I need some advice

[manpose]

Homeseer vs cqc vs main lobby
My main question which may be in the wrong forum and already asked before, but I want is an analysis of the current revisions of these software Packages. Most of the posts have seen are from several years ago. I'm looking to do a new complete system and I am not sure what route to go. I have looked at Homeseer, homeseer/Mainlobby combo, cqc, and Main lobby as a stand alone. My question is what are some of you using and what is your opinion of the best setup? What are some of the pros and cons of each setup. The programming aspect of cqc does inot scare me because I currently do some software engineering. Let me know what you guys think.

Also I use Insteon for lighting control, so with cqc would you use a PLM or pair it with something like the ISY controller?

 

[Dean Roddey]

Actually, there isn't really any 'programming' involved in CQC. You can if you want, but most don't. Unless you just want to do otherwise, it's all point and click, one of the benefits of having a fully integrated system with our own interface design system. It has access to everything directly, so there's no cutting and pasting to get information into your customization logic/interfaces.
 
There are some very light programming type concepts used in our 'action; system, which is where you tell CQC what to do. But most any system would have them or they wouldn't be very functional, e.g. If and If/Else logic, and the concept of variables to store values until you need them. But that's about it.

 

[fcwilt]

I would chose between ML and CQC.
 
In terms of pure power I believe CQC is the way to go.
 
I have licenses for Homeseer, ML and CQC (two actually) and have worked with all of them.

 

[manpose]

I have downloaded CQC and am working my way through the demo. I may change my mind after I get further in but I would say it is far from point and click. You have to edit Ini files similar to that of setting up a file sever on Linux. For instance adding Insteon devices you have to edit an Ini file for device addresses. I haven't found a way to iterate through existing devices to add the existing links in the devices.

 

[pete_c]

Keep playing and do not get discouraged.  Many folks are using CQC today and it works just fine for them.  Give it more time.
 
Do similar for other software you want to test.
 
BTW are you a Wintel only OS person, Apple iOS person or LInux OS person or a mixture of all of the above type of person?
 
Are you into DIYing hardware or DIYing mostly software or both?
 
We have a friend that built a large home (~8-9K) for herself a few years back.  She wanted similiar automation to what I had.
 
The contractor installed a Control 4 system (well Control 4 installed it)
 
While she had some hiccups with it mostly relating to how to use it; but that turned her off to Control4.
 
She has a service contract today and everything is automated and works fine her.
 
She is now content with her Control4 system.

 

[ano]

Keep playing and do not get discouraged.  Many folks are using CQC today and it works just fine for them.  Give it more time.

I've used it for over 5 years and still don't understand how to use most of it.
 
It's also important for anyone looking at home automation software to realize that there are different kinds of software. Not only different manufacturers, but also different types of home automation.  CQC is a great kind of software if you have touchscreens and require elaborate control of a media room and media (video/audio).  I think that it is weaker, or at least it gets more complex, if your vision of home automation falls more into realtime home control.  That isn't to say it can't do it, but just its not it's specialty.  I used CQC with a HAI panel, used voice and LED signs, and used UPB for control of lights.  All these things required "plug-in's" which usually required third parties, and often these plug-ins are not maintained and out-of-date. This is a problem for HomeSeer as well.
 
Other programs specialize in the realtime control, and are not so good at the screen and/or media control.  HomeSeer, at least in its early days, was very limited in screen control, but excelled on complex realtime control. Its changed a bunch since then.
 
So I would recommend, instead of shopping for software, you might want to start considering how you may want to use the software, and what aspects are most important.  Touchscreen creation? Voice in and/or text-to-speach? Real time HAI/ELK monitoring? Lighting control and which technology?  Media control? Then, when you know WHAT you will be connecting to, you can better research which software better "connects" to that hardware, and performs the tasks you want better.
 
For example, what I did with home automation depended upon realtime monitoring of my HAI panel, but HomeSeer, at least many years ago, only supported a serial connection to the panel, and this was very slow and buggy.  HomeSeer may be the greatest software in the world, but if it couldn't get my panel status accurately, everything else really didn't matter, so that one problem was a stumbling block for me.  You can rewrite a "driver" but that is not a trivial task. 

 

[pete_c]

What Ano saids above :rockon: .
 
and
 
here purchased Homeseer around 1998 (and ML a bit afterwards). 
 
The HAI OPII panel came a few years later and with the purchase of a new home in the early 2000's. 
 
I made them work together whatever it took.  (and a bit of PITA). 
 
I always did remote control to the two and the HS status timing stuff did bug me a bit.  It is working well today with HS2.
 
I am at "port capacity" today with two OPII panels. 
 
I have over 20 pieces of hardware connected to Homeseer 2 (now its more cuz I am using two Homeseer boxes - as its never enough for me) and all hardware is connected to Homeseer via one single USB cable.
 
Tell us specifically what you are looking for?
 
What is it that you consider automation today?

 

[Dean Roddey]

I have downloaded CQC and am working my way through the demo. I may change my mind after I get further in but I would say it is far from point and click. You have to edit Ini files similar to that of setting up a file sever on Linux. For instance adding Insteon devices you have to edit an Ini file for device addresses. I haven't found a way to iterate through existing devices to add the existing links in the devices.

