Frustrated with home automation software

[pete_c]

Wow; this is a great discussion!
 
Deane here too still have an Ocelot from many years ago. 
 
I see a "catch up" of bridging automation technology using whatever it takes to bring it to mainstream. 
 
There is the connection between using cellular technology, Wintel OS, Apple OS and Linux OS.
 
None of it is going away anytime soon that I can tell.
 
I have over the years played much with computers ....starting mostly in the 1980's with a variety of OS's back then; a race of sorts for most common use and popularity.  In the 1970's played Star Trek on a terminal and a variety of teletype machines in water closets in school while taking physics (with was up to some 6 hours long of a class; so a "star trek" break was welcome back then).  It was neato though to utilize X10 in the late 70's in one home thousands of miles away from the midwest and remote control it via an expensive phone call.   I would get PO'd though cuz I wanted to have a lived in look in the home and would be gone sometimes for up to 6 months when the electric got shut off (really for no apparent reason as the electric bills were paid even not present in the home).
 
Commercially got involved in much R&D relating to software and hardware for the largest private networks in the world that connected just about any major city anywhere at anytime globally way before the common use of the internet.  The private network grew so fast that protection of it within it and around it was written of and spoke of in meetings in the 1990's knowing that it would become a bit attached to today's internet.  Geez I had a public IP on my personal desktop at work that I could access from any part of the world in the 1990's; and played with groups of a variety of large public assigned internet addressing trying to make sense out of the addressing and mapping of these addresses to geographical locations such that I could figure out where I was in the world when looking at these addresses (it did get a bit confusing sometimes).
 
Above mentioned too is the entries of tiny single board ARM computers that can run a bit faster and do a bit more these days than yesteryear.
 
The Leviton / Elk combination security and automation panels will do basic automation (well what we see today) just fine and many folks say that is all that they need or even want relating to automation. 
 
Just relating to automation (not security); software (using a variety of OS's) can push that automation envelope today mostly because the speeds of the newest CPUs, abundance of memory relating to basic kernels and play space for the OS's (well that and sloppy fat programming).
 
Over the last few years many computer users have narrowed the focus of their preferences to whatever OS they feel most comfortable with; same with Cellular technology.  That said it goes along with the long term automation users having always utilized or having the preferences of one OS or another. 
 
The "console" has evolved and some folks prefer it and consider it over the main pieces of their automation "hub" and do not really care about that piece whether its at home or in the cloud. 
 
Years ago there were a couple of popular services which used mostly telephone lines; IE: Compuserve, Plink, AOL et al.  These services used mostly text communications with fancy graphical interfaces that did provide fancy eye candy for very simple communications.  It worked well and did make these services popular. 
 
Personally folks do pick whatever automation that they want based on their own knowledge base; especially if over the years they have used only one type of OS or one type of cellular phone; it makes total sense to do this.
 
Here too I have played with Elve; liked it. Did what I wanted it to do in Wintel.  Wintel though today is a bit bloated for me.  I know I can can slim down most current Windows Server to just running what is needed for Elve as I have done this many times.
 
I write that but also have a tiny Samsung "portable" touchscreen computer with a customized multiOS boot that runs Windows 8.1, Current MacOS, Current Android OS and Linux.  The OS's can be made to run just fine with all of the fat removed.
 
Ideally the invention of one box that talks a multitude of automation protocols which can be spoken to (programmed) with any OS today and can connect to any console today would be the ideal "automation" box....but that is my wishful thinking....
 
@Deane,
 
Tell us what OS you are most comfortable with and why?
 
What type of automation console you are most familiar with and why?  (IE: propietary interface to an OS, Web GUI, console GUI et al).
 
Personally this is a great discussion and this is a neato forum where we do see folks from all different avenue's of IT, personal and commercial along with security stuff; et al. 
 
Let us please continue with this discussion.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Pete, got to run to the gym ow, then get to the business of work.  I'll have some responses to your commentary above later today when I have time to put some thought into them.  I definitely have opinions on some basics of what needs to be presented in order to broaden the HA user base.  With HomeSeer driving clear off the road with 3.0, and John hanging it up with Elve, it might fall on Dean's CQC to carry the load into the future.
 
BTW, I got CQC loaded early this morning by going back and refreshing myself on DOS after not touching it for 25 years.  CQC needs just an "install" button.  Think Steve Jobs, Dean.  
 
