# IVB's HA Progress



## IVB

I've been doing a series of posts on another forum about the HA stuff I'm doing, was asked to duplicate that here as it's all integrated with the HT stuff. Anyhow, not sure anyone here cares, i'll update as I go.


To keep it simple for me to do, i'll just copy/paste each post here. There's only a few so far.


Post #1: 4/2/06: And so it begins...

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I've done some stuff around the periphery of HA, got an irrigation controller connected to CQC [not yet controlling my actual sprinkler system, still working through some cable-creation kinks], an aprilaire HVAC [but I broke the RS232 adapter by mistake].


But today I made a HUGE step forward, thought I'd share. BTW, this is all with my el cheapo SageTV/DVD/CQC Server that I use for the home theater thing. I can't believe my 3yr old budget Asus mobo and 512MB RAM is the engine behind my whole house. I have an AMD2500 in it, but it rarely goes above 15% CPU, usually ~5%.


I bought an Elk automation panel. Think ADT on steroids, and much cheaper to boot. You can get the "ez" version of it for pretty cheap, $350, or even less if you're a CQC customer. It can control security, HVAC, lighting, doorbell & telephone ring detection [and since it's integrated with the HT thing, i'm hoping to pause audio/video], a ton of other stuff. I paid $2.50/each for window sensors, whereas ADT wanted $100/each. I'll be putting Window/smoke/motion/heat/CO/flood/...., throughout the house. I think all the sensors total will cost me


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## IVB

Post #2: 4/3/06: It continues...

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Last week I had ran all new wiring for a doorbell as I didn't have any due to using a wireless. But, it worked for crap in my 100yr old plaster/lathe house, and I wanted to do some more intelligence, so I switched to a wired doorbell. Cheap as heck too. ($10 for the chime, $15 for the power source, $10 for the fancy restoration hardware doorbell button, $40 for the Elk doorbell ring detector)


Today I:

- Ran wiring for 2nd doorbell pushbutton. [doesn't work though, I broke one of the wires by accident. Should be simple to replace].


- Got Elk setup to trap the doorbell, and say something via the loudspeaker. It's not entirely stable, i didn't do a "fast loop detection", which I realized at 9pm after my kids went to bed so I can't test this tonight. I actually did wake them up earlier, but wife just looked at me and said "you woke them up, you get them". See below for my next steps.


- Ran wiring for 2 more thermocouples [one in BR, one outside]. I updated the CQC screens, check out the screenshot above. They were both working fine, but I just looked again and the outside stopped working. Not sure why, i'll have to recheck the wiring.


- Started reading up on the CQC events server, and a bunch of supporting material so I could do some cool stuff with the Doorbell. Also, to finally do something with the rain8NET since it finally works. (not that i've been brave enough to try my hand at another long RJ12 cable yet after completely messing up the first one).


Hopefully this week i'll be able to


1) get the Elk trapping the doorbell consistently, and get CQC to display a visual clue on the screen if/when it happens. It would be super-neat if I could figure out how to pause SageTV and pop CQC up and tell folks there's someone at the door, as in my house the TV room is all the way in the back and we don't ever hear it if the TV is on. It gets complex as it would have to know whether kids are watching TV, in which case don't pause it, or if mom is, in which case please pause it. Some of that intelligence is outside CQC's abilities right now, but Dean's working on it so I'm sure it'll be done once that whole CD/DVD mega-release is done.


2) If #1 works, then do the same thing with the telephone ring detector [on same Elk board].


I also just realized that since I have those two, I could probably setup the Elk and CQC so that I could pull the chime off the doorbell circuit, add another contact closure, and then use CQC to create a "quiet/nap" mode where the doorbell doesn't ring, and one where it does ring. That way the kids don't wake up if the Jehovah's witnesses come a-knockin...


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## IVB

Post #3: 4/5/06: Scope Creep sets in

----------------------------------------

Dear Diary:

Today I decided that if I was seriously going to rip out my ADT system and put this in, I should do it correctly from the get-go. My wife has been after me to put in more window & motion sensors anyhow, and I decided to put in integrated heat, smoke, & CO sensors. After all, those cheap $10 smoke detectors may not wake us up in the late night, and i've now got all that HTPC equipment in the house.


I ended up buying 37 window/motion/heat/CO/etc sensors from toymaster, a professional CI who's been giving great prices for the CQC folks . Got a good deal, and enough sensors to "correctly" cover my 1650 sqft/9 room house, plus the attic & the basement. The all-in cost was ~$1200, which may sound like a lot but ADT wanted $4K for that. Of course, that includes labor, but for $3K i'll do my own dang labor.


Hopefully this all works out and I can get all this stuff run over the next 1-2 months. It's certainly a boatload of work, but once it's done I'll sleep better at night knowing the house is more protected.


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## IVB

Post #4: And more...

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Today I learned how to wire up a motion sensor (ok, not that hard, but new to me). Plus I used a CQC "Enumerated Image" widget for the first time as I was trying to find a way to have CQC automatically switch between green & red if there was motion in a room.


Finally, I started putting some of Ripper's (artist & fellow CQC owner) amazing Elk graphics to use. I setup a bunch of command buttons. The screen doesn't have the full Elk keypad, I only put the #s, ready/armed/stay, as I am still learning how to use the Elk too and don't know what the other buttons do.


I chopped up my house photoshop image and created custom-sized green/red zones, along with a "motion" text image that I put into another enumerated widget and stacked on top of the others. It shows nothing when normal, an image of the word "motion" when tripped.


BTW, the "disarmed" & "ready to arm" are actually real values from the security keypad. It's not yet hooked up to the fire dept/etc as I don't actually have any sensors in place yet, but I figured that I'm not doing anymore "dummy" code, so what you see here is all "functional". Doesn't do much, but fxnl nonetheless.


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## IVB

Post #5: 4/9 - The beginnings of HT/HA convergence...

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So it was a very productive day. After doing pretty much nothing HA-related yesterday, I spent 3-4 hours today and completed the following (i'll spare you from the half-done stuff):


1) Irrigation: Hooked up Irrigation system to system, wrote up a CQC screen to control. I'm using the RAIN8 device, which is really just a fancy "contact closure", meaning all it does is close a circuit for a given zone which turns the water on for that zone. All the intelligence is done on your PC.

2) Doorbell: Figured out how to get CQC to pop up a "Someone rang the doorbell" box. This is currently only within CQC; i have yet to research how to pause TheaterTek or SageTV and pop up a box. Now that I figured out how to pop this up, that's the next step.

3) Security:Mounted another motion sensor, moved the above one to the "correct" location, hid the wires so it's a professional-looking install for both.

4)Weather: The wife is always checking the weather, so I decided to add it to the wrapper. The last screenshot shows the temperature outside the front door [via the Elk and a networked thermometer], and Weather.com's forecast for my area.


Next up:

1) Phone:See if I can pause TV/DVD/lower stereo, and display caller-id on screen if the phone rings.

2) HVAC:Figure out if my HVAC RS232 adapter is really broken, or if I just screwed up another wiring run.


Here's some more screenshots:


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## IVB

ok, that's it. I'll update as I go if there's interest here, otherwise i'll just let this thread die a natural death.


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## dan marquardt

I'm interested!


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## Big Worms

Very nice! I would be interested in you posting.


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## IVB

Well, the last week was somewhat boring in the IVB household. I got the vicious flu that's been going around, so that took me out for a few days. Then, I decided that I needed to improve some of the infastructure now before things got worse. Here's what I did:


1) Install a quiet (1.5 sone) bathroom fan in the ceiling for the media closet, vent to the attic. I'll run a pipe to the exterior wall this upcoming weekend. This alone dropped my closet temps by 8 degrees, and the fan is truly inaudible over the 2 HTPCs.


2) Build out a 3rd HTPC to act as the alternate zone video renderer [TV or DVD in Zones 2 & 3], and as the security camera DVR.


On a token exciting note, I did get a security camera in from tech-home. I got a Sony one, here's a pic. It's pretty dang small. I'll hopefully be able to mount this pointed at the front door, so I can pop up a screen at-will/on doorbell ring. Plus it's got infrared LEDs built-in, so it doesn't need any light.


I'll hopefully be able to get this all up&running in the next 1-2 weeks, and will post pics when i'm done.


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## IVB

_Yet another boring update. Hopefully life stabilizes and I move forward soon._


How shockingly irritating. My server has been flaky as of late, and finally died last week. As I had that lovely alternate zone machine assembled as mentioned above, I wasn't sweating it.


I ended up spending nearly the entire weekend moving cards & HDs from one to the other, and trying to get it up & running with any hint of stability. Everytime I thought I was close, BAM, another bit randomly started failing.


In the end, what was the problem? Software versions.


In my infinite wisdom, I downloaded the latest version of SageTV & CQC for the server. But, I neglected to get the latest client versions. I was running SageTV4.1.3 on the server, and V4.0 on the clients. For CQC, I was on V1.6.15 on the server, V1.6.14 on the clients.


I had clearance from the spousal unit to run all sorts of security, sensor, and speaker wires this weekend, and wasted it all b/c I didn't take the extra 4 minutes to download ALL the right software bits.


Man I really hate this hobby sometimes. [ok, maybe that's too strong. It's just so easy to hang yourself when you DIY]


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## cmcjo

You are retired, right?

Very impressive though.

I really like that floor plan with motion sensors. Im gonna have to copy you on that now.


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## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *cmcjo* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> You are retired, right?



I was definitely supposed to be by now. I'm 37 years old, and by now my stock options were supposed to be worth at LEAST $20M. [no joke, a few friends & I were discussing the various ways by which we would prevent our kids from finding out our true wealth, so they wouldn't be slackers. Who knew that startup consulting companies shouldn't be valued at $800K/employee...]


Anyhow, here's the latest blog entry. BTW, I just started a real blog at homeautomation.wordpress.com, for those RSS folks out there.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Just clued in last night that my old IPAQ 3635 wifi PDA [original pocketpc version] that I never donated/threw out could be used in concert with the CQC Webserver to be an audio/HVAC/lighting remote control for those rooms the wife won't let me buy touchpanels for (yet). I ignored all the stuff tonight I was supposed to do and started playing around. If this works out well and I can get a UI that's somewhat usable, I can go get another 1-2 of these for the $15 they cost on eBay, and have a low-cost [albeit ugly UI] mechanism for local control until the wife agrees to buy something nicer. They're pretty easy to wallmount to, I bet I could even psuedo-flushmount it.


Here's what I got so far, granted it's ugly and is only a display of information. But, now that i'm getting the basics down, i'll see how to:

1) Render images, color the text

2) Add command buttons so that CQC will do something (i.e., turn speakers on/volume up&down, in the future could be lighting).


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## jbInPhx

IVB, your PDA view has "Denon power" details for 3 rooms -- Are you controlling 3 Denon 3805s via CQC?


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## Dean Roddey

The Denon has 3 zones.


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## IVB

While I was running the security wire, I decided to also start running the mzone wiring in each room so that I could build out the attic storage space.


Then I realized I hadn't setup a screen to handle the mzone, so I just spent some time figuring out how to change my main wrapper template so I could also render an overlay in the middle that flowed cleanly. This isn't tested, as I haven't finished running wires or setting up the amps, but i'm sore from climbing around the attic and needed a diversion.


Here's the latest thinking. It's not easy to come up with a wrapper that'll work on all the other screens as well as flow cleanly into this one. I still need to decide what else to put on the top wrapper


You'll notice there's only 5 zones here. The 6th zone is the patio, and I figure i can put that in it's own screen easily enough.


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## IVB

Ran a bunch more runs today, thought i'd create a running list of what i've bought . Here's what I got so far. Ballpark price is ~$2100, but that's for a pretty full system with 40 sensors.

*SKU, Description, Qty, Total*
*Base stufff (incl. optional extra zones & 2nd cabinet)*

Elk-M1GSYS4, Control + Speaker + RJ21X + 14x14, 1

Elk-M1XIN, 16zone expander, 3

Elk-M1DBHR, M1 Data Bus Hub , 1

Elk-SWB28, 28" Structured Wired Box, 1

Elk-SWD1, Grommet Donuts for Box, 2

*Optional Ethernet Control unit so I don't need RS232*

Elk-M1XEP, M1 Series Ethernet Port, 1

*Zone Sensors*

Elk-M1ZTS, Zone Temp Sensor, 3

Elk-M1ZTS, Zone Temp Sensor with 7' probe, 1

Elk-930, Doorbell & Telephone Ring Detector, 1

GE-1125W-N, GE 3/8" Magnetic Stubby Reed Switch, 12

ROK-RG-71FM, Rokonet Vitron Glass Break Detector, 4

BH-ISMBLP1P, Bosch Blue Light passive infrared detector, 4

NAP-FW4H, Napco Fireworlf 4-wire Smoke Detector with Heat, 6

GE-240CO, GE 240-COE Carbon Monoxide Detector, 2

SS-5602, 194 Degree R/R Heat Sensor (Attic), 2

SS-5603, 135 Degree Heat Sensor (Kitchen), 1

SS-5601P, 135 Degree R/R Heat Sensor (Furnace & Laundry), 2

Elk-912, Elk Relay, SPDT 12V, 1


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## IVB

Some days I get to do HA, other days I'm asked to improve the existing HT stuff. Today I got lucky enough to do a little of both, but only finished the HT improvements so I'll post that. I did some work building up my Elk screens, but it's a pretty dang powerful automation panel, so much so that I haven't really begun to comprehend what it can do.


On the HT front, I finally used ripper's amazing polk images and redid my XM screen so that I can tune stations that I don't have hardcoded. You press the button, it shows up in the top area, then press select (the center XM button), and it tunes the station.


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## IVB

There's been some chatter on the CQC forums about the long lists of to-do that we all seem to have. I thought I'd formally write up everything I know that I still need to do. Dang, just writing this makes me tired. And to think - nearly all of this needs to be done before I can lay down the plywood in the attic to greatly expand our storage capacity, which I wanted to do June 10-17. That's a lotta work...


1) Run a 2nd 18/2 power wire from main Elk to 2ndary cabinet. I only ran the main power line that's constantly on. However, I'm putting stuff like smoke detectors in the 2ndary cabinet that need to be "switched" on/off by the main cabinet in the event of an alert, so the fire can be confirmed.


2) Run wiring for 20-ish more sensors. 12 of them are window sensors where I need to drill into the base, then into the crawlspace, and somehow divine how to get from one to the other


3) Connect telephone to the Elk and CQC so that I can have the CD pause if the phone rings


4) Rewire doorbell so I can create a naptime mode where it doesn't ring, and a daytime mode where it does ring. These would be selectable via a toggle on the wrapper


5) Mount & run wiring for internal speakers in 2 more locations where we can't hear the doorbell, setup Elk to send chimes to those locations when the doorbell rings [but only in daytime mode]. These speakers would also be used for security announcments [i.e., "dude there's a fire"], or to warn intruders ["hey buddy, you better get out now - the camera has begun recording and the cops have been called"]


6) Disconnect ADT and run the door sensors and RJ31X-main telco line from it into the Elk


7) Reformat one of my machines to act as a file server/CCTV recorder, setup & configure all software, test with the camera to make sure it all works.


8) Mount the front-door camera in a covert fashion


9) Mount & run wiring for 11 in-ceiling speakers in 7 rooms.


10) Mount & run wiring for 7 in-wall volume controllers for each of the above rooms


11) Install amps in a heat-friendly location, hook up to ZPR68


12) Switch over all screens to using the ZPR68 in production mode.


13) Run video wiring from ZPR68 to Kitchen & MBR so that I can render SDTV/DVD in those zones


14) Setup CQC/SageTV Server to send composite out to ZPR68, to act as a SDTV/DVD source.


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## IVB

Well, that whole list thing must have worked cuz I just had a shockingly productive evening. I had a pair of Niles CM5MP that I got off for $120 off eBay just sitting in a box. In the last few hours I:

- Drilled holes in the kids b/r, mounted them.

- Ran wiring in attic from speakers->media closet

- Hooked up Sherbourn 2/100A amp [$50 off eBay] in a heat-friendly location in media closet [top shelf, near top of rack, 8" below the exhaust fan]

- Redid ALL wiring that was going from 4 sources->Denon->2 amps for Zones2&3 to run through the ZPR instead.

- Redid screens to use ZPR. Basically I redid the actions to call the ZPR68 driver instead of the Denon, or in the case of Zone1, to call both of them.


I just got some Niles VolControllers off eBay to act as in-room volume reducers, but they haven't shown up yet. I left some extra slack in the wire so that there's room to run that, that'll happen next weekend. Until then, I'll have to use either the laptop or the 3400. [cellphone broke, so I can't use that].


The wife is going to Vegas this weekend for a girls weekend, so I won't be able to do much non-computer stuff over the next few days, but at least now I can chill with the girls in their bedroom listening to some tunes.


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## IVB

Somebody about how the basic wiring/etc was done. I'm sure I got a ton of stuff wrong, but the basic theory I think is sound. Here's an example sensor layout according to how i'm doing it. [not my house, don't worry].


Also, on the how-to, I just got 2 training CDs from Elk in the mail today. I'm going to setup myhomeautomationpc.com as a holder for any salient content from end-users as to how they've setup their systems, and will be hosting the training content there.


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## bigpapa

Hey, alarm guy tip...


If you have sliding windows, drill the contact close to the middle sash. Install a second magnet on the window in the open position to vent. You can now 'vent' the window and let air in while still keeping the system secure.


Most people do this in bathrooms or hall windows. I love having my sliding doors vented when it's hot.


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## IVB

_thx for the tip. Haven't had time to think about window sensors yet, this'll explain why._


Please allow me to tell you how hard it is to get up to speed on the whole resistor/termination thing is for security systems. To be safest, you need to specify "end of line" for a circuit by attaching a resistor. But, you can't attach too many or too few. I can't currently get any of my integrated smoke detectors to work when they're in my 2ndary cabinet. People are really trying to be helpful, but they're using words like termination, RS-485 bus, 2.2K resistors, and terminals. This is even worse than trying to properly calculate Ohms on speaker circuits.


I'm hoping that my track record holds, and the act of making a post declaring that I'm confused will result in me immediately realizing what the problem is, hence making this post invalid.


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## IVB

Another wiring question came up offline about how it was wired up. Here's the answer:

You have 2 options when wiring sensors:


1) Cheaper: Run sensors in series, where you daisy-chain the wiring from one sensor to another, and run back to the Elk main board. This means you'll probably only need the main board, as it has 16 zones.


2) More Granular info: Homerun each sensor back to the Elk. You'll probably need some zone expanders based on the # of sensors you have. For example, I have about 40 sensors. The base Elk has 16 zones. As I'm running nearly all wiring to the 2ndary cabinet, I needed 3 zone expanders (IIRC, they're about $70 each), as 16x3=48zones possible.


I also bought the Data Bus Hub, which I'd highly recommend. That way I can plug each expander into the Hub, and run one wire from the hub back to the Main Board.


For sensors, there's 2 main types of sensors:

- 2 wire. These are non-powered sensors, such as window contacts, that basically just open/close a circuit. For these you just run 18/2 or 22/2 back to the Elk [either main or expander]. The two wires are either N/O [normally open] or N/C [normally closed]. You specify which one in the ElkRP software. (see below)


- 4 wire. These require power, such as motion sensors. You run your 2 zone wires as above, plus a 12V and neg wire. You can use a regular 18/4 for this as it's low-voltage.


The other thing to know is that you'll probably want to terminate your sensors with a resistor. I'm still learning the details of why, but it's basically to detect if the wires are cut [aka a burglar cuts the wires].


BTW, A cool feature of the Elk is a rich recorded voice vocabulary. Check out the right side under voice description - that's what you hear if this gets tripped while the Elk is armed. I just set that up - i could have just as easily picked another set of words to say.


Here's the ElkRP picture of the sensor type options.


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## bigpapa




> Quote:
> 1) Cheaper: Run sensors in series, where you daisy-chain the wiring from one sensor to another, and run back to the Elk main board. This means you'll probably only need the main board, as it has 16 zones.



NO! Don't do it! Home run to the panel. You can terminate resistors EOL (end of line) at the panel, putting multiple contacts per zone. Worrying about someone cutting cable or the wiring being damaged doesn't make sense of the wires aren't accessible. If your wiring is exposed it would be more of an issue.


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## IVB

Good point. Frankly, I think that the cheaper option is a silly move in it's entirety as you're really only going to save $150-$220 for most installs. The additional info you get from the granularity is well worth it.


I'm setting up all my sensors to announce the location of the transgression - i.e., smoke in the kitchen dude, run for your life. No sense in just saying "eh, there's smoke somewhere. good luck not running into it on your way out."


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## IVB

3 seriously cool developments this weekend, one festering sore:

The sore: I still can't get those smokes to work, but i'm getting further in determining the problem. Won't bore you with the details, let's just say that the Elk setup may not be totally correct.


Cool item #1: I redid all my screens to use sliders and properly do mzone, as the ZPR definitely has a much slower RS232 response rate than the Denon and was a drag to change volume one at a time. I won't show a screenshot of just this, but focus on the left wrapper of the below shots.


Cool item #2:The Aprilaire HVAC started working again. No idea why - well, i did clean up the wiring a little, so perhaps it was a loose connection.











Cool item #3: I was looking for a clean & simple way to do 7-10 zone control, using repeating text was getting a little too busy for me. CQC has this awesome variable concept where you can use a single template to do mzone, but I never really looked into it until tonight. I'm not done with everything yet, but i'll probably crash soon and wanted to share cuz I was pretty excited about how this was turning out. Once this is done, i'll post just the overlay template so anyone can download it and use it in their own/their customer setups if they want. [the wrapper has copyrighted vladstudio art in it, so i'm not willing to publicly post that].


Check it out. Each room has an invisible command button, so pressing it brings up a different bottom image. It will also set a zone variable, so the source icon will know what zone to set the source to. I'll leave the on/off and volume to the wrapper, as it's all there already. I don't want to put more than one invisible command button, folks will be lost.


As I type this, I realize that I could make the text a little sexier. Oh well, i said i wasn't done...


The source icons will be hidden from view [or perhaps grey'ed out] if they're not available in that room.


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## IVB

Here's hoping I didn't just spend $200 teaching myself about polarity, or more specifically, about what happens when you roll the dice.


My security camera server setup was going ludicrously smoothly. The server build and kodicom card install took all of an hour. That should have been my first clue. I finally unpacked the security camera and universal power adapter got from Tech-home months ago, looked at it, realized the documentation didn't state what the polarity should be on the power adapter. Spent some time googling, couldn't figure it out, so I figured, what-the-heck, i'm not going to figure this out via osmosis, so I may as well try one.


Got it all plugged in, no image on the screen. Hmmm. Wonder what it could be. I jiggled all the wires, no love.


I then looked over at the wallwart, and said to myself "Hey - why isn't that green LED indicating power on anymore?". I took it out of the wall.


Oh my was it hot. Real hot. Really really hot. Not burning hot, but hot. Much hotter than power supplies are supposed to be. Did I mention it was hot?


Hey - reversing polarity may not be a good idea...


Anyhow, Radio Shack is closed now, but I'll swing by tomorrow and pick up another universal power supply.


And hope like heck that I only fried the $25 power supply, and not the $140 security camera.


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## bigpapa

There's a good possibility it's fine. If it blew it wouldn't have any heat at all.


Did you figure out the smokes yet?


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## IVB

Not yet. I'm thinking that I don't have the expanders setup right. I'm going to strip the system down to just Elk, data bus hub retrofit, and 1 expander, and try to get it working.


BraveSirRobbin over at cocoontech gave me some great step-by-step instructions here about using a multimeter to make sure all is ok. It'll take some extra time, but i'll teach myself how this stuff is supposed to work., so it's not a total loss.


Some day soon this will be done...


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## bigpapa

Great advice, get the expander working first with your resistor strapped out. Once you see the zone OK, then short the zone and that should put you into alarm... open the resistor and you should go into trouble. It seems that you are picking this up, attaboy.


Divide and Conquer.


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## IVB

Was asked by an AVS'er to describe my setup, rather than do it over PM/email, i figured i'd do it here as I'm also helping several other folks with their systems.


(Plus Dean & Mark keep harassing me to submit my stuff for the CQC gallery, this'll help there too. I'll do it in that format to reduce the workload







)

*System Overview*


What's under control?

Home Theater

- Polk XRt12 XM tuner (via RS232)

- ZoomPlayer (via IP, for mp3 playback)

- TheaterTek (via IP, for DVD playback)

- SageTV (via IP, for TV playback)

- Xantech ZPR68 (via RS232, to oversee whole-house audio & SDTV distribution for 6 zones/8 sources)

- Denon 3805 (via RS232, for Home Theater room playback only)

- 5 2-4ch amps, indirectly controlled via 12V triggers & the ZPR68 to power individual zones. I prefer Parasond zamps and Sherbourn since they're inexpensive and 12V triggerable

- (Soon) Xantech EXP9 zone expander, indirectly controlled via the ZPR68 so I can do up to 15 zones. I'll only have 10-ish, though.


Home Automation

- Rain8net irrigation controller (via RS232)

- Aprilaire 8870 HVAC (via RS232)

- Elk M1Gold (via IP)

- (Soon) Indirectly control security camera system, via the web browser control.

*System Layout*

All equipment & the CQC/Sage Server & HT room PC Client is stored in a central location. Most of the Elk sensors have been run to a 2ndary cabinet located in the basement, so I don't have 40-odd wires running into the media closet when I don't need to,

*System Configuration*

There's technically 6 machines in my layout:


CQC/Sage Server

- Asus A7V600, 512MB RAM, 1+TB of space, WinXP Home

- CQC Master Server, SageTV, ZoomPlayer, UltraVNC Server are the primary software bits on this box.


Home Theater PC client

- Abit NF7-S2G, 1GB RAM, 1TB of space, WinXP Home

- CQC Interface Viewer, SageTVClient, TheaterTek are the primary software bits on this box.


(soon) CCTV/File Server

- Abit NF7-S2, 512MB RAM, 1.5TB of space

- Kodicomm software will be the only software bit installed on this machine. i won't install CQC unless I see a need for it. My preference is to keep this to be a clean CCTV/File server.

Wallmount Controller

- Fujitsu 3400, P3-400, 192MB RAM, Win XP Pro

- CQC Interface Viewer is the only software installed on this box


Development Machine

- Cheapo Dell laptop, 512MB RAM

- Full CQC install [except Master Server], Photoshop Elements, ElkRP, UltraVNC Client are the primary software bits.


Fancy remote control

- Cingular Siemens SX66 wifi PDA cellphone

- CQC DotNetViewer, and MS.NET 2.0 are the primary software bits installed.

*Zone Layout*
If you look at this picture , you'll see that I currently have 7 zones in the layout. I'll be splitting up Zone 2,5,6 into seperate zones shortly, so I can have room-level power-on/off via CQC. They'll never play different sources, but I can't think of a better way to allow CQC to turn on/off the sound in those rooms.


I currently use VGA to display the image in Zone1, and will shortly be using composite to send SDTV to Zones 2 & 6. I'm in the midst of low-voltage wiring quicksand, so i'm getting to all of this as fast as I can without getting divorced or having my kids stop recognizing who I am...


That's it for the high-level overview. Any questions, lay them on me.


----------



## IVB

After getting irritated b/c I had to be a contortionist to do my Elk testing, I have just completely disassembled the top 50% of my rack and my entire Elk setup.


In the last 2 months, i've added so much stuff to the equipment closet (elk cabinet/speaker/keypad, 3 2ch amps, Xantech EXP9 zone expander), that I had this horrifically piecemeal and disgusting setup.


I'm confident (sorta) that I can resassemble it all. I'm justifying this the same way I did when I opted to blow up my HA/HT server 5 months ago - It had been up&running for 3 years, first as a PC, then as an HTPC client, then as a server, and had gobs of junk on it.


Cleaning up/laying down the right infrastructure is just so unsexy though...


----------



## IVB

Got my new camera & power supply 2 days ago. Hooked it up last night, the great news is that I've got a great CCTV feed, works AWESOME in the dark with the IR LEDs.


The good news is that I was able to pull up a live video feed of my camera over another PC's InternetExplorer Window.


The bad news is that I can't get my old camera to work [you know, the one I reversed polarity on last week]. I'm feeding it 12VDC off the new PS, which is what the specs call for. It's center-positive, so it's looking like I just threw away $200.


The worse news is that I can't figure out how to get the live video feed over IE without going through the Diginet ActiveX plugin, which requires you to login. I want to render this on the 3400, furthermore via CQC, neither of which are easy for me to do text input through a browser window. There's zero chance of me hooking up a keyboard to the 3400, so I need to find a way through this.


I'm hoping there's a way to have Diginet take screencaps every 0.5->1second and post to a file, so I can pull that up via CQC on the 3400. If that works, there's a techie type on CQC who's willing to buy the Kodicomm capture card as it'll be functionally equivalent to his current system. Then he's going to reverse engineer the Diginet ActiveX plugin, see if we can hardcode a username/pw in there so we can bypass it all, and have what we really want - live streaming video through CQC using the Diginet software.


BTW, the reason we want to stick with Diginet is that it's got some great CCTV functionality, such as robust recording [scheduleable, on motion, on sensor trip], PTZ, and a variety of other stuff.


----------



## blitz6speed

Love this thread, please keep us all updated. From what ive been reading on various threads, a lot of the software is still early and not 100% it seems. How old is this type of home control via tablet?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *blitz6speed* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Love this thread, please keep us all updated. From what ive been reading on various threads, a lot of the software is still early and not 100% it seems.



That's both true and not quite true. Each individual nit hardware and software silo likes to consider themselves mature. Frankly, each piece probably is quite advanced in it's own right, if that's all you want to do.


What I want to do is stitch together each of these components into a single cohesive experience. I want to treat all my devices as engines, and create an interaction wrapper around it. I don't care to ever see my HVAC, irrigation, a/v, etc bits again.


The ability to play nice together and/or not need 4-5 computers on 24x7 is what's still immature.

- The CCTV software needs to be the only thing on the box.

- For touchpanel hardware, companies like TouchTronix make some cool single-gang LCD panels that use a PCI video board, but they take over the primary display, so no other UI can be on that box.

- Until a week ago, the best DVD software out there [TheaterTek] wasn't designed to be controlled, so CQC had to control it via 'faking' user input. This is 1-way, and doesn't allow for robust & rich 2-way control.


