About two months ago. the owner of Ezlo Innovations, the manufacturer of the Vera Hub reached out to me after seeing a demo of my Home Remote project on there user forum. Since I live local to their corporate offices they invited me in to do a one person focus study on what is important to home automation users and to see if I could help them with some of their design initiatives. I gave an overview of my setup and gave them some input on what I felt was important to users. Just a testament to Home Remote that a well known player in the space took notice.
9 Likes
Well done John getting their attention with your magnificent setups… and thanks to Bill for the superb HomeRemote… All us iRulers have never looked back.
2 Likes
This is awesome news John! Thanks for sharing!
2 Likes
Yes, based on some of their beta releases it looks like they are aiming for an imperihome style tile dashboard but perhaps a bit updated. Nothing from what I can see to support full customization, on the level of Home Remote or iRule.
Wow really, did you tell us on the Vera forum? Maybe I missed it.
I think if we got an Imperihome style app replacement initially for the Ezlo hubs most people would be happy with that. For most users that style of dashboard creation app is simple and straight forward.
Home Remote no doubt is very powerful and if you know what you are doing with it you can create some amazing projects.
But for most mere mortals like myself its a steep learning curve.
I am still using the Group pages which are more auto generated in Home Remote and I am very happy with what I have been able to create so far to control Vera, although I am still testing out Home Remote only on my phone and tablet. All the other devices in the house are still setup with Imperihome.
But obviously John’s project is at a whole other level !
So what were the Ezlo guys saying?
Because their owner Melih says we will get an Imperihome feature parity dashboard app. But he’s also been telling me in the longer term we can expect much more professional premium grade looking dashboards.
If that ever happens I doubt it but time will tell.
I think it was you @cw-kid who told Melih to reach out to me. He did and I went to their offices in NJ. I was suppose to help them with some graphics work in my down time from my regular job but they said they were not at that stage to start yet so I am in a holding pattern for now. I dont think they are shooting for anything with full customization on the level of HR but something theme based where you could apply different skins to a tile based dashboard.
Sounds about right for them.
To be honest their dashboard alpha development seems to have ground to a halt, at least publicly, no new releases and what they did initially release is terrible and doesn’t work for even the most basic of things.
I know its alpha but still, it’s basically none functional as is now.
I have not been invited to any private testing any how and I was the main guy that gave all the feedback to them on what they had released.
You indeed were. They said accommodating many different screen sizes and resolutions was one of the harder challenges for them.
I’d say that’s the least of their problems.
They may surprise us at some point, but from what I’ve seen and heard so far I am not expecting great things. I doubt they could even make a dashboard app as good as Imperihome was.
As Imperihome is now dead, that’s why I started looking at Home Remote and its still my fall back choice.
I can probably replace Imperihome with Home Remote at some point but there is still some issues I am having with Home Remote and I am still learning it slowly.
1 Like
I have a feelling that Ezlo is small potatoes for Melih, his main business is Comodo. Lookup his net worth.
Yeah he made his money in SSL certs I think, the guy is worth billions.
Ezlo / Vera is probably just a side hobby for him LOL.
1 Like
Hi cw-kid,
Agreed on the imperihome not being nearly as difficult as HR. With Imperihome now gone, I am trying to learn the in’s and out’s of HR. Can’t get off square one, even the generic buttons on a grid!!
I did import the Vera and associated devices, now I am stuck.
Would you have any leads for learning the basics of setup with Designer?
To begin with I’d look at using the Groups pages as these are auto generated for you.
Rather than trying to create your own pages from a blank slate.
See my thread on the Vera forum here I touch on the subject with some screen shots and a brief explanation.