HOME AUTOMATION SOFTWARE

[pete_c]

I've been a Homeseer user since the early 2000's (I don't remember anymore if I really started with Homeseer in the late 1990's). Sometime about 6-7 years ago installed an HAI OPII. They work together.

These days it more like an old shoe to me and as I am older now my tendencies to want change/experiment are less than they were 10 years ago.

IE: Today I still prefer my old shoes and have my wife "rebuild" them at whatever costs over new shoes.

It is kind of fine tuned now to what I want it to do and I guess I push it a bit with 18 or so serial connections and many repetitive events / variables / plugins. My house is a sandbox of sorts.

In the early 2000's and days of mobile GPRS remember being able to browse the web / go to my HS server and remote control the house driving the wife nuts in any part of the world/country I happened to be at the time.

Recently (last year or two) I've been beta testing HS after using the same version for years. So in one respect I don't want to change and another I push HS to see if I can break it. It hasn't broken yet on me. (like the old Mony Python skit at the restaurant).

 

[jwilson56]

Personally I am using Promixis products at the moment for my Now Playing project (see my blog) but will be looking into either Elve or Homeseer/HStouch when the snow starts to fly.

Are you jumping ship back to homeseer?
Is it the slow development or lack of features that is making you think this way?

Just want to know

Well I will continue to use Promixis for the moment. However I think that future development will be super slow or non existent. Not sure you have noticed but Rob is no longer around and Ron is busy with his new project.

I will look into using Elve or HSTouch and I am hoping either one of them will be as powerful as Netremote so I can duplicate my Now Playing skin. Most people totally underestimated Netremote's power and robust features. However the lack of Iphone or other new features will spell its doom.

As for which one I jump back to... hmm... I own a copy of Elve when it comes out... and I already own HS2 and would only have to get HSTouch and a couple of drivers for Homeseer so I have options that will not cost me too much to explore.

 

[gasbie]

ok guys, is homeseer a software based HA or a hardware based HA? Or do I need both to work?

 

[jwilson56]

HomeSeer is one of the most used home automation packages and has the most active message board of any of the automation packages. You can download a free 30 day trial ( http://www.homeseer.com/downloads ) and if you have any issues put in a help desk request or ask the message board here:
http://board.homeseer.com

Active yes... many are for problems or bugs.... LOL

But I would have to say HS2 is finally getting more stable than it was when I jumped ship where I couldn't get it to run for 48 hours without a crash. Seems to me they should be about ready to shove an alpha code HS3 out to its users and force them to upgrade cheaper now or pay big bucks down the road when it is at least a beta level.

Sorry if I have some bad feelings lingering but I dare say I am not the only one. I might go back to Homeseer but I still think they need to learn to respect their customer base. If I do look at HSTouch it will be interesting to see how robust it really is. Maybe by now it too is out of alpha level.

So Rupp you might be the biggest fan (or most loyal employee?) they have but there are many of us that have not forgotten the history of HST with the deleted posts and censorship of their forum and the mistreatment of plugin writers.

 

[pete_c]

HS has both a HW based (XPE) based box and pure software.

My latest HW (still on the shelf) is a lower powered mITX dual core CPU / 2-3 Gb of memory / 2 2.5" SATA drives in a Raid 1 setup powered by a mini-ITX intelligent automotive style PS all in a mini ITX box with a redundant 12VDC battery supply. I've tested it to work just fine with HS and I like the footprint. Another HS test box has been same mITX CPU MB in an 8"X8" very small footprint case.

 

[batwater]

I'm a CQC user but to be perfectly honest I don't think I would invest any $ in CQC right now. The company seems to be in a never ending tail spin and I'm not sure it is going to pull out. It is sad because I don't think any other software can really touch it's positives. There are other alternatives you really should look at first.

I'm not going to argue that point, because any prospective buyer needs to do their due diligence. But when Dean was thinking of closing down CQC, at least he was going to open source it. Now that there is some more interest in CQC from some prospective investors, Dean has delayed that decision to see how that all plays out.

So I'm confident that anyone getting CQC isn't going to be left high and dry regardless of what happens long term. I think the worse case scenerio is that someone pays for CQC today, only to have it go open source sometime in the future (and hence might be free to others in the future).

I won't argue the point either, however, there really are no guarantees with any company, look at Premise and the backing they had. I am a CQC user, I will stay a CQC user. For me it offered the greatest bang for the buck with the greatest flexibility meeting the requirements I had at the time I made the decision. (and still does) It too has a 30 day trial

Hardware comparability, e.g. drivers to interface between the core software and the disparate hardware you want to control. With CQC you get everything up front.
-SageTV Control
-Thermostat
-Lighting
-Weather
-AVR equipment
-Security (came later after decision was made)
-Media control
-Etc

There are many good choices. Test drive them all; consider that the up front $$$ cost is the smallest part of your investment, your largest investment you will make will be the time you put in. CQC has great support and an active community as well.

 

[Rupp]

HomeSeer is one of the most used home automation packages and has the most active message board of any of the automation packages. You can download a free 30 day trial ( http://www.homeseer.com/downloads ) and if you have any issues put in a help desk request or ask the message board here:
http://board.homeseer.com

Active yes... many are for problems or bugs.... LOL

But I would have to say HS2 is finally getting more stable than it was when I jumped ship where I couldn't get it to run for 48 hours without a crash. Seems to me they should be about ready to shove an alpha code HS3 out to its users and force them to upgrade cheaper now or pay big bucks down the road when it is at least a beta level.

