jwilson56
Senior Member
I want a nice GUI frontend for my whole house audio system. Its so nice to be able to graphically browse through my library and select a CD to play or select a number of tracks. With over 700 CD's a graphics front end like MusicLobby or Netremote is a must.
As for HA needs, for me its the opposite. Turning on and off a few lights around the house is not that big of job. Right now Homeseer handles that and things like sending the IR commands with little trouble. Heck just buy an ELK to handle most of the actual HA work and stick a GUI front end on it for the user interface. The problem is you will still need a PC with some HA functions for handling quality TTS, weather and other things the ELK will not handle. But if you drop the security functions off your list of needs then a good HA application that is PC based will suffice. For ELK users the problem lies with having the applications (plugins) to 'glue' all of the system parts together (the GUI frontend, the ELK and the HA PC server).
If you look at my Now Playing you will see the 5 zone whole house audio portion 'showcases' the setup. A pop up light control panel handles the lights. Its not a big deal to have the touchscreen clients handling both functions as it pertains to the user interface. I wanted my user interface (client side) to give me access to all my Music & HA needs.
I run 2 servers right now. One has the JRMC music library and Homeseer on it. The other is running MCE for my PVR needs. Even with 5 clients connected and all 5 zones playing a seperate CD my CPU usage is still under 40%. There is no problem turning a light on and off. Even the TTS using a high quality voice has no problems under full load use.
Lastly I have all my CD's ripped using APE. I prefer a lossless format. I have compared MP3 and APE and there is a huge quality difference that is easy to hear. I wanted a high quality sound system and not background music.
If money was not an object, I would probably use Mainlobby suite or CQC. But not all of us have that kind of cash to spend. CQC seems to be a complete package but with a limited support for hardware. Mainlobby is more of a GUI frontend to Homeseer (yes the new ML3 does have some HA function built in now). Both of them would handle music & HA needs. The problem lies not only in the fact that both 'suites' cost hundreds of dollars but they also both need alot of horsepower on the client side to run the GUI. Netremote runs on slower and less expensive touchscreens. I suspect the GUI for HB also would run on a slower machine. Not all of us have the budget that some people on this forum do.
My comments were about Housebot (since this is a hb thread). From what I have read it handles the HA function pretty well on both the client side and server side. But it lacks the music handling functions. One solution would be to have a plugin for HB that would handle Girder commands and give people the ability to design the GUI interface in Netremote (which handles music needs excellent with its Mediabridge server for a dozen different players) as well as sending and receiving commands from HB for the HA needs.
John
As for HA needs, for me its the opposite. Turning on and off a few lights around the house is not that big of job. Right now Homeseer handles that and things like sending the IR commands with little trouble. Heck just buy an ELK to handle most of the actual HA work and stick a GUI front end on it for the user interface. The problem is you will still need a PC with some HA functions for handling quality TTS, weather and other things the ELK will not handle. But if you drop the security functions off your list of needs then a good HA application that is PC based will suffice. For ELK users the problem lies with having the applications (plugins) to 'glue' all of the system parts together (the GUI frontend, the ELK and the HA PC server).
If you look at my Now Playing you will see the 5 zone whole house audio portion 'showcases' the setup. A pop up light control panel handles the lights. Its not a big deal to have the touchscreen clients handling both functions as it pertains to the user interface. I wanted my user interface (client side) to give me access to all my Music & HA needs.
I run 2 servers right now. One has the JRMC music library and Homeseer on it. The other is running MCE for my PVR needs. Even with 5 clients connected and all 5 zones playing a seperate CD my CPU usage is still under 40%. There is no problem turning a light on and off. Even the TTS using a high quality voice has no problems under full load use.
Lastly I have all my CD's ripped using APE. I prefer a lossless format. I have compared MP3 and APE and there is a huge quality difference that is easy to hear. I wanted a high quality sound system and not background music.
If money was not an object, I would probably use Mainlobby suite or CQC. But not all of us have that kind of cash to spend. CQC seems to be a complete package but with a limited support for hardware. Mainlobby is more of a GUI frontend to Homeseer (yes the new ML3 does have some HA function built in now). Both of them would handle music & HA needs. The problem lies not only in the fact that both 'suites' cost hundreds of dollars but they also both need alot of horsepower on the client side to run the GUI. Netremote runs on slower and less expensive touchscreens. I suspect the GUI for HB also would run on a slower machine. Not all of us have the budget that some people on this forum do.
My comments were about Housebot (since this is a hb thread). From what I have read it handles the HA function pretty well on both the client side and server side. But it lacks the music handling functions. One solution would be to have a plugin for HB that would handle Girder commands and give people the ability to design the GUI interface in Netremote (which handles music needs excellent with its Mediabridge server for a dozen different players) as well as sending and receiving commands from HB for the HA needs.
John
