Firmware updates bricks my VeraPlus

[packman]

Simply said a VeraPlus without third-party plugins or not so many of them, will never fail at an upgrade.

I know it's impossible to give a specific number but can you quantify what you mean by "not so many of them"? Are you talking less than 10, less than 25, less than 50? I only have 6 plugins. Can I be confident that the upgrade wont fail? Although I never had a problem updating I haven't done it in quite awhile due to all the horror stories I've been reading.

[kwieto]

Great explaination, i was somewhat able to figure this out. before i even get into that, let me just state, I love u guys at vera i found out about the vera lite and never looked back. The frustrations i have it that u guys have plugin that u allow us to install then come back and says "no space because of plugins" so i have to do a factory restore before i can upgrade?

I'm not from Vera so it is not the question to me.
I'm also close to the limit and the point where I'll have to go for solution proposed by Sorin (hard reset - upgrade - restore from backup) and will not be satisfied with such procedure.
Recent upgrade went well but I was left with about 500-450kb of storage memory so my Vera started choking same day when upgrade was done. Clearing z-wave localization files (freeing up about 1500-1800kb) solved the issue, but as my system slowly but continuously grows it is just matter of time when I'll hit the wall.

If you don't need zigbee or bluetooth downgrade to Edge would do the trick for some time (as I wrote, it has about 1MB more storage memory than Plus), but you'll face the problem again sooner or later.

By the way, I have 7 plugins, plus the two which you can't remove (Sercomm IP camera and Alexa Helper). I have 130 devices in the system (about 50 physical devices as some of them are multiswitches or multisensors) and I don't consider that as a "large" setup.

[RichieB]

Great explaination, i was somewhat able to figure this out. before i even get into that, let me just state, I love u guys at vera i found out about the vera lite and never looked back. The frustrations i have it that u guys have plugin that u allow us to install then come back and says "no space because of plugins" so i have to do a factory restore before i can upgrade?

I'm not from Vera so it is not the question to me.
I'm also close to the limit and the point where I'll have to go for solution proposed by Sorin (hard reset - upgrade - restore from backup) and will not be satisfied with such procedure.
Recent upgrade went well but I was left with about 500-450kb of storage memory so my Vera started choking same day when upgrade was done. Clearing z-wave localization files (freeing up about 1500-1800kb) solved the issue, but as my system slowly but continuously grows it is just matter of time when I'll hit the wall.

If you don't need zigbee or bluetooth downgrade to Edge would do the trick for some time (as I wrote, it has about 1MB more storage memory than Plus), but you'll face the problem again sooner or later.

By the way, I have 7 plugins, plus the two which you can't remove (Sercomm IP camera and Alexa Helper). I have 130 devices in the system (about 50 physical devices as some of them are multiswitches or multisensors) and I don't consider that as a "large" setup.

nah its ok im working on an alternate solution i am running close to 30 plugins atm

[sk1.publicc]

I find it pretty amazing that I can buy 4GB of DDR3 RAM on eBay for $8AUD and we're talking about 1MB free space the difference between brick & no brick.
Why can't Vera do a decent spec update in the next model and avoid these issues altogether - whether it be RAM, CPU, or whatever the bottleneck is.
I'm sure we'll be willing to pay for it if it solves this level of anxiety.

For existing units, give us a cleanup tool built into the UI.  Something that can distinguish between needed / not needed and indicate potential space savings.

If there's a minimum amount of space required for an upgrade then get the OS to check if it's available - if not, then don't allow the upgrade to proceed.
Same thing for installing apps and uploading files... protect the minimum running requirements of the OS.
Are these things that hard to add?

I think it's time for Vera to divert more dev resources away from supporting new external devices and assign them to shoring up the OS & Controller hardware.

[Don Phillips]

I find it pretty amazing that I can buy 4GB of DDR3 RAM on eBay for $8AUD and we're talking about 1MB free space the difference between brick & no brick.
Why can't Vera do a decent spec update in the next model and avoid these issues altogether - whether it be RAM, CPU, or whatever the bottleneck is.
I'm sure we'll be willing to pay for it if it solves this level of anxiety.

For existing units, give us a cleanup tool built into the UI.  Something that can distinguish between needed / not needed and indicate potential space savings.

If there's a minimum amount of space required for an upgrade then get the OS to check if it's available - if not, then don't allow the upgrade to proceed.
Same thing for installing apps and uploading files... protect the minimum running requirements of the OS.
Are these things that hard to add?

I think it's time for Vera to divert more dev resources away from supporting new external devices and assign them to shoring up the OS & Controller hardware.

Simpler yet - allow the Vera OS to use the USB for the additional space, especially the FW update. 

[patim]

Richie, if it's someone that is understanding your frustration, it's gotta be me. I'm scanning this forum on a daily basis, even tho I often choose to stay on the side, I've seen and experienced both the good and the ugly. This does not mean that these things are passing by.

As many of you may have noticed, the fact that you can freely upload basically anything on Vera it's also it's Achilles heel sometimes. Upgrading should never be considered a "risk" and if it happens we will assume it and try to straighten it out as fast as possible.

Simply said a VeraPlus without third-party plugins or not so many of them, will never fail at an upgrade. A simple fix would be to, 1) make a full backup of your system and save it locally 2) reset your Vera to factory defaults 3) upgrade your VeraPlus  4) restore the backup.

Again, I'm really sorry that this is happening at all, but if we seem passive about it, we're not. The situation is being approached starting from the revamping of the API, app store, core drivers and software and so on. Things will change, it will not be overnight but things are continuously changing.

LE: If you have any doubts or a reluctance about a firmware upgrade, I highly suggest having our Customer Care deal with it for you. They ARE FAST and good at what they're doing. I've been with them for the last 5 years and trust me, they've come a long way.

Sounds reasonable and I know that the people there work hard. However I bricked mine with an update. Had to replace it. I had a backup but that didn?t work quite well on the new firmware. Not all the devices are up and I cannot include new devices, nor old, because of it. Customer care tried hard, but no relief. I have to set up all my work again (a weeks work), or leave it like this. And this isn.t the first time. Would really be nice if this could be prevented with updates. I now hesitate to update, not to say I don?t update at all. And still I have a crippled system.