HA Newbie:CQC, Homeseer or other?

[allen363]

Hi All! Yep, another Newbie

My wife and I recently purchased a house with our 4 kids. My oldest is in a wheelchair due to cerebral palsey and my littlest is just 3 months old with a very active 4 year old and a curious 2 year old.

I am in the process of learning the best solution for our needs and am hoping that I can ask of everybody's good nature here to give me your input. I understand that everybody will have a different opinion, and that is great, but trying to sort all of this out on my own with the kids and work keeps me up too late at night and your knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Our house is finished with the exception of the basement and we have IPTV from AT&T/Uverse. I would like to be able to have an automation system that we can build on. My first goal is home security and then automation. Our cars have the homelink system to control the garage doors and has the ability to do the lighting and a gate (we don't have one). After security I would like to be able to integrate the IPTV into the network with our home automation system which should control lighting, HVAC, irrigation (with sensor to avoid on during rain), audio/video, and video surveillance. I should mention that the house came with an AudioTek intercom system that has a main panel in the kitchen and remotes in each bedroom.

I have no problem in purchasing a dedicated server if that is what it will take but I would like your input as to what hardware and software you would recommend to implement this system. I do prefer access via web (PC or PDA) or touch panel over a proprietary remote.

Thank you very much in advanced for any information you can provide.

Allen

 

[electron]

Hi Allen, congratulations on your new home, and welcome to CT!

I moved your post into a new topic, since it would allow people to focus on your specific goals, and avoid confusion.

You definitely came to the right place. In my opinion, you should focus on a hardware based solution for the 'core' of your needs. I would narrow the choices down to the HAI Omni platform, and the Elk M1. Each have their pro's and cons, but both are very solid platforms. Once you figured out the hardware solution, you could look at software to complement the system.

Is this going to be a hobby that you are willing to spend time on, or do you want something that offers this all out of the box? Would you be installing your own hardware, or were you planning on hiring someone?

There are many other questions, but let's see which direction you want to take this, before overwhelming you with more questions.

 

[TeleFragger]

Well you will find ALOT of information here..

I will just give my own side of what i have done..

Mine started out years ago with x10 purchase from x10.com

few lamp modules, appliance modules, x10 mini controller (plugs into outlet and controls x10 codes)
I then moved on... purchased Homeseer after xmas as I had our house inside automated..... the mini controller was nice so when we got home.. plug it in and turn everything on.....

with homeseer... I use it to control the outside lights for holidays, push a button to turn on inside holiday stuff....

control my sons bedroom light, basement lights, crawl space light, utility room light and garage light - outlets and other devices.....

however x10 maybe cheap..... but getting it solid takes some work..

I have a 240v dryer coupler
2 phase coupler repeater near my electic panel

then had to find all the devices that were sucking down the signal...
2 apc ups's and a isobar 6 port surge protector......

I have 0 filters and have my x10 nice and stable...

I use ds10a door window sensors and motion sensors to turn on and off the garage, utility room and crawl lights...
im going to add them to my hallway, foyer and front porch....to turn off lights after a set amount of no movement.....

my goal was electricity costs... and I did lower it too!!!!!

during xmas use all 15 lamp modules, 20 appliance modules and a few x10 double outlets.....


I am getting ready to start the z-wave route.. for thermostat control and maybe lights.... not sure yet.....

if I had to redo it all... as it seems a good place for you to start...

I would highly recommend the elk m1 gold (if in the budget)
I only say that as I moved into a 8 year old 2400sq ft house that seems impossible to run wires anywhere to the second floor...

so I went the wireless route...

I have a wireless alarm from ADT... I have just purchased everything to get rid o fthem....
I bought the Concord 4 alarm... everything to replace my panel and stuff for $300ish....
now I just need to call ADT and cancel with them.... I purchased the superbus 2000 automation module as someone on homeseer.com is going to make a plugin.... hopefully soon!!!!!!!!!!
but there are other alarms that are automation friendly.....

my homseeer setup consists of the following:

Software
Windows XP Pro
Homeseer 2.0
Various Homeseer Plugins some free and some purchased

RF hardware
W800 310mhz antennea for DS10a door window sensors and x10 motion sensors (will most likely change over to rfxcom)
RFXCOM 433mhz usb antennea for oregon weight scale and THC-138 wireless temperature sensors (10 of them)

PC control hardware:
Smarthome 1132U USB x10 power line controller - works better than the 2 other cm11a I have had

Misc
x10 lamp modules
x10 appliance modules
x10 togglelinc light switches
x10 motion detectors
x10 motion security sensors
x10 flood lights

I know there is more out there.....


but as I said if you have the money.. the elk m1 gold is a great place to start....

enough of my rambling...

all in all...

see everything you want to automate and write it down...
have a game plan and figure out EVERYTHING..
then we can point you into the right direction...

seems Z-wave is getting to be a hot item and very reliable.....

~Jeff

 

[Steve]

Welcome to CT Allen. My advice would be pretty much the same as Dan's to start with a good hardware security panel with some automation and put your critical stuff on it, then as you grow and figure out more what you want to do, add a server with some software to 'fill in the blanks'. I have a little bit of experience with UVerse and I was curious about how you wanted to integrate that with your system.

