Wednesday, August 31, 2016

FB August 31, 2016

With HomeSeer Home Automation I'm FINALLY starting to feel like my automation might get past where it was 10 years ago. Just setup so when Google Voice sends me notice of vmail or Amazon shipping sends me an update, a yellow light comes on in my office and it SAYS "check your phone". Last night setup Amazon Echo linkage so can tell to put house into ready for bed and night modes. REALLY liking the multiple remote Z-Wave interfaces bit too. Instead of having a hub in the house and the shop for instance, I can have one hub with interfaces that talk over my network in each location. That might make even automating the barn possible again.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

FB August 21, 2016 excerpt

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Home controllers are even more messed up now than when I started the weekend. I think the Z-Wave stick on the Homeseer is bad. Ordered an upscale replacement but only have 8 days left on the Homeseer eval.
Moved UPS box sensor to the Vera Edge to try get that back online but it (and may be 1 or 2 others that replaced the Timecommander) just seem to have stopped seeing changes in the lines that are monitoring while otherwise responding fine. Yet the lines appear fine as well. Ordered a diff pro 8 input sensor block Homeseer supports but again only 8 days left to try.
Had a bunch of devices moved to the Homeseer before the device info got corrupted the first time that are still in limbo needing relinked.
So the next week is going to be REALLY jammed trying to sort if I should buy Homeseer or return a bunch of stuff and move everything back to a Vera.Tempted to just fall back to the Vera Edge (the Vera Plus still needs a reinstall) but so far the Homeseer appears to have some awesome features no other hubs have yet and other people don't seem to be seeing the issues I am so I'm hoping it is just bad hardware.
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Friday, August 12, 2016

FB August 12, 2016

Looks like my HomeSeer Home Automation config got corrupted yesterday which makes me a bit dubious about buying after the trial period. On the other hand I REALLY like the options it has that the others do not. Like voice alerts when the UPS box is opened. Plus it could be too much was lost taking the "easy route" cloning the Z-wave network from the Vera Control, Ltd. hub. Looks like it is fire or flood outside this weekend anyway so I guess I'll be inside relinking most of my devices. Already had to do some and that was what I was probably going to need to do to sort the Vera hub anyway.