With 12 new CQC App buttons to click on, I decided to not click on any of them until I get the tutorial out as suggested by Dean.  I want CQC to work, so I'll try and take it slow and smart.  That last part will be the hardest for me.

 

[pete_c]

Thanks Deane!
 
Much / many folks today here on Cocoontech prefer to understand those grey areas of the what and why of automation; while others only care or see the console connectivity to their automation and don't really want to know what drives that console; as long as it just works.
 
Personally I have learned much from being a member of CT and relating to not reinventing the wheel on much of my automation stuff.
 
I guess too its mostly folks involved in engineering and software that want to know the gritty details too because it offers a sort of self gratification of having DIY automated. 
 
Some folks too have more of a knowledge base of hardware and what is ticking versus software and how it communications to the ticking parts; some folks the other way around.
 
Your stuff / commentary on what you are looking for and why personally here is valued; please continue.

 

[Digger]

HS3 has tremendous potential in my opinion. Its just way to unreliable. After two Hometrollers and various plug ins and other HS accessories I shut it down and moved to the ISY with Zwave. Thousands wasted. Someday HS will get it together but i was tired of the low WAF etc.

HS has very little reoccurring revenue so they have to keep getting new customers to put food on the table. They dont have a lot of resources so bugs etc are not addressed very quickly. They dont use their forum for customer interaction like UDI so they frustrate their customers further. Bug reports get closed when they think they fixed a problem with comments like try it niw and if its still broken write a new bug report.

They are a small company with one guy doing most of the work and the rest do not seem to support him well. Michael at UDI gets a lot of support from his staff which keeps their customers frustrations to a minimum.

I think if HS was to change their business model they could be the most versatile HA software by addressing their issues and improving customer service. Time will tell.

 

[Deane Johnson]

@Pete
I do Windows, and begrudgingly deal with Apple OS on my iPads and iPhone.  I admire Apples simplicity and consistency, I resent it doing things for me that I don't want done.
 
My console, if I understand you correctly, is the iPad.  I use it to run my home theater mostly, and let Elve run rules for lighting, sun control with Hunter Douglas shades, etc.  My requirements out of CQC would not be very complex since I don't do a thermostat, no security involved with the CQC, no music distribution, no zones, not door locks.  Really, just lighting (Z-Wave and X-10), motorized shade control (I'm a dealer), and theater component control, mostly IR.  Unfortunately, CQC doesn't have drivers for Ocelot and X-10.  I think Dean is making a mistake thinking CQC is above dirtying it's hands on those protocols since they've been around for many years.  My PSC X-10 wall dimmers are more reliable than my Z-Wave, or they would have been changed out by now.  They are rather conspicuous by their absence on the list.
 
Here's a link to my home theater page.  It's pretty dated now since I have moved to a large Cinemascope screen and a Wolf Cinema HD projector.  I haven't had time to re-do the site, but the control section is still essentially the same.  The iPad at the bottom of that page is interactive in that you can use the buttons to change the screens, etc.
 
http://www.deanejohnson.com/johnsonhometheater/
 
I wish the HA software developers could see through the eyes of the users.  I call it "thinking from the user back", not from the software out.  In other words, think about what would be ideal for the average person who would be willing to do it themselves in terms of the GUI, then find a way to make that work.  Steve Jobs was not a software genius, he was a guy who had vision to imagine what the masses would embrace and then hired people to find a way to do it.  The Apple system is too automatic for home automation IMO, but the general concept of thinking could apply.
 
I envision it being so straightforward that you simple program it with check boxes and the like.  All of the thinking is done by the software behind the scenes.  It needs to start out with drivers for the main stream stuff that the most people, including Cocoontechers, would likely use.  We know what they are, it's lighting, thermostats, door locks, music distribution, security etc.  No scripts etc, but the software could and should have that capability for those who want to go beyond the basics.  And above all, when it is done, it needs marketing, something programmers are not good at.  It's hard to be both.
 
Probably one of the most challenging aspects would be keeping up with drivers as suppliers of peripheral equipment are prone to changing their protocol and breaking all existing drivers.
 