 
That's not CQC per se, it's a decision made by a driver writer, who needed some way to let you set up the driver with some non-trivial configuration info, and a text file is a simple and straightforward way to do it. So, yes, in that sort of situation you do have to provide some 'out of band' information that CQC doesn't control.
 
Any automation system sort of has this issue that drivers are an important aspect of a system, and the automation vendor can't write them all, so third parties inevitably write some of them, and they choose how they do things to some extent.
 
To get around that we'd have to provide a client side user interface for any third party driver that needs that kind of configuration info, and that typically isn't practical, though at some point we may come up with a means to allow driver writers to describe the data and we generate a generic input mechanism for them. Given the breadth of info required and the validation of it and all that, it can be tricky to do though.
 
But, other than that, within CQC itself, it's not like that, and of course my comment was more about the 'programming' issue you originally brought up. The places where in some programs you might write code, there's typically no need to do so in CQC, because it provides a fully integrated tool for creating what we call 'Actions', which has access to all of the information required. And very importantly the screen design tool is fully integrated as well, which makes a big difference.

 

[manpose]

First off I really appreciate everyone's feedback.
Just to fill everyone in on my project. I'm Am not complaining per say about the lack of point and click in CQC. It is a very powerful automation engine. I have decided to go with an ISY controller to pair with whatever system I choose. The main concerns I have is that we want a universal interface for everything if possible. That would include music library, dvd library, lighting control, whole house surround, security, cameras, door locks, etc. I haven't really got to the GUI of CQC yet because work had me waylaid the last few days. I am going to see how the ISY driver works with devices. I have over 150 insteon devices so a driver that doesn't learn through the on board links will be a bit of a pain. If ISY doesn't work as expected I may try and extend the drivers functionality on my own to poll the ISY through the rest service to get device names and details.
Just so more feedback on my install,
6 hard mounted touch panels
5 mobile devices
30 zones of audio
About 17 screens of some type for tv output.(not all of them are traditional big TVs)
Currently about 150 insteon loads with more misc to follow.
A few zwave devices
Elk M1 (switching from a dealer installed Honeywell system. I didn't have the capabilities to interface the way I would expect.)
How does Homeseer do with DVD and Video libraries?
Also can you call outside Dll's in a homeseer script? I am thinking of writing some of my own interfaces in Delphi Firemonkey to do exactly what I want.
Basically I feel like CQC is the best option as far as flexibility to interface with everything I want but I don't want to have to write everything from scratch. If that is the case then I would go with homeseer and fill in the gaps by writing my own plugin to fillin the gaps.

 

[Dean Roddey]

I can tell you that CQC doesn't allow any DLLs, for a very good reason. It's the quickest way to destabilize an automation system. Multiple third party DLLs mixed together in a single process space is bad. We use our own CML language because it's very difficult to do anything wrong, and it makes a huge difference in the stability of the product. There are a couple things a driver can do to hose itself, like go into an infinite loop and never exit or something like that, but it can't destabilize CQC itself,
 
I'm actually working on the ISY driver myself, just to do a V2 compliant version of it. It's certainly one that could use a rewrite, but probably one that I should do. Any of these types of devices (Elk, Omni, UPB, ISY, Z-Wave) they are all quite complex to really do well. We do the Elk, Omni, Radio RA, and Z-Wave drivers ourselves, but it's very difficult to do all of these heavy ones ourselves, just due to the time required to spin up on all of them. So the ISY and UPB drivers are third party.

 

[manpose]

Dean how do you find time to answer me in every forum. . I really like your product I just have to figure it how to make it do what I want it to do. So all the coding inside CQC has to be done in CML? No outside scripting in other languages?

 

[Dean Roddey]

There's seldom any need for coding, but if you do want to do some, yeh, it's in CML. If you understand any modern OO language, (Java, C#, C++), you won't find CML hard to understand.
 
What are you thinking you need to actually write code for?

 

[manpose]

I am not sure but I typically develop in object pascal and I like being able to extend functionality if needed. Is it possible to write an application and pass info back and forth through a custom driver? I might create my own custom Developed version of something similar to MythTV that can be installed on small solid state systems to be paired with every TV to allow multiple interfaces at each TV. Options to select different video sources on the network, DVD library, music, and even automation control. Control4 has something similar to this but I don't like the implementation.

 

[Dean Roddey]

You can always create a driver to talk via socket to some server process you created. The driver wouldn't know or care if it's a piece of hardware or another piece of software that it's talking to. So it would have the same level of integration within CQC as a regular device would.
 
Though, keep in mind that I'm not saying you can't extend or customize. I'm just saying that, most of the time you don't need to write code to do it. We have a pretty powerful 'action' system which lets you create customization logic via point and click. You can do quite a lot using that, and it's all that probablyt 99% of our customers use, unless as you say they want to write a device driver. Actions can also invoke a CML macro as well, so you can mix and match as desired.
 
Even on the device driver front, for simpler devices with consistent protocols, we also have our PDL language which is a much simpler, declarative type language for doing device drivers. It's very high level, and is best for drivers that have well defined, consistent control protocols, where it's easy to find the data in the incoming messages without any code. But, where it's possible to use it, it makes it quite easy to do drivers.

 

[Dean Roddey]

BTW, we are having our traditional October 25% off sale, if that's of any benefit to you. Be sure you really want it, since we don't give refunds. But, if you do, this would be the time to buy.