Old PC or Shared PC for HA

[remoteshoppe]

I'm finally growing beyond X10s Active Home and plan on setting up HomeSeer with an Ocelot & PSC05 for my home automation. Now my decision is what PC to use? Here are the options:

Old Machine:
P3, 1.6GHz, Win2000 SP2
I would add a wireless network card to this machine for use with my network

New machine:
HP Workstation P4 2.8GHz with WinXP Pro. As is, this machine is on 24/7 but this is the main machine in the house which means this is where the family uploads digital pictures, surf the web, check email, etc

Or... laptop
Since most of the commands I will be using can be loaded to the Ocelot would it be ok to use my laptop for HS programming and then just connect the Ocelot when I'm done tweaking?

Finally, If I use the old machine with HS can I tweak HS settings from my networked laptop? If I install the HS software on both my old machine and the laptop and make changes to the same data file living on the old machine would this work???

 

[electron]

Welcome to CocoonTech!

I would recommend using the old machine if you aren't doing any voice recognition and such, I would even rebuild it with XP. You definitely want a dedicated machine, not a shared machine, considering how easy it is for spyware to infect systems lately. How much memory does the old machine have?

As for your laptop, it could be an option, but I usually try not to go that route since Laptops can be pretty slow, and don't offer many expansion ports.

As for remotely controlling HS, you can configure many aspects through the webbased interface, or you can either install VNC on the old machine, or if you rebuild it with XP, just use Remote Desktop. If you want to know more about this, let us know.

 

[remoteshoppe]

Thanks. You guys are awesome. treetop helped advise me to this point and lead me to these forums and I was trying hard not get hooked on yet another message board ;-)

The old machine has 256 ram but I'll probably throw more in since that is such an inexpensive upgrade. I considered adding XP but I hate giving more $ to the evil empire and the only copy I have is an HP OEM disk that won't install to other machines.

Also, I saw mention of HS 2 in another post but only see 1.7 available for purchase. Is that correct? Is 2 in beta??

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

HS2 was released for private beta testing and is still in that process, but should be out soon as early reports success with this preliminary testing.

Make sure you check out the ADIOcelot plugin when you get Homeseer installed so Homeseer can communicate with your Ocelot.

Post away if you have any additional questions (admitting you have an additiction is the first step to recovery BTW )

Again, welcome to our board.

BSR

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

BTW: After re-reading your post, do you plan on using the Ocelot/PSC05 combination as your X-10 interface with Homeseer to your powerline?

If so, you can do this without the ADIOcelot plugin. You will need the ADIOcelot plugin if you plan on creating Homeseer devices from variables or communicating with ADI add on modules such as the SECU16i or the RELAY8.

Most people use a CM11a or similar type of interface with Homeseer to the powerline, but you can use the Ocelot/PSC05 as well.

 

[remoteshoppe]

I am trying to put all the pieces together now while I have a few bucks in my PayPal account that my wife hasn't seen yet ;-) I plan on adding some of the ADI modules in the future so I wanted to set everything up right from the start for maximum growth potential. Besides, isn;t the ADIOcelot plug-in free? I also heard that the OCelot/PSC05 combo is more reliable than just the cm11a

 

[Treetop]

Hey remoteshoppe,

Glad you made it on over!

 

[electron]

I wouldn't even consider the CM11A, I would either go with the Ocelot combination as you mentioned, or the USB Powerlinc interface. The Ocelot plugin is indeed free.

 

[remoteshoppe]

I need to re-hash this thread because I have hit a wall trying to re-configure my old system as an HA server for Home Seer. My question now is what problems might I expect if I configure my primary PC as the HA hub as well?
The pros for my application:
- It's a monster HP workstation and is by far the most stable PC I've ever owned
- It's in the most centralized location in my home
- It's in a computer hutch so hardware like the Ocelot can be mounted to the back of the hutch and be out of site yet easily accessible
- This PC is on all of the time
The cons???
- electron mentioned spyware... is that just because it may affect the overall system stability or are there other ways it will screw with HA?

thanks for the help

 

[electron]

Hey Jim, happy late Birthday!

Stability would be the main concern, you really don't want to use your HA machine as the main workstation in the house. Resources is another issue, if you are watching some intense flash animation, it would slow down any other software you have on the machine, which might cause some issues with events etc. As far as I know, no spyware is designed to screw with your lights or exploit HA software

 

[TCassio]

I thought if you were going to run Homeseer, a PC had to be connected 24/7??

 

[remoteshoppe]

electron- Thanks. If stability is the main concern and I am fighting like crazy with my old machine now then I think my best course of action may be to set-it up on my workstation for now. An unstable system that misses events is still better than no system at all. Besides... my goal would then be to add a kick-a** media center in the future that would quickly become the primary PC.

TCassio- Yes I plan on running HS which requires the machine to be on 24/7 which is why it is an advantage to me that my workstation is on all the time. Am I misunderstanding something? Please elaborate..

 

[TCassio]

In your first post you stated

Since most of the commands I will be using can be loaded to the Ocelot would it be ok to use my laptop for HS programming and then just connect the Ocelot when I'm done tweaking?

Thats why I mentioned it.

 

[remoteshoppe]

Ahhh yes. I was young and stupid then. I know soooo much more now (sort of) thanks to Cocoontech.

I have completely ruled out the laptop at this point. And I have committed to using HS.

 

[rocco]

Stability. I currently running HomeSeer on my wife's computer. She doesn't even know it. She does a LOT of PhotoShop, Word, email and internet (with FireFox).

It's never had a problem in a year, on a plain vanilla 766Mhz Celeron, XPpro. I don't have a lot of plug-ins, scripts or events, however. No VR or speech (she HATES the speech), no phone, no scripts that access the internet.