Before you get burned on Zwave, please note that Mr. Houston has apparently never tried it at all. Most of his opposition to it is based on the fact that Zwave didn't offer a cheap developer's kit. They're a major player, backed by most of the industry giants. Insteon is the proprietary product of one company. If that company drops it, you're up the creek.
The author of Charned Quark is a regular participant in this newsgroup. His website is:
formatting link
I'm sure he'll chime in. He's a good guy, BTW, and his software is well spoken of by folks who don't mind doing some development.
There are two ways to purchase CQC. You can buy the DIY product (just buy it through the online store, under the Try/Buy tab) and install it yourself. Or, you can purchase it via an installer who will do it for you. The latter is of course more expensive, but time is money and if you don't have the time and have the money it can get you where you want to go quicker.
We don't really have a hardware product. What you see there is just a standard PC (though a well done one with our logo engraved on the faceplate) with CQC pre-installed. We are going to stop selling that though, since we've teamed up with
formatting link
to do our hardware boxes for anyone who is looking for a pre-fab hardware/CQC package.
I don't think that CQC is quite as A/V oriented as it might sound from reading this thread. It supports things like the Elk and Omni Pro II panels, and quite a bit of core automation type hardware, and will have more in the upcoming 2.0 release (it looks like maybe 25 to 30 new drivers, though it remains to be seen how many will be ready for prime time by the 2.0 release date.)
It does have strong support in the A/V area, since that's a heavily growing part of the automation world. Whereas turning lights on and off remains something that doesn't quite click with many people, browsing your DVDs on touch pads and so forth seems to be a more powerful driver to get people excited about automation, then we talk them into turning the lights on and off.
Anyway, the combination of something like CQC layered over an Elk or Omni ProII is a quite nice solution that is very commonly used by our customers. It can be quite an investment in time and learning curve to get both those bits well understood and do all the physical installation though. If you aren't getting into this for the love of the game, you might want to consider professional installation, or at least professional consultation.
------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
I would use cable only for internet. That's $50 unbundled for 5M and you can go a lot higher. But I don't know if they would install cable for you without cable TV.
I'll stay with satellite for TV. And for bundled DVR, your choice is limited to what you are offered.
Major webcam and wi-fi manufacturers have some, like a small webcam with antenna sticking out. Wi-fi has good range and digital transmission, so you really can install in discreetly position, needing only wires for the power supply. I can't think of anything you need to do to maintain cams. You should able to reconfig via internet.
I though you were talking about security intercom. Most cordless phone do intercom like calling handset #4, instead of call all handset all at once. This is the problem rather than price. Like Dect, the price is good. The Europeans couldn't delay the Chinese factories mass producing an open standard. They are all from China anyway, the difference is the label, major Western company or unknown Asian subsidiaries.
But do you have an intercom already? My wife is doing a good job at it. I can always hear her even if my house is several times bigger. And I have to run to her at light speed, or run away even faster.
Sure see other replies. My unit can be seen as a sensor and remote control in one. There is also the UI for status, displaying the temperature, also for programming. It is designed for multiple units - one being the master or at least they can talk to each other. You can do some complicated stuff like weighted average but I don't think it's useful. You must be able to get more units so you don't need to carry it around like me. But it make sense to have a sensor near you and remote control near you, so carrying it around is logical, cheap as well.
It comes to how centralized you want your system to be. x10 was a big player in all-in-one IR remotes. With it's x10 version, I can control most of the media center, change channel on TV to my security cam's receivers, and switch cams controlled by x10 dc adaptors, and of course all the lightings. Ideally I would like to have a display for the temp too and one touch button to increase temp by 1 deg. But that ain't going to happen. Even if there's a display, it not likely to be 1 touch operation. So a separate wireless device seem to be simpler.
I wouldn't know as cable is very good at protecting their digital content from getting out of the box. I think you have to pay for your own box and service to get the most from Tivo. I was thinking of moving digital content from Tivo to Tivo not in real time. If you are doing complicated things, you can use the PC ethernet interface to program multiple Tivo and shift contents around.
I think you are thinking of streaming Tivo content to a media adapter connected to your other TV via ethernet or wi-fi in real time. I think Tivo should have this function or sooner or later.
