Hello from Florida

[jingai]

Hello all. I'm a poster over on Perceptive Automation's forums mostly, and recently registered here. My HA set up is all Insteon with (IIRC) 39 devices, including switches, outlets, motion sensors, garage door sensor, thermostat, etc. It's all running really smoothly with Indigo on a Mac mini that doubles as our HTPC (with XBMC driving that).

All in all it's a really great set up, and it's really cool how flexible it all is. My next project will be to tackle the alarm system, but we're on a tight budget at the moment, so it might have to wait. Oh, and it'd be lovely to hook up the pool/spa to the system too, but again, so expensive The pool and air conditioning industries both really rape the customer as much as they can get away with due to lack of competition..

Anyway, nice to meet you all. Hopefully I can add some useful contributions B)

-j

 

[JonW]

Welcome!

 

[Steve]

Welcome to CocoonTech! What part of Fla are you in?

 

[drozwood90]

I'm just guessing...but the raping, probably not ALL due to lack of competition. Some, most, maybe...

But keep in mind, they are (esp. the pool stuff) working with combining electricity and water. There's a lot of certifications, testing, etc. they must pass. So, I'm sure there's a pretty steep cost in that.

Oh and WELCOME!

--Dan

 

[jingai]

Welcome to CocoonTech! What part of Fla are you in?

Central, east coast.

-j

 

[jingai]

I'm just guessing...but the raping, probably not ALL due to lack of competition. Some, most, maybe...

But keep in mind, they are (esp. the pool stuff) working with combining electricity and water. There's a lot of certifications, testing, etc. they must pass. So, I'm sure there's a pretty steep cost in that.

Oh, I know, but most of the reason it irks me is that I've yet to find a single contractor that is forthcoming about what work they're *actually* going to do, or even have done when it's all over. I just always get the feeling that this dishonesty translates to ripping me off.. lol

It could be due to lack of knowledge about the work they're doing (especially when it comes to electronics) or simply trying to pad profits, but either way it's dishonest.

Mostly I'm still aggravated that I dumped $1500 trying to fix our pool heater (replacing the "brain" 4 times) only to give up on the thing.. and there is so little technical information available to us as consumers that it's really hard to figure out if they're doing the right thing or not to fix the issue..

-j