Folks wanted feedback...
Well, the easiest way to describe this is: Welcome to 1995.
OK hardware, shame about the software - and we have a dozen competing systems that are all crap.
I sent back a VeraLite under the DSR (whatever...) because it was buggy and unstable. Gave it quite a hard "go", on the forums, reflashing firmware, everything.
I've tried the linux "version" of HomeSeer Hometroller but that's a clusterfuck of a Mono monstrosity where it eventually starts but mysteriously several bits of the web menus don't work and noone knows why... No sure whether to trust taking a punt on the RasberryPi version (the Zee).
I'm still trying to join the Fibaro forums - but after a week, the "admin" has completely failed to approve my registration.... And I'm reading stuff like, and I quote from the forum:
"It's all VERY buggy. I also see from many other posts everything is rather "hope it works" rather than it does. As a software engineer I stop adding "new features" and fix all known bugs then proceed. This software as is (any version!) is unusable!! "
[Looked at RazBerry (Pi) - that seems to be a very raw gateway that needs something else to add the interface and smartness.
The interface is choosable - there's Openremote (which it seems is not limited to the Pi, but can also drive a directly connected Z-Stick (USB dongle) and other gateways. This looks interesting, but could be best described as:
Not quite a Mecchano set. More like a sheet of metal with a set of saws, files and drills supplied...
That's not intended as any disrespect to what looks like a very solid project - it just knocks it out of the "ready to go" running...
I think I will take a punt on the Fibaro Lite - it's not expensive, I've got 14 days to send it back and I know what to expect, so I should be able to ascertain "works or not works" pretty quickly...
Such a shame - there must be a dozen tangential efforts - it would be better perhaps if there were 4. Two commercial and two at most OpenSource. Then stuff might get done and there's be some pretty healthy but tightly linked competition.
Considering X10 has been around forever, I am very surprised that the outside web interface and control logic has not been well and truly cracked by now - leaving a generalisation of the back end to add in other protocols...