idle but I plan to change that. I've added an MQTT interface to SmartThings. I'll have Misterhouse share the topics. Hopefully this will provide a nice floor plan interface to the SmartThings devices. More on that later.