Thinking of moving to Homeseer? Things you should know

Don't get me wrong, I think Homeseer is a great solution just not for a first timer. 

The interface is really aimed more at installers than end users but when you get to the point you need for instance multiple Z-wave networks it makes sense to  move to the next level with Homeseer. Before you run out and buy there are a few things to keep in mind.

Coming from SmartThings:

I do find it odd no one has made a plugin to use a SmartThings as a ZigBee bridge for Homeseer. Seems like it should not be that hard to do. I might have to do it myself at some point. Just got about 300 things ahead of that in the queue. Especially seeing as how my SmartThings account is locked out right now due to all the recent Samsung conversion mess. The "temp" IFTTT linkages I setup way back seem to still be functioning for now. In case you didn't know many of the SmartThings sensors and devices will not work with most other hubs. Many are ZigBee based which Homeseer has only limited support for. This is why it is important to get devices with cross hub support as much as possible. Many ZigBee devices, like Hue, also have "hubs" (bridges/gateways) available that allow them to work with many brands of hubs and multiple systems at the same time. Being able to connect to multiple system not only give you multiple control paths should one fail but makes migration easier. For instance if you have Hue bulbs linked directly to a SmartThings hub you need to access them through SmartThings and moving to a new hub, even a replacement SmartThings requires pairing the bulbs all over again. Using the Hue "hub" you just link the Hue "hub" to the new one and you are done. They also tend to give you added features and might help avoid issues.

For anyone else thinking of moving to Homeseer:

• Get it on sale. The software is 50% off a few times a year. Their hardware is discounted frequently too.
• Try before you buy. You can download a 30 day trial and run it on any PC. Just get a Z-Stick, download the software and go. If you do not like it you can probably send the Z-Stick back and be out nothing.
• Do not get Pro. Get the standard version. Most the plugins you will want are not included in the Pro version anyway. The only real advantages to getting Pro are the HSTouch Designer and Z-Seer+ Z-Wave Diagnostics are included which at sale prices Pro might save you around $20. But odds are you will not get to using the designer till you get most of the system setup and you can spread the cost over time. You might never use it, I still primarily use the voice or web interface a couple years in now. Note the HSTouch phone apps work without designer. It just has the default interface. If you decide you want a flashy custom GUI you can always pick it up at the next sale. See my post A quick start for HSTouch Designer for an idea of what using the designer is like. Want to see how flashy you can get check out these YouTube videos.
• Get the software and a PC instead of their "hubs". Especially if you get a refurb or used PC you get a lot more power for the cost. Even though you might not need it for Homeseer it gives you power to run other things on there as well. Or if you have a PC that is always on and not maxed just use that. For example I'm running on a 4th gen i7 with 19 plugin instances, 4 Z-wave networks, 4 Hue networks, 3 Harmonies among other things. As I'm writing this mine shows 1928 connected Homeseer "devices" (data/control streams not physical things). I also have several external things hitting the Homeseer API updating values. The CPU rarely reaches 24% .
• Go Windows. I hate Windows but some plugins only work on Windows so if you go Linux you limit yourself. Windows 7 if you can, just to avoid Windows 10 things like updating at the most inconvenient times. Another reason to go refurb / used PC.
• Get a Z-Net instead of a Z-Stick. You can put the Z-Net anywhere that has WiFi or an network port letting you put it in the middle of your network to reduce mesh hops. Or in an area of high interference. Or my fav another building from the controlling server. Note Homeseer supports multiple Z-Wave networks which work as one.This is the best way to reach other buildings and problem areas. Assuming you are not just doing an eval of course. You could probably send the Z-Net back too if the eval did not live up to your expectations but the price of the Z-Stick is easier to tolerate if you end up not being able to send it back.

Interesting contrast to 4 years ago.

Funny I shared this article on Facebook 4 years ago when feeling depressed at the phone and cloud centric home automation then. Interesting to read again in light of the voice and cloud centric home automation we see now. Though SmartThings has been moving away from the cloud most have not and the voice interfaces are being marketed as "home automation" even though they are basically just remote controls.  Four years ago was also before I scrapped my Veras and upgraded to Homeseer which pretty much ticks all the boxes. The only real missing bit for Homeseer is Zigbee support. Though between Hue and SmartThings hubs that can be linked into Homeseer as well. Plus there are very few Zigbee devices that are not available in Z-wave and or WiFi versions these days.

How to get actual help in tech groups

Another attempt at Answer to "I'm new what camera / automation should I get?"

I'm seeing multiple posts a day with people asking vague questions like:

• What is the best security camera?
• What is the best hub?
• What is the best security or camera system?

