Insteon questions

[Steve]

I don't think Elk, nor any other company will ever publish a roadmap or talk about a feature before it is already on the board or in Beta. Too many get burned when they talk about stuff and then for whatever reason abandon it. Elk has however, mainly thru David frequenting this forum announced or hinted at some new things we will see. A new version of firmware for the XEP along with a new version of RP is due out shortly. Several versions of keypad and touch screens due out probably Q1 next year. An 'M2' with more processor power and capability has been hinted at as a possible next step. Various other additions to firmware and RP also discussed. I think Elk will continue to rely on other 'best in breed' devices like the Ocelot to provide IR, etc., although I would not be surprised if they built in some support for some of these technologies on their own. They seem to be very aggressive in adding new features and components and seem customer driven (Squeeky wheels as David says).

Also wanted to make a point about the 'Homerunner' for Stargate. Not to take anything away from it, it sounds very nice, but wanted to point out that similar things can be accomplished with other tools. Maybe not as simply, but doable.

Assuming you go with a hardware controller which I believe nobody would argue with - you could always supplement it with software for fluff and design. For example, I can use Charmed Quark(CQC), also mentioned here - see the recent announcement of 1.5, as a set of interfaces for a touch screen. This is exactly what I am doing with the M1. The beauty of CQC interface design is that it is open - you can use your own images or graphics and build the system to look however you want. It can be built to look like Homerunner using schematics of the house, or it can be as simple as stock buttons and text. The beauty is you are not locked into whatever the program produces. Of course the downside, as always, is it takes more work to have it look totally custom. As a benefit, you can also use CQC to supplement the panels weaknesses. There are drivers in CQC for the M1 and HAI, unfortuntaely not the Stargate as has been discussed here too. But it is doable if needed. Another alternative is Mainlobby which will also interface to many panels. The only downside to Mainlobby is it is geared mainly toward interface design, not a complete HT and HA solution as CQC is.

Which brings up something I did not see mentioned - in a home this size, is there a home theater you are looking at including in the automation? If so, then I especially recommend taking a look at CQC. HT is their strength and original target market. You can then have the core of your system being the hardware controller and CQC which will cover all your security, theater and most HA needs. Then just supplement with other bits as needed.

Last point, also an opinion, but I believe perimeter security still rules. I want to stop a criminal BEFORE they get in and trip internal sensors. I belive it is well worth securing all possible perimeter entries and use the motions, etc as a backup in addition to automation triggers. If you can't get a wire to a location, you can supplement with a good wireless like GE/Caddx which at least the M1 supports (not sure about JDS). In a multistory home, I would AT LEAST protect the perimeter on the ground floor. Specialized motions on the EXTERIOR are also not a bad idea. There are even some cool things like tripping sprinklers based on outdoor motion to ward off prowlers. Just please, don't wait until they are inside, especially with children before alerting you or the authorities.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Like JohnBullard, I'm a longtime user of the Ocelot and at this time, the Ocelot is more mature the the Elk, but the Elk has the potential for furthur language expansion due to its more recent cpu platform. The Elk is also unique in being an alarm panel at the same time as a HA controller. On the other hand, the Ocelot has several different expansion module types and Infrared, which the Elk doesn't do at all. I also think that the Ocelot's programming language is also currently more flexible, espcially when it comes to timers. I think that for the foreseeable future, an Elk/Ocelot combo is just about as versatile as you can get while still being quite affordable. I have just bought an Elk and I have yet to even turn it on (I want to finish another project first) but once I get it going, I plan on playing with it in a lab environment to really figure it out well.

 

[elcano]

Wow! This has been an excellent and enlightining discussion.

Interesting the description of the Stargate. Seems very, very powerful. I want one. Just kidding - I just adquired an M1.

But out of curiosity I did a search about it in the web and noticed that every module is 2 - 4 the price of the equivalent M1 module. And you have to buy separate a dedicated alarm, while the M1 already has this functionality. Granted, modules are not necessarily comparable since the Stargate modules sometimes seems to be more powerful.

