Migrate HA Server from Homeseer to ?

[mbreeden]

I am in the same boat.  I have been looking but not finding.  I have been on HS1 and 2 but not happy with the direction of 3.  As  someone mentioned you are basically starting over as you will have to pay for the upgrade and the upgrade of plugins to work on it.  The main issue is all the dropped support of plugins on version 2 and the fact that they will not be porting over HAI, Russound and JRiver (which never work correctly).
 
I will remain on HS2 until I can find another solution.

 

[Madcodger]

Interesting topic, and timely for me. I used homeseer 1 & 2 for years. Then Vera with z-wave. Vera works pretty well but has limits. So I started looking again at HS2-3. My primary interface needs are zwave, DSC panel, and nice iOS and remote access.

After a few weeks of demo evaluation, I just purchased Indigo and a Mac mini. I could not be happier. With the exception of my zwave locks (which I knew going in, and there's a Vera workaround), indigo works with everything.

I love it.

JimyT (and comments welcome from others),

I'm a big fan of Macs but don't know much about Indigo other than limited info from their site. Can you (or anyone) please tell me if:

Indigo can interface with an Elk M1G?
With an ISY? (which I use to control Insteon - I would not have Indigo doing that, but want it to "talk" to the ISY)
With an RFXCom? (want this to read all my Oregon Scientific temp/humidity sensors)
With a W800? (to read X10 wireless motion sensors, etc.)
With a Davis Vantage Pro weather station?

These are the things HomeSeer did for me in the past, but v2 hasn't done it all that well. And like others i'm thinking that if I have to spend $$ to upgrade it all I may as well look around.

Thanks!

Joe

 

[picta]

These are the things HomeSeer did for me in the past, but v2 hasn't done it all that well. And like others i'm thinking that if I have to spend $$ to upgrade it all I may as well look around.
 

 
I am running HS Pro and with an exception of ISY, it interfaces to all devices that you listed, and IMO does it quite well. The problem HS2 has is what actually makes it attractive as well: abundance of 3d party plugins for a lot of things. Some plugins are implemented better than others, but many may not co-exist. I never tried ISY, but the Insteon PLM plugin crashed the system repeatedly. Potentially HS3 will fix these types of problems, but at the expense of complete redesign of the system. So I am staying with HS2 for now and keep looking for alternatives.

 

[Timoh]

I'll never miss my opportunity to chime in about OpenHAB. 
I use it for zwave lighting primarily, but a wifi t-stat, motion sensors are next to be migrated.  Once that is done, it'll be roll up the sleeves and write my plugin for my Caddx alarm panel and my AP800 audio matrix.
 
There's lot's in OpenHAB, but there's also a lot yet to be added. I've noticed the community is ramping up all the time and more & more plugins are being developped.  It's got plenty of buzz around it these days, it just won an award at Oracle OpenWorld for using java in a diverse way (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2020453).
 
The learning curve is steeper than what I've seen on other products because OpenHAB has it's own Home automation programming language!  This makes it powerful, but you gotta learn the language.  The editor is good though and helps out a lot with suggestions.
 
If you're not ready yet, keep OpenHab book marked...   It's going places!
 
Tim

 

[Kevin L]

We'd certainly be happy to see any of you over in CQC Land. Lack of robustness is not a characteristic anyone would apply to CQC, AFAIK.

Hi, Dean,
 
Back in 2005/2006 when I was designing the home I built in 2007, I narrowed my HA choices between CQC and HS. Other than writing some macros, I've never done any programming so was nervous about CQC. I went with HS Pro. I've been relatively happy with HS Pro, and have quite a few events set up, but was waiting for HS3 to really start making additions like touchscreens. Now that HS3 has been announced, I'm very disappointed that an essential plugin, Centralite LiteJet, written by HS, will not be ported to HS3. LiteJet is a home-runned, hard-wired lighting control that cannot be swapped by changing a lightswitch. It would take major house re-wiring to change this out. I'm not about to do that just to use HS3.
 
I've just started designing a new house we will begin building in late 2014 or early 2015. I don't believe I will use HS in the new home, so I will be looking closely at CQC. I'm still concerned, though, that not having any programming experience, CQC may be too difficult to deploy and customize. Are there tutorials or books I should read that will help me learn what I'll need for CQC?
 
Thank you,
Kevin

 

[Dean Roddey]

There is zero programming involved. I'm not sure how folks get that impression. You can if you want, but most everyone works completely at the point and click level. The easiest way to get a feel for it is to watch some of the video tutorials on the web site, then go back and install the trial and go through the videos and follow along. There are basic concepts to get your head around, as with any such product, but then everyone is pretty much an application of those concepts in one form or another.
 