It's getting better - Touchtronix is coming out with a flush-mountable UTMA screen that I *don't think* has the same hardware/software constraints of their single-gang line. As mentioned above, TT is now controllable, there'll be an updated driver for that in the 4-6 week timeframe. It's all still VERY bleeding edge.


I can only do as much with CQC as is exposed to it by the hardware & software that I choose. The difference that exists if you go to a closed environment (ie AMX/Crestron) is that everythings been tested together, so you know that a good installer can make it all work. However, for folks like me who don't know what they want and who learn organically, by doing and moving and tweaking their way through the path, that's an expensive option as I can't ever "lock down" my requirements. Plus there's still bleeding edge thoughts that even they can't do.



> Quote:
> How old is this type of home control via tablet?



I'd say that folks have been doing it for 3-4 years, but the last 6-12 months have seen a great increase in the # of folks as folks like me talk publicly about how we've succeeded and where we've failed, and how to set yourself up for success.


----------



## IVB

What a cool last 3 hours. I:


- Mounted CCTV outside, ran power & video wiring back to central location


- Mounted volume controller for bathroom, ran CAT5/power/speaker wiring back to central location


- setup CCTV server, confirmed that the camera works fine


- checked everything out online, made sure it works ok.




And best of all, it was all pretty dang easy. If I had a helper, this whole thing would have taken an hour. The only reason it took 3 was cuz I had to keep going up the dang ladder, back down, cuz I forgot stuff or I had to confirm wiring. I also wanted to go a bit slower, so I didn't burn out camera #2.




The drumbeat of progress is constant!




Not that it's exciting, but here's a few pics. I still haven't figured out how to integrate into CQC, but babysteps...


----------



## IVB

Just tested out the 3400 rendering my CCTV image via the web browser. It works fine, which I'm sure will make many folks happy.


1 Caveat though: I'm currently sitting in front of my 2.6GHz P4 desktop with the 3400 next to it, both connected via a hardwired cxn. The desktop reports anywhere from 4.9->5.1 frames/second, but the 3400 is holding steady at 3.12 Frames/sec. I'm not sure if this is a computer thing or a CCTV server thing. Regardless, I think it's "good enough for me" as the purpose is not to see smooth streaming TV on it, but rather to see who's at the front-door.


Maybe once I hit the lotto i'll go get a houseful of TouchTronix UTMA/UMPCs. For now, for $160, this is proving yet again to be a worthwhile investment.


----------



## IVB

DigiNet software visible through CQC?


Oooh, pretty....


----------



## IVB

Somebody mentioned that "IDE is going the way of serial ports". I replied with what my usage would be. ugh. This is wrong.



----------------------------------------------------------------

COM1 - DirecTV STB

COM2 - not working


COM3 - Denon3805

COM4 - Aprilaire HVAC thermostat

COM5 - Polk XM tuner

COM6 - IRMan

COM7 - RAIN8 irrigation

COM8 - Xantech ZPR68 (6source/8z preamp for whole house audio)

COM9 - Elk M1, automation panel so I can tie in security

COM10 - DirecTV STB #2


I got my COM9 & 10 back as I decided to buy the $200 ethernet interface add-on for the elk [unrelated reasons], and my 2nd RCA D* STB died.


Everything is stable now, but dang I need a 2nd STB for 2 concurrent shows being recorded. Assuming I use COM9 for that, before I'm "done" with deploying HA, I also need:


COM10 - RS232 controllable FM tuner

COM11 - Lighting

COM12 - Sony 777ES DVD Mega-changer

COM13 - SMS Modem, so I can tell system to activate the "coming home sequence (lights/heat/etc)" via a text page from my cellphone, or have system page me in the event of HA issues (ie security alarm trip or power loss)

COM14 - Panasonic Plasma

COM15 - Video Matrix Switcher to send HiDef video to any room (either Autopatch, Neothings, Extron)

COM16 - Denon 2105 for Zone2 digital audio decoder


And, I haven't decided whether to hook the following up to the HA/HTPC server or the Elk. If I opt for the HA/HTPC server:

COM17 - Contact Closure to open/close curtain #1.

COM18 - Contact Closure to open/close curtain #2.


----------



## jbhungvt




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> What a cool last 3 hours. I:
> 
> 
> - Mounted CCTV outside, ran power & video wiring back to central location
> 
> 
> - Mounted volume controller for bathroom, ran CAT5/power/speaker wiring back to central location
> 
> 
> - setup CCTV server, confirmed that the camera works fine
> 
> 
> - checked everything out online, made sure it works ok.



Hi IVB,

I'm happy that got your setup working nicely.

Could you tell us what types of cameras and the cable requirements (rg59 or cat5 etc) you're using for your security?

What equipments is needed to centrally distribute all the cameras locations within your house?


thanks


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jbhungvt* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Hi IVB,
> 
> I'm happy that got your setup working nicely.
> 
> Could you tell us what types of cameras and the cable requirements (rg59 or cat5 etc) you're using for your security?



I got these Vitek cameras . They're 1/3" 480TVL, with IR LEDs for zero-light situations. They were highly suggested by toymaster of CQC/cocoon fame for my needs.


They need an RG59 for video, and 18-2 for 12VDC. I just bought some RG59/18-2 cable from tri-state electronics, I think it was $130 for 500'.


> Quote:
> What equipments is needed to centrally distribute all the cameras locations within your house?
> 
> thanks



Not following the question, so i'll tell you what i got, perhaps that'll answer it.


I have 1 camera now, just ordered 3 more of the same for each side of the house. They'll have all RG59/18-2 run back to my CCTV & fileserver. It's basically a PC with a kodicomm clone CCTV DVR card that can handle 8 video inputs. I have a 1.5A power supply wired to a PD9HC Elk power distribution module, so I can run all the cameras off the single power supply.

For software, i'm using Diginet which is a very robust CCTV package and designed to work with the kodicomm cards. It's got tons of functionality that's meant for situations such as this.

One of the things it does is install the apache webservdr on that machine as part of the install. Diginet has a web server page that they install alongside apache.


This means that any PC in your house can simply pull up the webserver on that PC using it's IP address [i.e., http://192.168.2.110] and the screen in the post above on 6/4 will come up.


What I got working last night was the ability to bypass the login screen by hardcoding my IP address, sitename, and password into the Diginet webserver page. [sounds hard, but it was actually very very very easy]. That means that if my wife is on the laptop or any other PC, she can just click the favorites link I setup in IE that says "FrontDoorCam", and the camera grid will come up. No typing necessary.


That's what I needed in order to be able to render this on the 3400, as I have that wallmounted, and don't have a keyboard hooked up to it.


Does that make sense?


----------



## jbhungvt




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> I got these Vitek cameras . They're 1/3" 480TVL, with IR LEDs for zero-light situations. They were highly suggested by toymaster of CQC/cocoon fame for my needs.
> 
> 
> They need an RG59 for video, and 18-2 for 12VDC. I just bought some RG59/18-2 cable from tri-state electronics, I think it was $130 for 500'.
> 
> 
> Not following the question, so i'll tell you what i got, perhaps that'll answer it.
> 
> 
> I have 1 camera now, just ordered 3 more of the same for each side of the house. They'll have all RG59/18-2 run back to my CCTV & fileserver. It's basically a PC with a kodicomm clone CCTV DVR card that can handle 8 video inputs. I have a 1.5A power supply wired to a PD9HC Elk power distribution module, so I can run all the cameras off the single power supply.
> 
> For software, i'm using Diginet which is a very robust CCTV package and designed to work with the kodicomm cards. It's got tons of functionality that's meant for situations such as this.
> 
> One of the things it does is install the apache webservdr on that machine as part of the install. Diginet has a web server page that they install alongside apache.
> 
> 
> This means that any PC in your house can simply pull up the webserver on that PC using it's IP address [i.e., http://192.168.2.110] and the screen in the post above on 6/4 will come up.
> 
> 
> What I got working last night was the ability to bypass the login screen by hardcoding my IP address, sitename, and password into the Diginet webserver page. [sounds hard, but it was actually very very very easy]. That means that if my wife is on the laptop or any other PC, she can just click the favorites link I setup in IE that says "FrontDoorCam", and the camera grid will come up. No typing necessary.
> 
> 
> That's what I needed in order to be able to render this on the 3400, as I have that wallmounted, and don't have a keyboard hooked up to it.
> 
> 
> Does that make sense?



thanks IVB for the detailed response.

Currently my home is wired with cat5e for future camera locations. I know there are cat5e based cameras out there but not sure about the reliability/resolution these cameras put out. The only location where I can run rg59/18-2 cable is at the front door since I have a conduit there.

My questions are

1. can I mix cat5e based cameras with cameras you're currently using at the fileserver &CCTV?


2. Diginet? is that a monthly service where you have to pay a monthly fees for the webserver space?


3. I don't have security setup for my house and wasn't planning on getting the ELK distribution panels. Is there something comparable to make the CCTV work?


4. Are you planning on putting intercom system in your house? I'm planning on getting the Russound Compoint system when it's available and want to be able to see someone at the door when someone rings the doorbell. Currently, I don't know how that'll work since the russound compoint is strictly for intercom and not for video. When you get to that intercom stage, I would like to know how you're doing it so I can do the same thing.


thanks,


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jbhungvt* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> thanks IVB for the detailed response.
> 
> Currently my home is wired with cat5e for future camera locations. I know there are cat5e based cameras out there but not sure about the reliability/resolution these cameras put out. The only location where I can run rg59/18-2 cable is at the front door since I have a conduit there.
> 
> My questions are
> 
> 1. can I mix cat5e based cameras with cameras you're currently using at the fileserver &CCTV?



Actually, someone just posted over on cocoon about how to run video+power over CAT5, so you can get whatever cameras you want and just put $13 balun's on the ends to convert.


> Quote:
> 2. Diginet? is that a monthly service where you have to pay a monthly fees for the webserver space?



Sorry for the vagueness. It's a software package that you install on your PC for the monitoring. Apache is a software package that turns that machine into a webserver, so you don't need anything external. If you want to view it from outside your house, all you do is open up a port in your router [again, sounds hard but very easy].


> Quote:
> 3. I don't have security setup for my house and wasn't planning on getting the ELK distribution panels. Is there something comparable to make the CCTV work?



Not following this question. If you get that DVR card on your PC and the diginet software, you don't actually need anything else.


> Quote:
> 4. Are you planning on putting intercom system in your house? I'm planning on getting the Russound Compoint system when it's available and want to be able to see someone at the door when someone rings the doorbell. Currently, I don't know how that'll work since the russound compoint is strictly for intercom and not for video. When you get to that intercom stage, I would like to know how you're doing it so I can do the same thing.
> 
> 
> thanks,



At this point, not in the plan, however I said the same thing about XM and CCTVs










I'll wait until CCTV, security is done, then hopefully move into lighting, then probably RFID for the doors, then contemplate intercom. Hopefully an external event doesn't occur that makes me rejigger priorities.


----------



## jbhungvt




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Actually, someone just posted over on cocoon about how to run video+power over CAT5, so you can get whatever cameras you want and just put $13 balun's on the ends to convert.



That's good to know you can get baluns and do the trick. do you have a link to that thread? I would like to know how big the balun is and wonder if I can hide the balun in-wall.



> Quote:
> Hopefully an external event doesn't occur that makes me rejigger priorities



You mean similar to the event when someone stole your Jap. maple tree? What a bummer to hear


----------



## IVB

 Here's the link to that cocoon thread.


----------



## IVB

Lest any of you readers think that this stuff is easy, I spent another 2.5 hours tonight trying to figure out why I can't get my smokes to work on my expander zone.


My latest guess it that i've terminated the RS485 bus wrong, as I bought the Elk Data Bus Hub Retrofit as I was planning on re-using my ADT stuff. Had I bought the Elk Data Bus Hub regular, I hear that there would be no termination issues. Can't speak to that - don't got one.


All I know is that I'm happy I took a month off from diagnosing this - it's killing me.


----------



## IVB

A big reason I went with the Elk: They have a dedicated forum on cocoontech where I can ask questions. That type of access is exactly what the DIY contingent needs, as some of this stuff isn't so easy to do even after we put some elbow grease into the situation.


I opted to pull the hub out of the equation, still having issues. Here's the post I just made on their cocoontech forum , i'm sure they'll respond soon enough....

--------------------------------------------

I know you guys have followed this thread , thanks for that. I've done another series of tests tonight; i'm missing something blindingly obvious, as I cannot figure out how to get my 4-wire Firewolf smokes to work on an expander. The Elk immediately reports an alarm.


Here's what I did, any guidance or confirmation that a smoke detector can indeed go on an expander zone would be helpdful.


Note: I used the ElkRP status button to tell me what the various voltages were, as it was much faster than using a multimeter. I'm happy to repeat all of these tests using a multimeter if you feel you want confirmation of the readings.


With only keypad & expander hanging directly off Elk, no data bus hub retrofit, or sensors of any sort hooked up:


1) Confirm proper resistance across RS485 bus, ie do I have the right # of terminators. 67ohms, within range specified by spanky

2) Determine smoke detector voltage on normal (7V), alarm mode (0V), just EOL on zone (7V).

3) Put smoke on mainzone 9, "enabled" zone to type 12 (fire supervisory). works fine. Measures 7V on normal, 0V on alarm

4) Put smoke on expander zone 17. Didn't "enable" the zone, elk sees 7V. "enabled" via ElkRP to a type 12 (fire supervisory), elk still sees 7V but immediately reports alarm

5) Put smoke on expander zone 17. but this time I "enabled" via ElkRP to a type 10 (fire alarm), acknowledged alert, reset smoke, still reports alarm.

6) put EOL on expander zone 19, reads 7V. "enabled" zone to a type 12(fire supervisory), elk reports alarm.

7) Added a motion detector to expander zone 21, works fine. Set to 04(burglar interior), 3-EOL Supervised on short.


So at this point, i believe i've confirmed that the expander works fine as a motion on it works, the smoke works fine as it works on the mainboard.


Can I, and how can I, get the smoke working on the expander?


----------



## IVB

Ok now this is service!


Within 7 hours, by 7:30am EST [which is where they are], I got the following response from Elk's Chief Engineer. I tried a few things out, not all, will do the rest tonight. At least i know it's "supposed" to work.


-------------------------------------------------------------

Have you enrolled the input expander?


You should be using definition 10, Fire Alarm. Fire supervisory is for fire gate valves.


If you put a 2200 ohm resistor across the zone terminals, it should not show alarm.


I tested the fire alarm on a zone expander here at my desk and it works OK.


Try moving to zone 32 and see if you get the same results.


You might try re-downloading the software in the input expander, else a problem on the input expander.


----------



## IVB

Within 24 hours of me formally asking Elk for help on cocoontech, their chief engineer shows me how to basically do a "reformat" of the Elk, which cleared up my problem!


The system now works using both EOL resistors and a real smoke detector. When I first hooked up the smoke, it registered an alarm, but all I had to do is acknowledge it by entering a user code on the keypad, then it all worked fine.


These guys rock. I'm so so happy I went with the Elk - this customer service is both fast and actually helps solve the problem.


I wish I hadn't waited so long to ask, but honestly it took me this long to figure out what the heck to ask and to try everything that a DIY'er should try instead of quickly throwing in the towel.


Now off to figure out how to wire that damn Data Bus Hub Retrofit...


----------



## IVB

Wife's priorities & my priorities begin to merge, albeit in an unfortunate way.


Wife's friends relatives just had a home-invasion last night. Suddenly PDA-monitoring of CCTV from remote locations, cellphone alerts on sensor trips, cellular backup, pushbutton "panic/instant call" button, internal CCTV pointed at the doors, motion & window sensors in every room, PVC protected phone lines, and generally getting the Elk up & running in "production" mode are now also her priority.


Glad I finally got that smoke working - wife's going to keep me busy in Elk projects for the next 6-9 months.


----------



## jbhungvt




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Wife's priorities & my priorities begin to merge, albeit in an unfortunate way.
> 
> 
> Wife's friends relatives just had a home-invasion last night. Suddenly PDA-monitoring of CCTV from remote locations, cellphone alerts on sensor trips, cellular backup, pushbutton "panic/instant call" button, internal CCTV pointed at the doors, motion & window sensors in every room, PVC protected phone lines, and generally getting the Elk up & running in "production" mode are now also her priority.
> 
> 
> Glad I finally got that smoke working - wife's going to keep me busy in Elk projects for the next 6-9 months.



Hi IVB,

I'm happy you got things workin out for you.


It seems that ELK can do many things you want it to do, I guess the problem is if I was going to go that route, it's not easy and it looks to be a lot of challenge to try to figure all this out by doing the DIY route.


You've just solved a big problem, and I congratulate you for that, I guess if it was me, I'd start blaming that ELK thing is not working as advertised etc.


Keep up the good work and updated progress


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> ...it's not easy and it looks to be a lot of challenge to try to figure all this out by doing the DIY route...I'd start blaming that ELK thing is not working as advertised etc



I think you've hit the DIY'ers task squarely on the head there, and that statement right there was meant to be the purpose of keeping this thread alive: Have everyone see what it takes to do this, and determine for themselves whether DIY'ing an automation panel is what they want to do. Elk doesn't actually advertise as a DIY product, indeed they have everyone register as "installers" to drive home the point that automation panels are not meant to be a complete plug&play solution. Any manufacturer that tells you otherwise is misleading you. (Although I have to admit that had I tried "rebooting" the Elk myself 3 weeks ago, I wouldn't have had to do any of this and it would have been pretty darn near plug&play. I just didn't realize you could do that.) I see many folks on various forums rush to post a question rather than sit down and think it out for themselves. At least making an attempt to figure it out, then putting it away, then trying it again before posting the question is what DIY is meant to be.


This is significantly harder for me than HTPCs, as my dad is a PHD in EE who designed mainframes for IBM then opened up his own computer retail store. Hence, I've been exposed to computers since I was 8. [and i'm coming up on 38 now]. I started off programming at 8, at my fathers' store I was the best PC builder he had at 15, best salesman he had at 18, etc etc. But, I didn't know squat about wiring, resistors, eeproms, insulation, heck even carpentry.


Part of the reason I wanted to DIY was to learn that stuff so I could extend & integrate it into other areas as I saw fit. Just paying someone to do it is too much of a "black box", where I'll always have whatever instructions i gave the installer, and not realizing what else is possible. As new technologies and products become available, i'll now know how to bring them into the fold to make mine an even smarter house.


So suck it up and get one, and get down & dirty with me here


----------



## cjett




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Suddenly PDA-monitoring of CCTV from remote locations, cellphone alerts on sensor trips, cellular backup, pushbutton "panic/instant call" button, internal CCTV pointed at the doors, motion & window sensors in every room, PVC protected phone lines, and generally getting the Elk up & running in "production" mode are now also her priority.



I just picked up a Uplink DigiCell 1500 to connect to my Elk M1G. It arrived, but I am still waiting on the Elk 981K (Cell Pack for Uplink with Transformer and Battery) to arrive to get started. I will be using the cell uplink as my sole means of communication as we dropped our POTS lines a while ago. So... we can go through that pain together.


I plan to use Alarm Relay to monitor... unless I hear anything different. I think their costs are 12.99 per month for the cell uplink, and 8.95 per moth for monitoring. So, 21.00 per month.


cjett


----------



## IVB

Cool, look forward to hearing how that works out.

There's a whole thread on cocoon about cellular backup . Have you seen that?


Nextalarm can also do cellular monitoring for $7.50 extra, and the uplink is one of their compatible ones. That's $9/month for basic service with a 1year contract, so $16.50. Minimal cost difference, i was going to figure out how to do a comparison between all these folks. Whoever has the (?best service? not sure how to rate yet) is what i'll go with.


----------



## cjett

Next Alarm outsources monitoring to 3rd parties. I have some problems with not knowing who is doing my monitoring. Also, AlarmRelay is UL rated... NextAlarm is not. Makes it simple for me.


cjett


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *cjett* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Next Alarm outsources monitoring to a 3rd party. I have some problems with not knowing who is doing my monitoring. Also, AlarmRelay is UL rated... NextAlarm is not. Makes it simple for me.
> 
> 
> cjett



Ah, very interesting - i did not know that. Does AlarmRelay not outsource?


That would also make it very simple for me.


----------



## IVB

Another amazing day in paradise. Any doubts bigpapa had about me being a semi-DIY'er were put to rest. I spent Fathers day playing with the kids from 6:30am [when they woke up] to 9:00am, then having them read me a book while I played with the Elk. Had a slow start, ended almost perfect. Check it out:


- Moved data bus hub retro & expander back to secondary cabinet, wired up all expanders & keypads in "production mode". After 45 mins, realized that one of the expanders wasn't actually working. Swore some, then pulled it out.

- Had lunch with wife/kids. Chicken parmesan with whole wheat pasta. Yummy.

- Bought a 2" PVC pipe from home depot, screwed up the cut several times, finally got a totally straight conduit run from attic all the way to literally the top of the Elk unit (only about 5', can't believe how much I hosed it) so that it would be easy to do the next step.

- Ran new fire rated 22/4 wire for ALL SIX smoke detectors wires from current location to the elk [via the lovely conduit]

- Had dinner with family & wife's family who came over.

- Used 2 of the prior smoke runs that went to the 2ndary cabinet for 2 194deg Attic Heat Detectors.

- Family forced me to stop for 45mins. Some lame excuse about it being my wife's birthday last Wed, and cake/presents time. Don't these people know i've got wiring to do?

- Used 1 of the prior smoke runs for a new motion detector.

- Rejiggered all wiring in the 2ndary cabinet to match the new usage.

- Turned on the Elk, enabled Zones 2->7 for the new smokes


I say "almost perfect" cuz I must have cut the wrong wire, as when I turned the Elk on it claimed expander 4 was nowhere to be found. I'm dang tired, i'll go downstairs tomorrow and figure out why.


Still though, heckuva day.


----------



## cjett




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Ah, very interesting - i did not know that. Does AlarmRelay not outsource?
> 
> 
> That would also make it very simple for me.



Nope - AlarmRelay is all in house.


cjett


----------



## cjett




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Cool, look forward to hearing how that works out.
> 
> There's a whole thread on cocoon about cellular backup . Have you seen that?
> 
> 
> Nextalarm can also do cellular monitoring for $7.50 extra, and the uplink is one of their compatible ones. That's $9/month for basic service with a 1year contract, so $16.50. Minimal cost difference, i was going to figure out how to do a comparison between all these folks. Whoever has the (?best service? not sure how to rate yet) is what i'll go with.



Checked that thread... thank you. Sent back the uplink 1500 today, as well as cancelled my order for the Elk 981K. I already had the serial interface for my elk ordered... i'll couple that with the latest Uplink AnyNet-C... as it's the latest digital version that passes the full range of alerts vs 2 or 3 alerts that the 1500 did.


So, a bit of a step back, but at least i'm buying the right stuff now.


cjett


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *cjett* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Checked that thread... thank you. Sent back the uplink 1500 today, as well as cancelled my order for the Elk 981K. I already had the serial interface for my elk ordered... i'll couple that with the latest Uplink AnyNet-C... as it's the latest digital version that passes the full range of alerts vs 2 or 3 alerts that the 1500 did.
> 
> 
> So, a bit of a step back, but at least i'm buying the right stuff now.
> 
> 
> cjett



No idea what you just said, but i'll wait a month and see if you got it working, then buy whatever you did.


----------



## IVB

Dear Diary: Sometimes I wonder if I'm the exact right person for a DIY HA/HT solution, or the exact wrong person. Check out this bizarre thought process whence I came home:


5:15pm: "Dang is it nice. Getting a little warm though. Holy cow - look at the weather for the next few days; it's going to go up another 10deg, at least 90 by Wed. Man, I really need to ventilate that media closet."

6:15pm: "Man am I tired. But I best go down under the house and check the wiring on that expander."

6:30pm: "yep, accidentally pulled out a wire. Oh look at that - there's our old metal heat register grate that we pulled out when we put in the wooden one that we stained. Hmm. I wonder if I could use that in the media closet."

6:35pm: "Wow, check that out - there's a perfect location for the register on the floor in the back of the closet, where all the equipment vents. I'll just drill the 4 holes indicating the rectangle, i'll cut it later."

6:45pm: "Oh honey, you're going to give the kids a bath? Ok, I'll just cut this real quick."

7:00pm: "Ok, finally done taking the closet door off the hinges and moving all the crap out, ready to cut".

7:15pm: "How the heck did I screw up this rectangle so badly?"

7:30pm: "How the heck did I bend the crap out of this jigsaw blade?"

7:45pm: "Why isn't this damn thing fitting in? Wait a second - what the hell are these weird plastic bumper things on the side of the register - why in gods name would someone manufacture a non-straight edged register"

8:00pm: "Man, that is the ugliest most screwed up rectangle I have ever seen. Thank god the register grate has 1" of overlap on either side, so it's very forgiving"

8:15pm: "Well, finally all cleaned up. But, as long as I'm here, I may as well wallmount that magnetic strip on the other side of the closet so I can hang all my tools.

8:20pm "GOODNIGHT KIDS - I CAN'T COME TUCK YOU IN - IF I DON'T CLEAN THIS, MOMMY WILL YELL AT ME"

8:45pm: "Look honey, I cleaned everything out. I know I made a big mess, and did 2 hours of work I didn't plan on, but I also emptied the other half of the closet. Sure, you can put your sewing machine there - that's why I made the space."

8:55pm: "Hey - I can put my 4" RadioShack fan right on top of that register and suck the cold air up"

9:00pm: "Cool - the temperature fell another 5 degrees. I should go make another entry in the blog".


----------



## IVB

V1.6.20 of CQC went into public beta today, the coolest part is that it supports the new V2.3.2 Theatertek IP version.


Centralized view of what is currently playing on each source. I have another screen where I can see all zones , I didn't put the source per zone there as before 30 minutes ago all I could see was CD/XM. I think I'll have to add this in there.


Oooooh, pretty....


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *cjett* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Next Alarm outsources monitoring to 3rd parties. I have some problems with not knowing who is doing my monitoring. Also, AlarmRelay is UL rated... NextAlarm is not. Makes it simple for me.
> 
> 
> cjett


 Just started a thread on alarmrelay over on cocoon


----------



## IVB

So interesting discovery on the whole competing HA priorities thing with me/wife. I was tracing my phone line some more, two interesting points:

1) Telephone Demarc box is actually in my crawlspace just on the inside of the house from where the wire runs. There is what could be the biggest hack for lightning protection - a wire not actually tied up, dangling loose, running over to a cold water pipe. What I thought at first glance was the box is actually just some jury-rigged mechanism for holding wire against wall. It's 12' up, so I didn't clearly see it first time.

2) ADT ran the wiring without an RJ31, it's just a regular extension twist-tied along with the other extensions. If we're on the phone or a thief breaks in, all he has to do is pick up a phone to disable our security system.


Wife is royally pissed about both my discovery about the ease of cutting our phone lines, plus the RJ31 thing. She wants to call ADT and get 5.5 yrs of fees refunded for providing a false sense of security. No way would that happen, as they could just say that "line seizure" is an optional feature that the prior owners who did the ADT install 10yrs ago didn't pay for, but at least now she's of the ilk that the Elk must be operational ASAP.


----------



## bigpapa

You don't need an RJ31x for line seizure if the phone lines connect to the alarm CPU on screw terminals. It's more of a convienience feature for homeowners to troubleshoot. A few alarm panels used to only connect phone through an RJ....


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *bigpapa* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> You don't need an RJ31x for line seizure if the phone lines connect to the alarm CPU on screw terminals. It's more of a convienience feature for homeowners to troubleshoot. A few alarm panels used to only connect phone through an RJ....



Yeah, but this one is hooked up as a regular client, like the other phones. Not fighting it, not worth my time for what is surely not a fruitful endeavor. Wife is more than welcome to.


----------



## IVB

Got a Cingular 8125 PDA/cellphone today with the unlimited PDA data plan [ie, blackberry plan equivalent]. This is mostly for work purposes, but wife also wants a way to monitor house/CCTV away from home, probably to make sure I didn't screw up the Elk install.


I was researching ways to connect to my CQC instance [ie, logmein] when Mark Stega reminded me that the CQC DotNetViewer uses XML to communicate with the server, meaning that I can just port-forward the CQC XML server to my external IP address, and hit it directly [ie, no 3rd party sofware]. Plus, I can use DDNS via dyndns.com so that I can use an english name that'll follow my external IP if my router resets.


In laymans terms, I set the config up on the CQC PDA viewer to hit My_House.dyndns.org:12345 [not the real name I picked, and 12345 isn't really my CQC server].


I created some regular 320x240 interfaces, and loaded some new fonts on the cellphone so I could use cooler fonts than what came with it. I think I used too many pics, cuz performance is a little slow, but that could be my plaster/lathe house too. I get really horrid service in my house. I'll try again tomorrow from my office in downtown SF, which obviously has fantastic coverage.


I can now do the following thing from any location my phone gets service:

- Check status of Elk, arm&disarm if need be.

- Check motion sensors

- Check HVAC, turn heat/fan up or down!! [that's really cool]


I still have to do some more testing, also still have to create some more interfaces, but not bad for 1.5 hours of work.


Check it out. Looks pretty decent.


----------



## Big Worms

That is awesome! I have that same cell phone and I would love to do the same. Awesome job!


----------



## IVB

Do you have any performance issues with the Cingular GPRS? I'm noticing that all my web-browsing is also dang dang slow. As I'm not using IE, but rather the CQC PDA viewer, it seems that Cingular network performance may be the bottleneck.


----------



## Big Worms

Yes it is slower that would I would expect. But this is my first phone I have had that I actually use the internet connection so hard to compare to anything else.


----------



## dan marquardt

cingular is pretty slow. verizon seems to have the best speeds. but you can always hop on wifi connection if you are near on open spot for a speed boost.


----------



## IVB

The Elk is in beta mode! Or is it called Alpha? Whatever, I mounted the 2nd keypad near the front, ran the CAT5e and hooked up to the system, and armed both it & the ADT system today before leaving the house for several hours! And, when I came back, everything was still fine.


