Homeseer and HAI

[dgreene]

All, 
 
I've been an avid HAI fan/user for years, and have an OMNI II Pro. I bought a new house in Dec 2015 and decided to automate it top to bottom. I use UPB for ALL internal and external lighting, Zwave for thermostats and Schlague door locks and 2 Linear garage door controllers, and x10 for christmas lighting (because i had a ton of modules from my previous home), and IP cameras. (and have spent a small fortune)
 
To date, i've been unable to get the omni and the zwave to play together because of the new zwave protocol and Leviton's lack of ability to support it...and don't get me started on remote access via iPhone app without a static IP.  
 
I even moved to the VeraEdge for z-wave under the premise that it will connect to the OMNI via a plugin, which i found much later that it will not allow the omni to control the thermostats - and thus causes the plugin to crash...so that never worked.  So i have an app for the omni, and an app for the vera...not ideal.
 
I've been considering moving away from the Omni being the "HUB" of the system and maybe move to the HomeSeer system.  By what i've read, it will integrate with the Omni, and take over the brains of automation control and let everything play together better and have one app to control it all.
 
My question is - has anyone tried this?  If so what all will I need to make this work?  Will my existing UPB and X10 pims work with HomeSeer HomeTroller S6 PRO, or do i have to buy something different.  I think i'll also need the HomeSeer Z-NET Remote Z-Wave Plus Interface to program and manage the zwave devices but not sure.
 
 
Im open to suggestions - and i'd like this thing to finally "just work" and stop spending money on it!
 

 

[JonW]

If it were me, I'd move away from Zwave for the locks and thermostat and use Zigbee.  HAI supports them both flawlessly.  I've thought of doing a software based hub several times, but there really isn't much to gain for me that the OPII can't do natively.

 

[LarrylLix]

ISY994i supports Zwave, X10 and Insteon but not your UPB.
 
I have no Zwave but from what I am hearing, the ISY994i ties many of the Zwave incompatibilities together, much better, by reports from people coming from the Vera and Zwave fiasco.
 
I would be surprised if, between the Network Module and the REST interface, the ISY994 would not interface/extend to any UPB hub/bridges in use.

 

[dementeddigital]

I believe Pete_c uses an Omni Pro in conjunction with Homeseer.  He probably has some good insight.
 
If it were me, I'd look at doing low-level, basic stuff on the Omni Pro (since they are so reliable), and add higher-level, "nice to have" stuff with Homeseer.  Basic stuff to keep on the Omni Pro might be monitoring and control of things like lights and notifications relating to security, anything relating to fire safety or gas detection, and property protection (like leak sensors and control of water valves, etc.)  You could then offload "convenience" things to Homeseer.

 

[pete_c]

++ what JonW mentions above.
 
Here using an OmniPro 2 with X10 (the JV Engineering way), UPB, Z-Wave-VRCOP and an HAI Zigbee ZIM.
 
Homeseer 3 (X2) talks to everything except for ZIgbee right now.   I do have 4 other combo touchscreen controllers today that talk both ZWave and Zigbee. 
 
Testing Homeseer 3 lite and recently moved it from the RPi2 to testing on a Pine64/2Gb machine (which by the way runs circles around the RPi) and a Xi3 Xi5A which also runs circles around any RPi.  The bigger HS3 Pro box running Ubuntu 64bit is running on an iSeries Intel CPU with 16 Gb of memory.  The base LAMP server is also doing Win Server VMs to do some other HS3 stuff.
 
I am biased about Homeseer because I have been using it since 1998 and can do just about anything these days with it automation wise. 
 
I compliment the OP2 stuff with Homeseer taking automation up a notch but not dependant on HS for the basic heartbeat automation of the house if that makes sense?
 
The thermostat today here is a serially wired device to the OmniPro 2.  The dependency on it is that it works 100% all the time (have had WAF issues) and it will never be connected wirelessly nor will it ever be dependant on a cloud service.  If I were though to connect wirelessly to the OP2 panel I would utilize Zigbee rather than Z-Wave. 
 
IE: if Homeseer is OFF; the base automation works just fine.  IE: I have in place Omnitouch in wall screens here which my wife prefers to utilize over my 16 Homeseer touch screens cuz she is afraid to break the house.
 
I have though NEVER wanted to use Z-Wave / Zigbee as an end all means of automation.  Do not like wireless and never liked the design implementation of Z-Wave.  That is me.  I have tested much of all that Zigbee wireless everything over the last few years. (PIRs, water sensors, door sensors, et al).
 
