General Banter
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 12:32 am
Many of the Home Automation related forums seem to have more than their fair share of posts relating to problems with various hardware and/ or software, so I thought I would spend a bit of time sharing some of my Home Automation experiences of the last few years for anyone that’s interested.
I am actually from a farming background although I spent 12 years away from farming setting up and running a construction equipment rental company which I eventually sold in 2008. I have since returned to the agriculture industry although more on the technology side these days.
I’ve always been interested in technology and I started experimenting in Home Automation about 5 years ago with a few X10 modules and various software. I eventually added some more X10 devices and decided to go with Homeseer on the software side as it seemed to have the best following of users via its forum at that time.
Like a number of others, I had lots of issues with X10 reliability in my house. I tried various filters and other gadgets, but still I couldn’t get it to perform reliably. Whilst there were power line technologies with status feedback, they didn’t seem to be plentiful here in the UK and what was available was ridiculously expensive. I also looked at hard wired systems like Idratek and C-Bus, but I was not willing to tear the house apart to install all the necessary cables.
I added an RFXCOM LAN interface to the system quite early on and purchased a few Oregon weather and internal temp / humidity sensors etc which are still in use today and have performed very well. Later I added a Visonic alarm panel to the house and integrated it into Homeseer via RFXCOM. This is also still in use and again it has not given me any problems.
So I ended up with a system that could display weather info, internal temperatures and security sensor status with a good degree of reliability, but I couldn’t really control anything like lights and appliances with any confidence. After reading lots of info on this and other forums, I decided that 2-way comms (status feedback) was essential for any device that could be controlled locally as well as from a HA system.
My earlier X10 experiences had frightened me off products like Xanura and PLC-Bus although I’m sure they are/were much better than standard X10, so having decided not to tear apart the house I only had half a system. It remained this way until here in the UK the Home Easy (KaKu) RF range of devices came to market shortly followed by support for these devices in RFXCOM. Whilst not 2-way, they had a range of products that were relatively cheap and some of which were a direct replacement for UK light switches and power sockets. Z-Wave and other RF mesh technologies were also floating about at this time in small numbers but not so much in Europe and more specifically not here in the UK.
Given the low price and the lack of anything else on the immediate horizon, I decided to give the Home Easy a go so I installed quite a few devices including in-wall dimmers and power sockets, in-line and plug-in modules and battery remotes and switches. These have all performed quite well for a couple of years now with only one module failure that I can remember. I would say that I get about 95% reliability on the receiver devices when controlling them from RFXCOM and more than 99% reliability from the transmitter devices when receiving them with RFXCOM. I don’t know what causes it, but sometimes receiver devices appear to be deaf for a few hours and then everything will return to normal.
Around the same time as I installed the Home Easy devices, I also installed the Honeywell Hometronic system for heating control. I had searched (as many others have) for a system with individual radiator control that was easy to retrofit and could be integrated with a HA system. In the absence of such a system I went for the Honeywell. I purchased the Hometronic manager, 14 HR80 valves, a boiler relay and some other items to integrate my 3 non-standard radiators. Not cheap, but this system has made the house much more comfortable and so far it has been 100% reliable. I don’t think it has saved much energy, but individual room control does beat having a single or even 2 thermostats. I have got a limited level of Homeseer integration with Hometronic via a Honeywell I/O device which means that I can activate any one of 8 temperature programmes from Homeseer via an RFXCOM I/O module. I really would like to be able to interface Homeseer directly with the radiator valves and create my own time / temperature schedules, but so far it seems that there is no such interface to achieve this.
So what next?
I always knew that I needed 2-way comms on most switching devices, but I was just waiting for the right technology to arrive. I had been following the Z-Wave trail for quite a while and whilst it seemed to be growing rapidly in the US, here in Europe it appeared to be trailing behind. According to the marketing hype this technology would be ultra reliable and give me the status feedback that I have waited so long for, however I was reading lots of horror stories about it like a single module failure bringing down the entire network etc.
As Europe eventually started catching up, I thought it was time to give Z-Wave a test run for myself, so I purchased 10 devices of various sorts and an Aeon Labs USB stick.
Other than having a faulty dimmer module, the whole setup process in Homeseer was quite painless and I now have about 20 Z-wave devices. So far I am very impressed. I have almost instant response to commands and of course the status feedback. I have tested the network reliability by taking out a couple of modules and everything seems to work fine so I don’t think a module failure would bring down the whole system.
So, thanks to Z-Wave, it would appear that I can now make much better use of my HA system and finally I can rest a little easier knowing that things should happen when they are supposed to happen. I will probably make a complete switch to Z-Wave for lighting and some other switched devices over the coming months and retain RFXCOM for Oregon, Visonic and some Home Easy devices for which there is no Z-Wave replacement yet.
One final project that I don’t know if I will ever get the time to complete is to create my own HA software solution. For now I can make Homeseer do all I want it to do with the help of some scripting and a mix of self-written and third party plug-ins but I would definitely like to have 100% control of my system.