The Elk isn't actually hooked up to the phone lines, as I want to run it for 2-3 weeks to make sure the motion sensors don't pick up anything outside the house by mistake. I've now got them in every room of the house, more for non-security reasons [ie, turn off speakers/lights/etc if there's no motion and/or there's no DVD or audio playing in a room for xmins]. But, as long as I got them, I may as well use them. Hopefully all goes well enough to give ADT 30 days notice on 7/31, then flip to elk live on 9/1. By then, I may also have enough time to put in a structured wiring system for the network & phone distribution and clean up the horrors that is my current wiring for the media closet, so it'll go live with the "right" structure.


I've got some "known" issues; can't figure out how to get both keypads working at the same time. I'm reading the Elk install guide, says something about keypad addresses, yet another thing that'll take a few reads to get through my thick skull. I also wired up all the motions as Definition4: Immediate alarm, rather than putting the ones near the doors as Def5:Follower, giving me time to disarm the system.


But, exciting progress nonetheless.


----------



## IVB

Progress continues. Getting both keypads was a total RTFM move, as it was CLEARLY spelled out there. I was just reading the wrong section! I also bought some "liquid metal" 3/4" tubing which is basically plastic wrapped flex-metal conduit to protect the external phone wiring from being cut, and a hole saw so I can run it into the house and secure it there.


FIinally, I started planning out some more sensor wiring runs. A CQC guy just wrote up a CADDX driver, posted his screenshot here. Of course, I had to show him the light of the non-scifi/techie screens, had to finally do that screen I keep meaning to create. This also helped me realize how much work I have yet to do, and but also how much has gotten done.


----------



## IVB

Just worked something out over on cocoontech, looks like my theory about there being "something" about setting up each room as it's own audio zone, and putting motion detectors in every room "just in case" will work out.


I'm going to setup CQC & the Elk to turn off speakers and lighting(future) if there's been no motion in a room for 5 minutes. The design looks like it would be trivial as I could have CQC set Output208on if the familyroom speakers are turned on. In the Elk, I could then do;

WHENEVER FamRmMotion IS VIOLATED AND Output208 IS ON

THEN TURN Output207 ON for 5 Minutes Restart if running


WHENEVER Output207 TURNS OFF and Output208 IS ON

THEN TURN Output208 OFF


I'll create a triggered event in CQC that says something like

IsFldChangeFor("elk-driver.Output208") send false to the FamRm ZPR68 Power (turn off the power in that zone)


I guess if I wanted to get complex, I could do an

IsEqual("elk-driver.Output208",False), but the only thing that'd be changing that would be the Elk.


Gotta love it when 2 seperately created, organically designed plans come together and actually have synergy...


----------



## IVB

Good lord; i just did a mini-status report to see how far I am with my wiring as I had to redo a few runs, I will be doing this until the end of time:


23 of 54 runs for the Elk done. [sensors, smoke, keypad, Elk speakers, phone]

2 of 8 CCTV runs done

14 of 21 speaker runs done

4 of 12 network runs done


That's 43 of 95 done, or 45%. Who's smart idea was self-installing this thing...


----------



## IVB

I got the Cingular phone working much better by upgrading the firmware on the phone to the latest version. Just in time too - had some raging success yesterday with remote access of my server. We had a last minute out-of-town trip to Napa as wife's folks were willing to watch kids. I added some A/V screens so I could control the A/V equipment and start DVDs, as they constantly struggle with anything remotely technical, especially if they're trying to watch the kids at the same time.


Here's the latest set of interfaces I made for it, had some pretty good luck with them yesterday. That said, I'm going to create a high-bandwidth set and low-bandwidth set and create a new top-level menu having you pick one or the other, as I only got 5-10kbps over Cingular's EDGE network while in Napa yesterday, and some of these are nearly 200K. They were fine from the coffee shops with free wifi, but about 40 seconds per page load time from the movie theater. I kicked off a DVD for the inlaws so they didn't have to deal with anything other than turning TV on. Considering that I won't use this that often, 20 seconds is "ok", but i'd like to see if I can at least create security ones that load within 5-7 seconds.


Obviously these need some serious GUI work - the napa trip was a total last minute thing, so the A/V ones are what I whipped together in


----------



## stefuel

IVB,

I might have missed it but what thermostats are you using for your HVAC control?


Chip


----------



## Dean Roddey

If I remember correctly, he's using Aprilaire thermos.


----------



## IVB

yep. 8870 thermo with the 8811 RS232 adapter.


Also got some 8051/8061's in the mix for remote temp readings.


----------



## IVB

Did some performance testing/optimization of my PPC skins so I can get this to be a highly usable system. Can't do a heckuva lot here at home, as I get crappy cellphone coverage inside the house [all the plaster/lathe kills cellphone signals]. Pretty remarkable how much space even small images take up, though. I was able to cut download time of the first page I tried from 17 seconds to


----------



## MikeRich

Thanks for keeping your thread going, the updates are great!


I have a few questions about the XM Feeds.

Do you have a XM source for each room or is one player driving them all?

Are you using Sat or players?

If one source, Are you able to play different channels in different places at the same time or one channel at multiple locations at the same time?


Thanks,


Mike


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *MikeRich* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Thanks for keeping your thread going, the updates are great!
> 
> 
> I have a few questions about the XM Feeds.
> 
> Do you have a XM source for each room or is one player driving them all?
> 
> Are you using Sat or players?
> 
> If one source, Are you able to play different channels in different places at the same time or one channel at multiple locations at the same time?



I'm too cheap for multiple tuners, I got the $200 Polk XRt12 XM single tuner. Hence, that means only 1 channel in whichever and however many locations I want.


If I got the russound dual-tuner, or multiple Polk's, I could easily hook each one up to a different input on the Xantech and distribute wherever I wanted.


Honestly, in our house with me/wife/2 young kids, we rarely listen to 2 different audio sources, even XM vs CD. I've got 2 CD stream capability, but I think I used that once 5 months ago.


when my kids get old enough to have an opinion about the music they're listening to, and don't want to suck it up and listen to CDs but rather want their own seperate XM feed at the same time that i'm listening to XM, i'll get a 2nd one. Heck, i'll probably suck it up and tell them they can listen to the XM, rather than constantly pay for a unique one just so me/wife can listen to something different.


----------



## IVB

Holy cow! I worked with Mark Stega [CQC guy who wrote the DotNetViewer, i *think* he's the CEO] to optimize this. He sent me a new build, screw going down to text-based stuff, he optimized the DNV so that it doesn't redownload an image if it's already gotten it. My image-laden screens are now quite zippy!


Now, the menu art screen which was taking 17 seconds, now loads in 8 seconds the first time, and GET THIS: 2.5 seconds every other time. [it's already downloaded the button]

The motion screen , which was taking 79 seconds with art, and 11 seconds without art, takes 19 seconds the first time, 8 seconds the 2nd time and on!


Woohoo, no more text! I'm still doing some more sample runs, that was just the first run. Very very exciting stuff!


----------



## Dean Roddey

I think it was already not re-downloading the image if it already had it, it just quit doing the 'has this image changed since the last time I downloaded it' check unless it had been over some number of minutes since it last checked for that image. For whatever reason it seems like doing those redundant exchanges, even though the amount of information exchanged is pretty trivial, was causing a fair amount of delay.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Dean Roddey* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> I think it was already not re-downloading the image if it already had it, it just quit doing the 'has this image changed since the last time I downloaded it' check unless it had been over some number of minutes since it last checked for that image. For whatever reason it seems like doing those redundant exchanges, even though the amount of information exchanged is pretty trivial, was causing a fair amount of delay.



ok, yes, technically all he did was allow me to specify the time period that would go by from doing that check. Didn't want to get too technical.


BTW, this may not be an issue for folks on other providers. I hear Verizon has a pretty fast network. With Cingular, I get anywhere from 5-15Kbps once connected, and it takes a moment to get connected. Hence I need the absolute minimium amount of back&forth possible.


Also to set expectations: If you try to use a web server or logmein, there's zero chance you'll ever have remotely the same performance as it'll be forced to redownload the whole page. There's no intelligence a la the DotNetViewer which can do optimizations such as this. Hence, if you're serious about using a PDA cellphone to do remote access to your server, and if you've got anything but a wifi connection, either use the DNV, use entirely text-based screens, or be willing to have it perform slowly.


----------



## IVB

Finally, something that's easy. Both kids decided they wanted to go with Mom to pick up dinner, I went downstairs to see how easy it would be to access the front doors [outer & inner] via the crawlspace. Well, one thing led to another, inside of 90 minutes I had the floor and both doors drilled, magnets mounted, wires run, mounted to the expander, and confirmed proper operation via ElkRP!


Good thing the wife/kids decided to eat at the restaurant. Wife drove back up to see me with the outer door on the stoop, drill in hand. Thank god it only took me 15 minutes from then to completion, or else there'd been issues.


I just got the 2 doors working with CQC. I tried putting it on the current motion screen, didn't really work cuz you couldn't tell the difference between the green indicating no motion and the green indicating door is closed.


Here's a new screen dedicated to doors/windows. Not sure this is where i'll end up, it's just one of those things that needs to sit with me for a bit.


----------



## IVB

Dear Diary: This weekend I came up with a good plan to have consistently fast screen performance over the 8125. When I think i'll be entering a period of activity for interaction, I'll establish an Edge cxn via IE, startup the CQC PDA app, hit all the screens so I download/cache all the images, then do the PDA equivalent of alt-tabbing to the phone/calendar/etc. I put the phone back in the belt clip and resume my biz. As the PDA app hasn't technically shutdown, it still holds the images in memory. Whenever I want to check something on the house, I re-establish the Edge cxn, flip to the CQC Viewer, and play away. Did it this weekend, worked pretty well. Consistently got


----------



## IVB

Well, progress has been slow lately. Work has been truly horrific and political, and will likely continue to be so for the next 3 months. Hence, i'm in feast or famine mode - i either want to stay the heck away from everything and chill with the wife/kids, or dive into it and shut out the world. I did a little of both this weekend, bought a bike&trailer-car so 2yr old could sit in back, and get some decent progress on the HA side.


I got serious progress on 4 major fronts:

1) CCTV webserver working again. it broke when I tried to downgrade to Diginet V4.11]

2) Front Door cover MotionDetector Camera working kinda. Either I got cheap cables, cheap BNC connectors, cuz I had a HECK of a time getting a connection to hold. Plus, see the pics below, the image is a little funky. This part isn't done yet.

3) 3400 can now run kick off a show on another PC which is hooked up to a TV. Uses the SageTV webserver, and I can Play/Pause/skip from 3400. This eliminates the need for any remotes in that room (except for TV on/off). This is more cuz I got excited about the progress beelzerob is making on the SageTV driver than anything else, wanted to start prepping for that.

4) CQC state logic and Elk rules setup so that I can tell if there's been activity in a room within the last X minutes. I initially started with 5mins, but will probably change that to 15 once this is debugged.


Wife/kids are gone next weekend, i can't go cuz of work, so i'm coming up with a big list of stuff to get done. With any luck, i'll pound through lots, but that's assuming I don't get slaughtered at work this week and go into hiding this weekend. I've got still 4 cameras, Elk speakers & custom boards so I can play custom WAV files on doorbell/telephone, network&telco distro, and more speakers all sitting in boxes in the living room.


Here's screenshots of 2/3/4:


----------



## IVB

I'd like to say that I don't consider it a bad thing that rather than go to bed at 11:30pm, I opted to cut a hole in the MBR wall for the in-wall Niles subwoofer. And, I used a utility knife so I wouldn't screw it up and suffer the wrath of mom. [ok, kids mom, but wife doesn't rhyme with Khan]. I'm tempted to drill a hole in the subfloor, but the neighbors who's bedroom is probably 15' away from the location I need to drill, seeing as it's 1:15am and all.


The wife/kids are out of town, and I spent all dang night trying to fix my kitchen sink plumbing. First the pipes broke, I replaced them, now it looks like the pipe in the wall is clogged. I'm going to get my manual cheapo snake to figure out why, but seriously folks, i know even less about plumbing than I do about coding in CQC, which is basically squat.


I needed to do something HA/HT related, or else I'd have to get drunk to prove my manliness to myself.


----------



## IVB

If the wife is away, IVB will HA...


Good day today. After the

- 2 hour babble-athon which was the new CQC user walkthrough that I did for some of the new folks (and old folks)

- 2 hour kitchen pipe-snaking inside the wall task and realizing there were 2 blockages in the pipe, both of which looked suspiciously like something I had put down the pipe [i.e.,not wife or kids fault]


I finally spent the rest of the day getting the MBR basically done. This meant:


1) Installing in-ceiling directional Niles speakers

2) Installing in-wall passive subwoofer

3) Installing volume controller, which is really just acting as a volume reducer so that we can quickly turn volume down in case of phone call/kids beating each other up

4) Correctly mounting the Elk temperature sensor, so I don't have this dang wire dangling which the wife hated

5) Mounting an Elk speaker for HA announcements.

6) Searching for the dang speaker hole saw for 1 hour, then deciding to say "screw it", and using a utility knife to cut an 8" hole. Hey, at least it was nearly a perfect hole, as I used the template to mark a circle.


It sounds decent, but it sounds like there's a little distortion. Not sure if that's b/c I used really crappy audio cables, or whether the 30W x 2 Parasound zamp is underpowered, leaning toward the former. I have current issues with some of my Delta 410/mp3 sound as I has to steal the good cables for something else and put in horrid cables that I had laying around.


Here's as good a picture as I could take on my cellphone. Wife has the digital camera. You'll notice the subwoofer on the bottom, VC at the std 45" high that all my switches are at, and the Elk temperature sensor to the left, roughly centered. All this sits to the right of the armoire, which holds the crap SDTV that's in the MBR. I might get an el cheapo $500 27" CRT HDTV so we can really leverage this thing.


----------



## bigpapa




> Quote:
> It sounds decent, but it sounds like there's a little distortion. Not sure if that's b/c I used really crappy audio cables, or whether the 30W x 2 Parasound zamp is underpowered, leaning toward the former. I have current issues with some of my Delta 410/mp3 sound as I has to steal the good cables for something else and put in horrid cables that I had laying around.



I thought Zamps were 45 watts each.. maybe an older model?


Either way, I don't exclude crappy cabling, but I suspect first gain balance, then maybe underpowered amp, then maybe third would be the crappy cabling.


Make sure your source isn't turned up all the way, that could produce distortion. Make sure the Zamps input volume is properly calibrated also(start with that turned up all the way), plus it has a ground lift switch also that may provide some relief too.


I recommend a Velodyne 18" sub, it looks like it will fit there on the wall. Put a small tablecloth over it with a wide bottomed vase and flowers in it, your wife will notice the flowers and your impeccable taste in design, not the grotesquely large black box underneath.


----------



## IVB

Yeah, i got this is the V1.0 model.


No can do on the standalone sub - wife will straight-up veto that idea. Actually she already has. This was me "sneaking" it in, so I can still claim zero footprint.


I'll check out those distortion suggestions, thx.


----------



## IVB

ok, so now i'm getting pretty close to something cool. i hooked up the Elk-120 recordable voice module, and attached the elk output/relay expander, and put each speaker on it's own circuit. This means that I can turn on/off my elk HA speakers, furthermore I can play whatever sound I want.


Well, almost. I don't actually have the Elk-129 hooked up yet, just realized I need a power supply, trying to figure out what the right amps/volts should be. Once that's done, i'll have custom sounds/WAV files played back on doorbell ring & telephone ring. Finally, that'll also be the kicker for me to look into that whole "pause audio/video on ring" if i want.


I also created a UI so I could control the on/off from within CQC. I may record a few different sounds and create a page within CQC that allows me to pick which sound to render on doorbell. That gets a little more complex as I will need both Elk rules and CQC rules, not sure if it'll buy me that much.


I rejiggered the page so that on the zone control, it also showed some HA stuff. Not sure if i'll stick with this layout, i'll need to sit with it and see.


Here's what it looks like so far.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *bigpapa* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Make sure your source isn't turned up all the way, that could produce distortion. Make sure the Zamps input volume is properly calibrated also(start with that turned up all the way), plus it has a ground lift switch also that may provide some relief too.



Great call on tuning the zamp - that did the trick. Not sure what I did as I can't physically see the back of the zamp, but the distortion is gone on the one source I tested with. Sounds a bit flat, I twisted 2 dials just to fiddle with it, tonight i'll go hunt down the manual and see which dial does what.


But wait, there's more!


A few of us are looking to integrate a recipe management system with CQC, so we can pull it up on our touchpanels in the kitchen. I downloaded both BigOven and LivingCookbook, neither of them seemed good enough for me, plus they won't allow ODBC access and will force us to use XML export/imports, which makes for a kludgy integration.


I downloaded mySQL and found a PHP/web-based recipe mgmt package [CookDojo] that claims it'll run on it. I ran into install issues last night, i'll keep plugging away tonight.


I'll probably just use it to see how it works, then determine the build vs buy point. I still haven't found a buy solution that works the way we're going to want it to work.


And that's still not all:

I tried pulling up the CCTV web browser interface directly on the cellphone PDA. I'm not sure if it's the controls (dunno if it's javascript or activex), but it won't work. At this point my options are:

1) Get snapshot images, pull those up

2) Find diginet PDA app, see if I can get that to work

3) Ditch the Kodicomm, get the Avermedia nv5000, which supposedly has a very nice PDA app.


Time will tell.


----------



## IVB

2 interesting entries for this weekend:

*1) Recipe Management systems, esp those that integrate with HA software like CQC*

Not a huge deal, but some of us have been been wishing for a recipe mgmt system that would integrate cleanly with CQC, so that we could pull up stuff on our kitchen touchpanels [or laptops that we bring into the kitchen.

I looked around at nearly every package (probably 15), didn't like any of them [incl. the "nice" ones like Bigoven, LivingCookbook, mealmaster, etc]. Plus, none of them had ODBC access, which is what would be needed in order to not have to resort to an export/import process, which means 2-3 steps before CQC can see the updates after you make them in the recipe system.

Well, I decided to dust off my 10yr old programming skills, pick up a few java books, and get cracking on an open-source Recipe Mgmt system. I had mySQL , so i'm currently using that, may switch to Postgre, dunno. Won't matter, it'll just be an ODBC cxn, the back-end is irrelevant. I'm only a few hours into it, got the db schema setup and sample data populated. I'm having some issues getting access via java. Then again, i've only been coding java for 2 hours, so I can't expect miracles. Hopefully I can display data on the screen from within my db within a few days, able to modify & enter data a few days after that. Then I can move on to fancy stuff like a real, actual GUI to manipulate.


Look for a post from me in the next 2-ish weeks about this, as soon as I have a functional prototype up. I'll need some assistance with screen layouts, workflow, functionality, graphics, but am willing to put in the elbow grease required to learn how to code, well, as much as I can. I'll sourceforge it so I can get other, more talented folks, to take on some work, cuz god knows I'm not going to be able to code that which i'm thinking.


As it's open-source, ODBC, and totally standalone, you don't need CQC. In theory, you could use with *Lobby, or whatever.

*2) List of CQC drivers "in progress"*

I've been noticing many threads on the CQC forum from users about creating their own drivers for equipment, esp since the CQC PDL driver format is so easy to write. I started a thread asking for folks to let us all know what they're working on, so there's no double-and-wasted work.


You may be interested in watching this thread , as it'll be keeping a running list of what drivers folks are working on. Folks are pretty friendly, and while no one can guarantee that all of these will be in the CQC product, almost every driver writer has stated their intention of informally sharing them and formally submitting them to Dean for inclusion. Dean, of course, will have to review each one to make sure it's robust enough for inclusion in the product.


Here's the list of the current drivers in that thread. Not all have hyperlinks to a thread where you can get them - that gets added as they're in a state ready to share. Until then, the list is intended to provide visibility to others that someone is working on them, so no duplicative work is done. I've listed the author's handle so that if you want to PM them and volunteer to help code it, you can do so.

*Drivers in Progress, 8/12/06 [that's 12/8/06 for the non-US folks







]*


1) AdvantageAir , znelbok

2) Denon 4806 receiver , bodshal

3) GE/InterlogiX/Caddx NetworX NX-8E , jscheller 

4) GE 90-30 (PLC) , znelbok

5) Horoscopes, squintz 

6) Humax 5400 with ToH digital satellite STB, znelbok

7) InFocus IN74/IN76 , jonathan 

8) Integra DVD (all models), Mark/toymaster

9) Insteon, jonathan

10) Jandy RS Series Pool Controller, jscheller

11) LG LCD/Plasma Panel , bph

12) mitsubishi XD400U DLp projector, znelbok

13) Optoma H79 Projector, jpants

14)Optoma HD72 projector , bodshal

15) Panasonic AE9000, rritchey

16) Pixelmagic systems Crystalio scaler, Britax

17)Pixel Magic Crystalio II , bodshal

18) Resconsys (RCS) Serial Thermostat Driver, jscheller

19) Russound ST2-XM , ripper

20) Upgraded Russound Rnet Driver, Mark/toymaster

21) Topfield pvrt 5000 personal video recorder, znelbok

22) Upgraded SageTV driver, Beelzerob

23) Ultimeter II weather station, rhamer

24) Vantage lighting control, jscheller

25) Xantech XDT am/fm tuner, jscheller 

26) Xantech MRC-88, jscheller 

27) xBox, znelbok 

28) Yamaha RXV1600, (stefand?)

29) Yamaha RXV1500, beelzerob


And, in the hopefully beginning work soon so don't hold your breath but you can get excited camp:

1) Updated NetCallerID, IVB

2) Homegrown Recipe Mgmt system, IVB

3) Honeywell Enviracom communicating thermostat/zone controller, bph

4) Kenwood 400 disc mega DVD changer DV-5900M, jpants

5) Panasonic KX-TA SMDR telephone system, toymaster

6) Squeezebox, jonathan

7) CallerID via Asterisk PBX, jonathan

8) XMRadio Online, jonathan

9) Sony PFM-42B1 Plasma, bryanb


----------



## IVB

I got the correct screw-on BNC connector for my 18-2/RG6 cable 3 weeks ago, finally took the 6 minutes required to screw them on at both the camera side and the PC server side.


So the Vitek Motion detector camera in pic#1 produces images as per the next two pics. There's no night-time ability [no IR LEDs], but that's not relevant for a front door location. I've got that covered with 2 other Vitek day/night IR-LED cameras.


----------



## IVB

Well, a modicum of progress today. Got some wiring done, made some progress on that recipe stuff, and let the wife know I bought a 777ES (trust me, that's progress).


On the wiring/CCTV stuff:

I got 4 more wiring runs done: 3 CCTV and the driveway gate [using a cheap magnetic reed sensor]. I got the CCTV mounted, but it isn't working yet. I completely forgot where I put the wire cutters, so I tried using small pruning shears to cut the cable. Add this to the fact that I had to contort my body to reach the eave, and my 4yr old & 2yr old were in the driveway playing while wife was at a bridal shower, and it's no shocker that the new CCTV isn't working. Driveway sensor works fine, which I damn well hope so since it's basically 2 simple wires and my kids "helped me".


On the recipe's via CQC side, I'm thinking that using Joomla & RapidRecipe really will be the best path forward. I got it all loaded up & working. I figured out which RapidRecipe tables i'll need to display recipes in CQC and determined the basic structure. It's only 4, so it's nice and small. Plus, I finally got hosting for myhomecookingpc.com at a mega-Joomla hosting provider that's got all these tutorials and forums about customizing it. This'll be the permanent home. I figured out which tables need to be exported, and I have access to cron-jobs so i'm going to have it cut exports every 15 mins [or more]. However, i'm currently having issues both manually exporting and getting a command script that'll work. That's the next step.


That site( www.myhomecookingpc.com ) isn't going anywhere, it's open to the public (ie, non-CQC users too), so if you're interested in a recipe site, and potentially the ability to download a db (may be SQL, XML, CSV, or Excel, haven't finalized yet), you're more than welcome to it.


----------



## MikeRich

Are you currently using HD and streaming dvd's or is the ES a second unit? I mean are you replacing or adding on to the system? If you are replacing, can you share your reasoning?


I was about to start ripping my dvd's after being on the fence about an all digital vs changer config.


----------



## IVB

I'm currently using 4 250GB HDs just for the DVDs, probably ~100 DVDs or so. However, I've had several HD crashes in the past 6 months as they're beginning to age.


Rather than replace them, and given that I rarely watch most of them, i'm going to shift to 777ES. I'll initially move the rarely watched DVDs to the changer, then as more HDs fail [and they always do eventually], i just won't replace them.


The other advantage is that this will give me a vehicle to create more room for my HDTV recordings. The HDTV card has been out of commission for a while, but as soon as I get it back online that'll be another 10GB/hour. Freeing up that 1TB will give me more HDTV hours than I'd need. [famous last words]


----------



## jbhungvt




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Rather than replace them, and given that I rarely watch most of them, i'm going to shift to 777ES. I'll initially move the rarely watched DVDs to the changer, then as more HDs fail [and they always do eventually], i just won't replace them.
> 
> 
> [famous last words]



Have you tried the 777ES changer? If so, how is the delay between changing disks? 1 second or couple seconds?


thanks


----------



## IVB

No idea, it's going to be here on Friday. Hopefully I have time to get it setup this weekend, then i'll report back.


I want to fix the CCTV first, then setup the NetCallerID modem I got, so there's a few things ahead of it in the queue, but i'm hoping to get that dealt with before this weekend.


----------



## Dean Roddey

The delay is about 10 to 15 seconds for me. Nothing like the instant response of a disc based system, but nothing I can't live with given the many other advantages of a changer based system in terms of practicality and cost and size and heat and energy consumption and time required to load new contents to it and so forth.


----------



## IVB

Progress on a mechanism to integrate a recipe site with CQC!


As mentioned above, I bought www.myhomecookingpc.com and put Joomla and RapidRecipe on it. I'm very slowly adding recipes into it. The site is running an export every 15mins to a file for just the 4 recipe tables. I used the windows event scheduler to automatically download that exportfile via ftp in a very simple NT command script. Downside is that each task only runs 1x/day max. I was hoping to do this every 15-30mins as it's a 10second command and takes almost no CPU cycles.


At this point, i'll probably put this project on hold until V2.0 with ODBC access to local datastores comes out as all I need is a local display mechanism. I do need to populate the site with recipes, but I don't think i'll populate with MealMaster data as it's really 99.9% garbage, 1% useful. I might put in the recipes we use heavily [south beach stuff, indian food, etc].


Also, anyone else is more than welcome to signup and add their own stuff into it. PM me and i'll give you the NT command script with the ftp login details for the site.


----------



## IVB

Got the wife to say "hey, that's cool". Gotta love that.


How? I got the Diginet PDA software working on the 8125 over the Cingular network, just showed it to her. Now we can pull up any of our cameras on the cellphone. It only gets about 1.25fps, but for this purpose it'll be fine. If I'm somewhere with wifi access or once cingular rolls out their upgraded network in 6months, i'm sure it'll be better, but again, not a showstopper at this point in time.


I'm contemplating setting up a CQC button to make an announcement over the elk HA speakers, ie "Yo dude, get out of my house i've already called the cops and emailed them your picture". Too bad I can't link the phone to the speakers, and talk into the speakers, THAT would be super cool.


Here's as good a picture as I could take. You can barely but not quite make out a grid of #s on the bottom left, that corresponds to camera #. The image is markedly similar to the standard CCTV picture shot i've been showing you guys.











And here's the regular shot.


----------



## IVB

Feeling very irritated right now. I'm in NY, and for the past 24 hours, looks like my CCTV kodicomm server went south. It was working just fine, but it stopped yesterday. The nightly 3am reboot didn't seem to work last night, hopefully it will tonight.


I know CQC is up as I can hit that remotely just fine, but I can't get at my remote CCTV access. That system used to blue-screen on me when I was using an nvidia video card, but since I put the ATI 9800 Pro in it's been pretty good.


When I get home, i'll see what the issue is, but for now the wife was psyched that she could check out the house and make sure no one had mucked with anything.


At least this has underscored CQC stability to her as she can make sure the housesitter closed the outside front door via the Elk/CQC. Unfortunately she was primarily looking to make sure the block party tomorrow didn't have any nefarious types in our yard, or the punk ass college kid neighbors sitting on our car.


----------



## IVB

Great progress in 3 main areas: CCTV, CallerID, and automated lighting.

*1) CCTV works fine again.*

I didn't actually do anything, the machine must have reset itself into an ok state. It's set for a nightly reboot at 3am or something like that, so it probably just took 2-3 attempts at that to work. Got a great suggestion from electron over at cocoontech to put an elk relay on the PC reset switch, and tie to a CQC button so I can reset remotely at will. I'll certainly be doing that soon enough.

*2) Automated lighting*

For those of you who didn't follow the AVS thread , I got some great guidance from QQQ and audiblesolutions about the value of automated lighting, and whether HomeWorks or RadioRA would be better for me. I used to think that there were 2 main points to doing automated lighting:

A) Implement scenes

B ) Allow non-lighting events to trigger lighting (ie, I open my mud room door - the appropriate scene comes on if the security system is armed and it's dark outside).


In reality, I completely missed the boat on this one. Alan over at audiblesolutions pointed out that the real value in automated lighting is the ability to control a large amount of lights in a single room without a whole bank of dimmer/light switches. Rather, mount those things in a room closet, central closet, or other hidden location, and just put keypads in plain sight. That way things are cleaner looking and you can have better control. This really hit home for me as I have 4-5 locations where the light switch is VERY inconveniently located, and we're constantly irritated at having to go to a non-intuitive location to turn on/off the light. I'm going to look into putting the actual dimmer/lightswitch in the closet or even attic (so I can run a hardwire easily), and just putting a wireless keypad in the room.


I'm also ditching the idea of RadioRA and saving up my pennies for HomeWorks for 4 main reasons:

A) Once we remodel (in 2-3 years), i'll be at 45-50 loads minimum, esp given the above realization of cleaning up walls.