@Digger - I was hopeful that HomeSeer would have taken their successful V2.0 interface and moved it more toward user friendly.  IMO, they made it unusable, though I'm sure long term users of 2.0 would have a much easier time adapting than someone like me who was starting from scratch.  I at first thought the browser based concept would be clunky, and in some respects it is, but I found it rather fascinating to be able to access the server from any computer.  I don't know what CQC does in this regard as I haven't found time to click on the icon yet.

 

[pete_c]

Thank you Deane.
 
Yup the automation "console" has evolved much over the years.  Today it is related to the use of the Iphone and Android based cellular phones along with the use of IPads and Android tablets.
 
The portable computer phone console is primarily the interface and introduction to Home Automation to many users that had never even looked at or addressed having home automation.
 
Yup; X10 is still used very much today.  It's not fancy; but it does turn on, dim and turn off lights just fine.  Some folks only want that and do want to keep it simple these days.
 
Tablet computers were always around and I did purchase whatever I could find in the 90's.
 
I did also have CRT touchscreens / light pens / computers when they were infants (each had their own) and they seemed to like them more than the keyboards at the time.
 
 
OK so I am seeing that your personal "best" console for automation is the Iphone and Ipad and you are automating:
 
1 - Home theater via IR
2 - Lighting with X10, Z-Wave and Philips Hue
3 - sun control with Hunter Douglas shades
 
You have mentioned Homeseer, CQC and Elve.  There is more software and more hardware to look it. 
 
Curious while you mention the use of an Ipad or Iphone; what would be the best way (your opinion) to program your automation?
 
A propietary web gui?  propietary client application (well for Linux, iOS or Windows?)  A tablet?  What would you like to see?

 

[Dean Roddey]

X-10 is supported indirectly via the ISY. It's just not worth supporting directly though these days. It's a lot of work to support, and the number of people who use it is just going to continue to drop. There are so many better options that any new potential customers are going to go with, and it's hard enough to keep up with those (because there are more all the time.) Do we support Hue or Radio RA2 or ISY or Z-Wave or Elk or Omni, or X-10? X-10 sort of has to lose.
 
On the installer, the thing is, though I agree it would be nice to have a slightly more streamlined installer, once you've done it, suddenly you become interested in a lot of other things and will probably never bother me again about the installer. You'll suddenly decide that the month I spend on creating a fancy new installer is wasted time relative to supporting some new device or capability that you really want. That's always the way it is. Every new customer complains once about the installer and then their concerns move elsewhere, and I'm always trying to address the stuff that creates the most concern, given only so many hours in the day.
 
But, we'll get to the installer at some point, as we get to everything eventually. Right now our primary concern is making it easier to set up once you've installed it, which is a bigger stumbling block for most people. And also in getting an HTML5 based alternative client for folks on non-Windows platforms (who might prefer that to using a RIVA client there.) Initially the HTML5 client will only work in terms of the auto-generated interfaces, then after that we'll move towards allowing it to be more directly customized. Of course, as with the auto-generated stuff within our Windows client, you can always use it as the starting point for some customization of your own.
 
And of course supporting an HTML client required getting other infrastructure in place, and that's been plenty time sucking as well, though educational. So I've been digging into SSL/TLS, digital certificates, RSA, Diffie/Helman, and all of that stuff required to create a secure connection from an HTML5 client (since a key use of it will be from outside the house.)

 

[Deane Johnson]

Pete, I consider the iPad worthless for programming anything.  Too squirrelly, and as I've aged, my motor control is getting sloppier so the tablet can easily do dumb things in my hands.  I love my desk top PC for serious work.  I run multiple 27" screens.
 
I still like PC based resident software for design work, but my brief encounter with HomeSeer 3.0 left me a little bit intrigued by the flexibility of the browser based approach, though browsers are far from perfect.
 
Basically, I'm an old guy and I like to work at the PC, don't care much for laptops, don't like tablets except for their intended purpose of being very portable and I use two for that purpose.  iPhones are not good for anything except talking on, IMO.  I realize the youth of the world have a different view.  I don't do social media, but I like forums, such as this one.
 