What I mean is that I would expect a different in price that is proportional to the difference in functionality, but in this case it seems bigger. I found even the Stargate manual for $25 here, while the M1 is a free download.

Update: upstatemike pointed out that the Stargate manual is also available for download.

I wanted to point this out to other forum readers because, while this might not be important to some people, it is very important to others. As pointed out before in this thread, HA depends on what do you need. If money is no objection, I would probably have gone with the Stargate, UPB and RFID in the whole house, but unfortunately this is not the case.

However the M1 is evolving very fast just by firmware updates and add-in modules. So I think that I'm in the faster lane.

 

[elcano]

Last point, also an opinion, but I believe perimeter security still rules. I want to stop a criminal BEFORE they get in and trip internal sensors. I belive it is well worth securing all possible perimeter entries and use the motions, etc as a backup in addition to automation triggers. If you can't get a wire to a location, you can supplement with a good wireless like GE/Caddx which at least the M1 supports (not sure about JDS). In a multistory home, I would AT LEAST protect the perimeter on the ground floor. Specialized motions on the EXTERIOR are also not a bad idea. There are even some cool things like tripping sprinklers based on outdoor motion to ward off prowlers. Just please, don't wait until they are inside, especially with children before alerting you or the authorities.

OPTEX seems the leader in perimeter protection. I just ordered a BP-100PLUS and will report here once I get and test it, but the BX-80N is also a good option. There are other around, but these seems the ones with the most reasonable prices. They alert you if somebody actually attemps to enter your house. Regular motion sensors can be used to trigger lights or sprinklers if somebody wanders your property, but I would not trigger the alarm just for that.

Excuse for the change in topic, but I thought that Steve point is very important and wanted to collaborate.

 

[upstatemike]

My background is in programming and not in hardware and my ideal of a properly automated home requires massive logic -- which is something I just couldn't get across to the guys who wanted to sell me a Lutron or Crestron system.

While I am not a programmer, I think I have faced many of the same frustrations as you have. There doesn't seem to be any clear answer for picking an automation platform. I feel the ideal solution would come in one of three forms:

1- A full featured hardware based controller. This is what I hope the Elk M1 will become but it has a long way to go to catch up with older platforms like Stargate and HomeVision. These older platforms are still viable but are both overdue for core technology upgrades that their respective companies don't appear to be contemplating. Right now I have to say Stargate is the best option available until somebody can convince me otherwise.

2- A PC based controller. There are many issues here besides the obvious reliability concerns. Many PC based controllers have a core theme and then try to adapt eveything else to match that theme. It may be software that started out controlling X-10 and then tried to expand on that by assigning all devices a "House Code/Unit Code" type name and control them like they were modules. Other software might be primarily designed for media control and just tack on a weather download or thermostat screen. Some might be more general but force you to learn a programming language like PERL or VB. In these systems, even a trivial change to your program can involve a large investment in coding time (especially as compared to the menu driven coding engines in hardware based controllers). But the biggest weakness in PC based systems is support for device I/O. Almost none of them directly support a large amount of digital or analog inputs and depend on other subsystems to define and poll the inputs and pass the data on the PC. You essentially have to learn and support several platforms instead of working strictly within a single master environment. At this time I do not know of any PC based controller that will let you plug in a bunch of hard-wired I/O by connecting it to your RS-485 (or ethernet) line, setting an address dip switch, and have it be available to your master HA program. They all require you to learn a "host" program for the hardware (CMAX or whatever), set up you hardware there, and then set it up AGAIN in you HA program.

3- The third solution would be to pick the "best of breed" for different hardware requirements like alarm panel, media player, weather station, hardwire I/O, Lighting, etc. and then use a "gateway" application to glue it all together. The problem with this solution is that no true gateway applications exist. All existing HA software tries to be the core controller of the system and nobody wants to write something that simply serves as a translator to let different devices communicate with each other. A true gateway front end would provide a central user interface and robust support for things like parsing and translating ASCII messages between systems, triggering executables or wav files on remote PCs, providing an interface to the internet for email and retrieving news or forecast data. It would NOT duplicate the functions already built into the hardware devices it talks to. No media player, no rules engine (beyond what is required to route information between devices), etc. Unfortunately all existing HA software not only duplicates much of the functionality built into the hardware they connect to but they also are not set up to do a good job of coneying data from one device to another. Many do not even provide a generic ASCII I/O interface to facilitate such inter-communication and force you to wait until someone writes a bridge or plugin to the specific device you have. ECS probably comes closest to filling this role but in reality there is no application that is truly designed to act as a universal gateway front end.