B) Ability to have hardwired & wireless controls in same system

C) Richer protocol allows a more robust set of control

D) Better options for shade control


This isn't going to be cheap, I hear MSRP on the dimmer HW switches is $270, but i'll see what I can do. I'm getting the feeling that this could be 2nd in WAF only to mzone audio, as we're all constantly irritated at our lights being left on and having to run around turning them off, plus the $400/month electic bill. Hence, it might not be so bad. Besides, she spent $300 today at Banana republic on clothes she'll only have for a year - these should last a few times longer than that









*3) CallerID*

I couldn't get the netcallerID driver that comes with CQC to work, so I decided to write my own. Besides, I knew I wanted to do massive upgrades, like integration with my outlook contact list, so I needed to understand it anyhow. Better to just write my own rather than learn someone else's code in a language I don't yet know. V0.1 of the driver works fine for the last caller, it'll get reset if CQC bounces though. I'll write out to a file as soon as I learn how. Here's what the screen looks like:


----------



## IVB

Awesome day, even if I didn't get nearly enough done as I wanted. Clearly the hours of learning about how phone lines/telco paid off as it only took me 3 hours to:


1) Determine which of the 2 demarc blocks was main line, which was alternate

2) Pull telco line out of house, encase within flex metal pipe that I got from HomeDepot, secure to both outside and inside of house, cut the excess pipe [and dang, is it hard to do that]

3) Connect Elk RJ31X block

4) Run telco wiring to Elk

5) Mount Leviton 12-way structured media center panel

6) Run telco wiring to SMC

7) Jury rig an RJ11->RJ45 cable, so I could test it out with an analog line

8) Reconnect it all, and the phone actually works!


The one thing my research didn't turn up is that I cannot connect a security panel right off the RJ31 then send to telephone lines for distro if I have DSL. If I turn on the Elk, my DSL dies as the alarm panel is interfering with it. Here's a good diagram of how to do it , here's the DSL whole house filter that I just ordered from HomeTech to deal with this for me. This is the "cleanest" way to go, rather than some hokey inline filter, figured as long as I'm doing this whole thing I may as well do it right. Also while I'm "doing things right", I'm going to move my DSL modem/router to the "right" location in the basement with the other stuff, not in the MBR like it currently is. All in all, the project has another few hours before I can declare complete. I wouldn't call it "over allocated time", as I didn't think I'd be able to move that router so soon. The wife is going to love that as it gets the MBR that much cleaner.


Here's what the outer telephone line now looks like. Note that it comes into the house about 4' up, so it used to be pretty insecure. That's what all the houses are like in our neighborhood. I pulled on it pretty hard, no chance that the average joe will be able to yank that tube out with a standard pull. I'm sure a pro could do something if they really wanted in my house, but if you turn to the right, our neighbors have an unsecured phone line and a 50" plasma in plain view, so my theory is that I just want them to move to an easier house.












I also bit the bullet and ordered an $850 in parts machine to make up for the $215 geeks.com PC that didn't work out. Clearly several levels higher than what I got, but I figured that rather than get another machine that's an outdated machine, I may as well get a basic Core2Duo setup. It's pretty basic, only 1 stick of 1GB RAM, but an Abit AB9 mobo with bigtime RAID on the mobo, and a fanless Gigabyte Geforce vidcard, so I can put it in the office and satisfy the wife's desire for quiet as well as my need for a 2nd video renderer.


----------



## MikeRich

Any progress with the DVD changer? Also, will you have to change your dvd management software or will your current solution work with the changer as well?


-Mike


----------



## IVB

sorry, didn't notice that question until just now. Got it all setup, works just fine with CQC 1.6 and DVDProfiler. I'm hoping to use CQC2.0 and it's media repository for a much more friendly experience, though.


----------



## IVB

Ladies (are there any here?) and gentleman (i know there's none of those here







), CQC2.0 has literally just allowed me to achieve my #2 priority from 15 months ago, when I first started down this route. In theory I could have done this with V1.4, 12 months ago, if I wanted to learn coding, but well, I didn't and was ok with waiting around for more user-friendly tools. And today is that day!!


In my house, the HVAC is all but unusable as the house is 96 yrs old and drafty as heck. We have to manually turn it on/off, even though we've got this fancy thermo and super-efficient blower. We can't leave it on as it's either burning hot or freezing cold, literally based on which way the wind is blowing outside and whether it's producing cross-drafts in the house and inside the house walls. Rather than attempt to insulate a house this old, our 2 different installers told us to suck it up b/c all the houses in our neighborhood are like this. I just used CQC's new local/global variable thingey and very easy to use command editor to automatically turn on the thermo, set it to 5 degrees warmer than it is now, and turn on the heat. [i need 5 degrees so the blower kicks in].


I'm going to set this to turn itself on at 7:45am on the weekends, 7:15am on M/W/F which is when both kids go to preschool, and 7:30 every other day. The wife is actually juiced about this, b/c it's always so dang cold when the kids first get up, and this'll be a nice alarm clock for them too.


Oh, and btw, today I

1) added a whole-house DSL filter that I bought from HomeTech, so I could have the Elk on without kicking out my DSL cxn

2) Seperated SageTV server from CQC server and moved the SageTV downstairs so I could jam it full of SDTV and HDTV tuner cards and stack D* boxes next to it without messing up an already jammed media closet

3) Mounted an autopatch for HTPC/officePC/777 component video sharing to my plasma, ran wiring so I could share it with the MBR TV as soon as we replace it. [on that note, it's beginning to die, so that'll happen soon too!)

4) Added an HDTV CAt's eye tuner card to the SageTV box, got that up & running

5) Built out some more popups using the new 2.0 popup template mgr. Man, that's cool stuff.


Here's 3 token pics, i'll take more tomorrow. One of the event mgr for the HVAC stuff above, one with a popup.











Here's the 2nd/3rd. Pressing the blue source button on the left brings up the popup. Helps make the system look cleaner by getting rid of all the crap. Those particular buttons & colors don't necessarily work, but i'm sure i'll obsess over that later too.


BTW, the wife personally chose the fonts on the menu as she thinks go nicer with the art. You may also notice a slight change in the background on the wrapper, as she thought it looked a bit cleaner and more organic. Now THAT'S real progress and engagement.


----------



## IVB

big hats off to one of my fellow CQC'ers (handle of Steve), my lesson re-learned yet again is "Use quality wire".


I was having DSL connection and speed issues(went from 2.4Mbps down to 1.2Mbps after putting the filter in), Steve suggested that I check out the quality of the connection. I took out the cheap, 22g I had used to connect the telco line to the DSL filter, put in some solid 16g wire that's so thick, it's a royal PITA to bend. I'm now immediately up to 1.8Mbps download. Right now I'm using a long distance cheap telephone cable wire to run to DSL that's probably 24g on a good day. I'm going to order some RJ12 connectors, I might be able to get it even better by using that CAT6 cable i've got laying around.


Live a little, re-learn a little.


----------



## IVB

How cool, how cool, how cool. Ok, well, really quite basic, but for me it was cool.


I got my Elk connected to nextalarm.com, got some phone hookup issues dealt with, and just ran the nextalarm suggested test where I armed the system and then tripped it. I then disarmed it, checked my account at nextalarm.com, and saw the following:

Code:


Code:


Date & Time Event User Zone 
Oct 11, 2006 08:30:39 PM Interior Violation  Den Motion (Zone xx) 
Oct 11, 2006 08:30:36 PM Interior Violation  Breakfast Nook Motion (Zone xx)

This means that the system is now really fully functional. I'll run in test mode for 2 weeks, and if all goes well, i'll terminate ADT at the end of this month!


----------



## IVB

Well, I was away most of the weekend, so my token hour or two of CQC time was spent mucking with popups and if-then logic. Check it out, not totally done yet, but seems interesting.


On the main menu, pressing DVD will pop up a screen asking you which room you want to watch a DVD in. If you select one of the TV zones, it'll allow you to continue on to the DVD screen. If not, it'll error out. Once I learn how to turn down the opacity of a popup, I can get it to blend more seamlessly with the underlying screen.


Not sure yet whether this is what i want, but if you recall my old screen where I had all zones listed, and only those sources valid for those zones, it was pretty busy and required lots of clicks. I'll let this one sit with me, see if it feels better.


I'll walk folks through this on the Saturday monthly CQC webex if they want to see the coding stuff live. We may have a limit of either 10 or 25 people on that call, so if you want to get the walkthrough, please reply to this thread. It's first-reply, first-serve, and I don't want to attempt to reconcile PMs from different forums to determine who replied first.



Here's the flow:






































Here's the logic required to make it work. Pretty simple, really.












And this is the old screen.


----------



## IVB

I am so close to coolness that i'm drooling. Damn that I have to get up for work in 5.5 hours.


I got beelzerob's CQC-sage TCP driver working in 2.0, the theatertek TCP driver is working just fine, and I just created a button that intelligently determines whether SageTV, TT, or a CD is playing, and sends a command to the right one.


The massive difference between this and something like Girder is that I can actually bidirectionally handshake with the app and confirm that it's not only up, but it's actually playing something before I send it a command. This means going from reasonable confidence to 100% reliability. That last little bit is always the toughest, but it's what really drives the WAF and now it's done!!!


Oy, how can I be expected to focus at work tomorrow. I'll recode my USB-UIRT driver to have this logic based on pressing the pause/play/next/prev/etc buttons.


Here's the logic, it's pretty dang simple. I don't yet have a screen to show what's up/etc, bank on that happening within 24-48 hours.


----------



## Thomas J. Coyle

IVB,


Nice going as usual!!


I have started a Fujitsu 3400/3500 touch screen thread over at the new HA forum.


Maybe you can contribute once in a while?


Regards,

TCIII


----------



## IVB

Decent work lately. I'm still having an issue getting the Elk to communicate temperature changes to CQC (ie, the reason I put outside temp on my wrapper), but I'm sure the elk guys will come up with a solution right quick.


1) I activated my contract with NextAlarm, as I got the final communication kinks worked out. I still need to mount some more stuff, but i've already got well more coverage than ADT, so this just makes sense.

2) I mounted the autopatch and ran the cabling. My 777 isn't playing quite right with it, I don't get red sent over. The autopatch tech support (who are awesome and fast) suspect "that the red from the DVD player has a high DC offset. If another source works try measuring the red output for a DC level. If this level is +/- .6 volts DC this may be the source of your problem. If this is the case the only two options you have is to replace the DVD player or get a DC blocker to put in-line with the system." Oh well, let's see how that goes.

3) I finished up the first draft of the redo of my screens using the CQC 2.0 popups, cleaning up some of the flow. All 20 pictures are shown here, I won't bore you with more than 2-3. . I still have the following outstanding bits to get done:

- adding 7day weather via a button on the 4day weather popup that replaces itself with the 7day popup,

- "What's on" screen, using Sage and TT TCP drivers

3) FM screen.


Here's a few of the screenshots, specifically the CD ones, as those were the ones that got cleaned up the most from the popups. I also put a button to a weather popup on the wrapper, as that's one of the most commonly used screens in the whole setup.


----------



## IVB

October 25th, 9 full months after beginning to contemplate self-installing a security system, although admittedly only probably 10-15 mandays of actual dedicated attention to this, I've terminated ADT effective immediately. I just disconnected the keypad, and will slowly be dismantling the system. At this point, my Elk coverage far surpasses any ADT system I've personally seen, and I'm taking the next few days off to add more of the parts that are sitting in the boxes. [CO, heat, sound interface, etc].


But one day i'll be done, i'm sure of it


----------



## IVB

I just realized how big a nimrod I am. I've been doing all this work to integrate all this stuff, and I haven't yet bothered to cross-link my systems.


I just set it up so that when I arm the security system in "Away" mode and leave the house, it'll turn off the stereo, any zones that were left on, and turn off the HVAC. God am I looking forward to automated lighting, so it'll turn off all that crap too.


When I put it into "Armed - Stay" mode (i.e., we're home for the night), if I've left the outer front door or the driveway gate open, it'll announce that fact which will prompt my wife to harass me to go close them. Those are setup as "non-alarm" zones, as the UPS guy might get ticked otherwise. I just bought a 300lb magnetic door lock, and i'll mount that on the outside door and automatically hard-lock it at night. That'll actually drive a ton of WAF, as we have what the left-coasters call a "mud room", where we take off and leave all our shoes. The wife is always concerned that someone could come in and steal all our shoes. We've got a lock on the door, but it's pretty easy to push it in.


But really, seriously, some day i'll be done with setting this dang thing up. I just gotta go find that cool "list your automated events" thread that was on this forum a few months ago...


----------



## IVB

Well today I learned 3 things:

1) I really am a newbie at this stuff

2) The Elk can call the central monitoring station quickly

3) NextAlarm really is paying attention.


I ripped out the ADT dining room motion, put in a cool Bosch blueline motion. Thing is, I set it up in the Elk remote programming software as a "Burglar Interior" instead of a "Burglar Interior Follower", which means that there's an instant alarm if it's tripped during the Armed Away mode. A "Follower" means that it'll give you a few seconds to punch in the code, then sound the alarm.


That's fine for most of my other zones, but the DiningRoom has a clear line of sight to the front door. That means that I need to trip the front door, then walk to the KeyPad, thusly tripping the DiningRoom.


I walk in, look at the alarm keypad, crap my pants, quickly disarm it. I think i've gotten it in time when the phone rings. We had a message already, so I only had 2 rings to get to it. Damn cordless wasn't on the base, and I missed the call.


I hadn't yet printed out the nextalarm info, so I go to pull up their website before the cops show up and charge me $250 for a false alarm. Damn DSL is hanging. I finally get to the site, pull up the customer service #, call them up, totally forget my password. Remembered it, called it all off, and immediately went to elkRP to set the type correctly.


Upside is, cops didn't come cuz I made the call in time. Plus, now i know that all this crap actually works, and so does the wife, who happened to be 5 steps behind me.


----------



## IVB

Well, in a fantastically fantastic long weekend, I blazed through tons of stuff. In the past 4 days, I:

- Mounted the rest of my heat/smoke/CO sensors

- Added another non-alarm sensor on the Basement Door

- Mounted/fixed 2 more CCTVs and re-adjusted the front door one after a squirrel jumped on it and moved it

- Used my Leviton SMC for the first time to run 2 new telephone runs. Given that we only actually have 1 cordless phone base with a bunch of extensions thoughout the house, I can now completely ditch my existing telephone wiring and go entirely with the new stuff that I've put in.

- And, most importantly, I mounted my new 300 pound maglock on our outer door. It's too weak for front-door/back-door usage, but for a mudroom door it's just fine.


Check out the pics. I had to use 2x4 to fashion an L bracket as the 300# maglock doesn't come with one.


I can now arm/disarm the outer door through the keypad that's mounted at the front-door or through CQC. I'm going to setup a rule in the Elk to automatically lock it when the Elk is set to ArmStay mode, and unlock it upon Disarm.


Most importantly, the wife is happy I got this done before Halloween as we can lock the doors up at 8pm tomorrow night, and the hooligan ruffian types will hopefully just move on to the other house.














































And here's the CQC screen. Although now that I look at it, I wonder if I should flip the red/green status, or perhaps use another set of on/off images.











BTW, here's the latest CCTV image. I had to go to a 8grid view (3x3) as I'm about to put in the 5th CCTV.


----------



## IVB

Movement in a few areas, lately. Some good, some bad.


1) Still haven't gotten the autopatch working with my 777ES changer. Autopatch support is awesome - they replied within 10 hours even though they knew I wasn't the original owner. They helped troubleshoot it quite a bit, in the end their guidance was to get a DC blocker and try that. I picked one up from HomeTech, but damned if work hasn't sucked lately and I haven't had time to try it yet. Alas, my nice new(to me) 4YDM is still sitting there unused. This isn't technically a huge issue now as I only have the 1 HD zone and can use the MX850 to switch the inputs on the TV, but as soon as I get this working i'll replace the MBR SDTV with an HDTV and have 2 video zones.


2) I'm now rocking & rolling with my triggered events. I've started with automating around bad behavior. On ArmAway, the denon, all audio zones, and the HVAC get turned off. On ArmStay, the door maglock gets armed. I also pretty much finished the MX850 setup so that when I press pause, CQC determines whether i'm watching SageTV/TheaterTek/777, and sends the pause to the right line. That took some mucking with due to how SageTV and the 777 report status when they're up but not in-use.


3) I started reripping all my CDs with CQC. I ripped all 350+ of them 3 years ago, but that's when I didn't know from lossless formats, and I ripped to mp3. The mistake I made was to listen to some lossless formats, and now anything else is quite noticeable. Alas, I was better fat, dumb, and happy. I got a Sony 200 disc firewire changer as there'll be an auto-rip utility for that soon enough, but given the speed of the new Core2 Duo machine i'm using, this may be done before the drive is.


4) On the bad movement side, I just found out that my HomeWorks lighting project is competing for funding with some kitchen stuff. No joke, my wife wants to buy a $3K-$5K range hood. Not the range, just the dang hood that goes over it. Dunno what's wrong with the fan we got now. Plus, the primary source of funding is an investment that has dropped 25% in the past 3 weeks, Dow-at-a-high-my-a$$.

The wife doesn't think automated lighting is a value-add activity, even when I explained Alan's "but we can centralize all the new loads we'll run and use keypads" approach. So I'm on to Plan B. I'm going to put in a handful of zWave stuff, and get some basic stuff working. It's pretty cheap - $35/switch. Mark (CQC CEO) is potentially rewriting the whole zWave integration in Q1 to make it much more robust, esp given that some of the newer zWave controllers haven't been playing nice with CQC. I figure I can probably get 15-20 switches and 2-3 keypads for


----------



## IVB

Two words: Woo (almost) to the Hoo!


Got my zWave stuff in, mounted. Had 1 bad switch out of 5, but the lamp module & external screw-in thingey were fine. I've now got 6 functioning zWave lights. And, get this: They work via CQC, and, in the case of my Entry Light, through my Elk Kepad! Wife is very juiced b/c in order to overcome some horrific wiring, we had to leave power on all the time to the fixture and use a pullstring FUGLY fixture on it. So ugly so ugly so ugly.


I setup the F6 button on the Elk Keypad to be a toggle for the entry light.


I am having a pretty serious issue with stability of the system in that 1-2 of the switches are constantly losing it's connection to CQC, but I suspect that I don't have enough installed given that it's a mesh network thing. Now that I know that this can work, i'll order another 8-12 switches tomorrow and install them. That should greatly enhance the performance of my setup. Only time will tell what the mid-term stability of this is, hopefully it's good enough to last and be operational for at least 3-6 months or so.


Don't get me wrong - I still want to put in HomeWorks, it's just that I need to show the wife that you can use a lighting control system for both ease of use (overcome bad wiring design, turn off all lights upon security arm, etc), and for security (Turn on & off all lights upon intrusion, do not allow the blinking to stop unless, well, i'll think of someting). We had another mugging last week, not much an automation system can do about random stuff, but at least we can bring attention to the house when it's unoccupied if folks try and break in.)


Here's the screen I came up with. Given that this is a temporary solution, I'll probably limit myself to 20-ish switches & appliance control modules. That's only $700-$800 from automatedoutlet, so it's a good investment in learning what I'd actually want from a robust platform like Homeworks. Each of the grey/yellow buttons are actually on/off buttons, plus there's the "all-off" in the middle of the screen. I can fit 14 dimmers at the bottom. The up&down buttons change the level by 10% per shot, with a halt at 0% and 99% given those are the zWave bounds.


Furthermore, I used the cool if-then logic in the V2.0/CQC to take whatever the current value is and extend that. This means that if someone manually changes that level, I don't care.


IIRC, determining current dimmer level isn't possible in RadioRA, so that ability immediately makes me glad I didn't go that route. Either go long or go home...


Here's the code, again all entirely done with point&click, I just had to type in the variable names.
Code:


Code:


[OnClick]
   LocalVars::SetVariable(LVar:CurVal, $(sample-zwave-ACT.LivRm)) 
   LocalVars::Add(LVar:CurVal, 10) 
   If System::GrThan(%(LVar:CurVal), 99) 
      LocalVars::SetVariable(LVar:CurVal, 99) 
   End
   Devices::FieldWrite(sample-zwave-ACT.LivRm, %(LVar:CurVal))


Finally, here's that screenshot. BTW, I'll be putting this in it's entirety into that non-art downloadable CQC template pack I got given that there's nothing copyrighted in it. (just ripper's awesome Insteon image, which I photoshopped to fit)


----------



## IVB

Ok, now we're starting to hit some serious MAF. (again, that's my acceptance factor). A little WAF too.


We've got an MBR closet that has no light in it. Why, I have no idea. But, we've had this stupid table lamp on an extension cord in there, and we have to reach in and turn it on every time we open the door to look in. We don't need the light 100% of the time, but a solid 75% as it doesn't get much direct light. I swear every time I open that up as it's just such a hack, esp since the on/off switch isn't really conveniently located. So, I got to thinking - i've got an Elk, I've got CQC, and now i've got zWave, why not integrate this stuff and fix my dang problem.


Well, all these wiring runs are starting to show in terms of experience. I just took 15 mins to drill a hole in the floor of the MBRCloset where the door is, mount a magnetic switch, run it to the Elk 2ndary cabinet. I then took another 10 mins went into CQC, setup a trigger on that zone that'll turn off the MBRCloset light if the door is closed, turn it on when the door is open. Ok, that part shouldn't have taken 10 mins, but it took me way too long to realize that I was triggering on the wrong elk zone (ie, wasn't looking at the right field).


There is a but. I have had many many timeouts between CQC & zWave, but I'm really thinking it's b/c the USB controller has to go 15' through a 4" to the nearest switch, and the next one is another 10' away. I ordered another 10 HA06C zWave switches and 2 external lamp modules, (2day UPS to boot), once those are mounted i'll have a 20-switch network including 2 switches 7' away through air from the controller, and 4 more switches literally just above the USB controller. That's as much as I can do to make this a decent network given that there is no RF repeater concept a la Homeworks RF.


----------



## IVB

Something must have been in the turkey, because all kinds of things are finally being absorbed today. I finally clued in as to what the heck Dean/MarkStega/jonathan were talking about when they said "learn how to use the variables driver - it's damn powerful".


I just tried using it for real, ok, i publicly hereby admit that it took me far too long to realize that this is actually what I wanted all along and that I was wrong and that you guys were right.


I've been looking for a way to use the same UI that I use for everything else to enable/disable my events. Specifically, my irrigation system is the current angst.


So, I created 2 variables in the variable driver called active_hvac and active_irrigation - I can use that to transfer info from the IV to the event manager. This has enabled me to do the following screen.











Then, inside the "Start Sprinklers" action, I added an if-then statement around the whole thing testing for true or false.
Code:


Code:


If System::Equals($(sample-variables-driver.Act..., True) 
   Devices::FieldWrite(sample-rain8net.1_Zone_1, True) 
   Devices::FieldWrite(sample-rain8net.1_Zone_2, True) 
   Devices::FieldWrite(sample-rain8net.1_Zone_3, True) 
End

Pretty nifty, huh? I realize how much more powerful this package every time I turn around - some day I'll actually understand it.


----------



## IVB












And the beat goes on. Mounted another 4 switches today. Helped a little with the network, but still having issues maybe 35% of the time (down from 50). I've got another 6 I can easily mount, if that doesn't help I'll try relocating the USB controller. If basic repointing doesn't work, i'll try moving it to the mainfloor. That's going to suck, cuz it's currently below a 4" subfloor, under the MBR, and i'll have to drill a hole to mount it. I'll be able to put it in a hidden location, but it's still going to cost WAF points if that's where it ends up having to be.


All in all, yet another demonstration that as soon as I can afford a "real" solution like HomeWorks, I'll do that.


----------



## shawnharper

IVB - going back to ~post 38 of this thread, I heard the Audrey IR keyboard works out of the box with the 3400. Not sure if you've already discovered this already...


----------



## IVB

Thanks for that tip. I should look into that, would help me avoid pulling it out of the wallmount and putting into dock just to upgrade the CQC client.


----------



## IVB

_this was my to-do list on 5/4/06_


> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> 1) Run a 2nd 18/2 power wire from main Elk to 2ndary cabinet.
> 
> 2) Run wiring for 20-ish more sensors.
> 
> 3) Connect telephone to the Elk and CQC so that I can have the CD pause if the phone rings
> 
> 4) Rewire doorbell so I can create a naptime mode where it doesn't ring, and a daytime mode where it does ring. These would be selectable via a toggle on the wrapper
> 
> 5) Mount & run wiring for internal speakers in 2 more locations where we can't hear the doorbell, setup Elk to send chimes to those locations when the doorbell rings [but only in daytime mode]. These speakers would also be used for security announcments [i.e., "dude there's a fire"], or to warn intruders ["hey buddy, you better get out now - the camera has begun recording and the cops have been called"]
> 
> 
> 6) Disconnect ADT and run the door sensors and RJ31X-main telco line from it into the Elk
> 
> 
> 7) Reformat one of my machines to act as a file server/CCTV recorder, setup & configure all software, test with the camera to make sure it all works.
> 
> 
> 8) Mount the front-door camera in a covert fashion
> 
> 
> 9) Mount & run wiring for 11 in-ceiling speakers in 7 rooms.
> 
> 
> 10) Mount & run wiring for 7 in-wall volume controllers for each of the above rooms
> 
> 
> 11) Install amps in a heat-friendly location, hook up to ZPR68
> 
> 
> 12) Switch over all screens to using the ZPR68 in production mode.
> 
> 
> 13) Run video wiring from ZPR68 to Kitchen & MBR so that I can render SDTV/DVD in those zones
> 
> 
> 14) Setup CQC/SageTV Server to send composite out to ZPR68, to act as a SDTV/DVD source.



Well, 7 months later, i'm shockingly done with many items on the list. Still didn't finish wiring the initially planned sensors, but i did probably 15 other/new ones so that's a wash. The only thing I deprioritized was the telephone/doorbell thing. Also, the ZPR68 isn't working with composite video, but given that I'm tossing all my SDTV's cuz i'm sick of PC sync issues, that's irrelevant. Plus I accomplished much more that's not even on the list, like:

1) maglock installation

2) zWave lighting (11 mounted so far, 8 to go)

3) Elk->zWave integration (ie light on via keypad or closet door open)

4) many more cameras mounted than planned


So here's my new list. Rather than timebox this, i'll just say "2007". I have a feeling i'll want to take a break from adding new stuff for at least 5-7 days after the first item (stable zWave).

Will do:

1) Mount 2nd 8870 in KBR, setup CQC to turn T1 off at 8pm and turn T2 on, then flip control at 8am.

2) Stabilized lighting control via zWave, install remaining switches.

3) 2nd HDTV, distributed HDTV via the autopatch

4) Link both TVs via RS232 for auto-off. Both TVs will be commercial Panny plasmas. (i'm already exchanging my current consumer one with my F.I.L. who has a commercial that's the same age but wants one with speakers. )

5) Maglock all doors in an invisible (or nearly invisible) fashion.

6) Electric Door Strike on select doors.

7) Mount Proximity sensor that I already bought on one door 

8) Mount pin/prox reader on front door, link to electric door strike so a pin code could open door

9) Get a wireless keyfob and receiver so wife can turn on lights/etc when she approaches house.


Would like to do:

10) RFID control. Not necessarily for security, potentially for lighting, but not sure how realistic carrying an RFID card around is going to be.

11) VR. Now THIS would be useful - I'd love to be able to walk into the entry and just say "lights on" or "open door, disarm". I wouldn't put it all over the house, as i'd prefer to not spend $4K on a Gentner mixer. the entry is perfect, as we could force kids to be quiet to avoid ambient noise.


I guess once I get through that list, then I can really focus on automating my home.


----------



## IVB

Was looking to take steps to beef up the zWave mesh this weekend. Went to move a few light fixtures and put zWave switches in, and my dang 96yr old wiring started disintegrating in my hand. It's pretty well shielded in rubber/yarn, but the rubber is old and didn't take well to being moved several inches and stripped.


I could have worked slower and more carefully, but the wiring isn't in the right location anyhow, so i'm going to rip it all out and do it all "correctly". Well, i'll mount the gangbox and get a licensed electrician to do the HV work. And, as long as i'm calling him in, i'll re-route several switches.


So net net: I have a feeling it'll be a few more weeks before I can properly beef up the mesh in the weakest part of my network. I'm getting a few plug-in appliance modules, i may try and put those in an outlet nearby w/o anything actually plugged in as a stopgap measure.


One token good thing: The latest iteration of the CQC zWave driver has a little more error checking for bad environments like mine, so the setup as a whole is more stable. Obviously I'd prefer that my software not be forced to work around bad network architecture as it's driving up my latency/etc, but at least it's usable. I still think that for $1K, this will be a very useful learning experience.


----------



## IVB

Well, my kids have now woken me up 30+mins before CQC started the HVAC for the last 3 days. 2 days ago I tried starting the heat manually from the 3400, but the dang buttons were too small for my half-closed eyes.


I just coded up this screen with some seriously huge buttons, so even i could hit it with my eyes closed. Intentionally put the "heat+5deg" at the bottom, so I can reach over, tap the power button to pull it out of hibernate, then push this button. Now to figure out how to remember to leave it on this screen before I go to bed.


Frankly, this to me is getting more to the point of an HA system. Up until now, i've pretty much had a "gee ma, looky here, i can control it through my computer" type setup. Controlling more than 1 device per screen, furthermore custom-creating screens and embedding custom logic in there is what this HA thing ought to be about.


----------



## IVB

Well, given that:

1) The 2.0 PDA Viewer isn't done yet

2) The wife has a treo 650 with no dataplan and no ability to put the CQC DNV on it as it's a palm-OS


I decided to go ahead and use that webserver license I got as part of the "full CQC package" deal.


Yes Virginia, this is an ugly webpage. But, before spending excessive time coding it to be pretty (given that I don't know HTML), I opted to just do a raw dump of all the relevant HA type status info onto a webpage.


I can access this from the internet by going to http://ivbhouse.not-telling-you.net:...se_status.html from any PC or internet phone. That gets rerouted from my dyndns.com free hosting account to my house. I can't actually control anything over the 'net, that requires learning CML. I'm not willing to do that given the PDA Viewer will be out within a few weeks.


I won't post a screenshot here as it's 20" high, but you can see most of it on this page here 


Here's what the code looks like. Pretty dang simple. I won't show you the beginning security stuff, as i'm a paranoid guy, but here's some of the latter stuff. basically just put $(device.field) whereever you want the info to do. I used notepad to write the HTML, so i'm really no guru.

