HA Software Options

[beelzerob]

"I've met C++ and you sir (CML) are no C++!"

CML strikes me as being far more like ADA than C++.

Well, I think comparing it to C++ is enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone who doesn't have what it takes to learn CML....so in that sense, it's a good comparison.

But ya, it'd kind of a C++ (OO aspect), Ada (syntax), java (classpathing) amalgum.

 

[ano]

I was just about to purchase HomeSeer, but there are some things about that I am not too happy about. It seems a little clunky and buggy. It's still OK, but before I take the plunge, are there better options out there? Cost is not really an issue. I do specifically want iPhone support so that narrows the list. I was thinking about looking into CQC, but it is quite a challenge to get started in that one and it totally confuses me.

I am looking for the "best" solution for iphone support. I want to do lighting, IR, thermostat, and camera control. I am willing to buy new hardware if need be. Cost is not as much of an issue, I just want something really solid and stable.

O.K. I'll withdraw the C++ remark. I should say the closest to WHAT I KNOW, but I admit to a rather limited scope of programming languages.

Anyway, why an ELK or HAI is a great addition to a program like HomeSeer or CQC really has to do with both what both do best, and reliability.

Controlling a house requires a combination or processing power, programability, lots of hardware control, and reliability. Any full system would combine both nice things like turning on a light when you enter a room, and high-reliability security things like calling the fire department when your home is burning down.

A panel is great at connecting to many hardware devices, like motion, door, and window sensors, and its great at never crashing and running on batteries when the power goes out, like whats common during a fire. But the panel uses an embedded processor, so its not the most powerful, or programmable. A PC is just the opposite. Connecting it to external hardware is difficult, it can't run 8+ hours on battery power and it has great programability. So many people combine a panel with a PC and HA software.

Of the two, I started with a panel, because home security, and notifying the fire department when my home is burning is the most important function. But once I have 64+ zones wired to my panel, why not use those motion sensors for home automation? Still today, I would never use a PC where life or death is involved.

You can get an I/O card and attempt to hook that do door and window sensors to make an alarm of some sorts, but I wouldn't recommend it. A panel is built for that task and a better choice, and it runs for 8+ hours without power.

 

[pete_c]

I remember having some fun with my home HA while staying in the UK for a couple of weeks a couple of years back. I liked to walk a lot there so would walk from the office to my "efficiency" every day typically calling my wife on the cell phone during my walk. (occasionally though used cabs - old fashioned ones - didn't use the tube too much though)

Late at night being bored would test out some events / TTS timed just right to her arriving from work at home....using my phone or laptop connection...using the motion sensors would create some unique scenarios and had a bit of fun...all within a subtle WAF...

 

[123]

... comparing it to C++ is enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone who doesn't have what it takes to learn CML....

... then Ada will cause cardiac arrest.

If I had to learn a new programming language, I'd hope it wouldn't be obscure. An obscure language has a limited supply of experts, examples, and reference materials ... and the opportunity to use it elsewhere. C++ is more like learning how to speak Spanish versus Portuguese (or Catalan).

Here are the search results on www.stackoverflow.com for the following languages:
Ada: 54
C++: 24, 228

Fortunately, you don't need to learn CML in order to use CQC. CML is only needed for driver development. Then, and only then, do you need to learn how to speak Catalan.

 

[Steve]

And its much easier to buy Rob a six pack and say PLEASE PLEASE

 

[aslamma]

Tried out J9AE. Wow, it is super intuitive and pretty easy to use. I REALLY like the feel of this program. Bad news is that my CM15a driver kept saying it had an error and various other bugs seemed to be present. I think it will take some time before this becomes a viable choice, but I could see it being a great solution down the road.

Tried out CQC. What a totally confusing piece of software that is totally unintuitive. That being said, their documentation is pretty good and I was able to get a test screen going. I deployed it to the iPhone client with no problem and got it going. The iPhone dropped the connection just like HSTouch does when you are running off battery power. It worked fine overnight plugged in though. The iPhone client seems much more feature rich and is continuously being updated. But in the end, Apple is really causing me problems here.