Paul..
I am actually from a farming background although I spent 12 years away from farming setting up and running a construction equipment rental company which I eventually sold in 2008. I have since returned to the agriculture industry although more on the technology side these days.
I’ve always been interested in technology and I started experimenting in Home Automation about 5 years ago with a few X10 modules and various software. I eventually added some more X10 devices and decided to go with Homeseer on the software side as it seemed to have the best following of users via its forum at that time.
Like a number of others, I had lots of issues with X10 reliability in my house. I tried various filters and other gadgets, but still I couldn’t get it to perform reliably. Whilst there were power line technologies with status feedback, they didn’t seem to be plentiful here in the UK and what was available was ridiculously expensive. I also looked at hard wired systems like Idratek and C-Bus, but I was not willing to tear the house apart to install all the necessary cables.
I added an RFXCOM LAN interface to the system quite early on and purchased a few Oregon weather and internal temp / humidity sensors etc which are still in use today and have performed very well. Later I added a Visonic alarm panel to the house and integrated it into Homeseer via RFXCOM. This is also still in use and again it has not given me any problems.
So I ended up with a system that could display weather info, internal temperatures and security sensor status with a good degree of reliability, but I couldn’t really control anything like lights and appliances with any confidence. After reading lots of info on this and other forums, I decided that 2-way comms (status feedback) was essential for any device that could be controlled locally as well as from a HA system.
My earlier X10 experiences had frightened me off products like Xanura and PLC-Bus although I’m sure they are/were much better than standard X10, so having decided not to tear apart the house I only had half a system. It remained this way until here in the UK the Home Easy (KaKu) RF range of devices came to market shortly followed by support for these devices in RFXCOM. Whilst not 2-way, they had a range of products that were relatively cheap and some of which were a direct replacement for UK light switches and power sockets. Z-Wave and other RF mesh technologies were also floating about at this time in small numbers but not so much in Europe and more specifically not here in the UK.
Given the low price and the lack of anything else on the immediate horizon, I decided to give the Home Easy a go so I installed quite a few devices including in-wall dimmers and power sockets, in-line and plug-in modules and battery remotes and switches. These have all performed quite well for a couple of years now with only one module failure that I can remember. I would say that I get about 95% reliability on the receiver devices when controlling them from RFXCOM and more than 99% reliability from the transmitter devices when receiving them with RFXCOM. I don’t know what causes it, but sometimes receiver devices appear to be deaf for a few hours and then everything will return to normal.
Around the same time as I installed the Home Easy devices, I also installed the Honeywell Hometronic system for heating control. I had searched (as many others have) for a system with individual radiator control that was easy to retrofit and could be integrated with a HA system. In the absence of such a system I went for the Honeywell. I purchased the Hometronic manager, 14 HR80 valves, a boiler relay and some other items to integrate my 3 non-standard radiators. Not cheap, but this system has made the house much more comfortable and so far it has been 100% reliable. I don’t think it has saved much energy, but individual room control does beat having a single or even 2 thermostats. I have got a limited level of Homeseer integration with Hometronic via a Honeywell I/O device which means that I can activate any one of 8 temperature programmes from Homeseer via an RFXCOM I/O module. I really would like to be able to interface Homeseer directly with the radiator valves and create my own time / temperature schedules, but so far it seems that there is no such interface to achieve this.
So what next?
I always knew that I needed 2-way comms on most switching devices, but I was just waiting for the right technology to arrive. I had been following the Z-Wave trail for quite a while and whilst it seemed to be growing rapidly in the US, here in Europe it appeared to be trailing behind. According to the marketing hype this technology would be ultra reliable and give me the status feedback that I have waited so long for, however I was reading lots of horror stories about it like a single module failure bringing down the entire network etc.
As Europe eventually started catching up, I thought it was time to give Z-Wave a test run for myself, so I purchased 10 devices of various sorts and an Aeon Labs USB stick.
Other than having a faulty dimmer module, the whole setup process in Homeseer was quite painless and I now have about 20 Z-wave devices. So far I am very impressed. I have almost instant response to commands and of course the status feedback. I have tested the network reliability by taking out a couple of modules and everything seems to work fine so I don’t think a module failure would bring down the whole system.
So, thanks to Z-Wave, it would appear that I can now make much better use of my HA system and finally I can rest a little easier knowing that things should happen when they are supposed to happen. I will probably make a complete switch to Z-Wave for lighting and some other switched devices over the coming months and retain RFXCOM for Oregon, Visonic and some Home Easy devices for which there is no Z-Wave replacement yet.
One final project that I don’t know if I will ever get the time to complete is to create my own HA software solution. For now I can make Homeseer do all I want it to do with the help of some scripting and a mix of self-written and third party plug-ins but I would definitely like to have 100% control of my system.
Paul..
, I agree on that.