Code:


Code:


Entry: $(sample-zwave-ACT.Entry)
InHouseEntry: $(sample-zwave-ACT.InHouseEntry)
Living Room: $(sample-zwave-ACT.LivRm)
Kitchen: $(sample-zwave-ACT.Kitchen)
MBRCloset: $(sample-zwave-ACT.MBRCloset)
DinRmPendant: $(sample-zwave-ACT.DinRmPendant)
KBR: $(sample-zwave-ACT.KBR)
Hallway: $(sample-zwave-ACT.Hallway)
KBath: $(sample-zwave-ACT.KBath)
DinRmSpot: $(sample-zwave-ACT.DinRmSpot)
BRNook: $(sample-zwave-ACT.BRNook)



The Thermostat is: $(sample-aprilaire.T1Mode)
Current Temperature in Dining room is: $(sample-aprilaire.T1CurTemp)
The SetPoint is $(sample-aprilaire.T1SPHeat)

Temperature in other parts of the house is:
Outside: $(sample-elk.Probe15)
MBR: $(sample-elk.Probe09)
Attic: $(sample-elk.Probe10)
Inside Entry: $(sample-elk.Keypad02)
Media Closet: $(sample-elk.Keypad01)



FamilyRoom Xantech is: $(sample-xantech.Z1Power)
FamilyRoom Denon is: $(sample-denon-3805.MZPower)
BRN/Kitchen/KBath is: $(sample-xantech.Z2Power)
Livrm/DinRm is: $(sample-xantech.Z3Power)
KBR is: $(sample-xantech.Z5Power)
MBR is: $(sample-xantech.Z6Power)


----------



## CTay

IVB... How is it you get more work done on your vacation than I have done on my whole system?


BTW, you left the kitchen light on...










Chris


----------



## IVB

Haven't left yet. I got that done after putting kids to bed (@8:30pm) and midnight, while also helping wife with Excel, dealing with work emails, chatting on CQCUsers.com, and watching DaveMathewsBand:CentralPark Disc1.


I am either incredibly smart and the king of multitasking, or you're overestimating how difficult this stuff actually is. Trust me, in a few weeks, once you "get" CQC and how it works, you'll be slamming things out of the park too.


----------



## IVB

Well, i've gone from a "yeah, that webserver thing is cute, not really that necessary" to "I must use that and use it more" in a matter of 1 week, and the wife in a matter of 1 hr. Much more so for the value of PDA control.


We're on vacation now, and I've been using the above page to keep tabs on the house and housesitter. Wife thinks it's very nice to be able to monitor said things, esp given how crime has been on the rise given the holiday season.


Well, we just got a call from NextAlarm saying that the alarm was tripped, they tried contacting the premises, no one picked up, so they dispatched the police. I happened to be on a work call in the hotel room at the time (don't they know i'm on vacation), so I quickly hung up, pulled up the CCTV's on the PDA. Didn't see anything, decided to pull up CQC. Regardless of the 2.0 CQC DotNetViewer not yet being released, I can't actually put CQC on my work laptop. But I could quickly pull up that page, boy does it load fast.


I scanned through the security system, checked out the doors and interior with the CCTV. All looked fine. But that's still not all - I just got HUGE mileage out of the 10 motion sensors and that "recent activity" logic I coded in ElkRP where it'll tell CQC if there's been any motion in any room in the last minutes. Scanned through it, realized there was only one zone reporting recent activity, pulled that up on the CCTV, realized it was fine, must have been some funky false alarm. I'll check out the ElkRP log when I get back to make sure the Elk threw a false alarm, and it wasn't a communications or NextAlarm problem. Apparently there was an earthquake a few hours ago, so that may have thrown some wiring or other electronics akilter.


Anyhow, count the wife (& me) in as one of the "webserver rocks" converted, she actually had me add the bookmark for the above page in her Treo 650P. Both of us were already "PDA access is key" folks, now much more so (although admittedly, today's activity was all about the CCTV PDA access).


She cannot put CQC on her PalmOS PDA, nor the CCTV PDA software. Hence, she's stuck with webserver access. However, she's now contemplating getting the same phone as me so she can pull up the CCTV if I'm unavailable. Hmmm, maybe i'll get the new Cingular 8525 and she can have my 5 month old 8125.


We wouldn't have been able to actually do anything had we verified the existence of the bad guys. Honestly, I would have deferred that to the cops anyhow - this just gave us peace of mind that the house is actually fine within the matter of a few minutes, as opposed to the 1-3 hours it would have taken for a relative or the house sitter to finally make it there. (oh, plus avoiding the $250 charge for a false alarm if we weren't able to succesfully cancel). That is priceless.


----------



## IVB

If you're going to be a big man and use a software based controller for primary automation duties, I've got 2 words for you: Battery Backup.


A few hours after the prior post, there was a power outage in my house. Unfortunately, I didn't have a battery backup and the machines require someone to press the button in order to turn on. I haven't been able to access my house servers for >1wk now since I wasn't home. We just got home and checked, sure enough, both the HA server and the CCTV server were off.


I'll be buying 2 battery backup UPS's tomorrow to correct that defiency...


----------



## Thomas J. Coyle

IVB,


UPS is the only way to go for that kind of computer hardware!


I have my HA/DVR computers as well as my DVD unRaid servers on 1KW APC UPSs since SCE here in Los Angeles is very flaky.


Costco has 1KW UPSs for around $100 all the time.


Regards,

TCIII


----------



## video321




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> the machines require someone to press the button in order to turn on.



Check your BIOS and set the power failure scheme to "ON" after power loss. Or worded something along those lines. Use that feature along with a UPS incase of extended outages and the battery goes belly up


----------



## IVB

Turns out CompUSA has 900VA Belkin UPS's on sale today, 40% off, for $70. They had an 110VA for $77, but were sold out. I picked up 2 of them, one for each PC.


Also thx on that BIOS setting tip - I happened to be re-installing XP on a PC that my wife managed to completely hose, and I took care of that. Not sure my 3.5yr old Asus mobo that I use on the servers has that, but i'll def check.


----------



## shawnharper

THomas - are you referring to the TrippLite ones Costco has for $99? They have the little screen on front showing input voltage. Don't recall if these were UPSs or merely power conditioners, but was thinking of one for my AV equipment. Any comments? (sorry to hijack).


Also, IVB, can you tell me what SW you're using for your cameras? I'm not too satisfied with the KGuard SW that came with my DVR card.


----------



## Thomas J. Coyle

shawnharper,


The TrippLite units at Costco with the little screens are definitely 1kw UPSs and they also have line voltage regulation built in when they are not in the UPS mode.


I bought one about a year ago and it is still working fine with my DVR PC.


It is not pure sine wave so it will not work well with HiFi equipment that uses a linear power supply instead of a switcher.


If you need pure sine wave, then you will have to consider the Belkin unit ($389) or a TrippLite/APC pure sine wave model.


Regards,

TCIII


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *shawnharper* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Also, IVB, can you tell me what SW you're using for your cameras? I'm not too satisfied with the KGuard SW that came with my DVR card.



I'm using the Diginet software that's meant for Kodicom cards & systems. The software is simply "ok" - got all the features/functionality, but it takes over the PC and won't let you do anything else with it. Frankly, given that it's meant for a dedicated kodicomm system, and that this is a grey market thing, I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to sacrifice a PC. I'm actually contemplating selling it off and getting a GeoVision. I think there's a few cocoon'ers who have it, you could ask there for their opinions.


----------



## IVB

Did someone ask in another thread how much time I spend on this HA stuff?


I'm declaring a moratorium on me buying stuff for a bit. A ton of UPS stuff has begun arriving, refilling the parts closet that I was close to emptying. I've now got, or within a week will have the following unfinished stuff. I just estimated how many manhours it will take me to do the physical install (ie, nothing to do with CQC, just the physical install). I won't put the # here, let's just say that there's a distinct possibility it's not going to be 2 digits. It might be, all based on how easily I can run the wires, but it could easily not be.


And, that doesn't include getting CQC to work with all this stuff. Fortunately, that should be


----------



## IVB

The bitter cold arctic winds this am prompted me to do something cool that anyone with CQC and Windows XP on their server (at least the one hooked up to the stereo) can do: Announce the current temperature, forecast, and high for the day at 8am every am.


It was pretty darn easy. I've avoided using my audio equipment for HA announcements given the 1-2s delay in turning on, switching sources, etc, but given that we don't use any of it then, and that this is a timed event, that's not a problem. I set it up so that:

1) System wakes up at 8am

2) Turns on master bedroom zone

3) sets input & volume

4) Waits 2s

5) Begins series of announcements

6) Waits 3s

7) Repeats, just in case we didn't catch it.


Here's the gory details of the "coding". All point&click, except obviously the "good morning/etc" bit.


----------



## IVB

Well, I received the 2nd Aprilaire 8870 and the Distro panel yesterday, learned a few lessons.


Lesson learned #767: Read the manual. Then read it again. Or else you might do what I did, and remove the HVAC wiring from one thermo, re-run to the distro panel, and then realize the panel is basically an RS-485 hub, and the HVAC wiring is *supposed* to go to the thermo that you just yanked it from.


Lesson Learned #768: If you're mucking with your HVAC, the installation/service/wiring manual for your furnace is a *good* thing to have.


Lesson Learned #769: If you're mucking with your HVAC, don't forget to turn off your furnace, or else you could accidentally short 2 wires and blow a $0.99 fuse and not realize it until 5 hours into the troubleshooting.


I haven't actually replaced the fuse yet, but I realized 30mins ago that the light in the furnace was flashing green 4x, yellow 2x. I read through the whole install/service manual, found the location with status codes, realized it said "Fuse open, short in the 24VAC wiring". Suddenly remembered that temporary spark I saw when I was re-running the HVAC wiring.


God I hope that electrical access panel is easy to access - it would SUCK to have to pay a $105 minimum repairman fee just to replace a fuse that the manual says is a "standard 3A automative fuse". Plus having no heat and waking up tomorrow to a dining room that's 56 degrees (again).


----------



## IVB

WooHoo! It works. Again, thank god I kept that furnace manual - it pointed me right to the fuse, and which screws to undo to get to it. Shockingly simple to do, VERY standard automotive fuse. Popped it in, and we got heat!


Still not working through CQC, not sure if I messed up the communication wiring, but at least the wife is off my back. Plus I need to learn how to use multiple thermo's.


All in, I feel quite good that even though I took 8 hours to do 2 hours of work due to a screwup on my part, I learned how to fix it and didn't just give up and call a repairman. (was very close I have to admit).


----------



## IVB

Very little got done over the past 2 days, HA or family time or otherwise because I upgraded from my currently Earthlink DSL to EarthlinkDSL+Voice. Long story short, I had no DSL for 2 days, and my wife&I now realize how crippling that is for our lifestyle.


But, the 2.0 Dot Net Viewer did go into Beta on Monday, so I pulled up all my screens and they work generally fine. There's 1-2 bugs with rendering images that I've found, but then again, it is in beta...


First thing I did was to create a lighting screen, as it seems my wife is constantly asking me to turn off lights after I armed the security system to leave. Now it's pretty simple to use a GUI to turn this stuff on/off. I also added a "recent motion" vs "current motion" screen for security purposes.


I'm going to implement some form of "combo tasks" menu, yes i know that's a horrid name, to do stuff like "I'm coming home and it's dark&cold. Crank the heat and turn on the lights so my wife&kids don't scream bloody murder".


I just realized these screenshots look choppy - i'll put some stuff I haven't changed in here so you see that it's me accidentally saving the screenshots as too low resolution, not the CQC Stuff.


At this point, the primary thing I do with my cellphone is:

- Lights

- Heat

- Security

- CCTV


For the non-CQC savvy folks: these use CQC's DotNetViewer which directly hits the CQC XML Gateway server in my house, so I don't need logmein.com, and so no unnecessary software or security holes.

Here's the full list of screenshots if you want to see all the A/V control stuff. Pretty boring - I just resized my fullsize template to 240x320 and changed images to lighter weight so they download quickly off my slow-a$$ cingular connection.


----------



## IVB

So much stuff I need a list of what i'll tell you:


1) Learned how to use events & variables to do a single screen for recent/current motion

2) Automated apple.com HD movie trailers in CQC!!

3) Two mistakes in speaker mounting may have cost me $250.

4) Looks like i'll need one zone per room after all, for a total of 10zones.

1 & 2) Events/Variables & apple.com trailers

How cool is the CQC user community? Well, in the last 3 days one person (acheslow) showed me how to do something with variables &events so I can use a single screen for recent & current motion, and another user (jonathan) wrote a driver that will automatically download the HD movie trailers from apple.com during low internet connection usage. Check this out, how cool is this stuff!


There's also some text below about some, eh, accidents today, but in general a large step forward.


First, a single screen with current & recent motion. I did it for the PPC without using states, just variables & events. I've now got 47 different events in CQC, but i'm also using perfmon to log performance to make sure there's no issues.











And now, the COOL stuff: Automated movie trailer download. Even the wife thinks this is cool. It's only got 10 of the 92 downloaded so far, given each is 50-200MB, and there's 92, it may take a while. But, it can sort in download order (haven't tried that yet), so I can see the most recently downloaded ones first.


I'm still playing with the fonts to see what looks best.




















3: Mistakes costing me $$

But alas, it wasn't all love&roses. I proved twice that I'm a DIY'er, meaning I don't do this for a living constantly. I went to mount a speaker in the Master Bath, haven't done that in MONTHS so I forgot to check for a joist. Well, I cut out the hole, promptly beat myself, then put the sheetrock circle back up & mudded it.


But that's not all. When I cut the correct hole and went to mount the speaker, the screwdriver slipped and I poked a hole in the speaker. Fortunately I had another one for the Den, so I used that. I'll see if this one works, since the wiring/etc is the hard part. It's easy to replace a speaker once all that is done.


Even if I "threw away" $150 on that speaker (stereo input, so it's $$) and have to call in a sheetrock guy to fix my hole mistake, I figure I'm still getting functionality that I could not have possibly afforded to pay for.

4: 1 zone per room

Retrofitting is hard stuff. In 3 different rooms now I've noticed that I cannot mount an in-wall volume controller easily as there's fireblock studs in the way. Rather than tear up my walls, i'm just homerunning the speaker cable back to the media closet and will use the EXP9 with the ZPR68 to control the volume. Thank god I got both of those, otherwise i'd have holes galore from having to drill through those and dealing with the damn code issues that'd generate.


Phew, what a lot of progress!!


----------



## sic0048

I would say that 1 room per zone is going to be the best solution going forward. It is certainly more expensive to set up, but since you already had the equipment, price isn't an issue anyway. It will certainly give you more flexibility in the future.


I personally think I've decided on using a switcher and amplifiers to build out my whole house a/v system. I'll use CQC to control it all. That just seems to be more flexible and prehaps even cheaper than buying a "ready made" system like Xantech, Russound, Nuvo, etc. I could potentially end up with 15 audio zones and up to 9 video zones, so there is no ready made system that meets my needs.


----------



## IVB

Well, i've redone my screens in 3 ways for a variety of reasons.

1) Add a CCTV shot to the wrapper (less stable screens, but addresses one of wife's major issues)

2) Switch to a floorplan view as the default and eliminate a/v control on wrapper

3) Eliminate all menu screens, just the one menu popup.


I actually did this 5 days ago, but wanted to wait before posting to see how it would work out.


So on to the details:

1) CCTV on wrapper: this change that will make them slightly less stable, but potentially much more functional. One of my wife's biggest complaints was that it took too long to pull up the CCTV on the touchpanel, hence greatly diminishing the value of a front-door camera. I redid my screens to put a small web browser right on the wrapper, and pointed it at the CCTV. Unfortunately, it looks like that CCTV app does something funky graphic-wise and interferes with SageTV/TheaterTek/other apps, so I cannot use this on my regular PCs. But, for the touchpanel, this has been working out just fine.

The instability is that whenever there's any hint of a network issue or slowness, the diginet PDA app will lose the connection temporarily and throw a popup. A few times when we've tapped the touchpanel after not using it for a while, we'll see 10-15 popup error messages from it. No big deal, we just keep hitting the "ok" button with our finger until they're all dismissed.


I can only put one shot on the screen at any one time - the user can either use the scroll bars to navigate (we never do) or hit the button to switch out the overlay to one where all the cameras are shown.


So far, the wife likes the rapid viewing of the CCTV more than the irritation of those popups, but obviously she gets irritated at having to press that "ok" button 10-15x. I'll let this sit a while longer to see how it goes.


2) Use a floorplan default view where both lights & a/v is visible, with just the volume control on a popup. Still tinkering with this bit, screens are clearly denser content, so far everyone has picked up quickly after the initial shock and 60 seconds of staring at it to figure out what the hell the screen means. But, so far it's looking like after those first few mins, people like having all the buttons on the screen so that they can immediately do that which they most commonly do.


3) Eliminated all menus. yes, i know the screenshot below is ugly, but before spending too much time on the aesthetics I wanted to see if this would actually be usable. So far it's working out well, but it's one of those "i need to let it sit for a few weeks and burn in" before I can really ask the wife what she prefers.


Here's the screenshots:


----------



## IVB

In the "totally outside CQC control" camp, I just got my MediaMVP working with SageV6 for a simple 2nd video zone. Works fine, I opted to run a hardwire as it was easy to run even though I bought the wireless unit. (only took me 3 hours and 1-2dozen mistakes to make a dang 15' RJ45 cable)


I can confirm that it works fine to playback DVDs if you navigate to each VOB file; i'm now looking into how SageTV does playback and the cover-art browsing therein. I had this working 12+months back when I was messing around with it, haven't looked at it since then.


I can also confirm that I forgot how crappy SD PQ is; I was watching a DVD, and it was nearly painful compared to watching it on the plasma. It's not really for me though - this is more for the kids, also so the wife can watch her god awful reality shows and chick flicks and let me have the plasma.


One more bit of equipment out of the parts closet and into "production". Gotta like that.


----------



## IVB

This is cool - I just setup automated data logging of my Elk temperature sensors and my callerid history into an ODBC database using the DatalogDB driver that jscheller wrote for CQC. I used SQLServerExpress (free version) as I was having issues getting the ODBC driver for MySQL to work.


I'm logging each of these fields every 30 seconds, but there's a flag on the driver schedule table to indicate whether you want to always write it or only write if there's a change.


For stuff like the temperature, you'd want to always record it so you could create a graph to see how it moves over time. I'll record the temperature in various areas of the house, compared to the temperature my aprilaire is set at, and plot them on the same graph so I can see how efficient the air flow is.


In a (to me) much more clear value add, i'll have the name, number, & time of every phone call into my house recorded into a database but *only* if it's changed from the prior poll (ie, don't record every dang 30 seconds, only if there's a new record). This is something that bit me 3 weeks ago as my college buddy called, I accidentally deleted the message. I had the wrong email and # for him, and no one I knew had his # as he had just moved and was unlisted. No joke, I sent him a physical letter telling him to call me again, as I knew that would get to him (eventually).


No coding needed for this. I told the driver what fields to log by simply adding some rows to a table as such:











That results in a table with the following values:


----------



## justinjmiller

Very cool. Do you plan on adding zones to your HVAC if the data ends up showing that there are some inefficiencies in your system?


----------



## IVB

Unfortunately, this is yet another prime example of how I'm really just a DIY'er who doesn't really know much, and is growing his system organically. (read: i am so lost it's not funny, and i'm really just guessing)


It's hard to say what the specific next steps will be until I actually see the data. That said, it's going to be some serious $$ to add zone capability to a single-furnace system, so the very first reaction I'd have is to add/move/expand/shrink heat registers to better control the air flow. I have a feeling the data will show 15+ degree differences in the temperature between rooms because the prior owners put in a totally massive heat register in the kids bathroom, but only one tiny one in the LR/DR. It's only $500 to add a new heat register, but before rushing off and doing that I want to learn a little more about what's needed & where, and how the science of airflow works so I can work with the HVAC installer to redesign the system properly.


----------



## IVB

Forgive me forum, for I have sinned. It has been over a month since my last entry. I was getting a little fried on HA after 16 months, so i needed some time off. One exciting thing happened tonight, thought I'd share:


The power of all free drivers has struck again. I scored a Concerto with 2 keypads and a host of accessories off eBay for $530 shipped! I've already got a buyer for the ZPR68 who doesn't mind the source bleeding problem i'm having, I'll be selling off the EXP9 with 5 zone cards, and probably all 3 parasound zamps within the next 7 days. The concerto is a pretty nice unit for that price point - the EXP9 w/5 cards cost me $450, and the zamps were $125 each. Granted I'll only be able to do 8 zones, but I might get the extender if I can find someone still selling it. If I can get my cost back on that stuff, I'll be happy. I was pretty tempted to get the grand concerto, but it was obviously much much more than $500 and I just couldn't justify that.


Well, off to create screens that reference the concerto, and to find boxes for all the spare stuff I now own and need to sell!


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## rayvenn

Way to score a bargain, IVB. Five hundred for a Concerto? Sweet. I have to watch Ebay a lot closer. Isn't the main diff between that and the Grand the fancy OLED keypads? Which don't give as much information as your 3400, anyway ....


On a previous post, you mentioned temp monitoring w/ the Elk. Is there a limitation on how many temp probes you can use with it? Ideally, I'd like to monitor six different zones for temp. If the Elk can do that, I won't need to do the Sensatronics thing.


I'm off to check Ebay for prices ....


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## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *rayvenn* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> On a previous post, you mentioned temp monitoring w/ the Elk. Is there a limitation on how many temp probes you can use with it? Ideally, I'd like to monitor six different zones for temp. If the Elk can do that, I won't need to do the Sensatronics thing.



Zones 1->16 are for smokes & temp sensors so 16 total there. However, check out the look&feel of the Elk sensors - they are BUTT ugly. I have one in a psuedo-visible place, 2 more in not too visible places. I'm hoping to debug my flushmount aprilaire sensors which look cleaner. I'm having a wiring issue though, haven't spent much time debugging it.


----------



## IVB

Damn, that concerto is hassling me about maintaining an RS232 connection. It works fine through the keypads though, here's hoping I don't have to sell it and pay the $1300 or so for a new one.


----------



## bdmac97

Any updates on the progress w/your Concerto integration? I think the Nuvo stuff looks pretty sweet and wondered what your thoughts were on everything.


----------



## bdmac97

Actually on second thought, could you give me some ideas as to what you're even using something like the Concerto for? I started making a list of everything I would want to distribute and it looked to me like almost all of it would be or could be coming from an HTPC.


I mean the Concerto can take like 6 source inputs or something and I'm just wondering what in the world I would even hook up to something like that. The system, especially the Grand Concerto, LOOKS great and I'm sure it would be awesome for people that don't plan to have all of their media on a PC but from your other posts and your website it seems like most of your stuff is on a PC like I plan to have mine. At that point, besides distributing audio from the PC, what would you use the other 5 inputs for?


I guess things like regular radio and XM radio but I'm not even sure those would serve much purpose for me and can't you get those onto your PC anyways? Basically it seems like the PC could just do the audio distribution itself assuming enough sound cards/outputs which makes me wonder what the Concerto (or Russound or whatever) would be doing besides amplification. I think I'm confused! :-(


----------



## IVB

oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. Got so caught up in redoing some stuff and prepping for the webinar (up to 30 people pre-registered) I forgot to post another entry.


The issue with the nuvo was simply that it wasn't configured correctly with the Concerto Configurator software. As soon as I did that, it started working perfectly.


I ended up scoring a few more cheap keypads off eBay, so all-in-all, this is proving to be a very worthwhile move.


----------



## IVB

Ok, made some important realizations lately.


1) On occasion, eBay really rocks. That concerto is working awesome, and i've now put up several keypads. More on that in the next point.


2) I was wrong. In 2nd tier rooms, equipment keypads rather than passive volume controls are actually a great idea because you can turn on a zone. I'm finding that inevitably, we listen to the same dang XM station 80% of the time. For background music, it's much easier to quickly turn on a zone and we find ourselves actually using the WHA more as a result. I put 4 up (MBR, MBath, KBath, Breakfast Nook) and they rock.


3) I've relearned that not putting at least some governors on a machine is just a bad idea. I have a machine that my wife has put tons of internet crap on. It has begun crashing massively, worst of all, twice during the webinar. I never use it for HA nor CQC, but it happened to be the only machine that I could get a microphone to work on last Friday. I'll reformat it, then put the lockdowns on. It's silly to own a machine that I can't use applications reliably on.


4) I've already got something like 65 events, but it looks like I'll need more. The plan is working, the wife has begun getting addicted to automated lighting. She now wants the entry lights to automatically come on at sunset if the security is in ArmedAway mode. I'm hoping several more months of this will get her used to it, and i'll get less pushback about putting in a hardwired Homeworks solution. When I casually brought that up 1 month ago to her, I was royally shot down and laughed out of the room.


5) I've decided to get my 5 year old her own PC. I'm going to use CQC to create a custom fullscreen page where she can only start the games that I let her (dora, etc), or play music in the "approved" genre. I'll use the CQC media repo to put songs or playlists in there. That'll be the first time I do truly "independent" systems both being run by CQC.


----------



## IVB

I just had a cool idea tonight for merging a variety of the drivers to add WAF in a way that actually helps.


We use SageTV for DVR, and many times we turn the plasma off with the Sage UI up and manually turn off the receiver. This means that when we turn the plasma back on and decide to start playing something, we have to minimize Sage, turn on the receiver, then maximize Sage. Of course, this will hopefully be gone as soon as the Sage driver is enhanced, but until then I've added the following triggered event:


- When SageTV begins playing a show (detectable via the IP driver), check to see if the denon is on and set to the right source, right volume, etc. If not, then set it to be. That way we don't to worry about anything, CQC will take care of it.


----------



## IVB

Daddy just built a (slow and old but they won't know) computer for the kids, installed some new games for them, and built them their own CQC screen! Obviously very work-in-progress, but i've been at it for 9 hours now (including 3 runs to compusa because the dang scavenging didn't work out quite like planned)...



Look what they're going to see when they wake up. It all works too. (the notepad is because my 5yr old has taken to writing long rambling stories, and we're seriously running out of paper...)


I'm automatically booting the PC into fullscreen CQC mode, even though it's a locked down PC. The games are starting over the CQC screen, so when they exit, CQC is back. Not easy to get to the desktop (unless they know to press that button on the top right, and i'm not telling). That way there's as little temptation as possible.


----------



## herdfan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Not easy to get to the desktop (unless they know to press that button on the top right, and i'm not telling). That way there's as little temptation as possible.



Nice, but don't think for a minute that the curiousity of a child won't see what it does.










Can you make the button the same color as the background so you have to look for it?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *herdfan* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Can you make the button the same color as the background so you have to look for it?



Man, that's brilliant. That's exactly what i'm going to do.


So, the kids were certainly excited this am. My wife warned me that they would fight over it, but my approach is that rather than get them 2 of everything, I intentionally get them 2 different things and force them to share. I also kicked them off after they started fighting over it 20mins in, and told them they could come back "when you're holding hands and talking nicely to each other, like sisters are supposed to".


Here's a picture of the physical install. There's not nearly enough pink to suit them, they want to get a pink mousepad, and I promised them i'd spray paint the monitor frame pink after 30 days, once the dust had settled. (no, not joking!). You'll note that I got a 15" LCD with VESA mounting. I picked up a $35 articulating arm mount off eBay, it's pretty decent. moves every which way. They can push it back when not in use.


I accept that they might break the LCD, but they're both girlie girls, so the odds are low. Plus, I need to stop shielding them and let them make their own mistakes, although that's certainly a hard thing for a father of 2 girls to do


----------



## herdfan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> There's not nearly enough pink to suit them



My 7 year old would go nuts over that keyboard, so I'm not showing it to her.










Of course her bedroom is painted from the Disney Princess Collection at Home Depot, so she is also kind of into pink.


But I don't think I could get her to give up her cordless mouse for that one.


----------



## IVB

Oy! You were saying herdfan?


My daughter was using her new PC, directly behind me, when she said completely without prompting: "Daddy, when are you going to let me play CDs by myself"? No joke. I hadn't mentioned it to her before, total freak coincidence. (although I did say to myself - "atta girl"). I happened to be working on a filtered CD screen for her, so I said "how about in an hour". She saw the vladstudio.com art, and said that it was nice. I asked her if she liked it, and she wanted to see the others.


VladStudio.com has 45ish pieces in his "The Two" collection, which is typically what I stick with. Of course, look at the one she picked out. On the upside, after I finished it, she looked at the whole screen, and it made sense to her. ("atta girl")


The way it works is that:

1) Pressing a zone button will turn on that zone and automatically set the input to CD. (That way XM can't be played by her)

2) The Louder/Quieter buttons have if-then logic behind it, and any of those 3 zones currently on will be adjusted by one decibel.

3) Pressing the "Games" button takes you back to the prior screen.


----------



## herdfan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Pressing a zone button will turn on that zone and automatically set the input to CD. (That way XM can't be played by her)



WOW! That's a lot of pink.


And I understand not wanting young girls to not have access to XM, but have you though about allowing them access to XM 115 (?) which is the kids channels and is harmelss. Maybe a single button to access only that channel. I would stay away from Radio Disney as it seems geared to the 10-12 year old set.


But when we had XM (Sirius now), my daughter loved the kids channel.


BTW, that other thing we discussed via PM is progressing nicely and the wireless aspect seems rock solid.


----------



## IVB

Man, this Elk panel combined with CQC is really a pretty powerful combo, and it's beauty is it's simplicity.


I'm working from home today as I had to drop the car off at the mechanic. The wife has been spending tons of time on the patio almost every day lately as the weather has been pretty nice. But half the time when she's out there, she forgets to turn on the patio speakers, or decide later to turn on the speakers. This means schlepping inside the house.


I just spent


----------



## IVB

Well it's official. I've sold my Kodicomm DVR card, and today I ordered the AverMedia NV5000 plus 4channel extender from CollinR over at LowVoltageSolutions. He's a professional CCTV guy over on cocoon who's clearly forgotten more about CCTV's than I'll ever know. After discussing my needs with him, it seemed that the NV5000 was the appropriate card for my needs.


It cost me a bit more than the grey-market Kodicom, but given that it's: 1) legit, and 2)recommended by a pro, i'm feeling pretty good about it.


He's got some real interesting recommendations on using the looping capability to feed the stream into SageTV, and we'll research the ability to use any SageClient (ie MediaMVP) to display the camera stream.