CQC, J9AE, and HomeSeer all seem to have their own advantages and disadvantages and are all pretty good programs. Of the three, CQC seems to be my cup of tea, but pretty confusing at the same time.

 

[drozwood90]

Ada....ewww....
'nuf said

 

[ano]

Yeah, if you are going to CQC, throw out everything you know about how a program should work, and go into it with a very open mind. Its the most illogical piece of software I've ever seen, but once you get the hang of it, it does seem to work well.

 

[aslamma]

The whole time I was thinking "you've got to be kidding me" while working in cqc. Just made no sense and seems overly complex to do simple functions. But it seems solid at the same time and I kinda think homeseer is a bit "hokey". Though hstouch is quite nice.

I am pretty interested in j9 though. It seems to be what HA needs, but realistically how far off is it?

 

[123]

... realistically how far off is it?

J9AE is in beta so one should be prepared to encounter a few errors and to report them to its author, John. He's been extremely receptive to everyone's input and J9AE improves with each new release. Its rapid progression over the past year is a good sign that the author has the time and stamina to see this thing through.

------

FWIW,
When comparing HA software, be sure to evaluate the quality of the available drivers. Ensure they accomplish precisely what you need; some drivers support a fraction of what a given device can do.

 

[ano]

The whole time I was thinking "you've got to be kidding me" while working in cqc. Just made no sense and seems overly complex to do simple functions. But it seems solid at the same time and I kinda think homeseer is a bit "hokey". Though hstouch is quite nice.

I am pretty interested in j9 though. It seems to be what HA needs, but realistically how far off is it?

It seems that John has done an excellent job with J9 but the question I would ask is will his interest stay peaked for the longhaul? Both CQC and HomeSeer are also both closely tied to one developer, but the different is that these products have a fairly large user community to keep the product moving along should something happen to the main developer.

If your set on J9, maybe try it for a month, see how good the support is, and move along from there. If it does most of what you need, there isn't any problem, but if you are relying on future upgrades, that is where long-term support becomes a bigger concern.

 

[aslamma]

The j9 support forum seems very inactive, I am quite surprised since the product looks very promising. In my tests it was so buggy though that it did not even look to be viable. I don't think I want to be a beta tester so while the curbside appeal is real nice for j9, I think cqc has it where it counts.

 

[ano]

Really you hit upon one of the big problems with Home Automation software. Sometimes the userbase is so small, that common problems aren't found and fixed, and it becomes a matter of convincing the author to fix it. Even with CQC, which of the three mentioned, has the best support in my opinion, its sometimes difficult to get fixes. This leads to an advantage I mentioned earlier, with CQC, you can see and modify the code for most drivers.

I happen to use a large Alpha LED sign in my kitchen to post events, news, weather, reminders, etc. CQC actually had a driver for it, but the driver only supported a betabrite sign because that is all the driver author owned. Because it was really just the two of us using the driver (I suspect), getting the driver author to add commands for my larger sign was unlikely, so with CQC I modified the driver to support my large sign myself. (Had the same problem under HomeSeer, but there you CAN'T modify a driver.)

The second frustration a small userbase can lead to is just problems going unfixed. For example, Text-to-Speech in CQC under Windows 7 just doesn't work. The CQC author knows that, he did attempt to fix it, but couldn't, so me as a user just gets stuck in a limbo state until more people come along wanting this feature to work, and it becomes a higher priority for the author to fix the thing or create a fix somehow. Since I HAVE to have text-to-speech for my system, I'm stuck on XP until enough others complain and a solution is found. For this problem, it seems like only a matter of time until this hits enough people where the problem will have to be fixed, but for some problems, that critical mass may never occur. The moral of this is, the more parts of a home control system that you yourself can control, the better. The more things that rely on other people, the more frustrating it can become.

Such fun as the life of a trend-setter.

 

[Steve]

Really you hit upon one of the big problems with Home Automation software. Sometimes the userbase is so small, that common problems aren't found and fixed, and it becomes a matter of convincing the author to fix it. Even with CQC, which of the three mentioned, has the best support in my opinion, its sometimes difficult to get fixes. This leads to an advantage I mentioned earlier, with CQC, you can see and modify the code for most drivers.