Sorry if I have some bad feelings lingering but I dare say I am not the only one. I might go back to Homeseer but I still think they need to learn to respect their customer base. If I do look at HSTouch it will be interesting to see how robust it really is. Maybe by now it too is out of alpha level.

So Rupp you might be the biggest fan (or most loyal employee?) they have but there are many of us that have not forgotten the history of HST with the deleted posts and censorship of their forum and the mistreatment of plugin writers.

With complex software comes complex systems so yes any of our configuratons can crash but if you give the board a change we generally get all users back up and running. I'm not going to hash though the deleted posts here but there were good reasons for this and that user is now back in the HomeSeer store so we are all a happy family. come on back and give HomeSeer a whirl and if your not an Apple fan the new Android client was released today and so far it's not bad for a first release.

 

[Dean Roddey]

If you just count the shipped drivers, CQC ships with about 200 drivers. Of those, a small percentage are specialized things that don't actually talk to hardware, but that would still leave probably 180 actual devices/systems supports, which seems like a pretty good count to me, particularly when they are all available as part of the system price.

I would also say that we've added just a butt load of new stuff for the upcoming 3.4 version. The product has really reached a point where the functionality is really there. It's capable of a ridiculous amount of stuff. So we are really concentrating on usability stuff now, and a lot of what's in 3.4 are those types of usability improvements. But there's also some substantial new functionality as well. Moving forward to 3.5, more usability improvements and providing a layer of simplification over the exsting system for those folks who don't want to dig in so deep is going to be the major push.

We also support iPhone/IPad and Android clients now as well, via third party cilents that use our RIVA architecture.

 

[madburg]

Question, I will be shopping for HS soon. I am seeing how far/much you can do with a OPII on its own. I am having a bit of a hard time with there program logic. No emailing (SMTP) of any kind based on conditions (just hard to believe in this day and age). Are any of the products out there based on vb/vbscript (ex. If.. Then/ If... ElseIf.. Then, etc...) HA coding?

 

[justinm001]

I use girder and netremote. I looked and looked for HA software and didn't find anything close to what girder offers. It seems like it can do just about anything you could think of. Netremote is good but they've been too busy with other stuff for development and I'd like to find another software for tablets I can use that will work with new devices. Netremote has so many features and is awesome software but only works on windows devices but not winCE 6.0.

 

[TeleFragger]

im a HS user... years ago i was going to go with hal2000 but im not a programmer... so i need simplicity...

i have found homeseer to be pretty good (once past the cost) to do what i want... however it was getting tired of a $40 plugin for this and $40 plugin for that...
example... $40 for acrf plugin (310mhz w800 antennea) then they went to acrf2 plugin ($40 new or $30 for upgrade)
other than this being expensive I really like what HS does...
im slowly going to z-wave and i dont have any issues, however it seems all the betas are to fix some of the z-wave issues..

i run
x10 - most outlets, motions, light switches (23890w togglelinc 2 way switches)
z-wave - appliance, lamp modules, single outlets
concord 4 - alarm system using piperpilots free plugin
rfxcom - plugin but oregon temp sensors and bathroom scale with charting
cctv - im currently dabbling in on this... finally got whs, hs and cctv working - currently watching the Best Practices for CCTV Systems up here...


now a guy i work with (new guy) uses the HAI panel with cctv and the HAI built software... i have no experience on that...

 

[programmergeek]

All depends what you are trying to control. I like homeseer but I haven't used it since we do mostly HAI installs and it is not compatable, till it can do HAI it is off my list unless I have someone trying to retrafit an dumb alarm panel. Also hoomseer the driver devloper owns the driver so if they don't modify it all of a sudden it may not work, terrable for my busness if I installed it and 2 years later I get a call and have to tell the customer it will not work. CQC is quite good most people seem to go that way since it is basically compatable with everything. All depends what you are trying to control.

 

[Madcodger]

As noted, it does depend on what you're trying to do / control. I've been a HomeSeer user for years, and have both loved it and been frustrated by it. It is robust and has many different plugins, but this can leave you vulnerable to a plugin developer stopping support for a product. Sometimes HST takes over support for it, but sometimes they don't, or can't. IMO, this leaves them stuck in the role of a very good program for hobbyists, but not a technology that most installers appear to support, and not a program for those who want to do a one-time install and then just walk away. If you enjoy tinkering with your system and don't mind following the message board to stay current, it's a great product. If you want to set it and forget it, I'd think twice.

My biggest complaint is that they have fallen head over heels in love with Z-wave and most enhancements (and what appears to be a lot of bug fixes) are dedicated to that product line. For those of us using other technologies (I just sold a house full of Insteon and have some in the new house now) this leaves them open to us looking at other programs, which is the process I'm going through now.

BTW, appreciate all the good ideas for other software noted in this thread. Does anyone have suggestions for a Mac platform other than Indigo (which doesn't seem to play well with alarm systems from what I can understand). Don't want to hijack this thread, but perhaps Mac ideas could shed some additional light on the subject.