Lutron, MyQ, and Nest. Looking to unify it.

[Skippman]

Ok gang, I need some help designing my system. My goal is to be able to control lighting, my thermostat, and my garage doors all from a nice mobile interface without having to subscribe to a monthly service. I'm going to DIY this so keeping costs and complexity down are major goals for me. 
 
Here's what I currently have:
 
Nest Thermostat
Chamberlain MyQ Garage Door Opener
A Lutron RadioRa2 install package (RR-FDN-INC-WH). (Not installed)
 
 
Here's my networks layout:
 

 
 

 
 

 
I use one NAS to stream my archived movies to two nVidia Shield boxes that run Kodi as a front end for media play back. The other NAS acts as a backup for my PC's and as a network shared drive. 
 
I did my best to lay things out in a logical manner. Now I'm looking for something to pull it all together. I've been looking at the HomeSeer as that will allegedly support my MyQ opener, but I'm not sure if that's the right fit for me or not.
 
Any input would be appreciated.

 

[potts.mike]

Take a look at CQC also. Radiora 2 and best are already supported. I think you'll need to write a driver for the garage door opener.

 

[jon102034050]

I have no clue about CQC, but I hear good things about it.  I have HomeSeer, and it's terrific.  Unfortunately, I can't speak directly to your specific devices (myq and nest) as I do not use these, but I will add that it is a bit pricey.  Usually, people aren't choosing HS because it's the cheapest option, it just happens to be a reasonably effective option and isn't control4/crestron expensive.

 

[Sparkman1]

HomeSeer has third party plugins for all those including Kodi and DirectTV.  There's a 30 day free trial on the base app and also on the plugins, so you can try it with just investing your time (assuming you have some hardware you can run it on).  Also check out the ImperiHome app and plugin as it allows you to easily create a functional mobile interface for it.  

 

[Skippman]

Looking at the HomeSeer software it looks like it'll run on just about any PC. My NAS has virtualization capabilities. Maybe I can virtualize it on that box and save myself having to buy a dedicated hardware platform. Reading what I have about it, it seems like it's mostly community driven. Is that a fair statement?

 

[Sparkman1]

Not sure exactly what you mean by community driven.  There is an active user base with typically around 50-75 active threads per day on the forum and there are quite a few third party developers providing free and paid plugins/scripts/etc.  HS staff themselves are fairly active developing the core app and certain plugins and are active on the forum as well and accessible through phone/email.

 

[pete_c]

Many Homeseer folks have virtualized their Homeseer builds.  Other folks have created multifunctional boxes to run Homeseer
 
Here always have dedicated hardware to Homeseer. 

One current BSD NAS here is using an LSi 9240 for use with NAS4Free and it works well. I have seen folks using jails to run other software / OS stuff. 

That said depending on your Homeseer build there could be a lot of hardware controller interaction with the software.  (IE: here have utilized a Digi 7 port hub with two Digi Edgeport 8 boxes which do with with Linux just fine).
 
Today running Homeseer 3 on Ubuntu 16.04 server with VB's doing Microsoft SAPI which works fine.   Personally have not had issues running Microsoft VB's with Homeseer plugins talking to Ubuntu 16.04.  Your mileage may vary with this sort of interaction.

 

[Skippman]

By community driven I mean that most of the plug in's seemed to be written by community members, not the company that publishes HomeSeer itself. That's not necessarily a bad thing if those plug ins are written to be open source, but it can be disastrous if the sole developer of a plug in you depend on suddenly abandons the project without keeping it updated. 
 
I could virtualize it on my TS-451+ NAS. It's got a quad core 2.0G Celeron. I'd have to up the RAM from it's 2GB for sure however. Their base line unit looks pretty reasonable however. Do you still need the higher end unit with the Z-Wave interface if I'm controlling my Lutron gear through it's own bridge? Or is that for future use if I add other Z-Wave dependent appliances?

 

[pete_c]

Primary lighting here is UPB.  That said I also have in place X10-XTB (used for Christmas lighting), Z-Wave and Zigbee controllers.  I have but do not use Zigbee or Z-Wave wireless battery powered devices much other than testing them.
 
UPB today works 100% fine.  X-10 now with XTB is also 100% functional. 
 
All security devices here are wired to the OmniPro 2.  I have one testing wireless device on one wireless OmniPro2 receiver and have left it in place to tinker with but not really using it much.  Old fashioned a bit here I will never use Zigbee or Z-Wave for any sort of security. (motion detection, light detection type of stuff).  That is me.
 
I started the Linux HS3 thing using an RPi / GPIO Z-Wave running Wheezy.  This was the first Linux implementation of Homeseer 3 for me.  Concurrently also purchased HS3 Pro which originally ran on Wintel then changed it to Linux.
 
Shifted the function of the RPi2 to using Jessie / Z-Wave GPIO card and RTC shim to a slave Z-Wave POE device which connects to the old HS3 lite software now running on Ubuntu 64 bit Ubuntu 1604 server on an Xi3/Xi5A.  This machine only has 2Gb of RAM on it but runs via an SSD card.   The HS3 Z-Wave plugin runs fine by itself these days on the POE connected RPi2 with Jessie installed in the attic.  It ran OK too with HS3 lite on it.  I did go to pushing it a bit and that is why I moved it to the Xi5A.
 
My current new NAS (8 drive bays with 4TB drives) has 8 Gb of memory.  That said it is just a NAS.
 
2Gb on a NAS for multitasking is a bit light.  It is really light and will be dysfunctional for any sort of VM.  
 
2 Gb of RAM is a bit light for HS3 Standard or Pro.  HS3 Lite will run OK with a shared 2Gb of RAM.
 
 
Here have been using Homeseer now since the 1990's.  There are Homeseer users today still using the original Homeseer 1 and it works fine for them.  I purchased HS2 Pro when it was first introduced here and at the time there were many HS provided and included plugins.  I also purchased a few 3rd party plugins supported by HS3 plugin writers and users.  I have helped a few of these folks over the years mostly relating to having the plugin take care of me and getting familiar with the plugins.  Today with HS3 Pro HS provides basic plugins and functionality.  There are many 3rd party plugins with HS3 Pro supported primarily by the writer and yes that can be an issue.  One HS user died a few years back.  HS and I tried selling his source code to continue development and we had no takers and only folks that wanted it for free which dinged my efforts so I gave up.  The thing about HS is that it provides you a base (if you are savy with this stuff) to create your own plugins easy enough.  If you not savy with this there are plenty of folks on the forum that will help with the basics of writing scripts / plugins and Homeseer does offer documentation for doing this sort of stuff.  You can today create events / triggers solely with the HS3 GUI or simple scripts.