BTW, one the reasons X-10 is still hanging in there is that it's simply and straight forward.  While the Z-Wave concept it great, some of the manufacturers are doing it a disservice with sloppy quality.  Programming Z-Wave is still a pain in the rear.  I see a lot of posts on forums about that issue.  I started with UPB with one switch to test and discovered I needed a neutral so it went back and I switched to Z-Wave.  Insteon doesn't meet my minimum quality standards though I know some users are doing fine with it.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Oh, and I meant to mention, we all would like to create a perfect experience for our customers. However, the reality is that this huge a product, with all the things it has to be able to do in order to meet the needs of the customers, it's just not possible without far greater resources. Just getting the functionality available is challenge enough, because it's so much work, and automation is such an open ended, complex problem. It would take many times more hours than that to then wrap it up into a perfect package that could foresee your every need and figure it out for you.
 
The simpler the product is, the simpler it is to write it in that shiny package. The larger it is, the problem grows exponentially. At some point, when people feel that the product is functionally everything required, then we can turn our eyes towards more streamlining. But, even as large and powerful as it is, we still aren't there yet. And of course the outside world continues to throw new requirements at us faster than we can implement them, which doesn't help.
 
That being said, we have been working hard to make it easier to set up. That's been the primary focus for the last year or more. However, doing that has required digging into a raft of dirty details that have be worked out first, such as all of this V2 driver stuff. Without standardized driver interfaces, we can't have an auto-magical system. So you have to put down pylons in the mud first, then start building on top of that. And we've been working hard at pylon building.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Dean, you've always been very open about the issues you face and I respect and appreciate that.
 
I think this discussion is not to complain so much about existing software, but to talk about what needs to happen to expand the user base.  We are all going to benefit when there are more people buying the products, both software and hardware.
 
I was thinking a few minutes ago about all of the software vendors being one man shows.  Elve and CQC fit that category, I believe HomeSeer pretty much does from a code writing standpoint.  If a large company got into it, they would assign the job to multiple coders, most probably not having any feel for HA and the result would end up being all marketing and not much performance.
 
OK Dean, you win on the X-10.  If I can make CQC work for me, I'll look into the Isy.  I'm aware that it's well liked, but frankly, when it started out as an Insteon device, I crossed it off the "serious player" list.

 

[pete_c]

@Deane,
 
Yup here too I consider myself an "old guy".  I do similiar with multiple large monitors for my home office and now my little project workbench and am not tethered to my cell phone nor any social web sites these days. 
 
That said having been on both sides of the business of IT and my age now; I do not ever mind vocalizing my opinion out loud relating to whatever no matter what the topic is relating to automation and software et al.  I am doing it more now; but have always been like that.
 
This forum and users and vendors here provide that environment freely which I really like.
 
So keep asking; keep writing about what you want.
 
I like that Dean is participating in this discussion.

 

[roussell]

I'm enjoying this topic as well. Deane I would add on the Insteon topic that if by-and-large you're not having a problem with X10, you won't have a problem with Insteon. I have been in the Insteon camp since the beginning and while there were some growing pains at first with the quality of the gear coming out of Smartlabs, I haven't had a single problem in years, quite literally. I too had a house that was X10 friendly, and rarely would have a dropped X10 signal which made the transition to Insteon much easier. I have since moved and now have a large mix (about 45-50 devices) of devices now and it all just works.
 
Not trying to talk you into switching, just offering a different point of view. 
 
Also, WRT Elve - even though it's changing, why are you considering switching? If everything is working and you're not looking to expand into hardware not currently covered with Elve's feature-set, why move at all? You might be able to ride the wave a while longer until it's either open-sourced or a more suitable replacement comes along.
 
Terry

 

[Deane Johnson]

@rousell
 
I can't do Insteon as I have some switch locations that don't have neutrals.  Z-Wave is the only one that can operate without a neutral.
 
I was excited when I heard that Elve was going open source and there would be individuals working on it.  Somehow, that's never happened and I suspect it won't at this point.
 
Yes, everything in Elve works great, but now I'd like to add Philips Hue lighting.  Elve, of course, has no drivers, which has sort of encouraged me to move on.

 

[pete_c]

Curious about your Hue lighting adds?

 

[NeverDie]

I was excited when I heard that Elve was going open source and there would be individuals working on it.  Somehow, that's never happened and I suspect it won't at this point.

Just what is the status of Elve?  http://codecoretechnologies.com/content/ says Elve 2.1 is available for download and free.  I had the impression from http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/25913-elve-to-be-discontinued/ that it would be open sourced.  Was it not open sourced and/or no individuals are working on it?