After several years away from automation, largely due to a new child and frustrations getting my hodgepodge system (Elk, CQC, Aprilaire, ViziaRF, et al) to work, I'm dipping my toes back in the water once again as we're building a new house and starting over.
I'm fine on the wiring side of things, and our only real "must have" is our existing Sonos system, but I think I'll leave that separate from the automation to start. I enjoy DIY, but the Elk was too much for me on the DIY front. Nothing ever worked 100% (lights are a crapshoot at best), and CQC was amazingly powerful, but it was a blank slate and I'm no Picasso.
Our LV guy did a Control4 demo, and I liked the consistent UI between TV, touchscreen, and iDevice, but I don't want to call their "engineer" every time I want to change some tiny aspect of a program, so I'm leaning towards basing the system around an HAI Omni. I'll likely buy their UPB-based switches for lighting, and their thermos so I know everything works and talks to each other after my bad experience with Elk and "best of breed". I also don't want three different boxes and computer-based software to get systems to talk to each other or have multiple vendors blaming each other when things don't work. Any flaws in this thinking?
Security and lighting are probably my first two goals, after that, is it possible to integrate Sonos with HAI (so we can do rules/macros/programs that turn on music when a lighting scene is activated)? Is this "out of the box" or would we need an additional layer?
Where I'm troubled with HAI is their touch screens look pretty lame compared with C4, and ultimately I can't see paying a few grand for touchscreens and controllers when there are commodity iPads and Androids in the market. I've seen some of the HAI/iPad integration options, but get confused here; what's the "state of the art?" Again, I ideally want prebuilt screens that already have the hard work and graphic design done rather than "blank slate."
On a side note, did anything every happen with Google's Android@Home? Best I can tell it's stillborn.
Thanks for your help, and I'm looking forward to having some fun, and hopefully a better success rate this time around!
I'm fine on the wiring side of things, and our only real "must have" is our existing Sonos system, but I think I'll leave that separate from the automation to start. I enjoy DIY, but the Elk was too much for me on the DIY front. Nothing ever worked 100% (lights are a crapshoot at best), and CQC was amazingly powerful, but it was a blank slate and I'm no Picasso.
Our LV guy did a Control4 demo, and I liked the consistent UI between TV, touchscreen, and iDevice, but I don't want to call their "engineer" every time I want to change some tiny aspect of a program, so I'm leaning towards basing the system around an HAI Omni. I'll likely buy their UPB-based switches for lighting, and their thermos so I know everything works and talks to each other after my bad experience with Elk and "best of breed". I also don't want three different boxes and computer-based software to get systems to talk to each other or have multiple vendors blaming each other when things don't work. Any flaws in this thinking?
Security and lighting are probably my first two goals, after that, is it possible to integrate Sonos with HAI (so we can do rules/macros/programs that turn on music when a lighting scene is activated)? Is this "out of the box" or would we need an additional layer?
Where I'm troubled with HAI is their touch screens look pretty lame compared with C4, and ultimately I can't see paying a few grand for touchscreens and controllers when there are commodity iPads and Androids in the market. I've seen some of the HAI/iPad integration options, but get confused here; what's the "state of the art?" Again, I ideally want prebuilt screens that already have the hard work and graphic design done rather than "blank slate."
On a side note, did anything every happen with Google's Android@Home? Best I can tell it's stillborn.
Thanks for your help, and I'm looking forward to having some fun, and hopefully a better success rate this time around!