Here's a link to a thread from another HA related forum where someone with first hand ZWave experience appears to confirm some of the weaknesses that I pointed out from its introduction.
formatting link
You can find other threads where the weaknesses of the routing tables and controllers are discussed. What you will have a hard time finding are threads which are very positive.
My evaluation is not colored by any financial interest.
This is a software product correct? I guess the primary expense of a professional installation is the configuration of the software to controll or work with whatever devices and or panels I have? I guess since I'm starting from scratch and have nothing to control, downloading a timed trial at this point would not be my best bet right now? Would it be beneficial to download or read the manual to see what devices I can control and learn more about exactly what this stuff can do?
So does the CharmedQuark run on top of a media server (like the ones at
2partsfusion?) Or does it run on a standard PC that in turn controls the media server?
Interesting. This is such a learning experience for me. So what is the hardware interface between CQC and all these panels and devices? I'm sure it varies, but for example, what is the physical connection between whatever device is running the CQC software and the ELK M1 Gold panel? I would use the CQC software to control the lights and programming, etc of all the lights that are connected to the elk m1?
I would agree completly. Lights are cool, but some of the screen shots I've seen in the CQC forums are definitely much cooler. I would definitely like to learn more about the hardware that's behind some of those screens, and maybe figure out if this stuff is something I can realistically implement.
Can you recommend any professionals in the Greater Atlanta area?
Totaline uses 418MHz RF. All of the RF-capable, high-end, programmable remotes (e.g. Philips Pronto) in North America also use 418MHz RF making it an easy matter to control the Totaline with the remotes.
Programmable thermostats have been available for 25 or more years (along with subsidies and incentives for installing them). I don't know whether Totaline RF thermostats can handle multiple sensor inputs.
The cited thread began in 2003. Almost every recent post is positive.
Actually, most of the negative information posted on Zwave originated with Mr. Houston who, as mentioned earlier, has never actually tested anything Zwave.
Yes, it is a software based product. It's useful to download and play around with. There is a device simulator program that comes with it, and which is used in the tutorial, that you can use to play until you have some real devices to hook up. The tutorial is under the Learn tab, Quick Tutorial section.
The big gotcha is that 2.0 is so close to release. So you'll be learning 1.6 just in time to then move to 2.0. But most of what you'll learn in the existing tutorial is still relevant.
It can work either way. If you aren't hurting for budget, it's usually a more stable scenario to have a separate backend machine in the rack for CQC, since it's usually doing lots more than running the media repository. You don't need a super-manly machine for CQC if you are going that route. But, as long as the machine has sufficient oomph that you aren't going to have CQC and the media streaming stuff fighing for CPU or I/O it's fine to have them on one machine. I'd argue against having the backend of CQC on a machine that's interacted with directly by users though. Stability is a big issue and day to day use machines are more subject to problems, whereas a dedicated server machine in the closet can remain stable for a long time.
If the CQC server and the media server are on the same machine and that machine is in the closet, hidden away, then that's usually fine, again as long as it has sufficient oomph to do what you want to do.
The Elk and Omni ProII both have ethernet connections to the PC. The lower end Omnis have serial (too slow to be of use) and the Elk has a serial which is fast (actually the ethernet connection works by way of the serial port anyway.) There are various scenarios as to what devices get controlled where. But generally most folks hook up what can be hooked up through the panels through the panels, and CQC controls those things indirectly via the panels. But there will be other things that the panels don't understand and CQC would control those.
There are various alternatives for getting touch screens around the home, some being:
UMPC wireless tablets. Pricier but nicer, they are their own network nodes, and have full graphical capabilities.
RDP clients. Cheaper, not quite as nice. They just do remote desktop sessions, and the graphics are more limited usually, such as in bit depth. They push the processing to the back end machine, which can add up if you have many of them, so you have to be able to handle the load.
The Rad-IO and UMTC products from
formatting link
. This provides centralized maintenance if these products are ok for your needs. The UMTC are a variation of the RDP scheme, but even lighter on the client side.
Very small PCs in the closet driving standard wall mounted touch screens via a Cat5 KVM extender. You can get a 15" touch screen, a teeny bare bones mini-itx machine, and a KVM extender for probably 00, or with a 7" Lillput screen for more like 0'ish. If you buy used you can obviously get that down considerably. CQC is network distributed, so it's no problem having a main server and a few of these little guys driving standard touch screens. It centralized maintenance which is nice.