I've also begun ordering the pieces to rebuild my CCTV server using a full intel northbridge/southbridge PC. I'm holding off on the CPU until 4/22 as that's when Intel is supposed to cut prices on the Core2Duo line. I'll use the one PC for SageTV Server & CCTV Server duties, and put an E6400 in it so I can do HD transcoding on-the-fly for my MediaMVP. When the HD extender comes out, that won't be needed, but given that I have another C2D in the house, I figure I should standardize on it.


----------



## socorob

Sorry about this coming late, I recently discovered this site. I read in a post way back that your power went off and you were on vacation and was unable to turn your pc back on. You can use your HA panel to turn your computer on remotely. i just spliced onto the wires from the power button on my pc, put a headphone jack on the back panel, then ran that into an open contact on my HAI panel. I made a button I can use with snaplink, or call with my cellphone that toggles for 2 seconds, so i can turn my server on or off remotely. Its simple, costs about $3 to do. Ive had 2 pcs controlled like that for over a year now and it works flawlessly.


----------



## IVB

Yeah, I was contemplating doing that to create a dead mans switch. I found the BIOS setting to turn back on if power loss, so it's been mitigated away.


BTW, how exactly does your cellphone linkage work? Is it one of those "call your house and press this keycode" type thing? I think that's how the Elk works, but i'm not really sure - haven't tried it.


----------



## socorob

yeah either call my house an press a button, or snaplink over the web. im going to add a 12v relay inside the case soon to send a contact closure to my HA board so i can monitor status also. Ive been looking around at software to tie everything together, i see youre a fan of cqc. whats the learning curve for someone who has no programming knowledge?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *socorob* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Ive been looking around at software to tie everything together, i see youre a fan of cqc. whats the learning curve for someone who has no programming knowledge?



No programming knowledge needed to do everything that I've done. If you can attend one of the monthly webinars or user group meetings and watch the tutorial videos, you can get up to speed relatively quickly. I can't give a manhour estimate as some folks "get it" within a few hours, some folks have a harder time.


FWIW, the full license of CQC is on sale until 4/13 for $625 full license, normally $895. You'd save big bucks if you can evaluate it within the next 5 days. That's obviously way too fast to really evaluate it, you'd barely get under the covers by then, but thought you should know.


----------



## socorob

timing is everything i guess... right now i have family in from out of town, and too busy with work to do much in the next few weeks, id love to try it out. I downloaded girder about a year ago, and didnt have enough time to get more than controlling my music with my pda done before the trial ran out. Ill try to start checking out your webinars and hopefuly one day take the big plunge, if it goes on sale again.


----------



## IVB

I started out my day off attempting to swap out some switches for zWave, only to find that the electrician who wired up this house had a sense of humor again. I have never seen such screwed up wiring. It just doesn't make logical sense. After 45 minutes, I admitted defeat, and told my wife I'd have to call in a licensed electrician for the 6 remaining zWave switches that need to be installed.


Then, I spent most of the rest of the day testing/rewiring one of my unpowered Concerto zones, and had issues every way I turned. No matter what I did, there was no sound. First I thought the equipment wasn't working, then it was my wiring, then back to the equipment. I swapped damn well near everything out. Turns out I had TWO bad mini->RCA cables. But that's still not all - Sherbourn decided to make the 12V trigger and signal sensing only work with their "input B", which is supposed to be an override type input for paging/etc. Of course, it says that in the manual AND on the back of the amp, but god forbid I do that. I didn't even think to read the fine print as I figured it'd be a standard setup. I want those 4 hours of my life back.


So after needing to take 5 hours just to get one thing done, I went somewhere I knew I'd have luck: Interface Editing. I've been using the PPC/DotNetViewer a little more lately, not for any real reason. I decided that while the menus were fine for the wife, there's no need for me to navigate around so much. I came up with an "expert" screen which will be my initial screen, the wife rarely uses it so it's cool.


Here it is. You'll notice I jammed everything on the one screen, and generally lined up the lights on/off button with the motion indicator for that room. I also put in the outside & inside temps. I've got more temp sensors than that, but I really don't care about any more than just one room.


----------



## IVB

Gadzooks, forgot the callerid portion - checking on who called from the road was a big question I got from the wife. Boy I'd love to know if we had any messages, but that's another level of integration that i'm not willing to do now.


Updated screenshot above.


----------



## IVB

Well, I won the zWaveWorld rockstar contest. I had to write up a story for publication, figured i'd share with you guys too.


Not sure how much this will be hacked during publication or edited to make it flow smoother, i guess we'll find out next week.


---------------

My name is IVB, and I've got a pretty robust home automation setup using Intermatic zWave products to control my lighting. I've fully integrated it with the rest of my setup, so I can control my lights both manually through the use of various devices, as well as in an automated sense through my home automation software package (CQC) and my Elk security system that controls the rest of my house.


For my story, I'll start with the outside of the house and walk you through it. In California, the concept of mudrooms is common. A mudroom is a location just inside an outer front door where you come in and remove your shoes, then unlock your actual front door and enter the house. The downside is that if it's night time, you either have to waste electricity and leave the lights on until you come home, or install one of those huge motion sensor lights. In addition, it's the perfect place for someone to come in and break into your house. Not in my house! If the Elk detects motion in that room, it tells CQC, and CQC will tell the Intermatic zWave USB controller to turn on the light. (see http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/mudroom.jpg ). This extra light also helps the covert security camera inside the motion sensor that I've got in there record what's going on. Don't worry - the light won't stay on if no one is in there. After a minute of no motion, CQC will automatically tell the Intermatic stick to turn off the entry light.


Now that you're inside the house, you may want to turn off the light instantly. Or, perhaps, you know someone is about to come in the house and you want to turn it on. Well, my house is old, and I don't have any convenient locations where there's wiring for a zWave inwall keypad. That's fine, given my home automation setup I can turn the light on & off using my security system's keypad! Using the same concept as above, pressing a button on my Elk security system tells CQC to have the Intermatic stick toggle the light. ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/elk_keypad.jpg )


The first thing you do is sit down at the desk and check your email. You've got a floor lamp, but you keep forgetting to turn it off at night. Rather than use the lamp's on/off switch directly, you plug it into a zWave appliance switch. Now, all you have to do is press the pushbutton mounted under the desk, and it'll have the Elk tell CQC to turn on that zWave light. ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/desk_button.jpg )


As you walk inside the house, you'll quickly get to the kitchen. There, you may want to turn on/off other lights, perhaps the whole house audio system, and maybe arm the magnetic lock that I have on the outer front door. Walking up to the Fujtisu tablet pc in the kitchen ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/kitchen_panel.JPG - only $160 on eBay) shows you the default CQC screen where you can get an overview of the house status and turn lights on/off at will. ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/scree...pper_touch.jpg ).


Well, it might be a little chilly out, or perhaps you just want to change. If you go into the bedroom and open up the closet door, the door sensor in the floor tells the Elk panel to have CQC turn on the zWave light in the closet. Once you close the door, the door sensor has the Elk tell CQC to turn off that light. Have a tendency to walk away from the closet and forget the light on? No worries, CQC will turn off the zWave light automatically after 15 minutes.


By now you're probably tired, and want to plop down on the bed and relax. After watching some TV you're probably ready to go to bed. But, your significant other (or you) may have forgotten to turn off all the various stereos, lights, turn down the heat, or arm the security system. You're probably too tired to walk downstairs or around the house and do that. Not to worry, home automation to the rescue! Simply take the wifi Fujitsu tablet on the nightstand out of it's dock ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/mbr_panel.jpg ) , and select whatever you want to adjust from the CQC UI. ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/scree...r_mbrpanel.jpg ) Sure, it might look a little intimidating at first glance, but if you stop to look it over it's quite easy. Plus there's that nice big button at the bottom that says Put house to sleep. If you're really feeling lazy, all you have to do is press that button and CQC and zWave will take care of the rest. The only way it could be easier is if you had a big red easy button 


Now for most homes, that would be the end of the story. Not in my house. Perhaps in the middle of the night, you suddenly remember you're out of milk and the kids will be upset in the morning. You run out of the house to get some (leaving the spouse at home with the kids of course), but you forget to turn off (or on) one of the lights. Not to worry, zWave to the rescue again! Simply take out your PDA cellphone ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/cellphone.JPG ) , pull up the CQC UI ( http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/scree...c_overview.jpg ) and turn on/off any lights you want. While you're there, you can check on the motion and if anyone has called while you were out.


----------



## video321

Nice!

I'm hoping to tackle my security project this summer. However, unlike you







, I only need the security panel to automate the outdoor and maybe 2 indoor lights.

At this time, I'm seriously considering using an Elk panel, but haven't looked deeply enough to decide on the gold or ez. Maybe I'll pick your brain when I'm ready to buy


----------



## IVB

Nope, can't help you - i hate to talk about my experience (







kidding of course).


IIRC, the HAI is cheaper and may be able to do that. If cost is a concern, that is. I wouldn't be able to help much with that, but it is a legit option.


----------



## IVB

I got what boys like, I got what boys want - my holy grail of integrated HA/HT! I've been salivating about this for 14 months - the ability to use a custom UI to control *everything* I do. I had it all except SageTV, and now I have that!


Here's my sageTV recordings, viewable and playable directly from within a custom built CQC UI, where I have receiver/any other device control on the same page!


The driver is still in alpha, so all the recorded detail isn't yet available (ie, see the show description, recorded time, etc, before you play), but the ability to use one of the major DVR players (ie, SageTV, MCE, or VMC) to display info on a custom UI with HA controls is a major major leap forward!


The watch show button immediately starts playing the show within sage, no menu browsing necessary.


----------



## socorob

very nice, i cant wait till i can get back into mine with some sort of force... when i do i hope you dont mind me picking your brain.


----------



## herdfan

Is it just me or is the show name and the guide data not in sync? I am talking about in the Currently Selected Show box in the lower right hand side. It lists the show as Dora, but has a description from Clifford.

















Very nice though.


----------



## IVB

Oho, you must have young kids!


Yeah, I clued into that after taking it. The way zap2it works (which feeds SageTV which feeds CQC), not everything has a description. But, the way I had set it up, i wasn't clearing out that field before setting it. I clicked on Clifford, then Dora, then took the screencap. Hey, I warned you it was still in alpha










I already mentioned this to beelzerob (dude who wrote it), and he already put in a workaround in the driver where if there's no description, it'll say "no description available".


He's working on one other bit which is to display the upcoming recordings. Once that's done, i'll reinstall it and retake the screenshot.


----------



## IVB

Life just gets better and better. Check that shot out again 2 posts ago, and now this too. Sage Recording schedule and all recorded details from within CQC.


----------



## IVB

I have just had the most brilliant realization - this opens up that TV integration that I was contemplating several months back. for example, Of pure visibility from any of my touchpanels is only the beginning. Now that I have access to this data, there's other things I can do given that I'm using a fullblown HA engine. For example, one very real thing is that if the doorbell or telephone rings and I'm watching TV and:


1) the TV show category is *not* childrens, and

2) The callerid isn't on some form of blocking rules I come up with, and

3) Timeslot is within certain parameters THEN


pause the TV show automatically so I can deal with the interruption.


Ok, maybe those rules aren't exactly correct, but you get the point. True integration across house subsystems is not a good thing, it is the best of things.


----------



## IVB

I've been meaning to do this, but a CQC'er asking questions about how to enhance his integration pushed me.


Here's a list of the events i'm currently using. I've got a feeling that some of these are redundant and could be merged, still shaking bugs out of some others, and there's a few i'm thinking I need but I haven't yet done. It is the current list, however.


There's 9 scheduled & 54 triggered. Actually I just deleted 2 that I was trying to use for the Elk phone integration, as I'm currently unable to get that working correctly. It's another one of those "round tuits" type things.

*Scheduled*
Code:


Code:


#       Title
1)      HVAC: Start at 7:10am on M/W/F
2)      HVAC: Start at 7:20am on T/X
3)      Lighting: DenFloor ON at 8pm on S/T/X/S
4)      Lighting: DenFloor OFF at 11:30pm on S/T/X/S
5)      Lighting: LivRmFloor ON at 8pm on M/W/F
6)      Lighting: LivRmFloor OFF at 11:30pm on M/W/F

7)      AV: Reload HD Trailer XML

8)      Sprinkler: Turn on at 9pm on M/W/F
9)      Sprinkler: Turn off at 9:15pm on M/W/F

*Triggered*
Code:


Code:


#       Title                           Description
1)      AVCloset-777-Monitor            Helps workaround the poor 777 protocol

2)      Den-PushButton Light Switch     Turn zwave light on/off with the pushbutton lightswitch on Elk

3)      Elk Disarmed                    Reset the HouseIsArmed variable

4)      Entry: AutoLightAfterDark       Turn on Entry Light if there's motion after dark
5)      Entry: ElkF6 Toggle Light       Toggle the Entry Light if F6 is pressed

6)      FamRm: AVPower                  If both the Denon and Concerto zone are on, set AVPower to true, else false
7)      FamRm: AVSource                 Compound field to track Concerto & Denon source inputs
8)      FamRm: IR Exit                  Intelligent control over IR
9)      FamRm: IR Guide                 Intelligent control over IR
10)     FamRm: IR Left                  Intelligent control over IR
11)     FamRm: IR Menu                  Intelligent control over IR
12)     FamRm: IR Pause                 Intelligent control over IR
13)     FamRm: IR-Down                  Intelligent control over IR
14)     FamRm: Ir-Enter                 Intelligent control over IR
15)     FamRm: IR-Info                  Intelligent control over IR
16)     FamRm: IR-Next                  Intelligent control over IR
17)     FamRm: IR-Play                  Intelligent control over IR
18)     FamRm: IR-Prev                  Intelligent control over IR
19)     FamRm: IR-Right                 Intelligent control over IR
20)     FamRm: IR-Stop                  Intelligent control over IR
21)     FamRm: IR-Up                    Intelligent control over IR
22)     FamRm: Start AV on Sage Play    Make sure Denon is set correctly if Sage starts playing

23)     On Burglar Alarm                Turn on all lights, stereo zones, irrigation on alarm

24)     Patio Switch Flipped            turn on patio concerto zone, set to XM, set XM to #20

25)     HouseArmed15Mins                TimeDelay field for "Motion since armed" fields

26)     Timer: BRNook Motion                    Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
27)     Timer: BRNook-Motion-Expired            Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
28)     Timer: Den Motion                       Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
29)     Timer: Den-Motion-Expired               Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
30)     Timer: Door Front Motion                Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
31)     Timer: Door-Back Motion                 Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
32)     Timer: Door-Basement-Motion             Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
33)     Timer: Door-Basement-Motion-Expired     Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
34)     Timer: Door-OuterFront-Motion           Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
35)     Timer:Door-OuterFront-Motion Expired    Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
36)     Timer: Entry Motion                     Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
37)     Timer: Entry Motion Expired             Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
38)     Timer: Entry Motion Expired (1Min)      Turn Entry Light off
39)     Timer: FamRm Motion                     Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
40)     Timer: FamRm Motion Expired             Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
41)     Timer: Hallway Motion                   Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
42)     Timer: Hallway Motion Expired           Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
43)     Timer: KBR Motion                       Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
44)     Timer: KBR Motion Expired               Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
45)     Timer: Kitchen Motion                   Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
46)     Timer: Kitchen Motion  Expired          Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
47)     Timer: LivDinRm Motion                  Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
48)     Timer: LivDinRm Motion Expired          Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
49)     Timer: MBR Motion                       Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"
50)     Timer: MBR Motion Expired               Timers to set "Motion, Recent Motion, Since Armed, or None"

51)     Turn off House upon ArmedAway           Turn off lights, stereos, etc.

52)     MBR: Turn off Closet Light if door closed               self-explanatory
53)     MBR: Turn off Closet Light if Inactive for 15mins       self-explanatory
54)     MBR: Turn On Closet Light if door opened                self-explanatory


----------



## IVB

Two things happened today, both CCTV related:


I assembled my new Core2Duo system, which will house both SageTV and AverMedia, as well as (hopefully) the database server.


1) What happens when you use a legit piece of hardware (AverMedia NV5000) & software? You spend all of 15 minutes setting it up! (well, the CCTV bit anyhow). That includes both the server software and the PDA bit.


2) I went out for dinner. When I got there, I got a page from NextAlarm telling me the house had been armed & disarmed with my code. I was a little perturbed as I had left the house 90 minutes beforehand, but the timestamp was 2 minutes beforehand. I quickly pulled up CQC on the PDA, noticed the Elk was still armed. I pulled up the cameras, realized all was good, resumed fun.


yet again proof that the value-add of PDA control may not be in actually controlling your devices (although I did forget the lights off, so I had to turn those on via the phone), but will definitely help in the piece of mind arena.


Here's a pic of how it looks on the PC. Obviously this screencap isn't going to work long-term, but after long last i've got my CCTV back, *and* I can easily minimize this application and run whatever else I want. CollinR of LowVoltageSolutions (the dude who is helping me with this) is working with me to modify the html code to make it a little cleaner. Let's hope that all works out fine.


----------



## IVB

Check this out - now THIS is why I don't go with the lowest price dealer, but rather someone who'll help me out. I spent some time with CollinR at LowVoltageSolutions on the phone this am (hence the tease) - he wrote a snippet of code that will allow me to choose which camera i'm pulling up with a CQC command button!


Unfortunately, command buttons mean a smaller display size (352x2something), but the ease of use may win out there.











Plus, if I want to use the regular AverMedia code, I can see all of them with that last button which will get me the full size shot you saw earlier. Cramming all the Avermedia code there gets a bit ugly, not sure how long that'll last.


So net net: If you guys want to do this, email CollinR - that guy rocks.


----------



## IVB

Man, is this guy good or this guy good.


Check out the latest javascript CollinR sent me - clean, easy, custom-fitting quad cam in CQC via a command button (see bottom left). I pulled out the cable for cam4 by mistake, i'll go fix it tomorrow.


----------



## IVB

Well, when you're on the bleeding edge, you tend to get bloody. My god did I get bloody over the past 2 days.


Rather than go through all the painful, bloody, gory, icky, maddening, idiotic details, I'll net this out and spare you all.

A) The AverMedia software WILL NOT work if you have *any* other tuner cards in the system other than the NV5000.

B) The AverMedia software WILL NOT work with AMD cpus.


of course, A+B=

C) You CANNOT use the same machine for AverMedia CCTV and SageTV.



But there is good news:

D) You CAN use the same machine for AverMedia CCTV and CQC master server.

E) The NV5000 TV-out loop works just fine, and I plugged it into a PVR250 so I can now pull up the CCTVs through SageTV. Most importantly, I can do it via the MVP too, so now i can pull that up on any TV. I gotta learn how to use that remote, so I can just punch in the channel # if i'm watching TV to see who's at the door.

F) JKMonroe is tackling the rfID, small cheap tablets, and other stuff, so at least I won't get bloody everywhere. (ok, maybe that's just good news for me)


Basically, I ended up playing a massive game of musical chairs, and swiped the new PC i built for the kids. After hours of bleeding (literally too, i scraped a metal thingey with my wrist and bled on the basement floor), my setup is now:


CQC Master Server plus AverMedia CCTV:

- Intel D865GLC motherboard, 2.8GHz cpu, and 1GB of DDR400 RAM. 250GB for CCTV recording, 200GB disk for a "backup" partition although that's way overkill

- Moxa card, internal PCI modem,AverMedia means i'm maxed out on damn PCI slots!


SageTV Server plus MS SQL Server Express:

- E6600, 1GB RAM.

- 2 PVR250's (1 for D*, 1 for the CCTV inbound), 1 VBox (HD). No more PCI slots here either!


Kids PC:

- AMD2500. Good to know that Caillou and Clifford games seem to work fine so far.


I'm beat. Thank god i'm taking this week off work, it's 2pm, went to bed at 2:30am, up at 8am, i haven't eaten breakfast yet, and there's 14 neighbors coming to a little "how-to" seminar i'm having for CCTV setup. It is abundantly clear that I need to get a beer immediately.


----------



## sic0048

At least you have something to show your neighbors!


I can see it now..... IVB "Welcome everyone, I know you came to see my set up. I've been bragging about it for a while now (and rightly so), but I've had a little computer problem, and well........there is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing (not even the weaher on CQC) to see right now.....Enjoy yourself, but I am heading back to the basement where my wife has set a cot up for me and told me I cannot come out until everthing is working again.......See you at Christmas...."


----------



## erkq




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Man, is this guy good or this guy good.
> 
> 
> Check out the latest javascript CollinR sent me - clean, easy, custom-fitting quad cam in CQC via a command button (see bottom left). I pulled out the cable for cam4 by mistake, i'll go fix it tomorrow.



Looks great!

I'd like tilt/pan buttons for Web-cams that support it. I'll be looking at this when I move into the new house and get set up. In the meantime... any ideas on that?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *sic0048* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> At least you have something to show your neighbors!
> 
> 
> I can see it now..... IVB "Welcome everyone, I know you came to see my set up. I've been bragging about it for a while now (and rightly so), but I've had a little computer problem, and well........there is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing (not even the weaher on CQC) to see right now.....Enjoy yourself, but I am heading back to the basement where my wife has set a cot up for me and told me I cannot come out until everthing is working again.......See you at Christmas...."



Bite your tongue, man, it went great! Well, ok, I can't get my PDA to work with it after the switch, that's probably some damn setting somewhere.



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *erkq* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Looks great!
> 
> I'd like tilt/pan buttons for Web-cams that support it. I'll be looking at this when I move into the new house and get set up. In the meantime... any ideas on that?



I don't actually know squat about that, but I know Brandon over at Automated Outlet knows tons - he was actually on the phone the entire time, answering questions I didn't know the answer to. (ie, why is the software so bound to hardware cards for CCTV? because it has to be encrypted so that it can be entered into evidence legally. Or something like that).


----------



## IVB

I just typed up this summary of my Monday night CCTV meeting and sent it out. Dang my neighbors loved it; it's not really that insightful, but I s'pose if you've not had any exposure to CCTV, this could help.

------------------------------------------

Why I put up cameras:


- 55% of the value to me was the ability to remotely view the cameras over my cellphone in the event of a false alarm. I've had 2 instances over the past 6 months where I was erroneously contacted, and the ability to confirm that everything was fine gave me piece of mind. Once was when I was alone and wife/kids were out of town, so I was definitely a little skittish about potentially coming home to a robbery in progress, and it's not like I'd want to ask my neighbors to put themselves in harms way by checking it out. The police will start charging for false alarms, so this was a simple way of confirming that life was good.


- 45% of the value to me was security in case the bad guys do come. Of that 45%, there's 2 components:


o Recording what's happening on the sidewalk outside my house in the event of a mugging there or someone running away from a mugging, so there's legit evidence of what happened. (ie, no need for Neighborhood Watch Network emails with text-based and potentially vague descriptions about who was the guy who robbed you/broke into your car, but an actual picture.


o Recording of the bad guys stealing my stuff. This is clearly the smallest overall percentage since my stuff will still be gone, but hopefully this will help the police somewhat.




What equipment you need:


1) Cameras. The sweet spot is from $125 to $175, my Vitek brand, night vision color 1/3 480line cameras are $156 if you get them from automatedoutlet.com.


2) Either:


a. A CCTV DVR, which is basically a tivo-type unit with camera inputs and specialized software. This runs anywhere from $700-$2000, based on # of cameras you want to record, quality, internet/PDA viewing.


b. A CCTV card for computer. This could run $150->$1000, mine cost $400 and is a pretty dang decent one. It's the AverMedia NV5000. It's very picky though and only works on Intel computers (not AMD). If you opt for the same card I have and are computer-savvy, you can read through the hardware recommendations on the AverMedia site. Warning, it's pretty technical, as I'm sure they need to legally defend themselves ( http://www.avermedia.com/nvd/hardware-recom.asp )


You do NOT need both the computer and the DVR, it's one or the other




3) Cabling to run from the camera to the PC or DVR (unless you get wireless cameras, which I know very little about since I don't have them). You can use either


a. CAT5 network cable with adapters on the end, or


b. RG6 (video signal) and 18gauge/2 conductor (for low-voltage power).




How hard is it:


- If you're comfortable with getting up on a ladder, have easy access to your attic, and know how to use a drill, this is pretty basic stuff. The first time you drill a hole through your outer wall is a little freaky, but once you get in the attic and look around at how craftsman style homes are built, you realize that it's all very very simple.




Other thoughts:


- Consider camera placement before purchasing cameras. If you're only going to have one, then putting up high where you just grab a shot of the top of the perpetrator's head isn't going to be useful as all a jury will ever think is yes, the suspect had a bald spot. If you have more than one, that's less of an issue.


- If you're going to go through this hassle, don't skimp on the most important bit and get a cheapo camera. Keep in mind that the jury system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, so getting something cheap and grainy won't really help you that much if the bad guys come knocking.


----------



## IVB

My god I seriously hate technology at times.


I've been fighting with my new E6600 Server to stream HD to my MVP's. I set all the damn filters, I made sure I had 64K drive units, everything. Turns out that all my testing coincidentally has been with video recorded on my 250GB IDE. I thought I noticed some slowness today, so I physically checked to find a recording that was on my 400GB SATA with the 16MB cache.


Turns out it streams fine, at least with my sample run of 1 10second clip just now, off that SATA. I'm going to rip out the IDE, spit on it, and never have it besmirch my existence again. Don't know why it's so slow, don't care.


And in another big angst, the serial port decided to stop tuning the DTV box decided today. Oy, I hate this new server! I doubt its the DTV box or SageTV, but i'll try that tomorrow. I've got no more PCI slots in it to try another serial port, i'll have to sleep on it and decide what to do. I don't really feel like buying a USB->Serial adapter just to try this elsewhere, no energy to try another mobo, clearly I just need more to drink.


----------



## video321




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> stream HD to my MVP's.



How are you streaming HD to a MVP? Did you modify one?


----------



## IVB

No, via SageTV. SageTV records OTA HD and DirecTV SD, and the MVP connects to SageTV, displays the SageTV screen, and I can select whatever I want.


----------



## IVB

In attempting to fix my DTV tuning issues, i've done something bad to destabilize that box, and I need to reformat and start over from scratch.


This is exactly why I always tell people that DIY takes at least twice as long as it should, and why the pro's stick with known good hardware configurations with as much standardization as possible. In retrospect, I should have gotten the same exact mobo I used for my C2D HTPC; i know how to make that work, and it was only $50 more.


Clearly the only thing to do is to go to the fish store with my kids and buy some more fish and food, and walk away from the HAPCs until late tonight.


----------



## RichTJ99




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> 1) Cameras. The sweet spot is from $125 to $175, my Vitek brand, night vision color 1/3 480line cameras are $156 if you get them from automatedoutlet.com.



IVB - First I wanted to thank you for the HA meeting last night, it was excellent & it really got me thinking about what I 'could' do.


I also have a CCTV setup that I can view through my cell phone (via Geovision). I have some junky Ebay weatherproof cameras that have a decent picture during the day, but the IR at night is almost unviewable due to the 'halo' effect. My cameras are almost 2 years old at this point & they do work fine, but they are useless at night.


Do you find that your outdoor night vision works enough to see anything?


EDIT: I couldnt find the camera on AO - Do you have a link or some specs?




A second question - Do you (or can you) use Zwave to control an attic fan (whole house fan)? I am not sure about the AMP's but can you control an adjustable (dial) fan using Zwave (or another protocol)?


Thanks,

Rich


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *RichTJ99* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> IVB - First I wanted to thank you for the HA meeting last night, it was excellent & it really got me thinking about what I 'could' do.
> 
> 
> I also have a CCTV setup that I can view through my cell phone (via Geovision). I have some junky Ebay weatherproof cameras that have a decent picture during the day, but the IR at night is almost unviewable due to the 'halo' effect. My cameras are almost 2 years old at this point & they do work fine, but they are useless at night.
> 
> 
> Do you find that your outdoor night vision works enough to see anything?



I can see that there's something there, wouldn't be able to use it to id anyone in a court of law. I have motion lights that trigger on, which enables that.


> Quote:
> EDIT: I couldnt find the camera on AO - Do you have a link or some specs?


 this is it. 




> Quote:
> A second question - Do you (or can you) use Zwave to control an attic fan (whole house fan)? I am not sure about the AMP's but can you control an adjustable (dial) fan using Zwave (or another protocol)?
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich



I'm currently begging AO and Intermatic to let me have some of their beta zWave AC outlets (currently due out in June). In that case I'll use zWave to turn on/off a bathroom fan that i've got mounted in my loft to vent that room.


Dunno how you'd do adjustable though - can't dial down the amps as it'll burn out the motor.


----------



## IVB

We are not having fun. We put the following post on SageTV's hardware support forum at 12:30am last night.



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> As you mostly know by now, i've had some very significant issues after switching to my new server. I made the mistake of getting a budget MSI Neo3-F motherboard for my E6600 box, but let me describe what i've done and see where your fresh/independent eyes can help.
> 
> 
> What i'm looking for isn't an answer to all my problems (although that would be nice), it's more "hey, these are the steps you should try next".
> 
> 
> -------------------------------
> 
> Ok, here's the facts:
> 
> 
> 1) Old server was an absolute rock, worked just fine. I had 1 PVR250 and 1 VBox DTA-150 for HD. I had a D11-500 DTV Box that worked just fine with the paterson cable. But, it was an AMD2500 Asus A7N8X-E and had a hard time rendering HD to the MVP, plus I need to run a database server so I upgraded.
> 
> 
> 2) New server is an MSI Neo3-F. I built it


----------



## RichTJ99

IVB - Are you using any other wall dimmers aside from the Intermatic 300 watt dimmers (or any other zwave in wall lighting units)? I see Intermatic only has the one in wall unit.


----------



## IVB

I have the ACT inwall 600W 3way dimmers, but I can't figure out which of the 7 wiring "standards" the former owners used so i'm going to have to call an electrician to mount them.


----------



## IVB

Some interesting movements lately in the whole house audio area:


1) Outdoor Audio: With all the *fabulous* weather we've been having on the West Coast, we've been spending darn near every day in the backyard. That light switch I rigged up on the patio, run to the Elk has been a runaway success. For those of you who weren't following, flipping that switch has CQC automatically set XM to channel 20, turn on the patio zone, set a specified volume. Sure, we'd love the ability to switch stations or pick a CD, but when we're actually sitting on the patio it takes a lot of energy to walk the 10' inside the house to change stations, and channel 20 is "good enough" for background listening 99% of the time when we just don't feel like moving.


