Documenting the Home Automation Technology in Quadomated

[dgage]

Mike,

I went on eBay yesterday and I feel like you teased me. There were no great deals like you found and too many different models to know what worked or not. I'll just have to keep an eye out and see if I can beat you to the punch when a good del does show up. In the mean time, after lurking here for many months, I finally took the plunge on Lutron's RadioRa 2 so I should have something to keep me busy the week after Christmas.

David

 

[Chassmain]

Kind of one of those things you just need to keep an eye on. The ILT shades show up there all the time, it’s just all about finding enough of the right size for the right price. Right now there is a 506S2 model identically sized to what I’ve already got for $146. Still twice what I paid for the others, but might be a good enough deal that I buy it for a constant ratio blackout for my home theater screen. Hmmm… Do I have the money to spend for a project I won’t be doing for months?

Would be very interested to hear your experiences integrating the Lutron Radio RA. I looked at that system extremely closely when choosing my lighting system.

 

[Chassmain]

Do-It-Yourself Tempurpedic Ergo Adjustable Bed Automation

Oh how I love reverse engineering/hacking into stuff to get it to do exactly what you want. In this article I wrote about how we took apart the wireless controller to a Tempurpedic Advanced Ergo adjustable bed so that I could have full control of it with my HAI OmniPro and the corresponding smart phone and voice recognition functionality that will soon tie into my automation system.

 

[dgage]

My wife is so going to hate me when I mess with her bed while she is sleeping...and from out of town. Devious, so devious. Just so you know, I'm blaming you when she gets mad at me for hacking the bed. Awesome idea. I love it. Love the bed too. One of the best purchases we've ever made.

 

[EDP]

Hi Mike,

I was originally considering a hardwired solution, but have recently been debating between Zigbee (Centralite Azela), RadioRA2 and HAI Lighting Control (HLC). I'm curious as to why you chose UPB and whether you'd do it again. Would love to hear others thoughts as well.

 

[dgage]

Do a search for RadioRa2 2 and I'm sure you'll run across my posts on why I chose it instead of the other technologies. Of course, I'm still waiting for my electrician friend to come over to install the switches so I can't give personal experience but I've not read any negatives about RadioRa2 other than expense and being less than DIY friendly (getting software).

 

[EDP]

Thanks for the comment dgage......let us know how it goes after it's all set up.

 

[Chassmain]

My wife is so going to hate me when I mess with her bed while she is sleeping...and from out of town. Devious, so devious. Just so you know, I'm blaming you when she gets mad at me for hacking the bed. Awesome idea. I love it. Love the bed too. One of the best purchases we've ever made.

Maybe she’d love you if you use the massage button instead ;-). Definitely love my Tempurpedic bed as well! Might have cost a small fortune, but it’s so much more comfortable I have a tough time sleeping on anything else!

I was originally considering a hardwired solution, but have recently been debating between Zigbee (Centralite Azela), RadioRA2 and HAI Lighting Control (HLC). I'm curious as to why you chose UPB and whether you'd do it again. Would love to hear others thoughts as well.

Maybe she’d love you if you use the massage button ;-). Definitely love my Tempurpedic bed as well! Might have cost a small fortune, but it’s so much more comfortable I have a tough time sleeping on anything else!

I’ve been extremely happy with UPB and most certainly would do it again. It’s definitely not the most stylistic/modern looking hardware, but it does the job very well and at the most reasonable price. When I first started into this home automation world I wanted a hardwired Clipsal C-bus or Lutron Homeworks lighting solution, but after evaluating the incredible cost and lack of electricians in the area that are used to a doing anything away from the norm my expectations got quickly readjusted to something more reasonable. Did a lot of research between Z-Wave, UPB, Radio RA, and in the end what made the most sense for me as far as functionality/budget was UPB.

I wrote up a pretty in-depth article discussing my decision process to that effect at my website:
Automated Lighting – Universal Powerline Bus (UPB)

 

[EDP]

Good article on UPB. Are you able to control fans with it? I've heard conflicting things on this forum and elsewhere.

 

[Chassmain]

Thanks, no problem turning fans on/off I just use a 15 amp relay switch for that, but I don't believe there is any switch/module that will give you speed control.

 

[madburg]

I'm following and posted on Quadomated, Chassman. unRAID for digital media storage and Plex for HTPC's :rockon:
Thanks for sharing looking forward to your (frequent) updates there :mellow:

 

[EDP]

+1 for unRaid and Plex.

 

[Chassmain]

madburg! Great to meet ya and thanks for following along my blog, adding input here and there! I'll have to check out unRAID as soon as I can add in a few more hard drives and get some redundancy in there for my media… as far as Plax, would love to give it a try, but will never happen until the other folks in the household can get unhooked from the cable company.

We'll see, trying to push the family in that direction to save some money!

 

[tmbrown97]

I've been toying with Plex as well with mixed results; I have an HTPC that runs a nice server side - but it seems you need adequate resources client side. DVD's work great but BluRay's are 1 out of 10 so far. I also bought a Roku and used the Plex channel - it gets out of sync easily on the audio, but is easy enough to fix.

I've kinda given up - I'll probably more towards a Mac Mini and AppleTV - but I'd love to hear more about people who have made Plex work - I really like the server interface! In fact, until I work out a permanent solution, I just moved the HTPC down to the living room TV and directly connected it - so I can use the full power of the PC and still use the Plex interface.

 

[EDP]

Work2Play - I have Plex installed on a Mac Mini and it works beautifully. What specific issues are you having?