Dumb Keypad Question

[IVB]

IVB will those tablets come with an operating system (which one) and are they suitable for ELK RM and CQC?

They seem like a good deal.

Thanks

W2K, which is all you need for a CQC Client. It's a good deal, but not a great deal. I bought mine 5 months ago for $250 buy-it-now cuz it had XP Pro and came with the USB drive, and nothing else was available. The W2K ones at that time were $200. Hence, the price has dropped 25%, probably more due to folks upgrading and the imminent UMPC than anything else.

I'm now regretting that O/S; it may have been easier than W2K to use/setup, but it's a serious dog.

Do you happen to know if a RADI/O will fit into a Simply Automated Tabletop Pedestal Enclosure?

I'm not sure, we should ping Dwayne to get him to answer, but the one thing my research did show is that it's slightly wider than a single-gang, so they want you to use their custom-fit enclosure.

What's the size of that pedestal enclosure?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Since we are brainstorming on this topic check out THIS page on Dwayne's site. A statement is made:

May, 2006 We are actively working on improving our RelayTouch and RelayTouch-UTMA products with more display options, and more choices in display sizes. And since our RelayTouch-UTMA product has its own audio zone that can be played from the UTMA or from the Host computer, you can create a whole-house music system without the need for an expensive audio matrix system or home run speaker cables--and stay tuned--some of the most popular music software programs will be able to sync multiple audio streams from the server.

So I'm wondering that if by going to UTMA technology you get total touch screen integration of your HA/Security via connections to the server AND a method for music distribution as well?? Might be a solution to look into...

 

[upstatemike]

I'm not sure, we should ping Dwayne to get him to answer, but the one thing my research did show is that it's slightly wider than a single-gang, so they want you to use their custom-fit enclosure.

What's the size of that pedestal enclosure?

I'm not sure. Hopefully somebody has one and can let us know.

Another question: I went to the Touchtronix site to see what all works with RADI/O screens and they don't seem to list anybody that supports their product. Saying that "anything that can be rendered on a VGA screen can be used" doesn't help me picture how things work with a Mainlobby or CQC type of product. What am I missing?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I'm not sure, we should ping Dwayne to get him to answer, but the one thing my research did show is that it's slightly wider than a single-gang, so they want you to use their custom-fit enclosure.

What's the size of that pedestal enclosure?

I'm not sure. Hopefully somebody has one and can let us know.

Another question: I went to the Touchtronix site to see what all works with RADI/O screens and they don't seem to list anybody that supports their product. Saying that "anything that can be rendered on a VGA screen can be used" doesn't help me picture how things work with a Mainlobby or CQC type of product. What am I missing?

I know that at one time Dwayne had Mario of Cinemar create a hook into MainLobby so you could easily create "scenes" compatible with the size of the RAD I/O modules. It would also let you "run" many instances of these specific sized scenes so they could be distributed to the RAD I/O touchscreens.

I did THIS review of the product during the last CES show that you might want to look at also.

The units are "slightly" larger than a standard sized single gang box.

 

[Digger]

The 3500 have more RAM and harddrive for $100 more. Not sure if they are worth it. I want to eventually use this to view CCTV as well.

I assume you load a program onto a USB drive etc and then install them onto the tablet.

This will be new teritory for me.

 

[IVB]

Saying that "anything that can be rendered on a VGA screen can be used" doesn't help me picture how things work with a Mainlobby or CQC type of product. What am I missing?

Here's the deal: The RADI/O package is comprised of a PCI card and 4-8 touchscreen panels. The PCI card goes into your PC, takes over the primary display, and chops it up into screens. The way the CQC driver works, you load up 8 different instances of the "Interface Viewer", which is the CQC client program that renders interfaces. The one downstream isssue is that this PC cannot be used for any video playback. You could use this machine for controlling devices or audio playback, though.

Here's a sample set of startup routines that you'd run on that machine:

@ECHO OFF 
SETLOCAL 
SET CQC_USERNAME=RADIO_Screen_User_whatever
SET CQC_PASSWORD=IVB_is_great 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=1 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=2 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=3 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=4 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=5 /Load=\User\RadIOZ5 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=6 /Load=\User\RadIOZ6 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=7 /Load=\User\RadIOZ7 
CQCIntfView /RadIO=8

In this instance, panels 5-7 get loaded up with the RADIOZ5->7 template. Panels 1-4, 8, get loaded up with whatever the default template is for the "RADIO_Screen_User_whatever" userid is. Obviously you don't have to name it that, I just used that for dramatic effect. I believe that is the password you need to use :wink

The 3500 have more RAM and harddrive for $100 more. Not sure if they are worth it. I want to eventually use this to view CCTV as well.