 

[upstatemike]

But out of curiosity I did a search about it in the web and noticed that every module is 2 - 4 the price of the equivalent M1 module. And you have to buy separate a dedicated alarm, while the M1 already has this functionality. Granted, modules are not necessarily comparable since the Stargate modules sometimes seems to be more powerful.

You are 100% correct about the cost of modules though I should point out that if you purchase RCS branded expansion modules from Worthington the price difference is not as extreme as what you likely saw.

Also make sure when you talk about the cost of expansion you compare apples to apple. Stargate inputs are opto-isolated and that is a whole different class of circuitry from alarm style op-amp inputs. Stargate offers cheaper alarm style I/O via the Caddx integration.

The analog input on the Stargate expanders is also a big deal as there is no true equivalent in the Elk world yet.

The Caddx integration is so tight with Stargate that there is no technical disadvatage to having the separate panel. There is a cost diffrential but remember you are getting a second dedicated processor for the alarm functions. Same effect as putting a faster processor into an M1.

The $25 charge for a manual is just wrong. You can download the Stargate manual any time from jdstechnologies.com

I still agree that I like the overall pricing of the Elk system better than that of Stargate but it doesn't help me until the M1 can do everything my Stargate does.

 

[pkoslow]

Imagine having a picture of your house where you can touch any aspect of the house to either control it (triggering complex logic with a touch) or drill down to controls. For example, imagine having touch panels in your house that display a schematic of your house. If you touch the "entertainment room", for example, you will get a picture of the entertainment room with all its lights and components. Touch the garage door picture and the real garage door opens. Touch the picture of your wall light and the light comes on. Touch the picture of the light now on and it goes off ... or dims, depending on the light and your touch. Touch your TV and you get a picture of your remote control. Touch "on" and "13" and your TV turns on to channel 13. Imagine being able to put together this whole interface with a digital camera and an afternoon. THAT is the functionality they demonstrated and are releasing this month! For those of you who might provide HA services for a living, that is going to really impress any clients you have who want HA but don't want a geek interaction. (God, am I providing free advertising or what?)

tanstaaf1,

I'll stick me neck out here and state that as neat as this touchsceen interface sounds, my opinion is that it won't be very functional.

I'm running MainLobby on a touch screen and thought long an hard when designing my screens and how they opereated. I tried some stuff based on a floor plan that you could touch to take you to a screen that controlled specific rooms (similar to what you are describing, but without pictures).

For the way I use my home automation system, it worked horribly. I seldom wanted to control things in one room, but more often wanted to control lights or doors in several rooms at once. For instance, If I wanted to change lights in the Kitchen, Living Room & Office, then lock the front door and garage door... I had to go to 5 screens to do it. Very inefficient!

Having screens configured around functions (security, lighting, music, etc) seem to work so much better for me. Having said that... I've found the touchscreen is really only used to control music and to select certain scenes (dinner time, tv time, bedtime, etc). I probably only use it once every few weeks to actually change a specific light!

Once you get using the system, I think you'd find it's not very practical to use the touchscreen to "turn on the TV and select channel 13". Using the touchscreen to select a "TV Time" scene that turns off the music, turns on the TV and lowers the lights, now YES... that works well.

You're in a difficult situation in that your trying to install your first HA system in what sounds like a large home and you want it to work, and you want it to work as you've designed/dreamed. Many of us on this board have been able to grow our systems over time. I myself have installed and improved my systems over the last 6yrs and 3 houses which has given me lots of opportunity to get it right.

I think you'll find that lots of things you think are a great idea, may just not pan out... I know I've found this to be true.

