Premise What are you doing with Premise?

[kmitchell]

I find that it helps to see what others are doing when it comes to implementing my own systems.

First let me start off with the fact that I'm a long time HomeSeer user (almost 10 years now) and I plan to continue to use HomeSeer as my primary automation system mainly because of the time and money I have invested in software licenses and custom code.

With that said here's what I'm planning on doing with Premise...

I'm working on setting up a basic automation system for an older couple who are my neighbors. If I called them elderly he'd probably whip my a**, which I have no doubt he could do, even at 70 years old. They need some basic sunrise/sunset lighting control as well as a couple of motion triggered lighting scenes. I'm pretty sure that I could do this all with a programmed CM11A but that's about as far as I could take it. One thing my neighbor has asked about was scheduling his sprinkler/drip system and expanding his system into the greenhouse in the backyard where he grows orchids. He has some pretty complex watering requirements for the greenhouse so that should be fun to get implemented.

I plan on starting off with a CM11A, an HR12A PalmPad, and an RR501 Transceiver for the PalmPad. I'll probably throw in one or two X-10 motion sensors as well just to get them started. This is all gear that I have in my spare parts box so I'll be giving it to them to use until they decide if/when they want to do more at which point I'll recommend they go with something a bit more reliable. The irrigation control is something I'll be investigating once I get the basic system up and running.

One thing that has come up in our discussions is the cost of running a computer 24/7 so I'm planning on running the Premise Server on an Asus eee PC netbook running XP Home which I picked up on the net a couple of weeks ago for $179.95. Hopefully this will have enough horsepower to do the simple tasks I have in mind.

That's it for my neighbor's system but I also have plans to try and build up a dedicated home entertainment controller using Premise. Entertainment has always been kind of sacred ground in my house since everyone uses it but not everyone is into the same level of experimentation. I hope to build some type of a whole house AV system using Premise to control it and then possibly interface it back to HomeSeer. Haven't thought this through much but I'm sure it will come together (and change a lot) as I learn more about what Premise can do.

Please consider adding your own uses and ideas to this thread so others can see what you are doing with Premise.

Ken

 

[chucklyons]

I started looking at doing some Premise for a disabled person...seriously disabled. One of the things that I started working out is redundancy in the systems. This was a guy who's disability was on par with the late Christopher Reeves. You, and he/she can't afford failure. (and lets be honest, even Premise has its problems, although its more on the implementer than SYS). Test. Test. Test.

Having said that, X-10 is one area I wouldnt work with..X-10 Pro, maybe, (I havent ever tried it) but I think the Insteon gives you much more reliability. For lighting, I always go with Lutron. Can't beat it, although the cost could be prohibitive.

For the irrigation, I'd dig thru the old forums. Someone (Rob Brun?) had written a Rain-X irrigation controller.

Good luck. And just for the record, I would put SYS against anything else out there...

 

[samgreco]

Ken,

I am with Chuck on NOT using X-10 if you can manage it. It is the least reliable of all of the technologies out there. And a lot of the basic X-10 stuff is not 2-way, meaning it cannot report it's state back to Premise. So if you use a light switch and someone manually flips it, Premise won't know that it happened. So the switch is on, but Premise thinks it's off or visa-versa. Most X-10 pro I think is 2-way.

Insteon or UPB would be good choices. Although as drivers in Premise go, Insteon is the only one that has had any real updates, since it is actually relatively recent, thanks to John. I figured out how to add devices to the upb drivers, but is rudimentary at best and I am sure will have it's limits. But most device type are working or could be made to work, I think.

I use Premise primarily for music distribution and lighting. Pretty basic right now. As a multizone control system, I think Premise's mSense is light years ahead of anything else out there, even still. Don't get me wrong, it has it's short comings, but I literally had it hooked up to my Xantech matrix preamp and amps to 10 zones, and playing music in less than 15 minutes. I kid you not. Impressive.

I have "almost" jumped ship to other software a few times, but can't seem to get what I want as easily as I can with Premise. If we could get a few more people using it with real programming chops, I have no doubt it would keep up with the rest and keep things humming for years to come.

 

[etc6849]

I'm new to home automation and Premise is my first HA program. With my limited experience, I would say do not use X10 over power lines for lighting unless you have many branch circuits to choose from that are on the same side of the breaker box. However, do buy the X10 RF remotes and the MR26A RF receiver as these work with Premise and make great little $3-6 remotes. As they work with Premise, you can use them with any lighting system Premise supports (or any device in Premise) once you link them with a keypad under home. You would need one keypad for each housecode as a key chain remote set to housecode "A" uses the same signals as a palm pad set to house code "A". You can also set each remote to a certain housecode and use this to know what room you are sending a command from. For example, "A" for living room, "B' for master bedroom etc. If you do this, Premise would know which room you are pushing the button from! (assuming you don't mix up the remotes!)

