Recent content by ncgoober

From Vera site.....   But if you’re a tech enthusiast, Vera 3s’ advanced setup capabilities will be a lot of fun; among other things, you can set it up for universal IR control of your entertainment system, and the ability to bridge with virtually any control platform (Z-Wave, Insteon, Serial...

All the above is why I aborted my plan 4-5 years ago. It just all seems so much like a hassle...everybody is stitching together multiple systems. All the systems promise the world and then of coarse you find out that it's a lot of puffery. Maybe I'l just send back the Elk and buy a Dog. The only...

  Hmmm....I would think a safer route would be a USB hub (1 USB upstram / 4-8 ports downstream) and then hang individual cheap USB-to-1-serial-port cables.  I would think that multiport rs23c adapters would possible be more confusing to Vera drivers.    Conversely a usb hub with a sinle rs232...

@Fred  "The M1 can send out ASCII strings over a serial port if you find other hardware that you wish to use and needs that kind of control."   I don't see that in the installation manual.  Where is that documented at?  Does this come off the native rs232 port of M1 or do you need the M1XSP...

Well the basics....I'm an electrical engineer that built my own house from the sub-floor through the roofing shingles plus plumbing and electrical. That was 20+ years ago though and now  I'm not adverse to spending money for things that work from the get-go and are well designed. I've read some...

Hmmm....I looked at Vera3 and it seems like it starts off good with native ethernet + wireless.   One thing thats not obvious....whats the method to  get access to cheap wired IO and sensor support?   Off to see what the return policy is for my Elk.

  It's apparent this thing was designed in a previous era.   I still have the Elk in its shrink wrap.  I have a separate video surveliience that I'm satisfied with and don't need to integrate that into the Elk.    If my primary need is ..... Flexible support of a bunch of wired sensors Support...

@Fred   Thanks for the tip about the 10 user/custom messages.....that can solve some some of the needs I have.   Found the info in spec..... "this option is used in conjuction with a house telephone (microphone) to record up to 10 custom voice messages. Each message occupies a 6 second block...

This is what the elk-124 should be.....   capability of playing upto 200 differnt MP3 sound files of limitless length from flash card..............for $10 Would have to figure out how to send rs232c cmds to it     99 max files via rs232 and 10 discrete input lines for first ten files.....$20...

Yeah @ Fred I meant to type Elk-124   I can't use the native M1 voice TTS vocabulary, I need to play certain real voice files and such.   @ Work2play, Yes i realize my first option is to use the native M1 outputs but eventually if I keep having need for more outputs those 8 outputs for the...

So I'm kinda rushing to get some hardware in hand so I can install during vacation at end of year so after a quick assesment I decided to get an Elk M1 Gold because it seemed like it had plenty of HW and SW support.   One of the big things I wanted to do was have the capability to play recorded...