The End is Near for HomeSeer 1.7x

[Steve]

I like CQC's concept as a distributed application. It kind of combines ML & HS into a single application. But alas the lack of support for the W800 and Slink-e makes it a no go for me...I could possibly use the slink-e executable to send IR commands if CQC supports executing a command line. However I will never give up my W800. Not sure why this has not been fixed... wake up CQC.
What I would like to see (and maybe its close) is a Mainlobby/ELK solution that has an easy to use interface for creating events, handles web servering, TTS using good quality voices, ect. (basically all the features that makes some users still run HS). This would give it a high stability for the HA functions and a pretty user interface for the family to use.

If you are thinking about an Elk, it supports the W800. So you could then do an Elk/CQC combo and the only thing missing would be Slink-e which I'm sure somebody could write a CQC driver for. Just a thought...

 

[JeffCharger]

so if HS 1.7 is at end of life as of Dec 31st....how do you backup to ensure that you can reinstall (with plug-ins) when you can no longer go to the updater?

I don't want to be left without a FULL backup.

 

[jwilson56]

jwilson
"its too bad thats its only a front end... "
MainLobby is not just a front end. It's a full automation system too.
MainLobby Server 3 has event, timed, recurring, conditional, etc processing embedded in it. You can execute macros and control as many hardware devices as CQC is supporting. some missing, some additional, lots of overlap.
That is a common misconception because Cinemar adopts a "plug and play" strategy where you can use what you want to use. We don't hold any prejudice on what software we interact with. That provides you with choice.
But, you can use it completely stand alone as well.
Oh, MLSpeak (TTS for MainLobby Server) works just fine with many aftermarket voices.
And ELK M1 plugins, W800 and Slinke support (did that get your attention )
I'll keep this Ad short

Oh, and I know you are a fan of J River Media Center... so are we. full support for that too

Again OT... but I think this thread has a wide subject matter as of now...

David.... does ML 3 allow you to add buttons on the MusicLobby screen that can send out IR commands (including macros)? Could I do a Now Playing screen to control 5 zones of equipment & JRMC and have a popup light control panel? Will it handle the NetCallerID and accounce the CID via TTS using Brightspeech voices? Can I run the same interface screen on a few clients and have all the clients update with the changes made to any of the other ones. Will each client show the current JRMC zone selected for that client and not interfere with the other clients view. Is there a charge for each client used?

If so I might just take a look at it if there is a working demo available.

John

 

[jwilson56]

so if HS 1.7 is at end of life as of Dec 31st....how do you backup to ensure that you can reinstall (with plug-ins) when you can no longer go to the updater?

I don't want to be left without a FULL backup.

As for backups... I just copy the entire HS directory to another drive or CDR.... reinstall the original HS file on the new system (and enter the serial number in) then I rename the Homeseer directory to Homeseer_org and then copy the original directory back over to the Program Files directory... and its all back to the same as it was. This works even on a different machine upgrade. Of coarse this won't get you any new plugins but for me what I have now works and I will stay with it for now. I upgraded my HS machine three different times like this and was back in bussiness in less than 15 minutes.

John

 

[jwilson56]

I like CQC's concept as a distributed application. It kind of combines ML & HS into a single application. But alas the lack of support for the W800 and Slink-e makes it a no go for me...I could possibly use the slink-e executable to send IR commands if CQC supports executing a command line. However I will never give up my W800. Not sure why this has not been fixed... wake up CQC.
What I would like to see (and maybe its close) is a Mainlobby/ELK solution that has an easy to use interface for creating events, handles web servering, TTS using good quality voices, ect. (basically all the features that makes some users still run HS). This would give it a high stability for the HA functions and a pretty user interface for the family to use.

If you are thinking about an Elk, it supports the W800. So you could then do an Elk/CQC combo and the only thing missing would be Slink-e which I'm sure somebody could write a CQC driver for. Just a thought...

Does CQC support J River Media Center player/database?

Does it support Brightspeech or other high quality TTS voices?

Does it support TTS Caller ID anouncements?