If you want reliability with X10 try a few things like this:
You may need a phase coupler to help the signal jump to the other side of your breaker box. Houses have 240v service which is comprised of 2 - 120 volt circuits 180 degrees out of phase. The 2-120 volt lines going to your house are from opposite ends of a winding and the middle of the winding is tied to ground; this is why they are 180 degrees out of phase. Thus, without the coupler, the X10 signal travels outside your house through the house side winding on the pole mount transformer, then back into your house! Right now, my set up is reliable without the phase coupler, but it isn't always from what I read.

Or this:
Also, I had with X10 power line signals going into the transformers on my home theater equipment instead of going onto the branch circuit to actuate the light. I moved the CM11A to a different branch circuit and this fixed my issue, but beware of items like receivers, tvs etc as these can "absorb" the X10 signals. There are line filters that would fix my problem, but I would need more than one as they only handle 5 amps. They also cost more than the $2-$5 price point for most any X10 device on ebay.

 

[kmitchell]

Thanks guys for adding your thoughts.

For the record I only plan to use X-10 modules to get my neighbor's system started. I've already talked to them about other technologies such as Insteon, UPB, and even Z-Wave. I have another neighbor who has a Lutron Radio RA system and yet another who has Lutron HomeWorks. These will all be considered by my neighbor after the "proof-of-concept" phase is completed. So far I've got the phase coupler installed along with a couple of lamp modules, the RR501, and the PalmPad. I installed Premise on the Asus netbook but I haven't got that installed at my neighbor's yet. I have to go over this afternoon and setup a router and port-forward so I can access and monitor the Premise system remotely so I don't have to walk down the street to check on things. I'll install the Asus netbook and test it out at the same time.

Now for my own projects..

After only playing with Premise for a little over a week I find myself very impressed with its capabilities and potential. I've set up a test system so I can play with things a bit but the first thing I figured out was that almost all of my sub-systems are connected to my HomeSeer machine so I went ahead and installed the Premise Server on my HomeSeer Machine so I can play with the sub-systems I already have connected there. Installation went without a hitch as Premise just figured out that HS was already on port 80 and changed its webserver port to 86. Since the sub-systems "sharing" involves closing com port connections in HomeSeer while I'm playing with Premise I'll probably only being doing that late at night or when no one else is in the house. The one thing I found most impressive about Premise is the fact that I can do a huge amount of the system development before I have to connect to a real device since all of the programming is done at the home object layer and not at the device layer. I've already started on a generic device module for a Temp05 1-wire datalogger as practice for creating the module for my Denon AVR-4308CI.

I've run into a couple of gotchas with Premise that I'll document in a new thread that may help others just starting out.

One major piece that I haven't figured out yet is how to talk to a network device using a generic device module. It looks like the device has to be either IR or serial. A native driver may be required to talk to network devices.

Once I get my new USB-UIRT and can get it wired into my Xantech network I'll start playing with IR.

That's it for now,
Ken

 

[electron]

Eltima makes great serial port management software, one of their products is a software based serial port splitter. They offer a 14 day trial, I would try that software so Homeseer and Premise would be able to access the same device without any conflicts.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

You can make a reliable X-10 system, but it takes some work.

HERE is one of my favorite threads that drives home this point.

 

[etc6849]

To use Premise with a networked deivce, you need to add a device such as a UDS-10 to act as a virtual bridge between the network (where the device actually is) and the serial device module that Premise will see. Thus the device is a generic module that uses serial commands. Next, you bind the serial port to the virtual UDS-10. FYI: there are also networked based portservers that have rs232 ports (such as those made by Digi) if you want to network an actual RS232 device.

If you can't use telnet to control the device, then I don't think the UDS-10 tricks below will work for you, but you can always give it a try!

This post #4 gives an example:
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...mp;#entry111854

And here's another one that shows you how to control media center and extenders via ethernet with Premise (I recommend not using TVPACK 2008 with this method though. I had this working, but there were too many issues with it and TV PACK 2008):
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...st&p=114023

 

[etc6849]

There is also a free program that does this. When I get home I'll post the link. I think the program was on sourceforge and had the ability to split a port, make virtual ports etc... Ok, I don't think it splits ports, but some documentation is here: http://com0com.sourceforge.net/doc/UsingCom0com.pdf

Ok, so once you install com0com from above, install hub4com and it will split ports for you!

