Hello from MS

rhosch

Member
Seems I can make a post or two my first day, so why not. Longtime AVSforum poster (Bogus) who is about to (finally) start on the dream home construction.

Heavily considering RadioRa2 lighting. Interested in home automation and keeping it local with something like cqc or myserver. Need to research security systems and camera systems. My builder defaults to a local security dealer who provides discounted installation and hardware during construction for a multiyear monitoring contract. Sounds like local version of ADT to me. Doubt I'll be interested and need to see what my options are.

First question that may get no views in this hello forum... if I use rr2 lighting, cqc automation, is there any need for a security panel as sophisticated as the EM1G?
 
Welcome. The HAI and Elk panels also do automation since they can control lights and similar devices with the right accessories. Some use the automation security panels in addition to CQC (or similar) keeping more mission critical items on the more robust security panel. While CQC can be quite reliable (computer/VM only runs CQC, automatic updates turned off, etc), the Elk will likely be a little more reliable since it seems to never change and is built to be mission critical. Then CQC could be used for most other items such as interfacing with home entertainment (TV, stereo, etc) as well as the lighting.

You can also do some limited things just with RadioRa2 such as turning on/off lights on a schedule and responding to motion sensors. But unlike Homeworks, RadioRa2 doesn’t have any conditional programming so it is pretty dumb, which is where you’ll need CQC or Elk/HAI to give you more programming flexibility.
 
If you have RA2, you could buy an absolute minimum Elk for security I guess. As I understand it, the Elk is much more layered than, say, the Omni in terms of options, so the baseline wouldn't have a lot you wouldn't need. 
 
You could also get something like the DSC IT-100, which we also support. It's a dedicated security system. But, you may at some point find yourself wanting some I/O or sensors and such, and you could just add those options to the Elk at that point, and CQC can see them via the Elk.
 
BTW, does MS stand for Microsoft or Mississippi or something else altogether?
 
We have many dealers and DIY users that implement myServer as a front end and rules engine ontop of ELK.  They use the ELK more for Input / Output to real time display and trigger rules within myServer.
HAI (now gone), Honeywell, DSC and others can be used similarly.  But the ELK is the one that has best integration capability and rock solid performance.
 
Back
Top