I do have the two types of HAI wireless controllers (for testing) and only connected one FOB to one of them.  It worked fine.  Nothing else is connected today.  I didn't have a need for any wireless sensors.  BUT if I did I would use the standard wireless to security panel sensor over any Zigbee / ZWave wireless whatever.
 

 
I prefer to do it the a la carte way using multiple protocols / controllers and a dash of automation software to get to where I want to be.  (IE: use Kinect, Amazon Echo and Alexa app today - it is wiz bang stuff but not dependent on it for anything - that is me).
 
Will my existing UPB and X10 pims work with HomeSeer HomeTroller S6 PRO?
 
Personally switched OS's running Homeseer.  IE: Homeseer 2 ran in Wintel server.  Homeseer 3 runs in Linux and works fine with UPB and X10.  X10/UPB today is not really supported by Homeseer and has gone 3rd party even though the old HS2 UPB/X10 plugins were ported over to HS3.  I have no issues running both with Linux today.
 
I think i'll also need the HomeSeer Z-NET Remote Z-Wave Plus Interface to program and manage the zwave devices but not sure.
 
I am sort of doing this with an RPi2 / GPIO Z-Wave me card / POE connected RPi2 today mounted in the attic (well too testing UPB/CM11A/1-wire on it remotely connected to the mothership today).
 
Z-Net talks to both Wintel / Linux based HS3 motherships.  BUT it doesn't talk Zigbee, UPB, X10 today.  You can modify it though to do this if you wanted to.
 
OR
 
write a HS plugin to a multiradio automation hub removing the fat from it (cloud stuff - reverse engineering it repurposing it) and turning it in to a pure wireless automation controller. 

 

[ano]

I use an Omni Pro II, UPB and Zigbee and its very reliable.  I use a Zigbee Omnistat2 and that works great. I started with Zigbee Kwikset locks, and they were OK but not great. I've switched to Zigbee Yale locks and for me they are much much better. The advantage with Zigbee is you can also use other Zigbee devices to fill in some gaps where UPB don't exist. For example, you can find GE Quirky light bulbs and Quirky outlets that work well.  Quirky went bankrupt but you can still find devices out there cheap.
 
I used Homeseer V2 with the Omni Pro II.  That is a way to go, but for me having an added PC added more functionality, but it also was much more maintenance for me as well.  I decided to drop the extra PC and just use the Omni and it does all I need. When I thought about it, the extra things Homeseer did weren't really that important to me, and I like the 100% reliability of just the Omni as opposed to the 90% reliability of Homeseer and the Omni.

 

[pete_c]

++Ano relating to software automation reliability.
 
Here though always trying to break HS3 these days pushing it a bit and automation is a hobby here.  HS3 runs way better today on Linux than it did on Windows servers of yesteryear.  That is my opinion today.
 
The HAI OP2 plugin today runs fine on the RPi2 and the RPi2 can be installed inside of the HAI can if you wanted to.  You can even just run the plugin on the RPi2 and connect it to Homeseer via a wireless / wired connection.  Currently though the HAI plugin supports only one panel.  Personally here do not have much space left inside of my HAI can such that I went to playing with a OpenWRT microrouter inside of the can to do some basics with the OP2 via network and serial connections (and a tiny microrouter with RTC battery).
 
If you wanted to you can install a thin tablet on the inside door to the panel that will do anything sans a PC these days. (remote management/local management / PCA management stuff).
 
I have tested my tabletop embedded wintel HS3 touchscreens running via an IPSec anywhere connection on the internet and it works well these days relating to a portable console that can be utilized anywhere.
 
Got in to automation of the irrigation stuff here over 10 years ago. 
 
Relating to irrigation automation stuff here originally started with mcsSprinklers / Rain8Nets replacing the dealer installed RainBird system over 10 years ago.  mcsSprinklers was running on HS2.  Before HS3 came out worked with the author of mcsSprinklers to port it over to Linux/mono on a Seagate Dockstar (which I purchased a bunch of after seeing a post here on Cocoontech).  Also tested the software on PogoPlugs - but the pogoplugs were too big and really didn't fit inside of my rainbird box.
 
Today running fine with the old Seagate Dockstar almost embedded Linux/MCSprinklers.  Years now and it keeps ticking just fine inside of the Rainbird housing along with the two Rain8Nets giving me up to 16 zones of irrigation.  It has Internet weather and Davis Vantage Pro connectivity.  Well too using digital rain sensors that will turn on with just fog.
 
Never touch the irrigation these days.  It is working just fine as it is.  I can also remote it via the internet / cell phone /wireless hand held device but never do these days.
 
MCSprinklers is configured in such a way that it can be remote controlled and managed by Homeseer or just monitored by HS3.