Front ends for HA controllers?

[capall]

Hi all,
I've been trying to get myself educated on Home Automation and from reading several posts from the last few months, I've noticed that in general for a solid HA system you are recomending going with either Elk M1 or a HAI omni pro II, as a hardware controller, and then using homeseer, or cqc, Elve to control the system and give the front.  Correct?
 
However, very few, if any, seem to recommend mainlobby any more, is there a particular reason for that. They seem quite strong in the A/V  side of things but also seem to have security and lighting control as well?
 
Is there a fundamental difference in the capabilities / usage scenario of Mainlobby / Homeseer / CQC / Elve?..if planning a full house HA setup to include security, lighting, audio and video
 
Are these the upper end of front end controllers?
 
I thought CQC went open source and then didn't, whats the current status of them?
 
Any comments on the capabilities of CommandFusion with their new hardware
 
Thanks
derek
 

 

[electron]

There were rumors at one point in time that CQC was going to go open source, but Dean decided to keep working on the project instead, so it's still a commercial product.
 
As for which software solution to go with, I would narrow it down to CQC or Homeseer.  Main Lobby does have some advantages in the A/V world, but if you want to do some complex home automation stuff, and have access to a very active community, I would stick with CQC/Homeseer.
 
Elve was very promising, but I keep hearing complaints about lack of activity in both the community and development.
 
There is tons of software out there (check my sig), and the good ones all offer a trial version.

 

[dgage]

I don't know much about Homeseer but I will say that Dean (CQC) has been (amazingly sometimes) responsive with updates based on user feedback.

There are pros and cons to each and I really didn't search out the differences too much although I had originally planned to download CQC, Homeseer, and Elve to try. I signed up for the Elve (CodeCore) forums and then realized how lifeless it was so I threw that one out although it was originally my front runner due to the .NET focus. Before I could look at CQC and Homeseer, I decided to choose Lutron RadioRa 2 for my lighting control and Dean was just putting a driver together at the time and so my decision was made for me. When I've had issues (mine not the product), I post to the forums and within a day, usually much less, even on weekends, I will get a response from Dean giving me a helping nudge and guidance.

As Dan suggested, I'd recommend downloading the trial of each and taking a look at them. In general they both have the power to do the similar things but their scripting and engines are slightly different. Like you can't go wrong in choosing Elk or HAI, I don't think there is a wrong answer in choosing Homeseer or CQC.

And regarding the upper end of controllers, my opinion is no. CQC and Homeseer are likely the high end for the DIY market but I would consider Crestron, RTI, Control4, etc to be the high end. If you were to go the high end route it will cost you more for the equipment and you wouldn't get to play as your integrator would need to do all the work for you. Those high end solutions likely fit together better where they have solutions. With CQC and Homeseer, I'm not sure there are limitations to what can be done, but you are the glue that has to figure out how to get it done. At least, that is how I look at it.

David

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Some people use MainLobby for AV stuff, and also as a 'display' tool for HomeSeer as there is a plugin that will let device variables pass through to MLServer (I do this with older versions).
 
Reason is MainLobby has a superior (IMO) display capability than HomeSeer, but I also did this integration before HSTouch, though I still think HSTouch has a bit of a gap to catch up to when compared to MainLobby as far as display capabilities go.

 

[pete_c]

Personally here I would recommend Homeseer for the DIY Home automation person. 
 
That noted I've always owned MainLobby and would also make a recommendation of having a look at it as it has evolved much since the early 2000's.
 
Having written that though is to define what a DIY Home automation person is. 
 
I can only write relating to what I do being a DIY automation person.
 
Personally I've always been a "tinkering" with hardware type person.  Over the years Homeseer has allowed me to connect and utilize various hardware.  These days I have some 20 odd pieces of hardware connected to Homeseer either via a serial, USB and or virtual via network, serial or USB connections. 
 
The HVAC, lighting schedules, security stuff to me are standard house functions that I guess I do not perceive today as some new venture in home automation; it just works; and I really don't put any efforts into said actions anymore; hence the use of my HAI OPII panel for the "base" of house functions.  I do though today still push the OPII panel that I have to see if I can break it and I cannot at this time; but that is me.
 
The whole interface thing for me; AKA "touchscreen" has always been a kind of afterthought.  It was neat to have a conduit to my Homeautomation stuff; but not high up on the list. (as are tablets or phones as conduits today).  I did purchase first gen tablets and did utilize my old Palm PDA and WIndows Mobile phones in the early 2000's as a conduit to my home automation stuff. 
 
I had fun with it while sitting on the other side of the world and remoting functions at home to bug my wife mostly.
 
I do like to take one piece of hardware; whatever it is and create one interface to it with HSTouch of which I can do in 5 minutes.
 
Goofing around I set up a touch screen using a FlashxAP interface on a very basic flash based linux OS. 
 
The thrill was looking at temperatures and graphs; nothing else literally.
 
Relating to the "OP"; the "front end" of a home automation controller has evolved much over the last 10 years. 
 
I personally have no favorite conduit. 
 
Today I am playing with a little touchscreen that was originally "tested" as a combo DECT Phone hub/VOIP box combo Zigibee HVAC/Electric meter device.  I have a few of these.  Today's box has a combo BT/WLAN PCiE card, GSM modem, Zigbee chip, Gb NIC inside of it.  It came with a basic Linux flash based OS. 
 
Maybe though it would be better to reword the question relating to what the OP knows about software, application programming and hardware?

 

[Frunple]

Just to add, chose one that has been "around" for a while and seems to be stable and growing.
I'm a current Elve user, the developer got a new job and Elve is definitely not a priority to him anymore.
Before Elve I used Cortexa. I can literally copy and paste the previous sentence in regards to cortexa also.
I'm currently playing with the trial version of Homeseer for 2 reasons. 1) its what my brother uses and it's always good to have someone to "bounce" ideas off of. 2) I used it waaaay back, in the mid 90's I believe, and it's still around and going strong!
I can honestly say Elve is better than anything else I've tried but there's no way I would risk putting aother penny into it, even if it did start to show signs of life it's still not going to be around long barring open sourcing it, which is unlikely.

 

[capall]

Thanks for the info guys
good comments, I agree, there's no right or wrong, and I suppose I need to review them with a trial and evaluate them with respect to how I want to use them. I'll take a closer look at each of them and go from there.
 
 
Derek