There are also some multi-user software products that allow a single machine to drive 3 or 4 touch screens that could be used as well. They would work with standard touch screens. Something like this:
formatting link
We've not yet tried it out, and there are some restrictions on video hardware and such. But, it could be a quite reasonable solution. It's better than RDP, but still lets you drive multiple touch screens from one machine, for centralized maintenance. A back end server machine plus another smaller one pushing 4 15" touch screens could be had for a reasonable price.
We need to get brave and try this thing out.
We have a new integration partner in Atlanta. He just signed up so we've not gotten him on our page yet. E-mail me or PM me via the forum and I'll get you two together.
------------------ Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
I'm sorry Bob, but that's just not true. Almost every post is NOT positive. I read through that thread last night and here are some quotes from the most recent posts:
"having one stuck out by the end of the driveway probably won't work too good, or off in a corner of the house where it's blocked from a direct line to other modules by a metal duct or something like that."
"A disadvantage of Z-Wave, which it shares with X-10, is that pretty much all the modules out there now have to be polled if you want to get two way status back from them (important if using Z-Wave with an automatin package.) That wouldn't be a problem if the network was really fast, but it's actually really slow."
"The directions that come with the products isn't very good though and will cause you more problems than the products."
"Some systems can convert a PC controller to the master controller by just transferring that job from the remote remote control to the PC controller. You'd normally need to have that one be on a laptop that you can carry around and use to add modules."
(Carry a laptop around to add modules????? That STINKS!!!! -BG)
"the ZW network needs to be solid in order to keep the polling moving along, or that has been the case for me. If one module is acting up, it slows the polling down pretty signicantly."
"All of the current PC interfaces act as a secondary controller. This means you have to copy the device information from the handheld remote to the PC interface. While this works, its a pain and problematic."
"Insteon has the advantage when it comes to cost. Insteon wall switches can be had for less then $20, but Z-Wave switches are around $40. So outfitting a home costs much less then Z-Wave."
"right now there are no in-wall keypads for Z-Wave"
I wouldn't invest in Zwave based on those comments and not a single one of them was made by Dave (or me, for that matter). They were, in fact made by Dean Roddey, Rich of Homeseer and others.
More important than the faults above, ANY RF solution is always vulnerable to interference. You can run X-10 with or without RF if you choose. Not Zwave!
If some government agency sets up shop with a transmitter near you, you could be totally washed up with an all RF solution. While PLC devices like X-10 or UPB allow you to filter the powerline at the service entrance, there's almost nothing you can do to block out strong RF other than enclose your house in a metal Faraday cage.
RF interference is a serious problem and will only get worse as more and more RF devices hit the market. It's one thing to have to buy a new garage door opener, or unlock your car with keys and not a fob, it's another to have to yank all your Z-wave devices. Will it happen? Who knows. But lots of car remotes and garage door remotes are knocked out on a regular basis by interference. Here's just one case I know about:
formatting link
The Associated Press (All rights reserved)
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - During testing last week of the $5.5 million two-way radio system at Eglin, homeowners in Niceville, Valparaiso and the Crestview area reported that their garage door openers failed to work.
Air Force officials said Tuesday the contractor, Motorola Inc., will try to minimize the problem. Technicians will run the system at slightly different frequencies from those used by garage door openers when another test is conducted Friday through Monday.
"I want my garage door opener to work, too," said Col. Russell F. Miller, commander of the 96th Communication Group.
I want my home automation to work! I don't have to "register" any of my PC ethernet network devices. I don't have to register any of my telephones when I plug them into a wall outlet. Why would I want to run around the house registering HA modules? Sounds primitive to me.
One does not have to actually drink strychnine to know that it's a deadly poison. And, no, I neither own nor sell Zwave devices, but I do own RF devices of many types, HA, PC, alarm and otherwise and know well their limitations and the issues that others have experienced with them. That's the advantage of living in a civilized society with written communications.
One does not have to own a Zwave device to know the issues involved with RF. One does not have to own a whole fleet of modules to know they would not like the process of walking about the house registering and re-registering modules with or without a laptop in tow. Anyone with even a little experience with HA modules losing their settings and having to be reprogrammed knows how annoying a "feature" like that can become in very short order.
