Earlier this year, it became painfully clear to us (and no doubt many of you as well) that something was up with ImperiHome – the very popular app for controlling a wide array of smart home devices. The first indication of something wrong was when we tried to log into the app, which failed. When we headed over to the ImperiHome website to manage our account, the entire site was unresponsive. Huh? After a couple days, we stumbled across one simple tweet which revealed the problem: “The Evertygo company, which published the excellent Android/iOS ImperiHome application, is in bankruptcy proceedings. Bye bye ImperiHome!”. 

Noooooooo!!!!

Unable to log into the app, effectively rendering it useless, we found ourselves scrambling for a solution. The good news is, if you still have ImperiHome installed on your mobile device, and you never log out, you should be fine. If you’re trying to set-up the app on a new device or for the very first time (assuming you saved the app package in advance, before it was pulled from the app stores) you can still launch it using this very clever hack, which essentially bypasses the logon screen entirely.

These tricks work but they are interim solutions at best. Time to find a replacement app… Enter, Home Remote. 

Available for iOS, Android and Windows-based devices, Home Remote is a well-designed, dashboard-style app, for controlling numerous smart devices from a long list of manufacturers. It has built-in navigational elements and integrations for Vera, Fibaro, Logitech, SmartThings, Sonos, Yamaha, LG, HomeSeer and many more, but its real strength lies in its dedicated “Designer” app (for Windows) which allows you to fully customise the UI to suite your individual needs.

Designer is intended for advanced users but following this guide should be simple enough for most people when getting started. Even if you never touch Designer, when only using the default app template and widget tiles, you can use the built-in integrations to get basic device control very quickly and simply. We were able to set-up the app to control our VeraPlus, Yamaha Receiver, Logitech Harmony Hubs and IP cameras in literally a matter of minutes.

Home Remote is well worth a look and appears to be an excellent alternative to ImperiHome; possibly even exceeding its capabilities in terms of UI customisation and 3rd party device integrations. 

For more information, check out the Home Remote website.

If you're a Vera user and have not yet tried Reactor (the excellent FREE Vera plugin for advanced home automation), do yourself a favour! To get yourself started, checkout this excellent YouTube tutorial channel.

Here's one of our favourite videos from the channel, to show you how simple it is to create a motion controlled lighting routine...

Happy automating!

Whilst perhaps not immediately obvious to some people, it's actually possible to add devices to your VeraLite directly and without needing to rely on the Vera GUI. This is achieved by temporarily operating the controller on battery power and simply carrying it around the house to where your Z-Wave devices are physically installed. This is particularly useful in situations where you need to add or remove devices that are fixed and cannot be moved (eg a hard-wired relay switch) or when they are not within direct range of your Vera.

Step 1. Disconnect the power and LAN cables from the back of your VeraLite and insert a fresh set of 4x AA batteries (the battery compartment is located at the bottom of the device).

Step 2. Press and hold the "Battery" button for 3 seconds, then wait for the blue "Power" light to appear solid. Shortly after, the orange "Ready" light will start blinking once per second indicating that your VeraLite is in include mode.

Step 3. Before adding a device, we recommended that you first exclude it to ensure it's in its factory default state. To exclude a device, you will need to tap the "-" button. The orange "Ready" light will start blinking twice per second. Follow your device's exclude procedure and you will see the "Ready" light flutter briefly as a confirmation that your device was detected and successfully excluded.

Step 4: To include a device, you will need to tap the "+" button. The "Ready" light will blink once per second. Follow your device's include procedure and you will see the "Ready" light flutter briefly as a confirmation that your device was detected and successfully included. 

Step 5: Repeat steps 3 & 4 for any other devices you need to add.

Step 6. To save your changes and exit the battery mode, press and hold the "+" button for 5 seconds. You can then plug your VeraLite back into mains power and LAN and proceed to configuring your newly added devices via the Vera GUI.

Out of the box, Vera will natively support a handful of cameras only but will still provide partial integration for most generic IP cameras, allowing you to use them in your security scenes. For example, you can have Vera take snapshots when an associated Z-Wave motion sensor is tripped. 

The following guide explains how to add a generic IP camera to your Vera using UI7. It assumes you have already connected the camera to your LAN or WiFi network and have installed and configured the device as per the manufacturer's instructions. You need to make sure you can see a live stream via a browser on your PC, or via a 3rd party app on your phone, before you begin. 

Step 1: Click the “Add Camera” button under the “Cameras” menu: 

The real power behind any great Z-Wave home automation system undoubtedly lies with the central home controller. What some people may not realise though is that using a PC for this task is probably the most straight-forward and affordable way there is of setting one up. 

Step 1: First you'll need a Windows PC or laptop; something you don't mind leaving on most of the time. This is where a laptop is ideal as they don't require much power to run. You don't need the latest tech either.  

Step 2: Next, you need one of our Z-Stick USB adaptors which simply plugs into any available USB port. This allows your Z-Wave devices to "talk" to your PC. 

Step 3: The software! Our recommendation is InControl HA Server Pro. If you've ever shopped around for home automation software, you'll know that you can literally spend hundreds of dollars on this. What's great about InControl is that it's a fraction of the cost of other similar software solutions. It's also simple to use, which is great if you're a beginner, but powerful enough to drive even the most complex home automation systems.

The following guide will show you how you can use an ordinary IR remote control to trigger Z-Wave scenes with InControl HA. We use this method in conjunction with JRiver Media Center to control media playback and Z-Wave lighting in our home theatre so we can (for example) start a movie and dim the lights with the press of a single button.