John

 

[smee]

so if HS 1.7 is at end of life as of Dec 31st....how do you backup to ensure that you can reinstall (with plug-ins) when you can no longer go to the updater?

I don't want to be left without a FULL backup.

As for backups... I just copy the entire HS directory to another drive or CDR.... reinstall the original HS file on the new system (and enter the serial number in) then I rename the Homeseer directory to Homeseer_org and then copy the original directory back over to the Program Files directory... and its all back to the same as it was. This works even on a different machine upgrade. Of coarse this won't get you any new plugins but for me what I have now works and I will stay with it for now. I upgraded my HS machine three different times like this and was back in bussiness in less than 15 minutes.

John

One problem with a backup like this...

It won't copy and restore things which are stored in the registry. At least one plugin that I have used saves its data in the registry (I really don't like that...I really don't like much about the registry, I guess ).

 

[jwilson56]

so if HS 1.7 is at end of life as of Dec 31st....how do you backup to ensure that you can reinstall (with plug-ins) when you can no longer go to the updater?

I don't want to be left without a FULL backup.

As for backups... I just copy the entire HS directory to another drive or CDR.... reinstall the original HS file on the new system (and enter the serial number in) then I rename the Homeseer directory to Homeseer_org and then copy the original directory back over to the Program Files directory... and its all back to the same as it was. This works even on a different machine upgrade. Of coarse this won't get you any new plugins but for me what I have now works and I will stay with it for now. I upgraded my HS machine three different times like this and was back in bussiness in less than 15 minutes.

John

One problem with a backup like this...

It won't copy and restore things which are stored in the registry. At least one plugin that I have used saves its data in the registry (I really don't like that...I really don't like much about the registry, I guess ).

Well you can do an export on those keys in the registry and then inport them after the new install. Not pretty but it will work. I have done that in the past also.

John

 

[DavidL]

John, My responses in yours:

does ML 3 allow you to add buttons on the MusicLobby screen that can send out IR commands (including macros)?
YES. Easy.

Could I do a Now Playing screen to control 5 zones of equipment & JRMC and have a popup light control panel?
Yes, with MusicLobby 3.

Will it handle the NetCallerID and accounce the CID via TTS using Brightspeech voices?
Funny you should ask. I should have the NetCallerID tonight MLSpeak should follow shortly thereafter. I am using Brightspeech with it now. Exactly what you are asking for.

Can I run the same interface screen on a few clients and have all the clients update with the changes made to any of the other ones.
Another funny you should ask. I have our new MLWMI plugin that sits on a client and updates files on the client from the server for easy maintenance.

Will each client show the current JRMC zone selected for that client and not interfere with the other clients view.
YES. With MusicLobby 3

Is there a charge for each client used?
The MLServer license allows for up to 5 concurrant MainLobby 3 clients. Additional licenses are available in batches of 5. MusicLobby 3 base license is for support of one J River Media server with up to 3 zones. Extra zones area available in 3 packs that upgrade all media servers.

And no need for other software beyond J River (standalone capability).

 

[Dean Roddey]

Does CQC support J River Media Center player/database?

Not as a player, only as a database. We support ZP and TT.

Does it support Brightspeech or other high quality TTS voices?

Anything that's supported by the SAPI API of Windows.

Does it support TTS Caller ID anouncements?

You can pretty much announce anything you want. We don't have anything 'built in' since that's not really how CQC works. We have very general functionality so that you can do whatever you want. Among those would be to speak whatever you want. You tell the CID driver to send out an event when a call comes in, and you set up a triggered event to respond to that and speak the announcement. You can do that with any type of information.

I started another thread to provide some preview stuff on what's coming up (http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=5100) which would answer some of your questions since it shows how some of these things are configured.

We have a single system price. No extra chargers for drivers or for number of clinets used.

 

[jwilson56]

Is there a charge for each client used?
The MLServer license allows for up to 5 concurrant MainLobby 3 clients. Additional licenses are available in batches of 5. MusicLobby 3 base license is for support of one J River Media server with up to 3 zones. Extra zones area available in 3 packs that upgrade all media servers.

