Time to Make a Decision

[IVB]

FYI: To make things harder, CQC does TTS too, at least I've noticed it on the Supported Devices page for months now. I don't do that so I haven't paid attention to it or how good it is.

The $2500 also gets you a $1200 touchscreen and 4 $150 keypads, right? How many do you currently have? Is the below apples-apples?

If I add correctly, that's
Option 1-HS) $250+$350+$180+($1200 for TS) ~$2K (no slimserver integration with this)
Option 2-Elk) $2500
Option 3-CQC&Elk)$3K (FYI: Squintz was explaining to me over on CQC how to use the Elk phone integration to trigger things in CQC, didn't quite follow. This means you have SlimServer and *some* phone, but i'm sure the SG is much better.)

Mike brought up:
Option 4-CQC alone)$500 plus cost to build StarGate plugin, won't get you phone.

I'd bet that for $1K, you could get any of a few driver writers on CQC to do a decent StarGate plugin, then you could get the Elk whenever you want (ie if the StarGate died). That would make option 4 more like $1500, and you get StarGage plus Insteon, but no phone.

I don't know if any of this really helps you, I'm not smart enough to really advise, just pointing out facts that I think are interesting.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Adding CQC for an additional $500 gets me TTS and Slimserver support. Problem is no phone features on this route.

It would also get you network based sources like weather data, weather radar, and traffic cams. And, it could avoid the need for something like J.River to rip your CDs and get your metadata in place. The SlimServer driver allows you to use the metadata from CQC itself, which would allow you to also browse your media on a larger, CQC-based touch screen and then have it play via the SlimServer. If you use our own repository though, it's not really for random downloaded tracks, it's for CDs.

 

[Steve]

IVB, please, a little more accuracy...

MainLobby 3 / MLServer 3 combo $179.99

Dude, I was just summarizing the options he'd laid out, and verifying that I understood it. I didn't pass judgement or give any opinion about it, just making sure I was following his train of thought.

You're busting my chops for a $20 package discount I didn't clue in about which would be dusted by the cost on a SlimServer plugin if Cinemar created one??

In as much as Mainlobby out of the box is a very nice and powerful product, you can not lose sight of the fact that it is still a la cart. It is not fair at all to simply say it is $179. Even if you throw out music stuff and look at a 'reasonable' automation system, you are looking at:

ML Suite $179
Web Lobby $44.99
Weather Lobby $59.99
Insteon or UPB support $49.99
Text to Speech $29.99

If you stop right there, which imho is a barebones system for HA, you are already at $364.

If you were to be more realistic for a well configured system, and add stuff that I believe Mike would use:

Some basic extra graphics - MINIMUM $100
IP Camera control 39.99

and what about if you wanted to talk to an Elk, HAI or Stargate (if ever developed)
minimum $89.99

now you are at $564

It's all about marketing. I'm not saying a single thing about the quality of the products, they are both good and after trying you will find one you like better, but right now I know I can get everything in one package (CQC) for $500 with the comfort of knowing any driver I want is FREE. With Mainlobby you are realistically looking at over $500 and adding any music stuff, other drivers, graphics, etc is just going to keep going from there. The cost to do anything extra in ML will be $30-$100. So please keep that in mind when comparing products and pricing. And please, I do not want to get into a debate about how much you can do with the base product, I know it is quite capable, but I also know the addons mentioned are almost certainly required to do any real HA stuff.

 

[Mark S.]

FWIW, I'm already doing something similar to "Option 1", with the exception of Insteon and Slimserver. I've got Stargate plugged into HS with a Way-2-Call for phone. MainLobby Server runs on the same PC (using MLHS plugin) for several touchscreen PCs running Main Lobby scattered around the house.

The existing plugin integration between the three (SG, HS, ML) is great, ever since HS's JDS plugin was fixed. I find this combination to be extremely capable and flexible. If SG can't do what I want, then HS can. If HS can't do it, then ML can. It may sound like getting those three elements to work together might be a PITA, but the two HS plugins make it nearly seamless. If I lose one of the three legs ( via crash), I don't lose everything.

I arrived at this setup mainly because, personally, I was looking for 1) existing intergration (plugins) with a track record, 2) software/hardware with a large community and thus a lot of support and a steady flow of ideas for new stuff, and 3) the flexibility to use a variety of hardware - to avoid proprietary harware and mystery protocols. I achieved all of these as far as I'm concerned. In my mind, cost takes a back seat to meeting to the above criteria (within reason of course, +/- $1000).