2) Audio w/keypads: Mounting those cheap $125 eBay'ed Concerto Keypads was also a great idea. We listen to the music *much more* in the 2nd tier rooms (ie bathroom), and find ourselves and the kids being just a little happier in the mornings as the kids like to "dance on their clothes" (basically wiggle their bottoms to the music while putting on their pants). Hey, they're 5 & 3, it's the simple fun things in the morning that make life smoother. Considering it used to take acts of god, screaming, and crying to make them wear their clothes, we're digging that.


3) Newest Interesting Whole House Audio Idea: Given that we only use 1 of the 4 M-Audio analog pairs, i'm going to use 2 or 3 of the remaining pairs to "mock up my own stations. I'll setup multiple instances of the CQC audio player (no need for zoomplayer anymore), and continuously broadcast "Classic Rock that IVB likes" on source #2, approved kids music (ie, certain J.T. songs, Kelly Clarkson, etc) on source #3, perhaps "R&B/Soul/Rap that the wife likes" on source #4. That way we can just use the keypads source buttons to quickly select those sources in case we ever get sick of XM but don't feel like walking 20' to the touchscreen to change the songs.


----------



## IVB

I just got my qkits QK011 temp board & sensors in the mail (get temp over RS232 - CQC driver exists). My god these things are TINY!


Here's a pic next to a business card. Honestly, the wiring is going to be thicker than the damn sensor, now I have a whole different problem to solve (how to patch up the hole in the wall without the sensor falling through).


Bye bye big ugly elk temp sensor on the wall of the MBR that the wife hates, hello tininess!


----------



## IVB

What a nice weekend I've had. Well, mixed results, but still movement.

The good:


I just had the absolute *smoothest* motherboard install i've ever had, so much so that i'm going to specifically recommend this Intel 965P Core2Duo motherboard for anyone looking for something nice, simple, stable, and with RAID0+1 and RAID5 on the mobo to boot.


I got it for my SageTV server. I was able to put 5 SATA drives in, and in a matter of literally seconds after the first power-up, set it up so that SATA0 was the boot, 1-3 were the 500GB sata that I wanted in a RAID5, and SATA4 was a 400GB I wanted as standalone. It all just worked.


Plus I migrated my SageTV server over and it started up just fine. I can watch OTA digital on the MVP, still can't do HD transcoding on the fly. I'm contemplating migrating to SageTV 6.1 which I heard solves many issues, but 24 is on tomorrow night so I may hold off until Thursday (after American Idol/etc).


I was also able to use a PVR500, with 1 input for the CCTV, and 1 input for the DirecTV.


The Bad

I still can't get the D* STB to tune, but i've now clearly proven that it's either the cable or the STB. I believe i'm at the latest firmware, but i'll force-check tomorrow. I've currently only got HBO enabled, so at least I can watch Sopranos and Entourage.


I also still can't get the damn DataLogDB driver to work with mySQL. Works just fine with SQLServer Express, but I want to start making some progress against the myhomecookingpc.com stuff. It's simple to move mySQL databases around, no way to move SSE db's around in an automated fashion. I guess I could have 2 db engines up & running (one for datalogdb, one for myhomecookingpc.com), as it is a Core2Duo box, but that just seems so wasteful.


And, another sad note, we've had 3 incidents of crime in the local vicinity in the past 7 days. Rather than wait for me to run wire to the windows for the sensors, I just ordered the new Elk wireless receiver (out Tuesday), and a crapload of wireless sensors. I also got some keyfobs, so I'll be able to do keychain control of CQC shortly. That'll be nice (ie, turn on lights and turn up heat on the push of a button). I may also replace the outer doors, in which case I may do an electric strike for the same thing.


So, even more movement into the advanced areas.


----------



## rgroves

I've read the reviews on Newegg about this baord and they say it's picky about hte RAM you use. What RAM did you use with it? I'm interested in getting this to replace an old file server and make it a file server/Sage TV Server.


Also what CPU are you using with it? I'm guessing with a PVR250 and PVR150 that a E6400 (or the E6420 with 4MB Cache) would handle things just fine.




A side question - Will the SageTV Server work OK as a client? Say I have the SageTV Server in my office, and instead of streaming the content from the server to an extender or anohter PC in my office, could I just use the server as a client for myself? Right now it'll all be SDTV content.


----------



## smoothtlk

rgroves, Cinemar uses that Intel motherboard for it's HTPC and light servers. We use Corsair Ballistix DDR2 800 2) 1 gig. The voltage is the spec that reduces choices. Corsair certifies this Ram for this MB.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *rgroves* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> I've read the reviews on Newegg about this baord and they say it's picky about hte RAM you use. What RAM did you use with it? I'm interested in getting this to replace an old file server and make it a file server/Sage TV Server.



I used 2 sticks of Corsair 512MB RAM . I haven't yet had a chance to run burn-in tests in this config, as I ran out of time before The Sopranos last night, but i'll do that later on this week.


> Quote:
> Also what CPU are you using with it? I'm guessing with a PVR250 and PVR150 that a E6400 (or the E6420 with 4MB Cache) would handle things just fine.



I overarchitected given that I want to use this as a SageTV server, HD on the fly transcoding to high quality, and a db server - I got an E6600. As mentioned, i've got issues with HD transcoding, but i'm hoping V6.1 will address that.



> Quote:
> A side question - Will the SageTV Server work OK as a client? Say I have the SageTV Server in my office, and instead of streaming the content from the server to an extender or anohter PC in my office, could I just use the server as a client for myself? Right now it'll all be SDTV content.



Oh yeah, sure, I did that for probably 2 years. I had my single HTPC act as the SageTV Server *and* CQC server (back when I was doing much less CQC).


The primary destabilizer is the video rendering, and the muckage the HTPC community inevitably does to filters/etc. If you can get it going and leave well enough alone, your setup will be fine with a SageTV server acting as a client.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> http://www.elkproducts.com/latest_news.htm
> 
> 
> PRODUCT RELEASES
> 
> A v a i l a b l e N o w !
> 
> 
> ELK-M1XRF2G
> 
> M1 Crystal Wireless Receiver



Mine was pre-ordered last week (along with a *crapload* of other stuff). Hopefully by this weekend i'll have:


- Elk Wireless Receiver installed

- Some of my wireless window receivers installed (both recessed and surface mount)

- Keyfob working


I was going to hardwire all my windows, but some of them have A/C lines underneath them and retrofitting the hardwire in would have been beyond my skillset. Downside is that i'll have to deal with battery replacements every 2-4 years, but at least i'll be able to get *every* window done. Given the recent crime wave, I don't want to risk the bad guys using the 1 window I didn't wire up to come in.


----------



## IVB

On an upnote that could potentially have a *huge* impact, someone on the SageTV forums showed me to you can remotely control the $100 MVP!


Whoa! I had no idea. I never touch the server, never bothered installing the webserver there until tonight. (i use it on the sagetvclient).


If beelzerob can find a way to control a $100 MVP via CQC, then this changes everything, and (in my mind) suddenly thrusts SageTV into a very very strong position vis-a-vis any other DVR package, including Vista. It would be simple to a handful of MVPs in a central location, and have truly zero equipment in a room for control.


Check it out. this is via the SageTV web server, but if he can figure out how to do this via native CQC widgets, then I think what you get for $700 just got noticeably noticeably better. No more $300 xBox360's.


----------



## IVB

How much do I hate Home Automation sometimes, let me count the ways. I spent another 1.5 hours tonight trying to get the damn DirecTV STB to work over serial to no avail. This is a hardware level thing, i can't get any program to change the damn channel.


If IR wasn't so sucky, i'd go with that in a heartbeat.


----------



## smoothtlk

Which STB are you using?

If one of the USB flavors, are you using the correct USB serial adapter?


----------



## herdfan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> How I spent another 1.5 hours tonight trying to get the damn DirecTV STB to work over serial to no avail. This is a hardware level thing,



I can't remember which model it was, (I'm thinking D10 or 11) but D* sent down a software update that killed the serial port. TiVo owners were hopping mad.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Which STB are you using?
> 
> If one of the USB flavors, are you using the correct USB serial adapter?



Yeah; it worked totally fine for weeks (brand new STB), just started having issues after a power outage.



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *herdfan* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> I can't remember which model it was, (I'm thinking D10 or 11) but D* sent down a software update that killed the serial port. TiVo owners were hopping mad.



Oy, what! When? It's a D11-500, and indeed after a power-loss the STB will download the latest firmware. Supposedly some of the SageTV folks had the same issue and just got this working again, so I'm not throwing in the towel quite yet.


----------



## herdfan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> When? It's a D11-500,



Then its not that issue. I checked and it was the D10. So if you had it working recently, that is not your problem. Just make sure you are using the APG serial command set.


----------



## IVB

Thought I'd let you all know how the remote capabilities have been helping me lately.


I've pulled up CQC on the PDA quite often lately from the office/road/etc. 90% of the time it was via the webserver as I can get that up within probably 3-4seconds over Cingular's network and given that it was just me, text was fine. 10% of the time I wanted control so I used the DotNetViewer, as I don't know or want to learn CML which is required for control via the webserver, plus I have zero desire to open up firewall ports for http traffic controlling my house:


Here's what I did:

1) See if the wife is home, cuz she's not answering her cell or the house phone and we're trying to arrange for logistics for roughly 19K random events in the next month.

2) Wife asked me to check on who called last night as we were expecting an important call and the dimwit hadn't called us before we had to go. (the extent of our phone integration - if we had a call, we'd just call the house to see if there was a message).

3) Disarm the security system so one of our "less than intelligent" friends could go get something from our house (he has a spare key) without tripping the alarm like he did last time.

4) Start a DVD for the babysitter who barely understands how to turn a TV on. She's smart enough to put a DVD in a drive, but I swear the teeny-bopper is baffled by the concept of a stereo system, and I weep for the future.


Furthermore, we've also noticed that the wife's 3G cellphone isn't necessarily that much faster than mine. Even pulling up regular web pages seems to take quite a long time, much much longer than a PC. We ran some tests with them side-by-side, phone got dusted each time, not sure if it's a firmware issue or just network slowness.


----------



## IVB

Super Super Super Cool! Hats off to Robertmee, and *thank god* I got those concerto keypads, I can now use them to control CQC!


Specifically I've so far set it up so that the next/prev/etc buttons control the CQC CD player, but it looks like you can do buckets with this. I'm going to see how to use the digits to change XM stations. And for that eye-candy, supposedly he's using it put the song information on the keypad when it's changed but only on the keypads in zones that are actually on and tuned to that source. Seems eminently doable. The other supercool thing is that you can detect which zone's keypad was used, so you can build additional logic. For example, I may put a keypad in my kids room, and set it up so that as soon as the zone is turned on via the keypad it's set to XM disney or some such thing.


Very cool stuff.


----------



## IVB

And another very productive day. I got the Elk wireless M1XRF, and inside of 3.5 hours I had added it onto the Elk system, and mounted 15 wireless recessed window sensors and added them into the ElkRP & panel! And in true DIY fashion, I only broke one sensor (don't ask), and only needed gorilla glue on three windows (don't tell wife).


I still have all these damn wired recessed window sensors that I was going to use, but I just didn't have anymore time plus we've now had 10 muggings or armed robberies in 10 weeks in the general vicinity and we wanted more protection quicker. (police crackdown in Inner Oakland basically pushed crime out to the outlying areas.)


I also found out the Elk has three arming modes: Away, Stay, and Night. I put some of the windows into the Night mode, so we can open/close them during the day if the Elk happens to be in Stay mode. I don't actually know how to use the Elk Keypad to put it into "Night" mode, but I know how to do that through CQC so I may just stick with a screen to do that.


I played around with the overview screen, here's what I got. I'm contemplating adding an "ArmStay" and an "ArmNight" button with the security code hardcoded so I don't need a keypad, but not sure how smart an idea that is.


----------



## IVB

Ho ho, I am on an absolute TEAR this weekend.


Ideas implemented in the last 24 hours:
*1) Sound/Voice Stuff*

Well, I got ideas from 3 different folks in 3 different forums, but in typical IVB fashion I went waaay over the top with it. Well, I only got the basics done to-date, but i'm setup well for future.

1a) Custom sound playback over HA Elk speakers for callerID. I recorded my M.I.L.'s voice saying "it's me, why aren't you picking up the phone", and that'll get played everytime the phone rings and CID says it's her. Plus, since i'm using a PC, i've got unlimited .WAV capacity, so I can record a different voice/.WAV file for each person.

My wife gets bugged because if the phone rings, I *never* move to get it - 90% of the time it's for her. She always yells at me saying it could be the one time someone calls for me, but now we'll hear it and not in that generic ass M$ TTS voice. I told the wife about this, in typical wife form she shrugged her shoulders and asked why we need it.

Doesn't she know by now? It's not for her, it's for me, and so I don't have to do anything when the phone rings and it's her.


1b) Ripped out doorchime, ran wires to Elk for custom doorbell ring. That's boring, but i've been meaning to do something similar for a year now, since i was redoing the wiring for all the speakers i just got off my ass to do it.


1c) Bought a mixer so that I can re-use those same speakers for the Elk M1 output, PC (both TTS and custom WAV), whatever else I want.


Now I know all that's pretty straight-forward, but I think it's pretty impressive since I had to run all new wiring for the Elk speakers that those are running through. Plus I got the wiring done for adding another 3 speakers hooked up to the relays. This lays the groundwork for both

- Intruder warning on any non-alarm violation (ie, motion in entryway or backdoor detected)

- RFID greeting when it sees me come home

*2) Nuvo Concerto control over CQC.*

Given that I can now trap that a particular keypad pressed a button in CQC, i set it up so that pressing the AUX button will run the same weather script that we have going off in the AM.

*3) Keyfob control*

- got the keyfob hooked into CQC. I won't do remote disarms with it, but i did link the lighting button tonight. It'll be one of those things I gotta sit with to see what I want to do with it.


----------



## IVB

Well, it only took 14 months of having the stuff in my parts closet, but I finally have zoned HA announcements including doorbell ring, CallerID, and TTS! Not completely done, but 80% of the way there.


I created 3 zones of HA announcement speakers using the Elk (intentionally not using my A/V speakers). Right now there's only the CQCServer as the source (ie, not the Elk M1 output1), but that does:

1) Doorbell ring (different per door) (ripped out regular doorchime, i'm now Elk-only)

2) Custom WAV playback on callerID. I recorded 4 of our friends so far, and play back their greeting. This is actually the AWESOME bit, as I used strictly CQC for it, meaning I can sell off the Elk-930 Doorbell detector, Elk-120 4channel Recordable board and Elk-129 computer sound interface. And, since I'm using CQC and WAV files, I have infinite file capability.

3) Custom TTS (text to speech). I'll probably get a custom voice, I really want to try out one of the nuance ones as I think my kids would get a kick out of a british female accent, but it's $90 and there's no demo. I know Kate is a tried&true voice, but it just seems so bland.


Some techie details for those of you who care:

- Doorbells are rigged up directly to Elk zones using CAT5, so they're very simple open/close circuits.

- I'm using an Elk-800 amp which can handle 2-16Ohms

- For each zone, I used a relay on the M1XOVR relay expander

- I mounted 3 of the 32Ohm Elk speakers in parallel so I get a 10Ohm resistance on that leg

- I mounted 1 Elk 8 Ohm External speaker and 1 Elk 8Ohm internal speaker on two seperate legs.

- I *will* be added either a 32Ohm single gang speaker or an 8Ohm regular speaker on leg#4, haven't quite decided which form factor I want.


I'd never run all of them together, but even if I did that's still 2.1->2.6Ohms total, which is above the minimum.


If you want to calculate it yourself, the formula for parallel resistance is

1/x = (1/R1) + (1/R2) + (1/R3) + ...

or, to put it simpler

X (resistance) = 1 / ( (1/R1) + (1/R2) + (1/R3) + ... )


Here's the revised overview screen. I know all the HA speakers don't look like that, but the ones my wife can see do, and one icon is simpler than 3.


Final piece is to step down the M1 output to line level and use the $50 mixer i got off eBay to blend those two, and sell off the Elk-930, Elk-120, and Elk-129. If I get decent $$, I may take a gamble on the Nuance voice.


----------



## IVB

Oh, and I just had the coolest idea. Now that I've got the HA announcement stuff setup, I should record myself (or the PC in a Damian-type voice) yelling "get out of my house, you dorko thief, or else i'll release the nerve gas". Then, if there's ever an intrusion, or perhaps at will via the PDA, I could just play that WAV file through every PC and Concerto zone in the whole house.


The Cingular network has been *painfully* slow lately for everything (ie, not just CQC, even surfing the web is awful), but I should try that on the wife's BlackJack/3G cellphone...


----------



## rgroves

Or have a female voice say, "30 seconds until nerve agent release", then "10 seconds...", and then "Releasing nerve agent into ventilation system." Also include descriptive warnings about the agents affects like "The agent will cause uncontrolled muscle spasms, involuntary bowl movements, dizziness, and short-term memory loss, and possibly unconsciousness."


Maybe only announce those INSIDE the house...you may scare the neighbors and alert Homeland Security on you...LOL


What would be really freaky for the intruder would be to also have a fog machine blow some smoke into the air ducts at the time it says releasing agent.


----------



## IVB

LOL, yes, and also end each announcement with "Have a nice day".


----------



## rgroves

LOL, that would be great. Or record Apu from the Simpson's saying "Thank You, Come again."


other ideas...


"Thank you for flying IVB airlines. Buh-bye....".


"My precious....they took my precious...".


"Terminated".


The Looney Tunes ending "That's all folks".


The Princess Bride "bye bye boys, have fun storming the castle..."


Simpson's - Mr. Burns saying "release the hounds"


----------



## IVB

Hoho! I got a Gentner AP800 mic mixer/cancellation system off eBay for $77 shipped plus a Crown half-supercardoid mic for $75 shipped to see if VR is really as awful as everyone says.It came with Firmware v1.00, I just upgraded it to Firmware V2.40, and I can connect via HyperTerminal! Not too bad for the pittance of a cost.


Of course, the mic hasn't gotten here yet, let's hope the AP800 actually works, and not just via the serial port. The protocol looks pretty dead bang simple, except for the pesky pick a mic # for each command otherwise i'd be able to bang out a PDL driver for CQC within a few mandays. I say mandays as I have that security 101 thing on Sat, plus a boatload of day job work this week, so i'm not sure how much time i'll have to brush up on my PDL skills. I haven't touched PDL since last Jan, 16 months is a long time to forget that which I didn't really know too well in the first place. Plus I don't really know how to best deal with commands when everyone is in a format where each command has 2 values (1 is channel#, 1 is value, null means you want to read), so I'll have to ask questions there.


Regardless, let's see if I can get an AP800 driver for CQC done in 4-6 weeks. Of course, that's a loooong way from actually doing any VR, but at least being able to control the mixer is step 1. Step 2 is figuring out how to get a command to CQC, if I could figure out what the hell Nuance/DragonNaturallySpeaking meant by some of the jargon on their page I might look into that.


JKMonroe is tightening up the RFid stuff inside CQC, i'm looking more into VR, all I need is help with the recipe db and outlook contacts/callerID db lookup driver, and we'll all be able to start doing some seriously cool HA stuff


----------



## IVB

Ah, there's no such thing as a problem that money can't solve!


Tuning on my DirecTV has been down for 3 weeks ever since I had the power outage thing. Looks like it was the PatersonTech cable, I bought a 2nd one, just got it, plugged it in, it works fine! I just sent them a note asking them how to deal with fixing the old one.


The wife will be very happy - 3 weeks of only one channel of DirecTV (i left it on, with only HBO enabled) made her very sad.


Of course, now that I got a 2nd paterson cable, once it gets fixed I really should just get the 2nd D* STB and have 2 SDTVs recording at once. And I could get an HDHomerun, and get 2 more HDTV streams.


Plus, now that Squintz agreed to do the AP800 driver, looks like that'll actually get done on a timely basis too. Things are looking up in the IVB household!


----------



## IVB

Nothing like spending hours to stand still outcome-wise. well, not entirely still:


I had to disable the maglock last weekend when I moved the Elk expander to the basement. The wife has actually grown to prefer it as it gives us one additional level of security, and really didn't like not having it. I could have just rerun the wire to the other location, but the current conduit is nearly out of space and, in hindsight, not in the best location. I put in a 2nd conduit, although I could only fit a 1" pipe due to some random stud positioning. Then I reran the wiring for the maglock and got it up & running.


I'm going to link that output to the keyfob I got, plus that might be how we end up using the prox reader I bought but haven't yet mounted. I don't feel comfortable linking the actual Elk to the arm/disarm of a keyfob or a prox reader, but enabling & disabling that maglock might be just the ticket.


----------



## IVB

Tee Hee Hee, lookie ma, behold the power of my voice! No hands!


Well, I have 10% accuracy to turn my lights on with a ludicriously simple "lights" command using a $10 VRCommander package (i'm on the free trial as I didn't want to pony up the $10) and a cheap $15 computer headset/mic. I can't get it to recognize "lights off" but "lights on" and "lights" seem to work.


It was all pretty righteously simple, albeit highly inaccurate and pretty fragile. I setup a keymapping in CQC so that it would turn on the lights on a shift-F2, then I setup a command in VRCommander so that when I said "lights on" it would send S-F2 to CQC.


Pretty simplistic, but 2 points of issues so far:

1) VRCommander can't understand "lights off", but it can understand "lights on". But this is from a headset 2" from my mouth, and I ain't walkin around with that.

2) In order to do a keystroke command from within CQC, either the Admin Interface or the Interface Viewer needs to have focus. This has a ramification on which PC I put the AP800 at as the HTPC will obviously have video running, and I wouldn't want the whole VR system to be down just because of that.


#2 isn't a huge issue, as the server is headless so it letting the AI be the focus program isn't a problem, but it is point of failure.


Anyhow, i'm just mucking around anyhow until the AP800 driver gets done, at which point i'll try something better than a $15 headset. I may also see if I can find someone who has Dragon Preferred to see if it can translate a voice command into a keystroke (ie, shift-F2).


But it was geeky cool to see the lights turn on by the sound of my voice 


Here's 2 screenshots first is of VRCommander, second is CQC.


----------



## Dean Roddey

It would definitely be way better to do some little XML Gateway based app to use for that kind of thing.


----------



## IVB

Do you mean to take something like the XP VR SDK, write a (i dunno, C#) app to leverage that and communicate with CQC via XML?


----------



## IVB

well, momentum seems to be maintaining.


I got RFID working (woohoo!). Seriously simple too, just plug in the RFID receiver to the PC, put 2 AAA batteries in the transmitter (probably about the size of 4-5 of them total. The CQC driver records the tag id, and allows you to rename it.


Plus, the alpha test of the AP800 driver worked fine, so that's cool too!


Here's the only pic I got of the RFID stuff. I'm going to have to muck with positioning & placement as i'm only getting 15' off it, which is barely enough for me to reach the dining room. I need another 20ish feet, then I can use it to tell if i'm home or not. I can put on "coming home" routines based on who's home, and who just arrived (after door is opened, that is).


----------



## IVB

I finally put in the VK011 mini-temp sensor board. Great advantage of that is that since it was so cheap, I got 4 sensors for $75 shipped. I actually learned something too after mounting them:


I put 2 sensors in: my basement server room, and the crawlspace. Turns out those rooms aren't nearly as cold as I thought. The server room wasn't that surprising, but the 70degree temp in the crawlspace at 11:00pm at night surprised me. Now I realize why the media closet isn't getting that cool - it's drawing 70deg temp in.


I'm going to hunt down an old style thermometer to verify those temps, it certainly feels colder than 70deg down there, but i've been known to be vastly off temp wise before. If it really is 70, I may start thinking about how to pull in outside air - it's 54 deg outside right now.


----------



## IVB

Well bada bing! One of the CQC'ers is extending the SageTV driver to be able to control the MVP.


The very first alpha drop of the new control code has this in the debug logfile - that's the show I started on the MVP after loading up the new file!


Although crap, I just realized i'm going to have to run 3RG6 from the basement to the MBR for composite and analog audio distro as i'll be moving the MVP to the basement if it works. The evil downside of centralization - more damn wiring.



> Quote:
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.062 [[SageCQC]]: Setting new media file.
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.062 [[SageCQC]]: Title: Divine Design
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.063 [[SageCQC]]: Desc: Kitchen makeover.
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.063 [[SageCQC]]: IsLive: false
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.063 [[SageCQC]]: GetConfiguration: Initializing Config
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.063 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: PLMlay
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.063 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CTT
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ivine Design
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.064 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CDU:1799838
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.064 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CTM:15
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.064 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CDE:Kitchen makeover.
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:40.564 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CTM:15
> 
> Wed 6/27 23:07:41.141 [[SageCQC]]: Sending data: CTM:16


----------



## CollinR




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *erkq* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Looks great!
> 
> I'd like tilt/pan buttons for Web-cams that support it. I'll be looking at this when I move into the new house and get set up. In the meantime... any ideas on that?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't actually know squat about that, but I know Brandon over at Automated Outlet knows tons - he was actually on the phone the entire time, answering questions I didn't know the answer to. (ie, why is the software so bound to hardware cards for CCTV? because it has to be encrypted so that it can be entered into evidence legally. Or something like that).
Click to expand...



Coming soon for Avermedia, I should be able to do it today with Geovision.


I must admit though, I suggest my paying customers NOT go with PTZ cameras but rather more fixed cameras. PTZ for the home is "cool" however ultimately when you really need them somehow they are pointed in the wrong place. So basically if you have someone control it 24/7 it's awesome, otherwise fixed cameras will serve you better in the long run. Also they are cheaper.


----------



## IVB

Every time I do more and more with HA stuff, I realize how wrong I was 2 years ago when I questioned the value of CIs.


As you can tell by the age of the first post on this thread, i've been taking a very evolutionary & organic growth approach to my setup. I don't actually know everything I want to do, I just know I always want more. And it always seems to need wiring. As a result, my wiring was really unplanned, and has become extremely spaghetti-like. It was getting to the point where I was introducing instability due to wiring/shorts, which is really dumb.


I decided to rip out all my wiring a few days ago and redo it. As I started doing it, I realized I hadn't setup the physical space to be well organized for the amount of wiring I now have. It was fine when I thought there'd only be 15 runs of wire there, but i'm getting up there now, and it's just not working. Well, my rewiring job has turned into a full server room rebuild. I decided that the physical space wasn't really conducive to organized setups, so i've now spent 2.5 days redoing it. Not full days, but the wife has let me spend 4-5 hours per day so far on it.


Now, if I were a CI, first I'd know to plan out the wiring. 2nd, and this is really the bit i'm suffering from now, i'd know how to physically mount the various modules as I'd know which ones take up how much wire, and which ones don't. I kid you not - I spent probably 3 hours just looking and staring at the equipment, both on the floor as I was mocking it up, and again on the wall, trying to figure out how to best position all this stuff so I wouldn't end up with spaghetti again. No idea if I succeeded, time will tell.


Well, my rewiring job has turned into a full server room rebuild. I decided that the physical space wasn't really conducive to organized setups, so i've now spent 2.5 days redoing it. Not full days, but the wife has let me spend 4-5 hours per day so far on it.


Here's what I've got so far. I built a table and mounted the plywood, made all the more difficult by the fact that the room doesn't have square walls or level floors or ceiling. I mounted almost all my stuff. There's only 1 PC there now, the wife is watching SageTV as we speak so I couldn't move the other one. I've also got some very temporary network wiring on the right side, as this is an in-situ rebuild, so i can't take the whole system down for a week without wrath of wife/kids. I just bought a smallish onwall hinged rackmount, 23" high, 12" deep, so I gotta figure out where to put that. The patch panel, switch, and AP800 will go in there. Only two choices are left wall or build a right wall. I'll be building a right wall anyhow as I will have to put a dehumidifer in this room in the winter, and i'd just as soon wall off a 7'x7' area and only dehumidify that rather than the whole room.


i took 2 pics - one with everything mounted and the cans closed, one with the cans open (and a piece of plastic holding up the Elk door). I had a Bosch enclosure, so I put the CCTV power and Rain8Net in there, and I put my DSL modem in the Leviton SMC can.


There's no wires run yet, i'm hoping to redo that over the next 3 days (taking whole week off work). Hopefully it still looks pretty after that.


----------



## rgroves

Nice looking start to your "re-wire". One suggestion - On your Elk Panel, you might want to consider having the door open "UP". I know it sounds weird, but if it opens up, you can mount a small hook (or hooks) with a 1-2 link of chain, to the ceiling to hold the door open and it would be out of your way while you work on it. With it opening "down" you have to deal with it possibly being in your way while you wire things up or banging into your monitor ot other stuff on the wall.


----------



## IVB

That is a great idea; i'll be sure to do that. Dunno why I didn't think of it - i stared at the damn wall long enough.


----------



## smoothtlk

then again, with it mounted the way it is, with a chain on the inside of the box to the middle of the lid, it becomes a table for your wire crimper, ends, etc. while you are working on it. My question is, why mount it sideways at all? why not top to bottom like the way the box was designed for? The smaller box on the bottom right should then go into the middle row.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *smoothtlk* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> My question is, why mount it sideways at all? why not top to bottom like the way the box was designed for? The smaller box on the bottom right should then go into the middle row.



I was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask that - it seemed like the first question I would have










The reason is to keep the wiring as clean as possible, and there's 2 bits of info that you don't see in the pic:

1) I have 3 main boards that will have a decent # of wires.

2) On the other side of the wall, my wires run along the ceiling joist.


Hence with a horizontal mount, I can mount the boards as seen, and distribute the 3 sets of wires along a greater distance (28"), while still keeping it close to the ceiling and hence requiring minimal ugliness on that side of the wall.


Mounting it vertically is what I used to have, and required running wiring a longer distance from the ceiling. I personally feel like it made things uglier, as I had 3 different departure points from the same general vertical line. This way I just leave the ceiling joist at 3 different areas, and only need perhaps 12" of wire to reach the boards.


----------



## IVB

I am so damn sore it's not funny. I ripped out all the wiring back at least 20' from the room so I could introduce cleanly. There were some runs that I had to fully rerun the entire 80' house length because I now realize I did it inefficiently.