 

[allen363]

Thanks everybody for such a nice welcome

From what I have gathered here and in my limited research it seems that I should start with either the ELK M1 Gold or the HAI Omni Pro or Omni Pro II and then go from there. I am leaning toward the Cortexa 7202SV due to it's ability to network via Windows Media Center. My wife is Ukrainian and I am interested to see if I may be able to network the Uverse system with the Windows Media Center to download Ukrainian content to play for her (she misses her holiday films).

May I have your opinions (good, bad and ugly) regarding the ELK and HAI systems? Given that I am going to try to self install and I understand networking plus my second floor will have to be wireless would all play a role in the best decision.

Thank you very much for your valued input my new friends.

Allen

 

[jwilson56]

Welcome to the forum.


I have expanded my setup over the years and migrated from one system to another over the years. Take a look at my showcase and you might get some ideas. You will see some of that migration as I changed the look of my skin and added hardware like the Elk. But right now I have a 6 zone 1500+ watt true multizone whole house audio system with touchscreen clients, security, lighting, weather, Caller ID as well as a bunch of other home automation tasks.

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=2444

 

[IVB]

I personally went with the Elk due to superior & direct access to customer service, indeed even Spanky (aka David), their chief engineer, is on this forum. That type of access is worth hundreds of dollars in avoided psychiatrist bills alone.

There's a PDF & a webinar in my sig about setting up Elk & CQC to accomplish HA goals, but like the others I think the software decision should be made last; first get the hardware setup, you can easily muck with software later.

 

[fdiddy]

Did you invent this title, or did you see it somewhere? This is very strange! It's like deja vu all over again.

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=11296

 

[Steve]

Dan said in his post he created a new topic. I imagine the same title came over from your thread where this was originally posted.

 

[allen363]

Did you invent this title, or did you see it somewhere? This is very strange! It's like deja vu all over again.

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=11296

No deja vu. I'm not that creative I'm afraid. I had posted to another thread and Dan (Electron) kindly made it a new thread to avoid confusion and help me, thank you kindly Dan.

Thanks,
Allen

 

[allen363]

I personally went with the Elk due to superior & direct access to customer service, indeed even Spanky (aka David), their chief engineer, is on this forum. That type of access is worth hundreds of dollars in avoided psychiatrist bills alone.

There's a PDF & a webinar in my sig about setting up Elk & CQC to accomplish HA goals, but like the others I think the software decision should be made last; first get the hardware setup, you can easily muck with software later.

WOW IVB!!! Your system looks very much like what I envision for my house as time progresses.

You guys have been a big help and I appreciate it greatly. I'll take all of your advice and start with the hardware and then move on from there. I'll start with the ELK M1 system.

Any comments regarding Cortexa?

Thanks,
Allen

 

[IVB]

Dunno much about the cortexa system, but jesus was the sales guy seriously uptight when a bunch of us got together @EHX last year for drinks. Generally speaking, I dislike closed systems like Cortexa; i don't see the point. If i'm getting a closed system, i'll get an AMX/Crestron/Convergent.

 

[allen363]

Dunno much about the cortexa system, but jesus was the sales guy seriously uptight when a bunch of us got together @EHX last year for drinks. Generally speaking, I dislike closed systems like Cortexa; i don't see the point. If i'm getting a closed system, i'll get an AMX/Crestron/Convergent.

:wacko: Did something change? On their website they show all of the HAI and ELK hardware and others that are compatible to be controlled by thier system.

 

[IVB]

Sorry, I was unclear. They can control some other stuff, but you're forced into using their controller, most of their product line. Plus, if you look at that list of products with current drivers, it's what - maybe 2 dozen? CQC has close to 200 drivers, and you can pick/choose the hardware you want. For audio, they control, well, the NuVo. CQC has boatloads. For the server, I put CQC on my SageTV server as it's already on 24x7, so why do I need a 2nd one?

It's that freedom to pick what hardware you want that I personally feel is important, and not from some tiny list.

Here's an architecture diagram of my setup, so you get a feel for what my system is like. I'm pretty sure this is not possible with Cortexa, at least without serious programming.

I did all of this without writing a single line of "code", almost the whole damn thing was done using point&click. That level of accessibility allows you to create a custom-fit solution without spending a bazillion hours learning arcane syntax or languages to accomplish your goals.

 

[jlegault]

One of the biggest disappointments in my past 4 years of home automation has been Homeseer. In itself, it's an OK product, however .NET and Windows are not up to the task of 99.99% uptime. Very brittle, and you will end up pulling your hair out at some point.

My recommendation is to push as much logic and hardware control into the embedded stack of an ELK or HAI system as you can, or go with Control4, or something bred from the hardware layer up to be an automation system. I don't know how many times my wife has had to "reboot" the lighting control system (homeseer).

Ideally, someone needs to build an out of the box solution on top of Linux. CQC, Homeseer, Cinemar...someone..anyone.