If you're married to Insteon, then Rozetta is definitely a problem. Rozetta is still vapor and I'm skeptical of their ultimate success and it's effectiveness with SG. I don't know much about Slimserver, but I would think that SG, HS or ML could manage it somehow (via serial?). I think Elk M1 is great, but at the risk of inciting the many Elk supporters on CT, my Caddx when coupled with my already existing SG, HS and ML is far more capable and flexible than Elk. As for touchscreens, I buy cheap P4 PCs ($200 from Tiger or Ebay) and hook them up to 15" touchscreens ($300-400), load Main Lobby, plug into the network and I've got a competely customizable touchscreen for a whole lot less than a proprietary touchscreen from Elk or RCS. UMPC's open up another avenue.

With SG+HS+ML, I've got lighting (still X-10), lots of digital/analog/relay I/O, phone, TTS, VR, web access, weather, music (I use HS Media Player with AB8SS), touchscreens, alarm integration (Caddx), video, and more via HS and ML plugins. I guess what I'm doing is backing up DavidL's point about HS and ML with a real world example. And since I'm still not convinced that there is a better piece of hardware than SG, this is a great solution for me.

Mark

 

[upstatemike]

Thanks Mark, that is good input from a real world situation that bears thinking about. I guess some points relating to that-

1- Phone needs: I don't want to give the impression that I need a full phone suite to act as an answering machine etc. The only phone function I must have is the ability to go off hook, dial 33*, and then make an HA announcement. Other feateues that I would LIKE to have include: VR through the phones, caller ID announcements, and triggering things via touch tone.

2- Yes Insteon is a requirement. If I change that then I won't be able to afford anything else and anyway UPB is not yet in a state to justify a change.

3- Eveyone has given advice to go for a more generic touch screens but I need to make it clear that I cannot and will not ever under any circumstances flush mount a touch screen into a wall. I need a surface mount or tabletop touch screen. Even if I lived in a house with sheet rock walls I still would be Philosophically opposed to the idea of cutting propriety shaped holes into a wall to flush mount electronics. Walls last hundreds of years and electronic devices have a lifespan of like 5 minutes before they are obsolete so it makes no sense to create proprietary shaped cavities for short lived devices! I also do not have a wireless network so I need devices that run from a single cat5 cable. I don't care if the cable is feeding video, lan, or serial data but there must only be 1 and that includes the power feed. And finally, I need to stay in the 1K range for something like this just because of scale. I can never implement just 1 of anything around here. If I do touch screens, even just in key areas, I am looking at 4 minimum and there are lots of other things I need to put in the budget besides screens.

4- I can control SlimServer by kicking off batch files with xPLsend commands in them. Not elegant but it will work with any setup that can run a batch file.

 

[upstatemike]

I guess I need to add some more options to the mix:

If an Elk touch screen can run CQC I assume it could also run HomeRunner for the Stargate? Could I just substitute an Elk TS07 for the RCS touchscreen that was never released?

I had discounted the OmniPro II because there is no Insteon support. I suppose I should price out an HAI system in combination with HS or CQC since they could do the Insteon piece and HAI can do the touch screens, security camersa, wireless security sensors, etc. same as the M1.

ECS has support for Insteon, Stargate, and phone stuff. I suppose I should throw that into the mix at around $350. It might bre cheaper than the HS option.

 

[upstatemike]

Adding CQC for an additional $500 gets me TTS and Slimserver support. Problem is no phone features on this route.

It would also get you network based sources like weather data, weather radar, and traffic cams. And, it could avoid the need for something like J.River to rip your CDs and get your metadata in place. The SlimServer driver allows you to use the metadata from CQC itself, which would allow you to also browse your media on a larger, CQC-based touch screen and then have it play via the SlimServer. If you use our own repository though, it's not really for random downloaded tracks, it's for CDs.

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying about random tracks vs CDs but I suspect this is yet another area where I do not follow common convention. Even though storage is cheap, I never saw the value of creating a library of CDs when each one may only have 1 or 2 songs I like on them. Even if the disk space doesn't matter, the horsepower to reindex or back up a library full of garbage tracks is significant. For this reason I only rip tracks I like and that is rarely a full CD. Not sure how that would play into what you are explaining here.

The weather radar is a good point though not so much the traffic cams... if I ever find myself living in an area populous enough to require traffic cams I will move!

On the TTS - would I be able to use my ATT voices?

 

[upstatemike]

The $2500 also gets you a $1200 touchscreen and 4 $150 keypads, right? How many do you currently have? Is the below apples-apples?

