Homeseer vs. CQC?

[kertofer]

Hey guys, been lurking here a bit and am just really getting started on my HA system. My current plan is to ease into it by getting a Glabal Cache unit to control my AV gear and automate lights, shades and fan in my Theater room. Over time I plan to expand this to the whole house including thermostats, zoning the AC and putting 1-wire temp sensors around, irrigation control, lights around the whole house, locks, security system and motion sensors.

I have been doing a lot of reading and think that I am going to start off using Z-wave for my lighting and other components and eventually re tooling my security system with the Elk M1. I have been looking at 2 platforms for pulling all of this together and would like to hear the pros and cons of each from you folks that have been using them.

Right now I am leaning towards Homeseer as they seem to have a more intuitive interface and more built in support, but I have read a lot of folks say that CQC is more configurable and open. You guys that use either of those care to chime in and let me know your thoughts?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[Rupp]

I'm a HomeSeer user and have been for 13 years just so you know up front. I would recommend downloading the free 30 day trials and give both a whirl. I did look at CQC a long while back and it seemed to me to be a bit less intuitive but built well. Combine HomeSeer Pro and the new HSTouch application and you will have a really good platform to start small and work up from there. HomeSeer is as open as you can get as the SDK is free and available via the HomeSeer updater and uses Microfsoft .net so it's easy enough to expand if you so choose.

 

[drvnbysound]

What's the price of Homeseer, for what you would end up purchasing?

Curious, b/c if anyone has been following it, the price of CQC recently dropped to $350 for a full license.

EDIT: I have never been to the HS site before now, but if I follow the products correctly, the HS Pro is $600 + HSTouch ($100) = 2x the price of CQC

 

[wuench]

What's the price of Homeseer, for what you would end up purchasing?

Curious, b/c if anyone has been following it, the price of CQC just dropped to $350 for a full license.

EDIT: I have never been to the HS site before now, but if I follow the products correctly, the HS Pro is $600 + HSTouch ($100) = 2x the price of CQC

And don't forget to price out the Homeseer plugins you need to support your components. All CQC drivers are either included in the product or downloadable from the forum for no extra cost.

 

[Rupp]

HomeSeer Pro includes all HomeSeer plugins as well as HSTouch.
http://store.homeseer.com/store/Control-Software-C5.aspx

If you do not need all the plugins not HSTouch then HomeSeer 2 is nearly identical except for a couple of differences outlined here:
http://store.homeseer.com/store/HomeSeer-C...ison-W13C5.aspx

 

[Steve]

While they both accomplish the same goal they are quite different in their approach. They are both good products and as Rupp said you should try them both. You will probably find that one just feels better to you than the other. Homeseer probably has more device support out of the box, but it really all depends on what your personal devices are. It doesn't matter if a product supports 1000 devices if they don't include what you have. To me, and this is just personal opinion, Homeseer is a bit more geared to the HA type crowd where CQC was geared more toward the Theater / Music enthusiast. But they both are capable of much more. CQC has a much stronger touchscreen / interface system since that was a major part from the beginning where HS Touch is still pretty new and was a late add on. Still very nice, but not as complete as CQC. Alot of people don't like Homeseers paid plugin paradigm and there have been several cases where authors have just walked away and you are left with an old outdated driver. Same can happen with CQC but at least you didn't pay extra for them. They both have good user communities but Homeseers can be fractured at times and there are some complaints of censorship and stuff on their forums. I don't ever remember a case of anything negative on the CQC forums and it is a very helpful user community. CQC just had a major change in direction and some people may be hesitant about CQC's future but the price has never been better. So there are several pros and cons to both so we've come full circle to the suggestion you just try both and see what you like.

 

[donstephens]

I haven't seen CQC, but the author seems to be quite in the loop. I like HomeSeer a lot, and like Rupp, a long time user.

Try 'em both, and let us know what you think.

 

[AceCannon]

We've been using cqc now for several months, and I can honestly say the limiting factor is not Charmed Quark, it is my skill level and initiative.

CQC is intrinsically more powerful than I am using now, but I will def making our stuff more robust soon. The support community for qcq is superb, btw.

 

[Deane Johnson]

CQC was geared more toward the Theater / Music enthusiast.