If Zwave were truly a step above the rest, one would think we would be hearing more about it here in CHA. The fact that we don't almost always indicates very little real world market penetration and that's a bad thing. It means buyers are early adopters, the industry term for "bug hunters willing to be unpaid testers AND even willing to pay for the test equipment themselves!" No thanks! Been there, done that, mate. I'm thankful that among the many admitted X-10 flaws, wall switches losing their identity or needing periodic re-registration hasn't been among them, at least for me.
To be fair, some of my negative comments were refuted, and they are based on first generation stuff. As I said in that thread, maybe things have gotten better.
You don't HAVE to use a laptop to carry around, it's just one of the options. The other is to just carry around a Z-Wave remote control, add the modules to it, and then replicate that to the PC (which is acting as a static controller.) The remote remains the master controller.
Z-Wave is far from perfect, but I think I'd choose it over Insteon. That's not based on personal experience (well not with Insteon, I do use Z-Wave), but just on reading a lot of threads on the relative merits of the two by people who do use them.
Ideally, I'd never use any wireless or powerline scheme for something as important as lights and thermostats and such. But, I live in a small apartment and can't do otherwise for now.
--------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
So what do early adopters now do with their first generation hardware? Can they co-exist with the "maybe better" later things?
Not to denigrate your hands-on experience but six modules in a small apartment is probably not a good predictor for dozens of modules in a large residence (e.g. Bruce Robin's Insteon installation). Lutron suggests RF repeaters within 26 feet of each other for RadioRA (and I believe that is just one-way). I would expect Z-Wave to need similar density for reliability. And, unless one of the changes is an increase in max_hops, the size of an installation is inherently limited so your apartment may not be atypical in terms of size.
Unfortunately, unless you are building a new house and can hardwire it during the construction phase, you are pretty much limited to wireless and/or PLC so the question for most people is which less-than-optimal, non-hardwire solution is best.
Insteon is two-way with (reasonably fast) automatic ACKs so there's no necessity to poll.
The old modules should continue to work. I agree that 6 modules isn't any sort of real test. Some folks have larger systems than that of course. Newer modules can send async change notifications, using a sort of trick that gets around the (stupid) Lutron patent, as discussed in the previously linked thread.
RadioRA is two way, though only on/off status is returned, not dimmer level, which is the biggest limitation of RA really, well that and it's limited to
32 loads for a single unit, max of 64 with two linked units. But that's not a huge limitation for most people.
I think that for one way control, you can have a Z-Wave module at a pretty good distance from its nearest neighbor. Not sure about good two way control though. I've not ever tried it. A guy in the linked thread took one out to the end of the driveway and said he had no problems controlling it from inside the house. Not sure if that would remain so over time, or how it would do if it had to be polled, or how reliable async change notifications would be seen.
--------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
You say, "Some folks have larger systems" and earlier you referred to seeing several threads from people who had tried both Insteon and Z-Wave. URLs to any such threads would be welcomed by those here trying to decide between the two. Reports from installers whose profitability depends on reliability would be especially welcomed.
If RadioRA is two-way, then the modules must be transceivers. Why then do they need separate (and multiple) repeaters?
Free air range is not a valid indicator for indoor range (as you have noted). I have extensive experience with low power radio modules like these and my rule of thumb (which holds up fairly well) is that reliable indoor range is about 20% of free air range. I'd like to see how well they perform in the plaster over wire lath construction that San Francisco's firecodes required when I installed commercial sound systems there in the early '60s.
I recall seeing that removing a dead Z-Wave unit from the master controller required starting over with a clean slate. Has that been fixed?
The cost of RadioRA modules would limit most pe>The old modules should continue to work. I agree that 6 modules isn't any
I don't have them handy. Go to cocoontech and search for Chris Walker. I'm sure you guys could have a good debate.
Dunno. I'm a software geek, and don't know nothin bout those types of things.
Sure. I made that same point in the thread that was previously linked to from which my comments were quoted.
It depends on which master controller. If you are using a software based one, or one like the one HS just announced, which is a batter powered one that you take around and then plug back into the PC, then they can remove a dead one by selecting it from a list, I'm pretty sure.
--------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.