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=223131

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/software-s...m-mobilepc.html

Eltima makes great serial port management software, one of their products is a software based serial port splitter. They offer a 14 day trial, I would try that software so Homeseer and Premise would be able to access the same device without any conflicts.

 

[kmitchell]

Eltima makes great serial port management software, one of their products is a software based serial port splitter. They offer a 14 day trial, I would try that software so Homeseer and Premise would be able to access the same device without any conflicts.

Thanks Dan. I may give that a try but I'm not sure I want to add any more complexity to my system. It isn't to difficult to manually share the ports since I don't have to physically move any cables I just have to go into HS and close the com port before I try to use it with Premise.

Thanks again,
Ken

 

[kmitchell]

To use Premise with a networked deivce, you need to add a device such as a UDS-10 to act as a virtual bridge between the network (where the device actually is) and the serial device module that Premise will see. Thus the device is a generic module that uses serial commands. Next, you bind the serial port to the virtual UDS-10. FYI: there are also networked based portservers that have rs232 ports (such as those made by Digi) if you want to network an actual RS232 device.

If you can't use telnet to control the device, then I don't think the UDS-10 tricks below will work for you, but you can always give it a try!

This post #4 gives an example:
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...mp;#entry111854

And here's another one that shows you how to control media center and extenders via ethernet with Premise (I recommend not using TVPACK 2008 with this method though. I had this working, but there were too many issues with it and TV PACK 2008):
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...st&p=114023

Wow, this is excellent. I tried it last night and it works perfectly. BTW, the device I'm trying to control is a Mac Mini running XBMC.

Thanks,
Ken

 

[123]

... I've already started on a generic device module for a Temp05 1-wire datalogger ...

Now that's a driver that might be of interest to beezlerob.

 

[kmitchell]

... I've already started on a generic device module for a Temp05 1-wire datalogger ...

Now that's a driver that might be of interest to beezlerob.

He might be interested in this as well: http://www.doosoft.com/dootemp08/default.htm

This package has a standalone program (VB scriptable, of course) and a HomeSeer plug-in for those running HS.

I wrote a Temp05 plug-in for HomeSeer a number of years ago and passed the source code along to Jim Doolittle who ended up completely rewriting it to support multiple units and the Temp08, which wasn't out yet when I wrote the Temp05 plug-in. For now my Premise code will be pretty simple as it will just support the 32 temp sensor readings. It will collect the data from the Temp05 and place it into the appropriate sensor instance.

If there's enough interest I could get a hold of Mitch at Midon Design to see if I could borrow a Temp08 and write code to support that device as well. There's a lot more sensor type options with the Temp08.

Ken

 

[123]

... If there's enough interest I could ... borrow a Temp08 and write code to support that device as well.

If you build it they will come!

A Premise 1-wire driver for the Temp08 would be a well appreciated contribution.

 

[etc6849]

So my Digi Portserver TS 4 MEI arrive last night (paid ~$50 on ebay) and I thought I'd give an update since I mention it below.

It appears installation was very easy! The MEI series works with multiple serial types including RS485, RS423 and RS232 and allows access to these ports through the ethernet.

The digi products work with a program called realport that tricks windows into thinking these ports are local to the machine (the 4 rs232 ports show up under the computer devices like local ports). This means such a product works with almost any program or device requiring an rs232 port. As such, the ports showed up under premise without a problem and work great so far.

I did have to make some custom cables and went with a RJ45 8-pin to DB-9 male adapter to do this. The Portserver series actually uses a 10pin connector (like RJ45), but the RJ45-8pin plugs directly into it (I can only use pin2 thru pin-9 so some functionality of a normal com port is lost). Otherwise, the 10 pin cables are ~$12 each, and I might buy these later on...

Now I can move that X10 CM11a and MR26a to another room at last!

To use Premise with a networked deivce, you need to add a device such as a UDS-10 to act as a virtual bridge between the network (where the device actually is) and the serial device module that Premise will see. Thus the device is a generic module that uses serial commands. Next, you bind the serial port to the virtual UDS-10. FYI: there are also networked based portservers that have rs232 ports (such as those made by Digi) if you want to network an actual RS232 device.

If you can't use telnet to control the device, then I don't think the UDS-10 tricks below will work for you, but you can always give it a try!

This post #4 gives an example:
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...mp;#entry111854

And here's another one that shows you how to control media center and extenders via ethernet with Premise (I recommend not using TVPACK 2008 with this method though. I had this working, but there were too many issues with it and TV PACK 2008):
http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php...st&p=114023