Hardware v Software Controller

[Guy Lavoie]

I can understand upstatemike's desire for a "single brain" to keep things managable, but having 2 or 3 brains can be ok if each one has a well defined purpose. Something like security is best served with a dedicated box like an M1, but it can still have all the security related HA programming without too much hassle, such as turning on the lights when in pre-alarm, any light shows when in alarm, etc. Anything more HA related would best be controlled by the main general purpose controller. A similar approach could be used for HVAC. The best thing is when these 2 or 3 brains can communicate with each other with well implemented protocols that allow reliable and fast communications (ie: not use something like X10 to talk to each other!).

Like BSR, I use the Ocelot for pretty well all my conditional logic stuff. I have it:

- Run the lived-in routine when the alarm is armed.

- Take care of keeping the pool filled correctly.

- Stop and start the pool filter at proper time based on month, with manual override flag and acknowledge routines.

- Execute any lawn watering schedule.

- Timed macros such as controlling outside lights.

- Stop the central vac and ring the doorbell again if it was running when someone rang at the door.

- Turn off the wqter heater during certain time ranges if the cost of electricity is at the high rate.

- Macros for turning on the home theater system to watch cable, DVD, VHS, etc. with tracking of on/off status of devices without discrete commands.

- Lighting macros triggered by minicontrollers or X10 keypads, with secondary settings if the signal is sent again before a timeout value.

- Automatically turning off bathroom fan after a certain delay.

- Tracking level of heating oil tank.

- Tracking all HVAC settings in RCS TR-40 thermostat and allowing any changes from a PDA based utility.

- Display of inside and outside temperatures and humidity on PDA app and a dedicated TV channel, as well as status of hi/low electricity rate, heating oil level, sunrise/sunset times, etc.

- Send text messages to RCS TR-40 for things like taking out the garbage, changing the furnace filters, etc.

- Send and receive commads/data with phone system IVR. Phone system can trigger macros for home theater, lighting, etc. Can also announce temperatures, alarm status, etc. (alarm functions will expand with the M1 when it will be installed).

- Other things that I'm probably not thinking of right now...

 

[DavidL]

I didn't see a choice in the poll for Software primary, hardware secondary, so voted hardware crtical / software all else. I use MainLobby / a little bit of Homeseer / ELK M1 for thermo and security.

Definition of Primary gets blurred too. From a quantity of events and tracking etc, definately software primary. From a crticality, more weight on the M1. But then the software tracks same too as backup on these functions.....gets blurry.

 

[upstatemike]

To clarify: I don't mind having critical subsystems that are primarily designed to operate on their own (fire panel, phone system, music server, etc.) having their own brains. What I am tired of is having core automation functionality spread across several platforms (brains) such that they all need to be up and in sync for things to work, and you have to touch 2 or more systems to set up basic tasks.

In other words I don't mind my core automation system talking to many systems I just don't want it to BE many systems.

To clarify further; by core automation I mean:

Lighting
HVAC
Hard wired inputs
Relays
Voice announce
CID
Telephone paging
Remote access via internet
Serial I/O
On site weather station interface
Internet weather forecasts
VR
Cheap annunciators and basic user interfaces (such as RCS cheap RS-485 keypads)
IR

Non-automation items that I don't mind having a separate system for:
Fire
Security
Phone
Music / Media