At 192MB of RAM, you're fine. HD space is irrelevant on this. Hence, the 3400 is fine for most apps. However, I can't speak to it's ability to display CCTV (yet). The video card is pretty crappy. My replacement power supply and camera stuff is coming this week, so hopefully it'll be up & running by next weekend. THen i'll try to render video. I know i can't render a straight mpeg, but that could be b/c I code all my mpegs at a high rate.

You could always buy the one 3400, try it out. For $200(incl shipping), it's a good test.

 

[upstatemike]

I know that at one time Dwayne had Mario of Cinemar create a hook into MainLobby so you could easily create "scenes" compatible with the size of the RAD I/O modules. It would also let you "run" many instances of these specific sized scenes so they could be distributed to the RAD I/O touchscreens.

I looked on the MainLobby site but didn't see any mention of RADI/O.

 

[upstatemike]

The way the CQC driver works...

So CQC has an official driver for RADI/O? Does anybody else officially support it or CQC the only one?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I know that at one time Dwayne had Mario of Cinemar create a hook into MainLobby so you could easily create "scenes" compatible with the size of the RAD I/O modules. It would also let you "run" many instances of these specific sized scenes so they could be distributed to the RAD I/O touchscreens.

I looked on the MainLobby site but didn't see any mention of RADI/O.

Mike;

I don't know if it ever made it out of beta. I tried the beta version and it worked well, but it was a while ago and I can't remember all of the details. Heck I might still even have it loaded up on my machine...

 

[IVB]

The way the CQC driver works...

So CQC has an official driver for RADI/O? Does anybody else officially support it or CQC the only one?

Dunno about anyone else, but it's officially supported by CQC. It's in the 1.6.15 release that everyone can download.

I don't know how many folks actually have one, I *think* I know of 1, perhaps 2 folks that have one installed in their house and can speak to detatils. I'd have them join here, but the one guy has a 2 month old and 3 other kikds under 8 on top of owning a bar/restaurant and some other biz, and has been relatively unavailable lately.

 

[Rupp]

The way the CQC driver works...

So CQC has an official driver for RADI/O? Does anybody else officially support it or CQC the only one?

It doesn't require a driver. RADi/o is simply a display like your computer monitor that gets split into "chunks" and each chuck is "sent" to one of the I/O displays. If you can write an HTML page that has 4 or 8 equal size pieces of information then this information will be rendered on the I/O displays.

 

[IVB]

It doesn't require a driver. RADi/o is simply a display like your computer monitor that gets split into "chunks" and each chuck is "sent" to one of the I/O displays. If you can write an HTML page that has 4 or 8 equal size pieces of information then this information will be rendered on the I/O displays.

As pressing a button on that HTML page would probably take you to another page, how would you handle navigation? Would you use frames?

For CQC, it's much better to use the driver and the Interface viewer rather than the web browser widget as you get much richer screens with better widgets than IE can display, and only have to write one set of templates at 320x240 [or whatever the resolution is] in order to serve that.

 

[upstatemike]

It doesn't require a driver. RADi/o is simply a display like your computer monitor that gets split into "chunks" and each chuck is "sent" to one of the I/O displays. If you can write an HTML page that has 4 or 8 equal size pieces of information then this information will be rendered on the I/O displays.

I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. I don't mind considering a controller that supports this product and handles the formatting required to create the split screens but I'm not going to configure a bunch of manual pages that require serious maintenance every time I tweak a feature in my automation system.

 

[DavidL]

I have a Rad I/O setup and it works just fine with MainLobby. There was a utility that makes it easier to setup the scenes to work with the hardware. Let us know if you need the update for MainLobby. Dwayne can provide it to you as well.

 

[pkoslow]

Here are a couple photos that show UNO-S2 keypads integrated with Insteon (Mike I seem to remember you've got a lot on Insteon installed?). Coupled with the KeypadLincs is drops the number of required light switches. With the right interface (plug-in) to your security system, the KeypadLinc and could even eliminate the need for a security keypad in some areas by providing basic functionality.

This first photo is in a bedroom and the "Sleep" button runs a macro that does a number of things including arming the security system in night mode.

Cheers,
Paul