For a quick, first non-follow along sequence, watch:
 
Basic Configuration
Basic CQC Concepts
Actions Part 1 and Part 2
 
And then the first few videos on the interface system. You'll see there's no programming involved, it's just all point and click. Once in a while you might actually type something in, but you seldom need to do that.
 
The extent to which 'programming' is involved at that point and click level is, if you want to make use of such things, the basic concept of "If X then do Y, else do Z", in other words do things based on the state of the system in some way. That and the concept of 'variables', which are just named places to store values so that you can change them in some way and then use the changed values. That's about it.

 

[JimyT]

JimyT (and comments welcome from others),

I'm a big fan of Macs but don't know much about Indigo other than limited info from their site. Can you (or anyone) please tell me if:

Indigo can interface with an Elk M1G?
With an ISY? (which I use to control Insteon - I would not have Indigo doing that, but want it to "talk" to the ISY)
With an RFXCom? (want this to read all my Oregon Scientific temp/humidity sensors)
With a W800? (to read X10 wireless motion sensors, etc.)
With a Davis Vantage Pro weather station?

These are the things HomeSeer did for me in the past, but v2 hasn't done it all that well. And like others i'm thinking that if I have to spend $$ to upgrade it all I may as well look around.

Thanks!

Joe

 
I really cannot answer your questions.  I've had Indigo running with Z-wave (home troller), DSC 2DS, and some other devices (Sonos, Irrigation Caddy) and it has run flawlessly for over a month.   
 
Post your question in the Indigo forums.  The forums are relatively quiet, but they answer quickly.  I truly believe the slow volume of posts in their forums is because there are almost zero bug issues and the scripting options make it easy to do almost anything.  It seems like most people there just do their thing and the software just works.

 

[mark_anderson_us]

Interesting topic, and timely for me. I used homeseer 1 & 2 for years. Then Vera with z-wave. Vera works pretty well but has limits. So I started looking again at HS2-3. My primary interface needs are zwave, DSC panel, and nice iOS and remote access. After a few weeks of demo evaluation, I just purchased Indigo and a Mac mini. I could not be happier. With the exception of my zwave locks (which I knew going in, and there's a Vera workaround), indigo works with everything. I love it.

Hi JimyT, I'm in same situation as you. been HS2 user for about 3 years. bought the HS3 upgrade, found out what the "upgrade" process was, but worse that HSTouch has no fixes at all. The BIG think I like about HS is the Designer, so I can design my own layouts (floorplans, etc.)
 
My trial of Indigo is coming to an end. I was 90% sure I was going to switch and then i looked at the control page designer: I couldn't believe it: 
 

• No align and distribute
• No positioning by coordinate
• No multi-select operations except drag and drop

 
I just don't see how anyone could use it and it's a show stopper for me. Am I missing something? I posted this on forum and Matt replied "we have a long feature list". How did you get one?
 
Regards
 
Mark

 

[mark_anderson_us]

I'll never miss my opportunity to chime in about OpenHAB. 
I use it for zwave lighting primarily, but a wifi t-stat, motion sensors are next to be migrated.  Once that is done, it'll be roll up the sleeves and write my plugin for my Caddx alarm panel and my AP800 audio matrix.
 
There's lot's in OpenHAB, but there's also a lot yet to be added. I've noticed the community is ramping up all the time and more & more plugins are being developped.  It's got plenty of buzz around it these days, it just won an award at Oracle OpenWorld for using java in a diverse way (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2020453).
 
The learning curve is steeper than what I've seen on other products because OpenHAB has it's own Home automation programming language!  This makes it powerful, but you gotta learn the language.  The editor is good though and helps out a lot with suggestions.
 
If you're not ready yet, keep OpenHab book marked...   It's going places!
 
Tim

Hi Tim
 
I'm a disgruntled HS user and decided to look elsewhere. Got OpenHAB up and running yesterday with my Sonos. Got it reading my z-wave stick and it shows my 5 test devices in Habmin. Only one (Aeon smart energy switch) has any association groups. My leviton scene capable appliance module shows up with no manufacturer and all nodes show no neighbors. The Aeon stick is a spare I have that I was using to test Indigo and devices were added in Indigo.
 
Any tips on how to move forward with z-wave config? Did you just pull yours from HS, or did you start from scratch?
 
Regards
 
mark