Most of the responses are not any better. Lots of I use this and love it or I tried this and hated it.  With a vague question there can be not good reply other than asking for details. You do not see people asking what is the best vehicle or the best entertainments system? Ok maybe the second one from time to time but the reason you do not see people asking the vague question of what is the best vehicle is they have seem to get what you plan to do with it matters. A bike might work for some and odds are most will end up with some sort of car or SUV but there are many factors to take into account like:

• distance you plan to drive 
• number of passengers you may need to haul
• other stuff you may haul or tow
• any special needs equipment
• your driving habits as in want good pickup or braking
• how well the seating accommodates you and or your passengers
• safety factors like armor or crash handling

Or in the case of the entertainment system a smallish 720p smart TV with a Netflix app maybe all one person wants while another  may want to have a large 4K TV linked to a PC or Roku with a cable like subscription to see the show they may want plus a DVD player or Plex setup for stuff that can not be streamed. Then there is surround sound, voice search and such which some would assume to be include while others deem them frivolious.

In short you need some basic specs before you can talk brands and models.

For example if you are looking to add one or more security cameras, are you looking looking to just get notified or want actionable footage. I have multiple posts on just figuring out the specs you need for a camera. Starting with "What is the best camera for X?"

A home automation hub like an entertainment or security system is even more subjective with virtually infinite options to work with. It should be obvious that any package "system" will be a starting point at best and only makes sense is it is cheaper than getting the parts you want and can use later separately. The blog where this post is located, Adventures in Home Automation, chronicles stuff I've tried to solve the problems I want to solve.  These posts might give you ideas of what you can do to solve yours. Note however this blog only goes back to 2016 after I'd already moved to Homeseer so most of the posts involve it. I started with X10 stuff back in the early 1980s adding TimeCommander Plus in the late 1990s then Insteon devices up till 2014 when keeping it all going outweighed the time savings of having it. Though I did not remove the last of it till 2016. Between 2014 when I bought my first modern home automation hub via the SmartThings Kickstarter, and moving to Homeseer I also tried 4 models of Vera hubs and 2 Lowes Iris hubs. The point being I went through a lot of them before finding that worked for me. One of the reasons I went to Homeseer was than I have 3 buildings to cover. My home, shop and barn which need their own network of devices since Z-Wave and Zigbee do not do well over distances. Note I see people claiming they can use them between buildings and even over 100 feet line of sight but I've never seen anything like that myself. I would be VERY sceptical of such claims. Going with Homeseer let me have one interface for the networks in all the buildings. Plus it is made to handle a large number devices unlike many of the popular hubs that are controlled and configured mainly via a phone app. I generally do not suggest it as a first home automation hub though because it is aimed at the market between the basic DIY hubs like Vera and SmartThings and the pro install system like Crestron and Control4. As such it tends to cost more and be a bit harder to setup than the basic DIY hubs. Though some things are actually easier to do in Homeseer than Vera or SmartThings and some things others do better. For instance Home Assistant has a plug in to talk directly to a Wyze sense hub that has me thinking of linking a Home Assistant instance to my Homeseer. Another thing to keep in mind it each hub has its way of doing things. Somethings that are point and click with one require programming with another.

So when it comes to choosing a home automation hub ask yourself:

• Am I looking to do automation or just remote control? Automation is where things happen on their own like walking into a room and the lights come on versus you saying a command or pushing a button. You will often see both called automation and gateways like Hue and Harmony called hubs. There are even grey areas like Echo Plus which has a Zigbee interface and limited automation functionality.
• What do you want to control and monitor? Make a spreadsheet of the hubs you are looking at and the things you want to do and fill in the cells with if it will do it and how. But do your research. "Works with" can mean anything from you plug the device in and the hub sees it to you need to build and configure a gateway system to make it work. There will be compromises not matter what you go with. For example this is my sheet of the things I've tried.
• What skills do you have or want to have? Odds are you are going to have to learn something. Look at some examples to see what it takes to do the things with each. If programming it involved, how easy is it to learn to do. Is there a good community of supporters that can help you if you need it?
• The whole cloud versus local debate. Avoiding the cloud is best but sometimes it is the only way or so much easier that you are willing to take the risk, at least for now.
• Track record of company. We are just starting the shake out of companies. Look at their history and customer base.
• How easy is it to move to another? Probably more of a device thing than hub since there really is no way to move from one brand hub to another yet. Often not even between models of a brand in some cases (SmartThings V1 to V2 for example). Buying devices supported by multiple hubs is always your best bet as is doing things like using a Hue gateway instead of pairing devices directly to the hub. Then if you need to change or replace a hub you can do so much easier.

