This is great conversation and really strikes at the heart of the challenge faced with taking home automation "mainstream."
</Philosophical Rant>
I have recently read multiple articles written by the "pundits", some that are very well respected, that state that 2014 is the tipping point year for HA hitting the masses. (or is it now 2015, this year is almost gone already...) Anyway, while it is true there are many point solutions available today being purchased by consumers that automate something, for example, controlling their garage door from their smart phone, these individual things continue to remain disconnected islands. What's worse is that many of these solutions are proprietary in nature and require that manufacturers cloud solution in order to use them. (that undesired monthly fee someone mentioned earlier)
But this does not get us to where we want, that unified, ubiquitous interface, whether it is on the smart device through a graphical touch screen interface, by voice control through the same smart device (my area of interest right now) or both. Right now the average consumer of off the shelf HA solutions has to open up the garage door app to open the garage door or they have to open the Hue app to control their Hue lights, all very cool things, but a still not user friendly. Oh and don't forget that cloud fee. Revolve was a hardware based attempt at addressing this issue but that is now dead. IFTTT is a cloud based software at trying to connect the disparate dots, a good one for what it does.
The old adage goes that in order to solve a problem with software you have create a solution that is more complicated than the problem it is solving in order to actually solve the problem. The home automation field is just not there yet. Solving complex problems unfortunately begets more complexity. Dean is making an excellent effort to address this in CQC. As he stated in an earlier post, a great deal of time and effort has recently gone into standardizing the driver layer so that the "easy wrapper" could be put on top. This is the current reality, everything is different, wants it own thing its own way and until this can be leveled out (look at the journey MS took with Windows in abstracting the hardware layer to the point where it almost doesn't matter anymore - think blue screen of death, Linux has done the same thing, this took decades to get there) We don't have the easy button yet, we're getting closer though
The analogy I like to use is a house built with bricks. In order to construct the house properly to hold together against the elements and remain structurally sound you need to use mortar to hold the bricks together and the bricks or field stones all have to have consistent characteristics in order for the mortar to work and do its job. The software we are discussing here, CQC, Homeseer, Elve, Premise (not mentioned yet), etc, is the mortar to the automation bricks. Without said mortar the bricks won't hold together and without consistent bricks the mortar can't do it's job.
Until the bricks are uniform and the mortar flows easily the easy button is going to be out of the hands of the average consumer. I have hopes that we'll get there, sooner than later, these are interesting times to be certain!
For my HA journey, the end game is the connectedness of it all, once it's all connected I can make it dance via whatever control means works best (or remains hidden in the true case of automated behaviors) For example here is a path to get from my android device to CQC to control the garage door: Android <-> Tasker (android automation software) <-> AutoVoice (for voice input) <-> AutoRemote (bridge to other devices / platforms) <-> EventGhost (open source HA control for Wintel) <-> CQC EventGhost Driver <-> CQC <-> UPB CQC Driver <-> UPB PLC <-> UPB I/O bridge -> Garage Door Opener (<-> signifies 2 way communication) Separately for the garage door open/closed status I have: Garage door sensor -> DS10a X10 -> WGL X10 receiver -> WGL CQC Driver <-> CQC and that's just to control the garage door from my phone by voice or NFC tag (there's no easy button on that but Tasker on Android and CQC on Wintel provide the mortar to the driver bricks) I can also open the garage door via a button on a screen interface generated by CQC. (there's the easy button)
I don't see this journey ending anytime soon...
<End Rant/>
@Deane
Deane Johnson said:
OK Dean, you win on the X-10. If I can make CQC work for me, I'll look into the Isy. I'm aware that it's well liked, but frankly, when it started out as an Insteon device, I crossed it off the "serious player" list.
I was a total X10 house when I first started out on CQC. But my house became less and less x10 friendly over the years forcing me to put in more and more filters to clean up the line noise. Ultimately I gave in and switched over to UPB (fortunately I have a neutral in most of my gang boxes) and couldn't be happier. I'm still using a Smarthome Insteon 2412S PLC (does insteon and x10) to control 2 socket rockets in my shop area to provide just enough light to walk in and grab that tool that I need without having to flip on the big fixtures.The PLC is on the same branch circuit as the rockets and there are no florescent fixtures or motors or UPS's or, or, to generate line noise.
I'm still also using X10 DS10a window/door RF modules for all interior doors & windows that are not monitored by the alarm system. They are inexpensive and reliable enough (given the cost) to meet my needs.
@pete_c
Oh the history... I too played star trek on a time share green screen, later on an Apple ][ (loaded from cassette tape) in ascii text, oh those were the days. My favorite was core wars on the time share and later Robot Wars by M.U.S.E. software on the Apple ][ same concept but graphical...
-Ben