My Home Automation Hell

DeLicious

Active Member
I believe my trials and tribulations with UPB are well-documented (why did I have to be the one guy this happens to?). Well, in addition, tonight, all of my HomeSeer events are broken. Not a single one of them will fire, with any trigger type, or even manually triggered. This is obviously a very bad thing. I'm starting to rethink this whole strategy (so, CQC and Z-wave a good combo?).

And you know what is the rock? The Elk. 0 problems. okay, I had a little trouble installing a new XSP today, but that is my fault (that I suck at terminating CAT5 with RJ45 endings). But through all of this, the security system works.
 
Well, for what it's worth, you're in decent company. I've got CQC and am using ZWave and have plenty of my own issues.

I really just think it's the nature of the beast. If it was easy, anyone and everyone could do it. Even with as frustrating as it can get and as little as I feel I've accomplished, I still enjoy figuring out how to make something happen on its own.

I honestly don't think there are any easy answers. For some, it seems to all come together easier than for others but I'm not sure it's the completion that's all the fun but the getting there is where the joy comes from.
 
....I'm not sure it's the completion that's all the fun but the getting there is where the joy comes from.
Completion? Is there such a thing? I have been working on my own A/V and HA for years. I'm still tinkering on an, at least, weekly basis! There are so many fun new devices, lines of programming, making parts play nice, etc.
 
I think the problem with zWave is when you depart from just lighting, unless you stick with a single manufacturer. My CQC & zWave are holding @99% stability, but I just do lighting with it. Every now&again i'll notice a lost connection with a light, but it's temporary.
 
If you want absolute reliability, then it's going to require the extra cost of moving up to a system like RadioRA or something like that, which has that required over-engineering for always works type of performance. Z-Wave and UPB are good for the price, but you can't get 100% for that price, though you should be able to get it pretty high. I'm using Z-Wave in my apartment (with CQC of course) and it's highly reliable, but it's a small apartment with a fairly small number of modules.
 
Guys

One word ....CBUS ;-)

Frank

Seriously though ...its a hardwired system that can be retrofitted and works.......and its now available i believe in the States..........
 
yeah, but there's code hassles for a hardwired system. I'm absolutely going hardwired when I remodel, but for now that's more of a heartache than I can handle.
 
a nice little addendum to my story... at 1 AM, HomeSeer decided to run every event since the last reboot... that means about 45 seconds worth of voice announcements happened at my bedside, waking up both me and my wife. not funny. and then, this morning, none of the events are firing again.
 
a nice little addendum to my story... at 1 AM, HomeSeer decided to run every event since the last reboot... that means about 45 seconds worth of voice announcements happened at my bedside, waking up both me and my wife. not funny. and then, this morning, none of the events are firing again.
It only took one MS auto update at 3am and having HS restart and start making announcements throughout the house waking the wife that I ended up writing an application to run at windows startup to MUTE the computer's sound. HS can unmute and mute the sound also based upon time of day. No more having the computer wake us up in the middle of the night for non critical announcements just because MS released a security update and the pc had to restart. :)

The Pod
 
i'll look into it. with the speaker client respond even with the sound muted? it would be a real boon to me if I could talk to the tablet PC in my bedroom without it responding audibly (but instead, with just the balloons so I could still know it was working).
 
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