Lastly remember most of the people posting in groups have only tried one or two things so they really can not compare much and most of the replies will be love X and hate Y.  You will need to gather, filter and weigh it all into something usable. Also I would discount anyone saying they have never had a problem. Everything has problems. Especially out on the bleeding edge where a lot of automation is. There are things you can do like avoiding the Internet / cloud services to make things more reliable but even totally local will occasionally go down.  Like the guy claiming his WiFi goes 300 feet to his security camera you have to wonder what his frame rate is and how many are getting dropped. Odds are he rarely looks at that camera and just does not notice how much it is missing. Till one day he needs the footage of course but then it will be too late. This analogy an installer told me sums it up perfectly. "I have to explain to my clients that if you have only ever ridden a horse and someone gives you a small compact car, you are gonna think it's awesome purely because you don't know you can get a Range Rover or a Truck for the same money."

The right / best way to control a light. It depends.

Given all the flame wars over smart bulbs vs smart switches it seems time to make a post to use in replies. One guy even suggested using both to avoid:

• People turning off the switch. It should be obvious that even if the switch is smart, if it is off it is off and you can't control the light till you turn the switch on. Covering the switch with something like the Magnetic Switch & Outlett Cover for Toggle Switches ought to make people a think before flipping the switch.
• Smart bulbs coming on after an outage (they only do this after an outage not a flash). To avoid the power on after an outage all you need to do is put a bulb in an unneeded location and create an event to turn off all or some of your lights if it comes on. Note too the reason these lights come on if the power is cut for about a second is so you can manually override them if other control is lost. Some do have a hidden parameter to turn this off if you really think you need to. Google it. Personally even though I live in the country and have all my computers and AV and network equipment on UPS to handle the flaky electric I've only had the lights get triggered by this a couple times in over a year now so I don't see it as much of an issue.

There really is no point in chaining smart devices and in fact is can cause issues if the smart bulb is Z-Wave or Zigbee in that these are mesh devices and removing power from them means the mesh is regularly disrupted. In the best case this causes lag and in some cases might cause devices to miss commands. Depending on the WiFi bulb it may cause connection issues as well since most of them work via a cloud interface of some sort and disconnecting them will require them to establish a new connection to that cloud to receive commands. Then there is the whole bit about updates which would only be able to install while the the light ia powered. Bottom line these devices are designed to be always on so powering them off for extended times at your own risk.

As for the "right way" to control a light. First off it would depend on the best fit for the env.
Other than a bed room:

• I would use a motion detector as the primary trigger with voice backup
• As a secondary I would the dumb switch (with a magnetic cover to avoid accidents) and a timer that shuts off the light after X minutes of it being turned on and/or no motion detected. In many cases this also tied to turn off other devices in the room like a TV.
• I might use a wall switch or a smart bulb generally dependent on the level of control required. As in a smart bulb if I want to control the bulbs singularly or a smart switch to control a group of bulbs in a room. Just do the math. Which is cheaper to replace the bulb(s) on this circuit or the switch(s). Factor in if dimming or color changing is required of course.
• If a dimmer is wanted with a single bulb the Hue and Lightify dimmers work great for that and is pretty cheap too. Note the Hue dimmer with bulb bundle is generally a good bit cheaper than the two separately.

For a bedroom or other place where you want more manual control a smart switch is used without a motion detector.

Simple right? Like most of this stuff there is not general "right answer". The best fit is on a case by case basis. Though let me repeat again always try and get devices that work with multiple hubs because it is pretty much a given at some point you will want to move to a new one. Whether is a shutdown like Resolve or Lowes' Iris or issues like SmartThings has been having or incompatibility between version of hubs like Lowes Iris' and SmartThings' V1s and V2s or you just need a feature some other hub has and your current one does not.

Want a second opinion?

Note some of these are a bit one sided and a couple get into Rube Goldberg style options. 

FAQ: Philips Hue and Other Smart Bulbs - What sort of light switches to use with them? (Long FAQ)
Proper way to use both a smart wall switch and smart bulb to control same ceiling light fixture (multi-part question)
5 things to consider before installing smart light switches
Smart Switches vs Smart Lights: Which is best solution?
Which is Smarter: Smart Switches or Smart Bulbs?
Smart Switch vs Smart Bulb: Which Is Best for Your Smart Home

I must be missing something

Seems like the world is following in the footsteps of a Rube Goldberg comic.
For instance I've seen posted, multiple times now, people putting Echo Dots in their cars to stream music despite the fact it need to use their phone's data to stream. Why not just use the phone?
Another example is one going around of people BUYING the OLD (no longer made) IR to X10 interfaces and a Harmony hub to control X10 devices from their Alexa! I mean you can get a version 2 SmartThings hub for $50 and Z-wave switches as cheap as $25 for a single or $37 for a double outlet so why buy a Harmony hub for $75+ (more if you want it with the remote) PLUS for another $30-$50 to control up to 16 devices max? Not only more cost, unless you have many devices to control, the extra hops make it more error prone, X10 itself has serious issues with many modern things interfering with it's power line signals and if anything breaks you are probably going to have to dig up a used replacement on Ebay and hope it works.
Let me be clear, I used X10 for decades generally working fine till around 2010 when it started driving me nuts being generally being flaky. And automation is my thing so I have all the test equipment and such. I'd often spend a day back then running around with test equipment, plugging and unplugging stuff while monitoring signal levels, tracking down what device was messing my signal that day. In the end I had noise filters on almost as many devices as I controlled. Insteon tried to keep things going by adding RF connections into the X10 mix but it did not help my set up stability at all. Either because of legacy X10 stuff in the mix or something else I could not see. In 2014 I finally decided to try one of the new hubs and never looked back. So it boggles my mind people are still trying to work with X10. It is like someone trying to explain how a PDA and a flip phone are better than a cheap smart phone. BTW a nice write up on the diffs between Insteon, Z-Wave and ZigBee can be found here. Note the chart at the bottom showing what the top 10 security company support. You really want to keep what devices are going to work with your next hub since odds are you will be upgrading at some point.