Before I exit - Keep thinking about ways to "truely" automate your house. By this I mean using technologies that don't require any direct interaction. By using motion sensors, door contacts, timers and scenes, we rarely touch a light switch or use the touch screen to control individual lights.

iAutomate RFID is also something that I can higly recommend. So much happens now automatically depending on who is home, away, arriving, or departing. RFID controls all my systems including door locks & security. Not only does it open the garage door, disarm the security, turn on the lights, unlock the front door, and greet us personally depending on who just arrived, but also does the opposite if no one is home and ensures that the doors are locked, lights are out, TV is off doors are locked, etc. ALL THIS WITHOUT ANY INTERACTION... now that's automated!

Cheers,
Paul
Ps. Welcome... great thread!

 

[pkoslow]

iAutomate RFID is also something that I can higly recommend. So much happens now automatically depending on who is home, away, arriving, or departing. RFID controls all my systems including door locks & security. Not only does it open the garage door, disarm the security, turn on the lights, unlock the front door, and greet us personally depending on who just arrived, but also does the opposite if no one is home and ensures that the doors are locked, lights are out, TV is off doors are locked, etc. ALL THIS WITHOUT ANY INTERACTION... now that's automated!

RFID is something that I have always been curious about but I don't know anything about it. I do know that nobody in my household would cooperate to carry or wear any kind of device. Can they be surgically implanted somehow so the individual always has it with them?

Also wondering if you are the only one home and you go out to get the paper, does the house lock itself down before you can get back inside and then go into the whole disarm/unlock sequence when you come back in?

Sounds cool but I really need to understand it better!

There are implantable RFID chips, but they are passive devices. Because of this, you'd have to pass your implanted body part within a few inches of the reader to get it to work.

The iAutomate RFID tags are active which is what gives them the range of several hundred feet. An active tag requires a power source (battery) so I doubt they will be implantable soon.

We don't usually keep tags on our person while we're home. I have one in my wallet and my girlfriend keeps on in her purse. Both are left on a shelf in the bedroom closet while we're home. Tags are also installed in all our vehicles. With this setup, the house knows who is home/away including which cars are home/away.

For your "get the paper scenario", I'll usually just not pull the door all the way closed behind me. Remember, the wallet with the tag is still likely on the shelf in the closet... but we do keep the font door locked WHILE we're home. The front door only unlocks for 5mins when we arrive, and then locks back up.

The range on the tags also easily covers my entire property, so if I do have the tag in my pocket, the automation system won't determine I'm gone until I'm a couple houses away.

This does create a slight delay before the house locks up and arms the security system when we leave, but I doubt anyone is going to "sneak" in in under a minute. If they do, the PIRs will catch them once the security is armed!

Some other neat things to think about that RFID makes possible:

Preferences - If we're both home, Diane gets here preferences for lighting, music, temp, etc. For example... if she leaves and I stay home, music will automatically shift to my playlists, and the lights will adjust to my liking. When RFID notices her approaching, TTS will annouce "Diane is arriving home, I'll switch to her preferences". By the time she walks in, everything is set back to suit her.

Personalized Greetings - When we arrive the house greets us with personalized greetings. These greetings will be different depending on if Diane or I arrive home alone or together. The greetings are also different depending on if someone else is already home.

Some Examples:
I get reminders for putting the trash out if it's trash day and RFID determines that the cans are at the house instead of at the curb.

I get reminders when Diane's birthday is close (but only if she's not there)

If one of us arrives home alone, the house provides info about voice mails, if anyone stopped by the house while we were away (motion & doorbell), etc. But if someone is already home, the greeting is shortened by ommitting this info.

This kind of thing is really limited only by your imagination and scripting skills...

Tags on Vehicles - Tags on the cars will automatically open the correct garage door when you approach. I have an SUV that parks outside, so when it returns, the garage door normally doesn't open. If it's raining and the SUV approaches, it does open the garage door so I can get into the house through the garage without getting wet!

Tags under the bicycle seats open the garage when returing from a ride. The same tag can alert me to theft. If the bike "goes away" and I'm not home, I receive an email... same for the kayaks!

