Your SO's Favorite/Least Fav. Project

[Treetop]

For me, my girl's favorite project of mine, was setting up the alarm system.

Least favorite: When I had the kitchen light set to a motion sensor, and it would sometimes turn out the light before she finished. To help improve the WAF, I placed some rope lights under the cabinets, and have those on the motion sensors. If you plan on being in the kitchen for more than a couple of mintues...just (manually) turn on the overhead light. This improved the WAF significantly! So much so, that it is no longer her least favorite.

Now her least favorite is the mini-timer I bought for my side of the bed.... she still doesn't know how to set the alarmclock....

So what projects of yours does the SO love and which ones does the SO respond with a "not-so-much"?

 

[electron]

big WAF points:

• medication timer
• CID announcements
• dryer/washer
• garage door status

low WAF points:

• kitchen motion sensor based lighting (am in process of switching to pressure based sensors).
• too many announcements, need to add priority so it will only pause/mute for important messages.
• 1 remote for all devices, I had to remap some of the buttons which is confusing I guess.
• HS machine reboots every few days, sometimes multiple times a day, which starts a list of announcements, including a battery low message for each motion sensor.

 

[tech-home]

Biggest

Elk M1 -- Loves hearing Front Door is Open in case my daughter bolts out a door
I work mostly 3rd shift so security was a big concern


Least Favorite

Way2call Reliability--Taking it down Hopefully HS 2.0 will fix porblems with this.
I get it working then after a day or two it stops

Quote "I'm going to wal-mart to buy a $20 anserwing machine thats beter then your $300.00 one"

Come Back "Ummm.." :wacko:

Motion Based Lighting
Gave up on X10 motion sensors. Waiting for Elk to have the Zwave add-on and will combine with hardwired sensors. Maybe tie in pressure sensors.

 

[Bruce L]

She loves:
Talking CID
Driveway announcements
House lights turn on when you drive in at night

Hates:
Poor quality phone messages
The hallway light turning off when she is vacumming
HS reminding her she left the garden water running (but my favorite)

 

[fitzpatri8]

We're running mostly low-cost X10 devices & controllers here, together with Hal Deluxe, an 1132U PL interface, Beyond TV3, and integrated IR CCTV.

High WAF:


Whole-house, custom Caller ID announcements
Remote lighting and appliance control
Redundant lighting control--if the intended light fails, a nearby light is activated to avoid being plunged into darkness
Smart lighting behavior based on Home/Away/Vacation modes
Downloadable DVR scheduling
CCTV monitoring of the dogs when they are in the yard


Mixed WAF:

Voice recognition scheduling ('cause there's no way to "un-schedule" an event, except by going back to the computer)
Computer-based alarm clock
Motion activated doorbell


Low WAF:

Computer-based voicemail (no ability to screen calls at inconvenient times)
X10 signals dying because a device was moved to a different outlet w/o its filter
RF control delays on multi-push lighting buttons (one press on, another off)
Weather and time voice announcements
Timed shutoff of manually-activated lights
Inability to access VR interface when phone line is in use
Computer controller crashes

 

[JohnWPB]

Hahahahah! Glad I am not the only one with the old "Light going out in the kitchen". That was a disaster from the moment I tried to get it working right.

Favorites:

- Caller ID announcements, and popping a picture of the caller up on all computers in the house.

- Closet lights that use the X10 door/window sensors. When the closet door is opened the lights comes on, when closed they go off. No delay whatsoever, and no going off if there isn't enough motion.

- Doorbell announcements throughout the house.

Disasters

- Motion detected lights

- HomeSeer phone answering machine. I even must admit it is much easier to just press a button on a $30 answering machine, and there are no 2 minutes of dead space to deal with.

- Accidental announcements in the middle of the night Ea: "Kitchen motion sensor may need a new battery" (From the DooMotion Plugin)

 

[huggy59]

All my WAF went to 0% - 100% x 0 SO = 0% BUT, no SO!

 

[jrfuda]

High:
- CID Announcements (HSPhon + WAFNetCallerID + HSPCIModem)
- Blocking unwanted callers
- Ability to turn on and off HEPA filters remotely (appliance modules)
- Simulated sunrise in our infant's room (Zwave module and swith working together to slowly light-up the room over 45 minutes, since we usually all leave the house long before sunrise)
- Garage door monitoring (tells us if it's open >5 minutes after sunset/before sunrise.. emails us if it's open when we're not home.
- Vehicle tracker - announces the arrival of vehicles, and works in conjuntion with the garage door monitoring
- Fish tank automation - Fish lights, air, and food are all taken care of. Just needs cleaning once in a while
- Security signs and stickers - higher WAF (and probably effectiveness) than X10 wireless system.
- Universal remote (Home Theater Master MX700) After initialy low WAF, she now really likes it (better thanusing the other 10 remotes)
- DVR with multi-room capability. If you have one, you'll understand
- MainLobby WeatherLobby: Wife always asks about the weather
- Fisher Price baby monitors - used waaaaaaay more than the teddycam(which is viewable via both 2 TVs and all computers)
- Living Room lamps, dimmable and "easy on" are great. WAF would be higher if they had better local control (why don't they make a little bitty button that's wired to the module that you caan run to the lamp and screw onto the lamps switch - one button to toggel through on/off... half for dim/brite)

Medium:
- All the other MainLobby stuff less WeatherLobby (mentioned in high) including DVDLobby and the CX777ES - she just doens't see the need, but she enjoys using it (I think it should go in high, but she won't admit it)
- HSPhone Voicemail, She accepts it and likes that it emails us when we get a message, but would prefer a regular old machine to retreive it. Too bad we can't somehow have something that does both... I've made a voicemail page in MainLobby (using HSPI PhoneWeb) that is as close to an actual answering machine as you can get, but it's still not close enough.

Low: I've got to go, so I'll come back and finish the message later