Nothing is exactly apples to apples. In this case I have to not only replace the 2 Caddx keypads but also the 7 stargate LED annunciator keypads for which there is no Elk equivalent. (each Stargate keypad has 7 buttons and 7 LEDs, These are great for reminders that the garage door is open, some process is on temporary manual bypass, mailbox annunciator, doorbell was activated while nobody was home, etc.) I also have 3 Stargate LCD kepads each of which supports 96 menu pages. I am hoping I can replace all this functionality with 4 Elk keypads and 4 Elk touch screens.

 

[upstatemike]

UpstateMike, MainLobby also provides text to speech, as does Homeseer and HAL (I am sure you knew that).
Not tested by Cinemar, but there were means posted by one of our advanced users that our MusicLobby 3 solution ($59.99 plus J. River MC for $40) will also do SlimServer - which I posted to you about a few weeks ago.

I do remember the post but I never figured out exactly how that would work for me (probably because I don't know anything about JRiver).

 

[toymaster458]

Another option to the TS07 is a Samsung Q1. I have 3 of them in a job and 1 at my home running CQC and love it. There is also a Q1b for less money that is suppose to have a longer battery life and brighter display for outdoor use.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Even if the disk space doesn't matter, the horsepower to reindex or back up a library full of garbage tracks is significant. For this reason I only rip tracks I like and that is rarely a full CD. Not sure how that would play into what you are explaining here.

Hundreds of CDs ripped losslessly is still a small amount of disc space, and there's no re-indexing to be done. Backup is also not much of a problem. Put a second disc in the machine and you can back it up in minutes every month or so. The benefits you would gain from using our repository (no more requirement for external apps like J.River, you can rip and manage the repository from any machine and it uploads media/metadata to the server for you, and changes are immediately present in CQC), that it would be well worth just ripping the whole CDs.

On the TTS - would I be able to use my ATT voices?

Any SAPI5 complaint voices are supported, and I would be suprised if the ATT voices are not SAPI complaint.

 

[upstatemike]

Even if the disk space doesn't matter, the horsepower to reindex or back up a library full of garbage tracks is significant. For this reason I only rip tracks I like and that is rarely a full CD. Not sure how that would play into what you are explaining here.

Hundreds of CDs ripped losslessly is still a small amount of disc space, and there's no re-indexing to be done. Backup is also not much of a problem. Put a second disc in the machine and you can back it up in minutes every month or so. The benefits you would gain from using our repository (no more requirement for external apps like J.River, you can rip and manage the repository from any machine and it uploads media/metadata to the server for you, and changes are immediately present in CQC), that it would be well worth just ripping the whole CDs.

On the TTS - would I be able to use my ATT voices?

Any SAPI5 complaint voices are supported, and I would be suprised if the ATT voices are not SAPI complaint.

Ok. I'll buy that. If I switch to your repository I can do the whole CDs.... that should not be a factor in this decision. Would that method support replay gain tags? Toymasters $1000 Q1 tablet is making this more practical so I want to uncover some detail.

One possible deal killer... slimserver manages synching some or all of my players (I have 13). If I use the CQC plugin to play from your repository do I retain that feature? In other words is Slimserver still managing the players and CQC providing the repository? Would my slimserver plugins still work (weather display, vu meter display, etc.)?

 

[Steve]

If an Elk touch screen can run CQC I assume it could also run HomeRunner for the Stargate? Could I just substitute an Elk TS07 for the RCS touchscreen that was never released?

No, not unless Homerunner runs on CE or Windows Mobile. CQC runs on the TS07 which is CE based via its CE .net viewer.

 

[Steve]

QUOTE
On the TTS - would I be able to use my ATT voices?

Any SAPI5 complaint voices are supported, and I would be suprised if the ATT voices are not SAPI complaint.

Yes, I am running AT&T Kate with CQC

 

[upstatemike]

Another option to the TS07 is a Samsung Q1. I have 3 of them in a job and 1 at my home running CQC and love it. There is also a Q1b for less money that is suppose to have a longer battery life and brighter display for outdoor use.

I see newegg sells these for around $1K. This is on target. I think I can create my own single cord solution for power + ethernet so I'm good there. (There isn't a docking stand of some sort available by any chance?)

Of course I was very impressed with the PTZ controls Elk added to their camera screen so I am not chucking the TS07 just yet...

Are you using these just for HT control or are you doing some security camera stuff? How about internet weather maps?