Home Automation Dilemmas

[bseal]

I have always loved home automation. Sadly the realities of being a college student haven't allowed me to dabble much in my hobby. I do have a basic control4 system which I've loved, mainly because i stumbled upon the programming software which allows me to tinker a little.

My brother is building a house, which I wired low level for. I hardwired for:

Alarm (door & Window sensors)
Intercom (cat 5 to each location)
Surround sound (7.1 for 2 different Loacations)
TV for all rooms (all locations received 1 coax, 2 cat6, 1 cat5, and the 3 Main TV got HDMI)
Data (2 cat 6 for all potential networking devices).
Conduit (my brothers budget was my geeky imagination's worst nightmare, lucky i talked him into future proofing with Conduit to critical locations)

All of these cables run to a central basement location.

As much as i like control4, i hate that i cant integrate other technologies with it(X10, Z-Wave, UPB, INSTEON etc..)

So for my brother I looking for advice on setups that will allow me to use a Non-IR remote to control all the components (mostly IR components, 1 or 2 Serial) located in the Central basement Location. One of the reasons i like Control4 so much is its ease of plugging IR emitters into the controller, sticking them on the Device and being "line of sight" free. The only home theater remotes I've found that can accomplish this is z-wave...

Also, from my research I've really liked the Elk M1 Gold, for security / automation. Excuse my ignorance but is it possible to run IR emitters through the Elk somehow?

Sorry, I seem to be all over the place with my questions. Basically I want to see how others are doing this, or what the suggest...

 

[electron]

Welcome to CocoonTech!

As much as I like and use UPB (great article about UPB), I think Z-Wave might be your best choice here. Remotec is currently working on a Z-Wave to IR gateway, which might satisfy your IR needs. Another option is going the Global Cache route, which include wireless products such as the iTach product line. There are also IR gateway products for UPB and Insteon I believe, but not sure how reliable they are.

The ELK M1 Gold or HAI OmniPro II are your best choices when it comes to home security & automation controllers, but keep in mind that they have some limitations dealing with Z-Wave. They rely on the Leviton VRC0P Z-Wave interface (which basically allows you to control Z-Wave devices via ASCII commands), which currently doesn't support Beaming technologies, which are used by devices such as the Schlage and Yale door locks. Leviton is working on a replacement for this device, which will include support for this, and should be released by the end of the month.

It might also be worth taking a look at a dedicated home automation controller since the ELK is a security controller first, and home automation 2nd, meaning you might run into some other limitations (rule space, no scripting support, etc.).

Z-Wave: Mi Casa Verde Vera 2
INSTEON: ISY-99
UPB: Web Mountain Technologies Remote UPB Controller, PCS Mi LightStyle

If you don't mind a PC based system, then also take a look at HomeSeer, CQC, Elve, etc. (make sure you verify it will support your choice of hardware).

As for ELK/IR, you might be able to accomplish this with an ELK/Global Cache combo. I personally have done this with my ELK M1 and an ADI Ocelot, while relying on wired IR blasters/emitters to get the IR signal to the device.

 

[kertofer]

Currently I am a Homeseer user and it has been a very positive experience for me. I am currently only using a couple of subsystems on it, Z-Wave and X-10 (Mainly just RF and using events to link those devices to Z-Wave devices) but I plan to interface it with my security system, put in some t-stats and a lot of home monitoring over time. They also have an appliance that you can get if you are not a PC person.

I also have my Sonos (Whole house Audio system, absolutely fantastic system) interfaced through it so I can control all of that via my iPad or touchscreens and am in the process of doing the same with my IR control via Global Cache units so I can ditch my remotes!

If you are looking at the Elk a lot of people interface that through Homeseer as well, I believe Dan does, and from all the reading I have done the Elk is a very highly praised system.

 

[fresno51]

All of these cables run to a central basement location.
As much as i like control4, i hate that i cant integrate other technologies with it(X10, Z-Wave, UPB, INSTEON etc..)

How many Watts shall it consume? 100W, 200W or more ?

 

[etc6849]

If you're trying to spend less than Control 4 (which is hard to do as Control4 offers good bang for the buck), I would also recommend using Global Cache's GC-100 or a few of the new iTach products. These will allow you to have IR to IP, RS232 to IP, relay contacts to IP etc...

I would also choose one of the many PC based control options. Premise is the one I use and it's completely free and 100% stable: http://www.cocoontech.com/wiki/Premise. Premise is as powerful or more so than the solutions that cost money (Homeseer) and allows an unlimited amount of customization or you can use wizards to build basic device drivers.

Premise will be able to talk to the GC100's over the network; control anything over IP, RS232 or IR; and automatically generate a nice web interface for you.

For RF remote options, some cheap ideas are the X10 palm pads for lighting (up to 16 buttons on/off button sets with dim/inc). X10 RF is very reliable (in contrast to the original X10 over power line). X10 also makes a couple RF media remotes that work with Premise. You can pick up all of this stuff for under $5 on ebay.

If you want to spend more money and have a nice (non-Chinese made) RF control solution that is completely customizable, I would recommend the URC MSC-400 base station used with several MX-900 remotes. The MSC-400 based stations allow you to have custom RS232 strings based on soft-key or hard-key input on the MX-900 remotes. I use the base station to integrate several MX-900 remotes into my Premise setup.

There's also the option of using anything with an internet browser to control things through Premise (and this will be cheaper than the URC solution), but you won't have hard buttons You can also create custom flash, html, SOAP, etc sites to control things through Premise.

EDIT: to answer your Elk questions, the Elk M1G isn't really designed to control media or a home theater (that's not to say it's not possible). I use the Elk M1G integrated with Premise and it works great for security and occupancy tracking.

 

[JimS]

The correct link to premise wiki is:
http://www.cocoontech.com/wiki/Premise

(no period at the end)

There is also misterhouse.
http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/
You should be able to run this under linux on a low power router and very flexible. Also runs on windows. But it has a steep learning curve, especially if you don't already know perl.

 

[Gearhead]

Also, from my research I've really liked the Elk M1 Gold, for security / automation. Excuse my ignorance but is it possible to run IR emitters through the Elk somehow?

It's fairly simple to integrate IR through the Elk M1....as long as you use an IR base station that has an ascii serial port. I use a Xantech XTR39 to control UPB lighting simply by programming text strings into the remote, pushing them through the serial port to an Elk XSP and then using a Rule in the M1 to trigger the UPB lighting event.