Tags as sensors - Tag in the mailbox alerts when the mail arrives, tags on the trash and recycle cans monitor if they are at the street or beside the house.

With all the information that RFID provides to HomeSeer, it can do some great things ALL BY ITSELF. The greetings really make the house seem alive (and puzzle guests) because they can't figure out how it knows so much stuff.

Example: I arrive home at 5:30pm. "Hi Paul, you're home early. Hope you had a good day at the office. I missed you at lunch today, did you have a meeting? Thanks for putting the recycling out. There are 3 voice message, but no visitors to the house while you were away. Don't forget that Diane's birthday is in 9 days. Did you have fun driving the car today. You haven't ridden your bike or gone kayaking in 5 days, you should try to have more fun."

This is an exagerration of a normal greeting, but shows you the possibilities...

RFID really makes the house smart!

Cheers,
Paul

 

[Squintz]

I have been trying to contact Peter about his new Hardware RFID interface which should make his RFID product usable with any software and possibly hardware controllers. I have sent several e-mails and even posted on the homeseer boards and he has not returned my messages.

Anyone know the best way to contact him?

 

[electron]

I have tried to contact him too Squintz, no luck either, but he is probably spending time with his family, maybe he isn't even at home since it's the holidays. I definitely look forward to implementing RFID someday, so much you can do!

 

[tanstaaf1]

There are a lot of recent messages in this thread that I'd like to respond to in one way or another. I thought, though, that I'd use this message to summarize some of the main points I believe I've resolved and to present my intermediate-term "gameplan".

(1) Insteon is "good enough". I'm going to proceed with buying and installing Insteon switches because [a] they are "good enough" (as are the others) in terms of meeting my 100% reliability goal/ 2 way communication they have great appearance/presentation/functionality [c] they are inexpensive/ good value.

While functionality if my #1 criteria, spending less without any apparent decline in function is important to me because [a] it will make me feel better about any risks, mistakes, or experiments it will free money for other purchases/ experiments and [c] in the long run, in terms of market vitality, "good enough" at lower cost tends to beat out "good enough" (or even minutely better) at higher cost.

In other words, I suspect UPB will become be passed by pretty rapidly IF it doesn't drop radically in price, pick up momentum (including other manufacturers), or somehow prove to be much better than the other apparently other "good enough" mainstream alternatives: Insteon and Zwave.

This lack of faith in UPB's future is probably my main reason for not selecting it, even though I could get immediate native support for UPB in Stargate (but only by sacrificing my phone module as there isn't enough memory for both!). I expect Zwave will be the major contender vs. Insteon in maybe six months, once Leviton and others get into the price competition with switches at least as good in presentation/function as Smarthome's Insteons and at approximately the same price point.

With regard to Lutron and similar "high end" systems, in time I expect that if Insteon/Zwave or whatever is functionally and presentationally "good enough" that Lutron prices will have to drop 75-90% in order to compete. People will pay more for "quality" but at present pricing differences, imo the quality difference needs to more discernable than the Lutron vs. Zwave/Insteon gap is likely to be. (What is the difference, anyway? $20-$50 for a "good enough" Insteon vs. $200-$500 for Lutron ... with Lutron ALSO costing maybe 5-10X as much for specialty wiring/installation and ALSO costing extra for their integration panel?? All I know is that the Lutron specialist estimated I was looking at a minimum of $15K for switches installed for a RadioRa, for about half my house (maybe 75 switches tops). And RadioRa is the "cheapie" system!! I don't mind paying money for value ... but this is insane and the profit margins have GOT to be in the several thousand percent range all the way around! Anyone want to defend Lutron prices as sustainable due to "good value"/ sufficiently differentiated functionality vs. the new contenders?

(2) I will need to acquire software/hardware to control the Insteon switches ASAP, in order to begin hands-on learning. RECOMMENDATIONS?

JDS told me that a >3rd party< "X10 to Insteon" translator is coming "soon", but [a] I'm not excited about a mere translator - especially if it has X10 latency and maybe is incomplete (maybe only has 1 way communication?) 3rd party add-ons don't thrill me as they dramatically increase debugging as fingerpointing is so easy [c] in any case, "soon" isn't good enough.