Charging for more than 3 zones for JRMC... that seems silly as JRMC is handling the zones and is actually a piece of cake to deal with so why the extra charge?.... at least it should be equal to the 5 clients allowed in the ML3 package.

How soon for MusicLobby 3? How about a package price for ML3, MusicLobby3, MLServer3 for 5 total clients?

John

 

[jwilson56]

Does CQC support J River Media Center player/database?

Not as a player, only as a database. We support ZP and TT.

Does it support Brightspeech or other high quality TTS voices?

Anything that's supported by the SAPI API of Windows.

Does it support TTS Caller ID anouncements?

You can pretty much announce anything you want. We don't have anything 'built in' since that's not really how CQC works. We have very general functionality so that you can do whatever you want. Among those would be to speak whatever you want. You tell the CID driver to send out an event when a call comes in, and you set up a triggered event to respond to that and speak the announcement. You can do that with any type of information.

I started another thread to provide some preview stuff on what's coming up (http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=5100) which would answer some of your questions since it shows how some of these things are configured.

We have a single system price. No extra chargers for drivers or for number of clinets used.

Well I would NEVER use anything but JRMC and the APE lossless format I am usingow. I have 5 distinct zones showing individual views on all my clients (each client can view and control any of the 5 zones or a master hardware based sync to play the same CD in any of the 5 you choose).

Also if you want to draw people towards CQC you should see what people like the most about what they have (like CID TTS and W800).

Why no W800 support??

John

 

[JohnBullard]

Is this thread off topic ? I'm about to get confused. WHy not move some of this to the ML / CQC forum threads?

 

[Dean Roddey]

Well I would NEVER use anything but JRMC and the APE lossless format I am usingow. I have 5 distinct zones showing individual views on all my clients (each client can view and control any of the 5 zones or a master hardware based sync to play the same CD in any of the 5 you choose).

You can use APE with ZP I'm sure, since it's just a codec. JR and ZP are just front ends over the DirectShow filter graph system. They aren't involved in the actual playback of the data at all, they just provide control over the filter graph. You can use JR for ripping and metadata retrieval if you want (though we'll have our own CD ripping in the next release), which is what all our customers do now, and we just import the JR database into CQC for browsing.

You can do all those things with ZP and CQC. At some point, because of the enormous burden of supporting everything out there, we have to just say, we can do what you want to do with what we have, so we cannot justify supporting more and more products to achieve the same thing. It just isn't practical. We'd go broke since we'd spend all our time doing device support and none on all the other stuff that make the device support we do have worth having. The same applies for all the other products, which is why none of them do everything. It's nothing personal, or that we don't want to. It just isn't a practical business reality.

The problem with JR, as I think I mentioned before on this thread, is that they chose to use UPnP for their control API. That requires an enormous time investment for anyone who wants to interact with it. They do have an older COM interface which is what I assume ML uses and will probably have to dump at some point when JR drops it, but that's of no use to us because our drivers run in the background in a service and couldn't load up JR into itself. ZP and TT, OTOH, implemented simple and straightforward control interfaces that won't take a month's worth of work to implement just the plumbing required to even start doing the driver.

So it's just a practical issue that JR decided to support a control protocol that sets a prohibitively high barrier to entry.

 

[jwilson56]

Is this thread off topic ? I'm about to get confused. WHy not move some of this to the ML / CQC forum threads?

I don't see where its off topic really... I think its great to compare the alternative choices now that 1.7 has and end in sight...some of us are worried about the future state of our setups... I think BSR even thanked me for my comments summing up what people are looking for in a product... so please... lets all chime in...

If BSR wants to move the OT (as you see it) to another thread that can contain all application discussion, he is welcome to....

Let the discussions continue....



John

 

[JohnBullard]

No disrespect to anyone was intended, John.

And I agree healthy discussion is useful.

From my perspective, since this is/was a HomeSeer thread, my point was let ML and CQC advertise & battle in a different thread, (again).

I'm more into the HA automation/control side, rather then the music / theater GUI thing, although I will compilment you on your very impessive Now Playing Project, and can understand and appreciate where your main interest is right now.

Whatever the mods decide is fine with me.