AutomatedOutlet said:
What are you going to have the PC doing that you can't do in the Elk?
Martin,
I'll be picking up an M1 soon to play with and test but there are lots of things in my HA setup that still can't be done using the Elk alone:
*TTS announcements... yeah the Elk can talk from the library and tell me the temp or if a door is open, but PC based TTS is an important part of my system. Personalized greeting based on date and who is home or not home provide reminders and status of lots of stuff like weather conditions, who is calling, etc.
*RFID - So much of my HA system now relies on iAutomate RFID that I would be lost without it.
*VR - I've got a really sophisticated whole house mic installation that can cancel noise and also sound from sources such as background music and the TV. The Mic gate status is tracked so HS knows which room someone is speaking from and can adjust devices in that rooom with simple VR commands like "lights on" intead of having to say "kitchen lights on", etc.
A subset of VR is the phone based VR possible with HS & HAL... I don't use this much, but when I do it works and is more intuitive than having to remember number codes to punch in as the Elk requires.
*IR Control
*Integration with contol of home stereo/theater gear or Media Player, etc for playback of MP3's
*Email notification - Maybe the Elk can do this with the Ethernet module?
To sum it up, the Elk can make sure the doors are locked and the lights are out when you arm the system on your way out the door.
With HomeSeer in my setup, I can just walk out the door (with my RFID tag) knowing that if no one else is home the HA system will arm the security system, lock the doors, turn out the lights, make sure the TV is off, the music is stopped, etc. It provides another whole level of convienence at the cost of additional complexity.
I'm have over 60hrs invested in trying to convert my HS v1.7 system to HS2 and have now backtracked to my v1.7 system. Like Rupp (but not as vocal) I'm a big fan of HS and am certiain the problems with HS2 will be worked out in the near future. I feel my problems are trying to upgrade a complex system and expect that a new install starting with HS2 would be much more successful.
Having said all that, most of what I use HS for is not something that I would install or try to support for a customer. I'm just getting started with the business, but planning the installs to be based around an M1, maybe branching out to add PC funtionality ontop of this for some more complex installs? If this is the case, it will probably be the HST Pro-100 which runs imbedded XP on solid state drives.
If I could get iAutomate RFID capability added to the Elk, I think I could sell a lot of this stuff!
Cheers,
Paul