I guess it depends on the bug and how reproducible it is. I have to honestly say that Dean fixes bugs faster than any other software vendor hands down. The only possible difficulty I have seen is perhaps in a driver written by a user and they abandon ship, but...

I happen to use a large Alpha LED sign in my kitchen to post events, news, weather, reminders, etc. CQC actually had a driver for it, but the driver only supported a betabrite sign because that is all the driver author owned. Because it was really just the two of us using the driver (I suspect), getting the driver author to add commands for my larger sign was unlikely, so with CQC I modified the driver to support my large sign myself. (Had the same problem under HomeSeer, but there you CAN'T modify a driver.)

Yea, that's the sticky part but as you say at least you can modify it. I wanted Paging functionality in the Nuvo driver and while the author is still around and does a great job, I wanted it faster than he could do it so I just added it myself and now its part of the core that has been updated again several times since. It's HUGE to have the source to drivers. The other thing to mention is that drivers in CQC are sort of isolated. I mean even if a user who had no clue what they were doing put bad code in a driver it would likely not affect the core whereas in other system a rogue driver can take down the whole system.

The second frustration a small userbase can lead to is just problems going unfixed. For example, Text-to-Speech in CQC under Windows 7 just doesn't work. The CQC author knows that, he did attempt to fix it, but couldn't, so me as a user just gets stuck in a limbo state until more people come along wanting this feature to work, and it becomes a higher priority for the author to fix the thing or create a fix somehow. Since I HAVE to have text-to-speech for my system, I'm stuck on XP until enough others complain and a solution is found. For this problem, it seems like only a matter of time until this hits enough people where the problem will have to be fixed, but for some problems, that critical mass may never occur. The moral of this is, the more parts of a home control system that you yourself can control, the better. The more things that rely on other people, the more frustrating it can become.

Well, we all need to remember sometimes that CQS' market is the professional developer, DIYers are just 'privileged' (please don't twist that into a whole branch on how important DIYers are, I agree) to be able to buy the software and technically with no support. So it needs to be understood that things Pro's need will always get priority. If there are things that Pros need but there are no pros running W7 or having issues with it, then yea, unfortunately it sometimes gets bumped to lower priority if its not a quick fix.

 

[jwilson56]

I was just about to purchase HomeSeer, but there are some things about that I am not too happy about. It seems a little clunky and buggy. It's still OK, but before I take the plunge, are there better options out there? Cost is not really an issue. I do specifically want iPhone support so that narrows the list. I was thinking about looking into CQC, but it is quite a challenge to get started in that one and it totally confuses me.

I am looking for the "best" solution for iphone support. I want to do lighting, IR, thermostat, and camera control. I am willing to buy new hardware if need be. Cost is not as much of an issue, I just want something really solid and stable.

Well I guess I will toss my 2 cents in.....

If you look at my showcase blog on Cocoontech you will see my setup which consists of a six zone whole house music system, touchscreen interface, lighting control, security, weather and a host of other functions. For me I chose to use Netremote and Girder 5. They are from Promixis and are very stable. Netremote runs on the client side (Win32 and WM) and Girder acts as the home automation application. For the music player/database it uses JRMC which IMO is the best true multizone application out.

You can read up on it in my blog.

My setup does everything I want it to and I get a lot of compliments on it. To be quite frank I am not sure why so many other people shy away from Netremote and Girder 5. To me the learning curve doesn't seem any steeper than some other packages I have toyed with. I used to use Homeseer 2 (before HSTouch was released) and I just got tired of being a beta tester for an unstable application. My Girder 5 runs 24/7 for weeks without me touching it. It is lean and mean. I use it with an Elk, Ocelot and a ton of other hardware devices.

I am not going to be like some that say it is the one to beat all, like some I see on the forums. However I do believe that it has the capability to do pretty much anything you want it to. It has a lot of power. But like anything that is robust it also has a lot of things to wrap your head around. For me at less than $180 for the whole house pro versions of both packages with no update charges (within a major version change) it is also one of the cheapest to use.

I guess I am a bit tired of people whining about how hard it is. I personally don't think Netremote Designer is all that difficult to use. There are a lot of example skins to cut and paste from.

So just for your information.... take a look