HomeSeer says it will "soon" have an Insteon plugin (http://www.homeseer.com/support/newsletters/nov-2005.htm) but how soon is soon? Presumably much sooner than JDS will get off the dime (I told the JDS folks that if they don't get to the front of the parade in terms of supporting these emergent switch technologies they are going to become as obsolete as X10 approximately as quickly).

If HomeSeer (or any other well regarded alternative) had good Insteon support NOW, I would probably spring for it if only as a temporary base for learning and early control. In time, if I understand correctly, I could have Stargate communicating with HomeSeer with HomeSeer providing the Insteon drivers ... until, presumably, JDS gets its act together or I decide HomeSeer or Elk or something is programmable enough for my needs.

(3) Ideally I would like the experience of playing with ALL the contenders (except X10...I don't want to waste any time with it) so I can speak and act with conviction and personal experience. I guess my question is: of the choices out there, is HomeSeer the only presently/ near-term available platform for playing with ALL these new signalling technologies?

(4) I do, of course, have plans beyond lighting and motion detection and I have been running coax, cat5, and lots of empty coduit (but never enough...clearly no matter how much you think you need now you realize you needed more tomorrow :-(. I didn't want to crowd the topic too much by mixing my A.V. and other plans/questions in with the lighting issue. With my switch decision hopefully out of the way I'm hoping to turn my questions to whole house audio/visual. I think I'll start that in a separate thread -- if only to keep myself minimally organized!

 

[bfisher]

electron - that is an awesome setup and a great description. I may have to give RFID another consideration!

<edit: just saw the post from tanstaaf which he submitted as I was typing this message>

I can't fault your decision to go with Insteon. However, I disagree that UPB will be passed by rapidly by any technology. UPB is what the majority of the installers are using. Yes, it costs a little bit more, but that doesn't mean it's going to be replaced. UPB is very reliable and has lots of hardware and software support. And there is a long list of products soon to be released. At this point, Insteon and ZWave are still pretty new to the market... they may make it, or may not.

Personally I picked UPB because of its reliability (I've never had a missed signal) and it's support by hardware controllers (I use Homevision Pro). I've never regretted this decision, even if I did pay a little bit more.

 

[JohnBullard]

It seems that Smarthome only released a basic Insteon PIM within the past two weeks. I believe that is what everyone (the controller developers) have been waiting on.

There are some interesting posts from some software developers here.

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t...93&page=4&pp=20

So, "soon" may have to depend on how stable or functional the latest Smarthome Insteon release (v2.12 ?) really is.

EDIT: More information is now in the NEW HomeSeer Insteon forum that was launched today.

http://board.homeseer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=792

 

[Steve]

I agree 100% with bfisher. Nobody will ever debate somebodys decision, we just like to see decisions made with facts. I really don't understand your 'lack of faith' in UPB. Talk to any pro installer doing million dollar homes and ask what they use. Call Martin at Automated Outlet and have a chat with him. You will find that UPB is a solid choice with a history AND a future. There are many people 'on the fence' between UPB and Insteon and IMHO its mostly because of the aggressive pricing Smarthome has used to seed the market. Word on the street is that early next year Smarthome will be raising prices back up. If it weren't for the current pricing different, many more people would be putting in UPB right now. Just be sure all the support you need is in place for Insteon and be prepared for perhaps not the easiest install, since they do not have setup software yet.

If you are going to get into A/V, I would really take a look at CQC. While Homeseer was a great product and may be again some time, there is a lot of discussion here right now about the reliability of Homeseer. At this point in time, I would not even consider using it for mission critical home control unless you have a lot of extra time on your hands. I'm sure many would disagree with me, so search around here and decide for yourself.

 

[TCassio]

tanstaaf,
A basic plugin for Homeseer was just announced. I beleive it was written by Jon Ort, the author of the WGL W800 transciever plugin, one of the best plugins Homeseer has. Keep in mind this is a basic plugin with more to come. Visit the Homeseer site for more info.