I can even see stuff like this Google Home built from a Raspberry Pi as a learning project but don't tell me it is a cheap Google Home. $54 for the kit is cheaper than a Google Home but assumes you have a Pi 3 you do not need for anything else or you need to add another $50 to that and what you end up with is not near as easy to use as the $100 - $129 Google Home. Rumor is there a Dot like Home in the works that will be as cheap as the $35-$50 Dot. So if you want a Home instead of an Echo but have an issue with the cost, you might want to just wait for that.

Answer to "I'm new what camera / automation should I get?"

Before even starting to ask a "what's best" question you need to gather some details to make your question answerable in any useful way. There is not going to be any one answer, only one what best fits your specific situation from your point of view. While there might be several OK answers (in your opinion) there is never a general answer that works for every person. So ask yourself these questions first:

1. What is it you want to do? Something vague like something that looks cool is not useful. "I want my house to turn everything off and set the alarm when I leave", would be. Or even something as simple as I want to see the driveway camera on X when someone arrives or when it sees motion. (two diff things by the way.)
2. What do you have? Are you starting from scratch or do you already have an investment in a good bit of gear. Maybe you have stuff but are cool with dumping if need be. Factor in time and money here.
3. What skills and or eagerness to learn do you have? Are you good at programming or hardware building? Are you looking to learn or are you looking for something as easy as possible? The people you will get answers from will be from all over the spectrum, Something one might do everyday will be unthinkable to another but both will throw suggestions at a general question. 
4. What kind of budget in money, time and style? Note here often you can save a bit of money building something but the extra time required and or the lack of style of the finished product will make the savings over a produced item seem worthless. This is VERY subjective. Even if you are not rich you will be making compromises. You need to decide what you can live with.

Note lots of people will weigh in on the vaguest question to put forward with whatever they did (or in some cases just Googled) as being the ultimate solution for you. Be sure to weigh any responses you get like you would Amazon reviews. As in have they actually done what they are suggesting. If so how long have they been doing it and how does their skill set match yours.

That said there are some basic things to keep in mind especially with cams.

Wire your cams. You have to run power to them anyway (do not get battery powered ones) so you might as well run cat 6 and power them through that.

Only record to the cloud as a backup. Get a NVR like Blue Iris to record local.

Record 24/7. Recording on motion will get most stuff but usually misses that one thing you REALLY needed to get.

Think about what you want the camera for. 720p is fine if you are mainly looking at stuff up close or letting you know someone is there but if you want to have a pic the police can use you will need something with enough pixels to work with at the max distance you might see them at. This applies to viewing angle as well. The wider the angle the thinner you are spreading those pixels. 

Cams that also record to an internal card are good idea too but as a backup. Cameras should only talk to the NVR and be blocked from talking to the outside world.

I have a lot of notes, tips and compare pics of most of the cameras I've tried in my other blog Security Cam 101 give it a look to see what looks like a fit for you.

Automation is VERY subjective. 

People call anything from simple remote control of a bulb to multi room scenes that happen automatically based on conditions automation. Odds are you looking to do is somewhere between remote control and what is possible. If you are reading this odds are what is possible is way more than what you might think. The only real suggestion here is get a hub and look for devices that work with multiple hubs to keep your options open. This blog lists a lot of the stuff I've tried and some of the issues I've dealt with. I also have a matrix of hubs and devices I've tried tracking how well each worked. As a first hub I generally suggest SmartThings or Vera as they are both fairly cheap and simple to set up. I've also heard good things about Wink and Hubitat but have not tried them myself. When you are ready to go whole hog you can upgrade to Homeseer which costs more and is aimed more at the installer market but does almost anything you can think of except talk directly to Zigbee devices.

Gateways / sub hubs like Hue are good too just try and get ones that do not need to link through the cloud.

In a similar vein you can use your automation sensors for an alarm system if you really do not think you need an alarm and just want something simple. But if you think you need an alarm get one that is separate but talks to the hub you decided on above.