What does the Theater portion of that statement mean? Since my primary interest is home theater use, it grabbed my interest and I'd like to know more.

 

[jumbodogs]

There is also Girder/Netremote as an option. I am in the process of setting up my ELK and creating my skin for my touchscreen. Its a very powerful program only thing I'm not sure about is the Z-wave part but I know people that use UPB which I don't think is supported natively by Girder but can be used by controlling it with the ELK plugin.

You can take a look at my blog here or even better see jwilson56? his setup is more complete.

Most important try them all. Good Luck

 

[Neurorad]

Since you're just really getting started on your HA hobby, you have the luxury of choosing the controller (CQC/HS/J9(Elve)/Girder/etc) before the hardware. You'll be able to choose hardware based on compatibility with the controller, that is, you won't get stuck with a device that can't be controlled by the 'overlord' controller.

I'm currently leaning toward CQC, but have avoided purchasing until I have more devices to control (and time to play with it).

You mentioned security - that's a common starting point of many HA enthusiasts. The Elk M1 and HAI OPII are security systems with significant HA capabilities, that are commonly combined with an 'overlord' controller. The Elk and HAI systems have subforums here on Cocoontech that you could check out.

Here's a general suggestion - always read the manual before buying something.

 

[Steve]

CQC was geared more toward the Theater / Music enthusiast.

What does the Theater portion of that statement mean? Since my primary interest is home theater use, it grabbed my interest and I'd like to know more.

I just meant that CQC had a large base of users that use the product in these areas. It seems like it has more drivers for AV equipment and projectors and music repositories than anything else. If you have a HT with a nice projectors chances are you'll find a compatible driver in CQC and not other products like Homeseer. All that said, I don't use it for any AV except for control of my Nuvo which btw was free vs $100. And, since the CQC drivers are 'open', I was even able to add Paging Support to the driver and give it back to the community instead of having to wait for the company to get around to a low priority item, or wait for a paid update from a 3rd party author. And as I said earlier, CQC was designed around building nice touchscreen interface which were used on nice HT control panels. So between alot of AV specific drivers and beautiful control screen capability, it was/is very popular with the AV crowd.

 

[ano]

I've used both, first HomeSeer for several years, then and now CQC. I agree with most of what has been said, HomeSeer typically supports more devices. I will also note that over the years, CQC has been MUCH more stable than has HomeSeer for me. Its interesting that HomeSeer Pro has a watchdog timer and that is a "feature." Its only because HomneSeer can and often does lock-up, whereby running CQC for several years, it never has (and doesn't contain a watchdog timer.)

There is also a BIG difference between the two that isn't first apparent. As Steve pointed out, HomeSeer has many "plugins" where the author has long disappeared, and I suppose that is true for CQC as well, but there is a GIANT different between the two; HomeSeer plugins are locked code which only the original author can modify and make bug fixes to. If an author "disappears" and you have a bug in that plugin or you want to add a feature to that plugin, your basically out-of-luck. So not only does HomeSeer sell these plugins, but you may be buying something nobody supports.

On CQC, with a very few exceptions, CQC "drivers" are completely open, you can view and modify the code, add features, etc. with not that much work. And CQC drivers are quite a bit easier to write.

This may not seem important, but it really is. Equipment that the drivers connect to change all the time, so if a new XYZ DVD player comes out, but the driver only exists for the lower model, then its fairly easy in the CQC world to update that driver. On HomeSeer, you need to track down the author and just pray he will be motivated to support your new model.

Over the years I've modified several CQC drivers to add features or fix bugs and its not all that hard.

 

[johnnynine]

Don't forget Elve, which has robust support for Global Cache, ZWave, Elk-M1, and is by far the easiest product to use compared to the products mentioned above, having the smallest learning curve and quickest getting started time. Granted, I work for the company that makes Elve, but I think you will agree as many other have if you try each of the products.

 

[JonW]

Ano - thanks for the info on the open CQC drivers. That is something I was not aware off. For myself, I already knew that the HAI plugin for Homeseer was pretty well abandoned (or at least never updated) and that had me killing HS from my short list. I had also killed CQC because of the pricing model, but now that it is back where it was, I will be setting up an evaluation of it.