Automated Secure Home - Round 2!

[shnelson]

A long while back, you fellas were very helpful in guiding my wiring in a new construction home (2009 to be exact). At that time, I was just getting my feet wet and had the priority of security then automation. The Honeywell/Ademco Vista 21p served it's purpose just fine, even let me do some tinkering with x10 devices.
 
We sold that home earlier this year and are halfway into another new construction build. This time, I'm carrying the construction loan and have a very flexible general contractor. It's a good position to be in, but things take a little longer.
 
I'm fairly confident in my pre-wire needs and should be set there. I like seeing all of the new wireless device capabilities out there now too, it seems z-wave might be the way to go.
 
Where I could use a little help is determining my hardware requirements. It seems that my previous research led me to an Elk M1 paired with Homeseer. Not having an elk in possession yet (no serial number) , I can't pull the documentation to determine which system needs to handle what. 
 
My exterior doors & windows will all be hardwired to the elk, whereas the occupancy sensors will be z-wave (playing with the aeotec multisensor 6 right now).
 
I guess what I'm really asking is - Do I feed hardware into the elk and z-wave into home seer? Or do I feed everything into the elk and port it to the homeseer? I know the answer is probably suggestive to my intent, but I figured there's got to be a common or best practice here...
 
 
I'll have more questions once things get rolling and would love to document the build out here. Going to be a fun project!
 
 
 

 

[picta]

Hmm, if I were in your situation, I would hard wire for as much as I could think of using, since you have that option. Wireless is generally more expensive and less reliable but may be the only alternative for people who have to retrofit. With the wires in place you'll have an option to use either, that is you can start out with z-wave, and if you finally get fed up by the failures in the middle of the night, you at least would be able to say "screw it" and replace with the wired sensor 

 

[42etus]

:hesaid:

 

[shnelson]

I was planning on presenting at least cat5e for the multisensors to provide PoE -> USB 5pin for their power. If the zwave became problematic, I could just replace with a PIR and call it quits. I do much prefer hardwire over wireless, especially for devices that will trigger a primary security event or fault. The multisensors gave me hope for some pretty dynamic scene control, I haven't found any wired options for all in one though?
 
That's all less of a concern right now - trying to get my head wrapped around the relationship between the elk and homeseer, it's really tough knowing the right questions to ask here!