General Banter

[Sooty]

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..

[Bwired]

Hi Paul
Nice story

One thing to add from my side regarding X10
Xanura X10/A10 works very good for me, you need to keep track of the filters , I agree on that.
But let me tell you, the main problem regarding X10 is Homeseer! The X10 driver is a very bad driver which misses a lot of commands.
And specially when its very busy with X10 commands on the powerline.

[Sooty]

But let me tell you, the main problem regarding X10 is Homeseer! The X10 driver is a very bad driver which misses a lot of commands.
And specially when its very busy with X10 commands on the powerline.

Yes I have read on this forum many times of your praise for the Xanura devices. I can understand that Homeseer could be a weak link. I also found the CM12 Interface to be less than reliable. I have also found a few other shortcomings with Homeseer and this is why I would like to create my own solution. If only I could find the time.

For the most part Homeseer has been very good for me. I built a Via C7 based system very similar hardware to a Hometroller 100 as a dedicated Homeseer machine. I don't see any of the issues that others have reported with memory leaks etc and my system can run for many months without problems. Most of the problems I have experienced with Homeseer have been caused by third party plug-ins, so now I only use one third party plug-in which is RFXCOM. Bert must be one of the most dedicated HA developers out there. He really does go the extra mile for his customers

Another issue for some with Homeseer is the integrated web server. It really isn't much good for anything other than running the Homeseer interface (which I think is all it was actually designed to do). I run IIS on another machine to do all any fancy stuff so this is not an issue for me. Also the web interface is clumsy, particularly the way events are created. I will be interested to see what HS3 has to offer when it is eventually released.

End of Homeseer bashing..

Paul..

[Esteban]

Nice write-up Sooty. It indeed took 'fooooreeeveerrr + some more' for Z-wave to get up to speed on this side of the ocean. But I'm glad we're finally starting to get there!

If you can't find the time for doing your own HA software from scratch, maybe you could get close by using Domotiga or HouseAgent as a base.

Ciao

[Sooty]

If you can't find the time for doing your own HA software from scratch, maybe you could get close by using Domotiga or HouseAgent as a base.

I have looked at a number of open source projects in the past but most of them would require me to learn another programming language to get it the way I want it, which of course I don't have the time to do. I'm not a programmer by trade but I do have a reasonable self-taught knowledge of C#, VB and ASP and I have been involved with Windows operating systems of all flavours (including server versions) for many years.

I have played a little with Linux, and I have used a Mac two or three times. I just don't have the inclination to learn any new operating systems or programming languages and protocols etc (perhaps this is an age thing), so I think that whatever I do will have to be on a Windows platform and be in C# or VB.

It indeed took 'fooooreeeveerrr + some more' for Z-wave to get up to speed on this side of the ocean

Yes, it is nice to see Z-Wave gaining some ground here in Europe. I'm sure it will prove to be a viable long term protocol for Home Automation. It appears that there are quite a few manufacturers creating Z-Wave devices now, so I expect we will see some new Z-Wave enabled products appearing over the coming months / years.

I will probably swap my Hometronic heating system for a Z-Wave alternative if / when a system becomes available that allows for stand alone operation as well as integration with a HA system. When I get time, I will investigate the capabilities of the Danfoss Z-Wave radiator valves. Maybe it is already possible to use these to create an integrated heating system.

Paul..