Here's a pic of one new idea I had - I was struggling with how i'd rerun this cleanly from the other side. I built a PVC network, with openings right at "wire line". I left the PVC uncemented so I can add wires easily, so it's only held together by tension but that's a damn good fit. Note the left pipe for an example. I'll find out in 1-2 days whether this was very smart or very stupid, but it certainly shows potential.


----------



## shift_grind

if you add more wires to a pipe that already has wires....make sure you lube it....even then you can still burn the existing wire easily.


----------



## Dean Roddey

That sounds kind of exciting, but I'm not sure exactly why....


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *shift_grind* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> if you add more wires to a pipe that already has wires....make sure you lube it....even then you can still burn the existing wire easily.



By "burn", do you mean "screw up"?


I also was school'ed on the CQC forum about using right-angles meant for water for electrical, so i'm going to pull out all the bends and either just have the 11 pipes running straight out or pull out the PVC entirely. Perhaps this is a really bad idea after all...


----------



## Dean Roddey

I assumed he meant friction burns?


----------



## IVB

That was actually my question though - to reveal my ignorance, what does friction burn mean when it comes to cabling? The wires (either 2c/4c/8c) are inside a jacket, so how would they be affected?


----------



## sic0048

Well, you could potentially burn through the outer insulation. Keep in mind that while you are pulling the wire through, it might constantly rub one spot on an existing wire. It probably isnt bad in your case IVB where you are only pulling a couple of feet of wire, but it could be a bigger problem if you were pulling longer runs of wire.


I personally would do away with all the elbows and simply have straight conduit come out of the wall. This is obviously in a "non living space" so concealing the wires isn't of great importance on this side of the wall. Keep things simple man!


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *sic0048* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> I personally would do away with all the elbows and simply have straight conduit come out of the wall. This is obviously in a "non living space" so concealing the wires isn't of great importance on this side of the wall. Keep things simple man!



Good call man, I used a crapload of the endless velcro to tie it up, looks much better than I thought. I put some MDF on the back so I could write down what does where for easy reference, plus make it look somewhat less than the 97 year old basement that it is.


I just re-ran the wiring today, plus I decided to run 6 new runs of cat5e as long as I was at it. I'll terminate it on the board tomorrow, so if there's any other suggestions let me know.


Thanks all, check it out:


----------



## IVB

Well, the rewiring took about as long as expected, ~3 days. Of course, the entire room rebuild beforehand plus the fact that i'm not yet done with half of it means the overall project isn't nearly done. I still need to build 2 interior walls so I can create a "room within a room", to both wallmount my new 35" rack, and put in a dehumidifier for the wet winter times.


Here's an "after" picture. It ended up taking me between 5-10mins PER RUN to cut it to look clean, plus I ended up redoing several runs as I realized a better way of doing it. I went the "no pain, no gain" route, and cut every wire to 6" within the exact length needed. I fed the spare back out and pushed the wiring back a bit, but this is now the "permanent" location for the Elk cabinet. I had a contigency plan beforehand where I left 2-3 feet of extra wiring there, that's gone now.


I also came up with an interesting idea about how to flatmount items that were too small for the Elk mounting plates: I used the dual-sided Elk sticky foam, and attached it to velcro. That way I can easily remove it to put wires in, and just reattach it back.


There's still a few odds & ends to clean up (like that damn wire hanging straight through on the right), but this is already staggeringly nicer than the disgusting mess I used to have.


----------



## IVB

Well, i'm partially through rebuilding the server room to better accomdate all this stuff. certainly looks better than this before picture . You can see the studs I put on the ceiling to mark off where the interior walls will go. By the time those walls go up, my wallmount rack will be here, at which point i'll put up the patch panel and switch on the right side of the desk.


I guess that's one way to spend a week off work...


----------



## IVB

What an interesting, if a little ironic, night last night. I had just fallen asleep at 12:15am when the Elk went off (night mode). The wife was finishing up a book, so she was up. Thankfully I had put a keypad in the MBR, so I went right to it to see which zone was violated. I then handed my wife the golf club (5wood) that we keep in the MBR and told her to go to the kids room. I decided to bum-rush the 1 inside door leading to the room so as to take any intruder by surprise.


Thankfully no one was inside the house, but I did make NextAlarm stay on the phone with me as I checked it out ( the guy was great - very understanding). The huge bummer is that due to the rewiring, the camera pointed right at that window wasn't connected up (since fixed). Hence, we couldn't tell if it was a false alarm or not from inside the house, and i wasn't about to go outside to check for marks. The one thing I can think of is that I hosed off that particular windowsill pretty hard with the nozzle in "jet" mode, perhaps that interfered with the wireless sensors somehow. I'll check the outer window for jimmy marks tomorrow, forgot today.


Anyway, my lessons learned are:

- keypad in MBR has already proven to be a *very* valuable thing, and the wife is now very happy that it is there. Seriously, she high-fived me and said "ok, THAT was a good idea."

- variety of speakers throughout the house are also good, as it can undoubtedly alert any intruder as to detection

- Having a "process" that me/wife understand and agree to in event of issue is also good.

- 2 golf clubs in the MBR is a good idea, so I don't have to grab the steak knife en-route to the point of intrusion


----------



## IVB

Ok, i'm starting to get a little bugged with these wireless sensors. I just noticed the Elk report the window next to the 'tripped' one in the above story as being open, but I know it's closed. Granted, these are the 2 farthest ones from the M1XRF receiver, but it's only 50' max.


That area is already double-covered, so I made the windows non-alarm zones, which defeats the purpose of having them. Hopefully I hear back from someone as to why this could be happening, or else i'm going to be running a few more wires sooner than I thought. So much for wireless being "bulletproof"...


----------



## justinjmiller

Curious as to why you didn't use the wired window sensors? I am about to wire up a panel but my windows are in exterior cinder block covered with lathe/plaster. Not sure how I'd get the wires to the sensors. Is that the issue you faced?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *justinjmiller* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Curious as to why you didn't use the wired window sensors? I am about to wire up a panel but my windows are in exterior cinder block covered with lathe/plaster. Not sure how I'd get the wires to the sensors. Is that the issue you faced?



It was primarily a time-driven reason. I still have nearly a dozen wired sensors in the parts closet, but we were experiencing a crime wave, and 2 incidents of home break-ins were reported inside of 7 days. The wife wanted every window protected ASAP, and I was able to mount 15 in 3.5 hours on a Friday afternoon off work, including ElkRP config.


With wired sensors, it was closer to 1 hour per run, longer for the ones with AC nearby. I don't have cinder block to contend with though, I guess that's one good thing.


----------



## IVB

Another one failed, this one is 20' away from the wireless receiver.

At this point i'm declaring the use of wireless sensors to be a big mistake. I'm going to pull them all out and replace with wired ones. If your network wifi cxn drops out, the cops don't come. Another one failed, wife couldn't alarm the system, and had to get me out of bed as I had decided to go to sleep early in advance of a big day tomorrow. Oh well, I guess another 8 cups of coffee day is in my future.


----------



## rgroves

YIKES!!! That sucks man. I wonder if it's just a bad batch of sensors or the brand is junk.


Guess this means you've got a buy weekend coming up. I hate it when you get plans for a weekend (or just plan to relax), and it all goes to the crapper because of something small. I hope it goes smoothly for you.


----------



## CalypsoCowboy

Wonder if your reciever is hosed if your having a number of them fail at the same time.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *CalypsoCowboy* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Wonder if your reciever is hosed if your having a number of them fail at the same time.



It's interesting, someone on the CQC forum asked that too. Thing is, the only true way to "test" that is to replace the receiver and try again. And, if it fails, either the cops come or my wife can't arm the system and wakes my ass up again.


Either way, not a good way to do this. Perhaps i'll have a better attitude tomorrow, once i'm over the bitterness of last night (for those of you who didn't catch the 4:30am post-time on that entry)


----------



## IVB

Interesting thing, this HA journey, and interesting places it's led me.


I took a half-day off yesterday, had this burning desire not to shop at newegg (haven't bought parts in weeks/months), not to muck with my interfaces or rules (haven't touched screens or event engine in months), but to go to Home Depot and get some plywood, romex, and junction boxes for the basement server room rewiring. Initially I was just going to put up walls, but then decided that running the physical romex wasn't that big a deal, I'd just get an electrician in to examine my stapling and do the terminations both at the box and at the panel. Oh, and maybe a fan. And a light.


Today, my in-laws decided to recruit me to help do some *very* simple work at their house. Replacing light fixtures, switches, outlets, etc. I figured that would be simple and maybe 2 hours of work, esp after what i've been through, and given that their house was totally redone 25 years ago. Well wouldn't you know it, they picked the one room that hadn't been touched in many decades, so that sucked up the whole day.


Anyhow, the point i'm trying to make is that dipping my toe into the HA pool led me to basic home wiring led me to basic home repair and has now led me to intermediate home repair. There have been some very interesting CQC developments, esp with the V2.2 that's going G/A this week, but i'm still more interested in running that romex than integrating my iTunes with that new driver.


Normal people would have gone the other way, doing the wiring first, then going from there but there weren't really any DIY'ers around 22ish months ago when I started down this road doing HA/HT and talking about it so I suppose the organic growth option has been entertaining.


----------



## socorob




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/8777863
> 
> 
> Well, in a fantastically fantastic long weekend, I blazed through tons of stuff. In the past 4 days, I:
> 
> - Mounted the rest of my heat/smoke/CO sensors
> 
> - Added another non-alarm sensor on the Basement Door
> 
> - Mounted/fixed 2 more CCTVs and re-adjusted the front door one after a squirrel jumped on it and moved it
> 
> - Used my Leviton SMC for the first time to run 2 new telephone runs. Given that we only actually have 1 cordless phone base with a bunch of extensions thoughout the house, I can now completely ditch my existing telephone wiring and go entirely with the new stuff that I've put in.
> 
> - And, most importantly, I mounted my new 300 pound maglock on our outer door. It's too weak for front-door/back-door usage, but for a mudroom door it's just fine.
> 
> 
> Check out the pics. I had to use 2x4 to fashion an L bracket as the 300# maglock doesn't come with one.
> 
> 
> I can now arm/disarm the outer door through the keypad that's mounted at the front-door or through CQC. I'm going to setup a rule in the Elk to automatically lock it when the Elk is set to ArmStay mode, and unlock it upon Disarm.
> 
> 
> Most importantly, the wife is happy I got this done before Halloween as we can lock the doors up at 8pm tomorrow night, and the hooligan ruffian types will hopefully just move on to the other house.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here's the CQC screen. Although now that I look at it, I wonder if I should flip the red/green status, or perhaps use another set of on/off images.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> BTW, here's the latest CCTV image. I had to go to a 8grid view (3x3) as I'm about to put in the 5th CCTV.




there are z-brackets to hold the maglock strike plates on with. I dont know if you still have the wood for it, but its a cleaner install. We get them from ADI.


----------



## socorob

also i see youre building a room for your equipment. i did that into my garage about 2 years ago, and in retrospect heres what i would have done differently. This may not work for you since you have no attic access above.

also im not sure how this works with your building code or if you even care.



I would pick which wall i would want my equipment to be mounted on. that wall i would make either 6 or 8 inches thick, and since its not a supporting wall, i would put my studs on 2 feet centers. I would find as straight a board and no knots as possible for those studs. then i would get 3/4 inch plywood with 1 side finished. put the plywood on the outside wall with the finished side facing into the wall. then you can put sheetrock or whatever on the inside wall. drill some holes through the top plate for some 2 or 3 inch conduit to stub up into the attic for an easy fishing way. on the inside figure out how high you want the bottom of your "enclosure" to be and put a board across to keep things from falling into the wall. this way you can paint the inside of the wall, and have an inwall can as big as you want, and put whatever kind of doors you would like onthe outside. use 2 cavities and you could have a 4 foot wide can, everything hidden, as tall as you would like. drill some holes and put small pieces of pipe so you can have a way to go from cavity to cavity. i wishi would have done this on mine, but now it would require tearing a wall out, and re routing the electric i ran right through the center of it. it still may happen one day as my closet is getting cramped. just a suggestion...


----------



## socorob

this way you can use plastic standoffs and wood screws to mount your equipment wherever youd like. also put sheetrock over the plywood on the ouside if youd like to hide that. this is really making me want to redo my av/server closet.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> there are z-brackets to hold the maglock strike plates on with. I dont know if you still have the wood for it, but its a cleaner install. We get them from ADI.



Still got the wood, but mainly because the wife decided she wants new doors. I'm not going through that twice, so I figured i'd see if I can fully embed the hardware into the new doors now that we've proven this works with 100% uptime.



> Quote:
> in retrospect heres what i would have done differently.



Well, that particular method won't work due to the nonaccess above, but it certainly interesting for the eventual house remodel.


----------



## dummptyhummpty

WOW that was a lot of reading, but there was a lot of good information in there.


I was wondering why you didn't use your home theater speakers for the announcements? Just curious.


What are you doing about Premium HD channels (if anything). I know you have have the basic channels (ABC, Fox, etc) through a tv tuner card, but what if someone wants to watch HBO HD or an on demand movie? This is assuming you subscribe to all that.


Lastly, would there be an issue with using CQC to arm an alarm system instead of having a dedicated alarm panel?


Thanks for all the great info, I can't wait to start on Home Automation when I eventually buy a house this summer (i'm 20).


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *dummptyhummpty* /forum/post/12107538
> 
> 
> WOW that was a lot of reading, but there was a lot of good information in there.
> 
> 
> I was wondering why you didn't use your home theater speakers for the announcements? Just curious.



Actually I now use the whole-house/HT speakers for some of the "nice-to-have" voice announcements but only in the early am. I use the Elk for alarm, doorbell sound, and a few others that are "mission-critical" and time-sensitive.

Here's why:

1) Wife & I both got bugged at the TV/CD/etc dropping out in favor of the HA announcement. Mixing made both signals unintelligible. I do the TTS stuff in the early am as a wakeup, to announce weather & time so we get out of bed/dress kids correctly. No way will the TV be on then.

2) Startup delay. It took my Denon 3805 (HT receiver) ~2s to do the switching if it was on, ~5s to startup & switch to right input if it was off. Doesn't sound like much of a delay, but if someone is at the doorbell that's long enough for them to think it isn't working and pound on the door.


> Quote:
> What are you doing about Premium HD channels (if anything). I know you have have the basic channels (ABC, Fox, etc) through a tv tuner card, but what if someone wants to watch HBO HD or an on demand movie? This is assuming you subscribe to all that.



That's the current hole in the plan. I don't have HBOHD/etc, I'm hoping that once D* cuts over fully to the mpeg4 standard and a few months go by, someone will create an aftermarket mechanism to do this. In the meantime, I get tons of regular HD channels OTA, so it's really only ESPN/HBO; i think USA & SCIFI may have just gone HD, in which case it's getting really hard to resist. Thank god I haven't subscibed yet, I couldn't go from HD back to SD just for automation purposes.


> Quote:
> Lastly, would there be an issue with using CQC to arm an alarm system instead of having a dedicated alarm panel?



Depends on your opinion of what an "issue" is. On the one hand, no, technically there's no issue with that. OTOH:

1) if there's ever a server hard disk crash while you're out of town, the wife can't arm the system.

2) Resale value - other folks want a regular, simple system

3) Form Factor - in my house, it's easy to find a spot for either the KP1 pictured above or a single-gang KP2. Touchscreens really need to be 8" or so in order to be useful (to me). With a bezel, that's ~10", which gets to be pertty dang obtrusive

4) Code? I wonder if there's any regs that require a valid security system to have panels at the major entry/egress points.


> Quote:
> Thanks for all the great info, I can't wait to start on Home Automation when I eventually buy a house this summer (i'm 20).



You're buying a house @21? That's either truly brilliant (cuz I wish I did) or truly stupid (cuz I felt that spending half my money on wine/women/song and wasting the other half sounded like a good idea at the time).


----------



## dummptyhummpty




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12109954
> 
> 
> Actually I now use the whole-house/HT speakers for some of the "nice-to-have" voice announcements but only in the early am. I use the Elk for alarm, doorbell sound, and a few others that are "mission-critical" and time-sensitive.
> 
> Here's why:
> 
> 1) Wife & I both got bugged at the TV/CD/etc dropping out in favor of the HA announcement. Mixing made both signals unintelligible. I do the TTS stuff in the early am as a wakeup, to announce weather & time so we get out of bed/dress kids correctly. No way will the TV be on then.
> 
> 2) Startup delay. It took my Denon 3805 (HT receiver) ~2s to do the switching if it was on, ~5s to startup & switch to right input if it was off. Doesn't sound like much of a delay, but if someone is at the doorbell that's long enough for them to think it isn't working and pound on the door.



I didn't think of that, that does make sense. Are the Elk speakers the little ones on the keypad or are they different ones?



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12109954
> 
> 
> That's the current hole in the plan. I don't have HBOHD/etc, I'm hoping that once D* cuts over fully to the mpeg4 standard and a few months go by, someone will create an aftermarket mechanism to do this. In the meantime, I get tons of regular HD channels OTA, so it's really only ESPN/HBO; i think USA & SCIFI may have just gone HD, in which case it's getting really hard to resist. Thank god I haven't subscibed yet, I couldn't go from HD back to SD just for automation purposes.



Oh, I never knew there were so many OTA HD stations. I did some googleing yesterday and found this thread which allows control of an HD STB through firewire . The last page (30) has some info about how your cable co (not sure about satellite) has to give you a STB with a working firewire port.



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12109954
> 
> 
> Depends on your opinion of what an "issue" is. On the one hand, no, technically there's no issue with that. OTOH:
> 
> 1) if there's ever a server hard disk crash while you're out of town, the wife can't arm the system.
> 
> 2) Resale value - other folks want a regular, simple system
> 
> 3) Form Factor - in my house, it's easy to find a spot for either the KP1 pictured above or a single-gang KP2. Touchscreens really need to be 8" or so in order to be useful (to me). With a bezel, that's ~10", which gets to be pertty dang obtrusive
> 
> 4) Code? I wonder if there's any regs that require a valid security system to have panels at the major entry/egress points.



Oh yeah good points, that was a dumb question. I thought of the one about the server crashing, but wanted to see if you knew more than I did. The ELK KP2 is really nice! I wouldn't mind that.



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12109954
> 
> 
> You're buying a house @21? That's either truly brilliant (cuz I wish I did) or truly stupid (cuz I felt that spending half my money on wine/women/song and wasting the other half sounded like a good idea at the time).



Hopefully before the summer. My mom's downsizing our house (and I feel it's time to move out) and I don't see myself in an apartment. I was thinking of buying a fixer-up and renting out the extra rooms to people at my college (or in the area).


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *dummptyhummpty* /forum/post/12121358
> 
> 
> I didn't think of that, that does make sense. Are the Elk speakers the little ones on the keypad or are they different ones?



I got these Elk-SP12F single gang speakers and mounted them in-wall.


This is what they look like:










This is the on/off through CQC. Note the mini-pic of that speaker above. I put each speaker through an Elk relay, and I just turn the relay on/off via the CQC->Elk integration.


This proved esp useful on Halloween as I turned off the doorbell (played only via CQC) at 8:30pm when I thought it was too late to condone trick-or-treating. I turned it back on at 10:30pm as the streets were quiet then.


----------



## dummptyhummpty




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12126055
> 
> 
> I got these Elk-SP12F single gang speakers and mounted them in-wall.
> 
> 
> This is what they look like:
> 
> 
> This is the on/off through CQC. Note the mini-pic of that speaker above. I put each speaker through an Elk relay, and I just turn the relay on/off via the CQC->Elk integration.
> 
> 
> This proved esp useful on Halloween as I turned off the doorbell (played only via CQC) at 8:30pm when I thought it was too late to condone trick-or-treating. I turned it back on at 10:30pm as the streets were quiet then.



Ah that's cool! 8:30 too late for Trick-or-Treating?!?!? It's NEVER too late to Trick-Or-Treat! BTW, I'm in CA and I have never heard of a mud room before. I guess around here we use our garages for that.


----------



## IVB

Oy. What would make me revive this thread with a new post?


Anger. Severe Anger. At Myself.


My god**%*&%& NuVo Concerto that I bought off eBay for $500 turned out to be not such a good deal. It just died.


If you consider that I bought the Xantech ZPR68 for $200ish 2 years ago, then this, for just a few hundred more I could have gotten something under warranty new.


I'm unsure about what to do next, figure i'll sleep on it and ask Martin @EHX (get this one fixed and pay for it, etc).


Damn, damn, damn.


----------



## IVB

I finally swapped out 3 of my $40 and unstable wireless window sensors for the hardwired $2 and stable variety. I'll be fully ripping out all wireless sensors, at least the "security" ones, perhaps re-using them for stuff like deck gates where it's a "non-alarm" zone.


I post b/c I finally used the 54" long, 3/8" diameter flex drill bit I bought a year ago to drill through the window. Damn that thing is cool. I used it in a 3-window "bay" that's pushed out from the foundation, so I couldn't just push the drill all the way through and pull the drill bit and then wire out the other side. There's two things I thought were cool:


1) I was able to use my left hand at the middle of the big, just above the hole, to keep it going straight in. I used my right hand to hold the drill, and bend it back about 20 degrees as the window as above the hole and I didn't want to spend 2 hours taking it out/putting it back in. Good thing i've got a relatively high tolerance for pain & heat - I opted to not use gloves or a cloth to hold the bit on my left hand as I couldn't get a "feel" for when I was pushing through wood studs vs subfloor, and when I had cleared it. For those of you who've met me, i'm sure you can picture this; the rest of you, look at what i've gone through over the past 18 months to deploy HA - burning the crap out of my hands was a walk in the park 


2) I have one of those long plastic fish wire sticks, but it had a different and harder flex level than the bit so I couldn't get that through the hole without removing the window. As mentioned before, I couldn't just push the wire through the bit all the way through since I couldn't pull the bit out the other end. Hence, I pulled the bit out of the drill, turned it around, and taped 22/2 to the end; piece of cake to push that through the hole all the way down.


3 wireless sensors swapped out, 13 more to go. I'll have to use the fugly surface mount I can't do this with all of them as I have a/c wiring below some windows. I'm hoping I can embed 75% of them due to the low WAF of surface mount, but the wife agrees that ugly surface mount is better than unstable wireless or no security, so that's something.


----------



## audiblesolutions

I must confess that I admire your balls--are you related to a certain Head coach of an undefeated American football team in New England? I am not sure I'd publish any of those wiring terminations. I am hardly confessing that my home is done much better but I haven't published any pictures of my own wiring










I am in the process of my own rennovation. No, I am not using CQC but I am doing HVAC, CCTV, security, centralized lighting, music and video. My oldest daughter is getting an iPod interface. I stupidly forgot to run a wire for my youngest daughter--a mistake I will rue in a few years. We rewired the entire house, including the high voltage from scratch and no, it was not a gut rennovation I may be no fan of electricians but I, too, colapsed after pulling a 3x4 gage wire 100 feet through joists. I cannot describe how long it took to install the 60 or so high hats and then how long to connect the tails.


Why did you not use L/Bs inbetween your pipe runs? It would have been much neater. You were very wise to use velco instead of wire ties. Most pros, including my guys, prefer wire ties and I hate them. I'm always cutting the wire ties when I have to add a wire, trace a wire or trouble shoot the system. But I also forget to order the very expensive velco which is one more reason my guys use wire ties ( the other is you can torque them down tighter so it looks better and in so doing occationally break a wire but that's an other story).


Alan


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *audiblesolutions* /forum/post/12293795
> 
> 
> Why did you not use L/Bs inbetween your pipe runs? It would have been much neater. You were very wise to use velco instead of wire ties. Most pros, including my guys, prefer wire ties and I hate them. I'm always cutting the wire ties when I have to add a wire, trace a wire or trouble shoot the system.



I'm terrified to ask in case I find out about yet another thing I should have done, but what's an "L/B"? I have to admit, I didn't know about conduits until I had done 15 wires from attic->basement, and was promptly pissed at how much time I had wasted and how ugly it looked.


And don't give me too much credit on the velcro - I used wire ties for the first several months (bought a 500 pack), then after I had to constantly cut them I bought several feet of the endless velcro. Life really is much easier with that.


----------



## audiblesolutions




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12294322
> 
> 
> I'm terrified to ask in case I find out about yet another thing I should have done, but what's an "L/B"? I have to admit, I didn't know about conduits until I had done 15 wires from attic->basement, and was promptly pissed at how much time I had wasted and how ugly it looked.


 http://www.foxelectricsupply.com/con...uctNo=MADLB125 


I am very unskilled at HTML or I'd just have posted the picture. They most certainly come in all sizes and in PVC as well as EMT. Home Depot and Lowes stock them, though I could not locate one on Home Depot's web site.


Essentially it's a 90 degree turn with removable side piece so you can pull wire up the riser and make the 90 degree horrizontal turn. Put the cover back on and no one can see anything but a neat pipe job.


You do not, repeat do not, want to go back and remove the terminations and repull that wire.


Also unrelated but I did most of the high voltage work. It cost the job almost 6 weeks. Minor code screw ups, dumb me did not understand how 220 could work with just 2 wires, it took forever to connect the disconnect to the compressor and then locate a double pole switch for the blower. Outdoor electrical boxes were never cut in properly so they stick out. Service panels took longer than they should have not because it is hard but because I work and this was only part time--while the contractor worked full time. I ordered the wrong weather head for the new service, I forgot to get a new grounding rod and water main ground, need I go on? It's not that I do not do my share of DIY so it's not that I do not understand the imputus for doing it yourself. But an electrician would have known not to locate the disconnect for the compressor directly behind it ( I knew this but my guys didn't ) and were I not out of the state as much as I was earning the money to pay for the rennovation I might have had more time to devote to it. In the end it will all get fixed, pass inspection and I'll have saved a few sheckles. It's a hobby, isn't it? The devil is in the details. Perhpas I will post after pictures as the wiring will be much neater this time ( I hope ). I must confess that I admire the effort you have put in to your project. You do work an other job during the week? And then you do this at night or on weekends? Find any time to see your wife or children or do they see your hobby as an opportunity to endulge their "hobby." shopping? My wife just came back from the mall, but I digress.


Alan


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *audiblesolutions* /forum/post/12295578
> 
> 
> Essentially it's a 90 degree turn with removable side piece so you can pull wire up the riser and make the 90 degree horrizontal turn. Put the cover back on and no one can see anything but a neat pipe job.



Ah, got it. Well I pulled out all the pipe cuz I was having issues with the bends, so now it's just the straight wire. It's just too many damn wires for anything less than 3" pipe, which looks positively monstrous. I'm about to cross the 100wire mark in that location alone now that i'm doing all those windows hardwired. Doesn't look bad at all, actually my builder neighbor thinks it looks better than much of the work his sub's do.


> Quote:
> You do work an other job during the week? And then you do this at night or on weekends? Find any time to see your wife or children or do they see your hobby as an opportunity to endulge their "hobby." shopping?



Yep, got a real job, love it but it's fairly stressful so this is my therapy. It's only 40ish hours/week, so I can usually come home around 5:30ish, hang with the kids until 8pm, hang with wife until 9-10pm, do this stuff until midnight-ish. I don't need more than 5ish hours of sleep per night, it's amazing what one can get done when one doesn't sleep. The wire-pulling/etc is typically reserved from when they'll be out of the house, which is what you state but reversing the cause/effect (i indulge my hobby when they're off indulging theirs).


Then again, about 6ish months ago, right around the time this thread started moving real slow, was when I throttled way back. After all, most everything was done, or "done enough" in my house, so I opted to just sit back and enjoy it. The only time I muck with things now is if I want to make something a little better (ie, the hardwired sensors, i'm currently moving/adding some CCTV as burglaries & auto-theft is increasing in my hood).



> Quote:
> Also unrelated but I did most of the high voltage work.



You are a brave man - that bit is beyond me, and i find my head on the verge of exploding with all that i've learned just with LV, i can't imagine trying to cram anything else in there.


----------



## IVB

I did 2 things this past weekend, one interesting, one frustrating.


1) I got a backbox from CollinR for the bosch 540line variable-focus, variable-zoom bosch camera that I bought, and I finally mounted it. The backbox made it look very clean on a surface-mount, check out the pic.


This was the frustrating thing though - the issue with variable focus, variable zoom is that you have to, well, focus&zoom it. I keep forgetting to take a picture during the day, and to take a snapshot from the recording would mean I have to go downstairs as it's god-awful-slow over VNC. I'll get to that someday when I remember, but it's currently much crappier than my 480L Vitek camera. Oh well.











2) I added 2 more zWave switches to my setup: One in the basement, and one in the pic above, just outside the back door. You'll notice I had to use a screw-in module as i have no 3rd wire, plus the lamp cover now doesn't fit as it's too dang long but the wife is stoked she gets to go shopping for a new cover.


Here's the surprising thing though - both the crawlspace & backdoor are on one side of the house, but suddenly the front-porch switch works *much* faster than it did before. It used to take 1.5s or so to turn on after pressing either the Elk keypad button or the touchscreen. It's been


----------



## lola-d

I just finished reading through all of this. I am very impressed at your gusto. I would have given up around your 2nd post. This has been very enlightening. Thanks for sharing all of this!


----------



## IVB

Heh, you should check out the similar thread on the CQC forum. This one is only 10 pages long, there's a lot more full HA'ers over there asking questions along the way, that one is currently 68 pages!


----------



## IVB

Today's lesson for Vivek was on the value of building an "easily recreateable config", and how far I really am from that. I have an idea in here about what I could request of Dean for future CQC versions to hack around some Windows stuff, but that won't address my XP config issues.


i'm now realizing how much of a non-appliance I deployed for the server. As I posted above, my boot disk died, and given that I had used a P.O.S. non-RAID1 setup, one disk dying = PC dying. If you're going to do software-based HA, you really need to make sure you get a RAID1 boot disk cuz this *will* happen to you at some point.


Well, in true IVB form I got a wee bit lazy and just used the E6850 3.0GHz Core2Duo I temporarily had in the den. It was supposed to be the new HTPC, but then I would have had a 3way machine swap which would have sucked. So now i've got one hell of an overpowered CQC/CCTV server. I'm sure i'll find a way to eat it up, but damn stuff loads near-instantly. Not that it was slow on the 2.8GHz, but this is a clearly noticeable improvement.


But on to my realization. I was thinking it would be a simple "just name the new machine with the same name as the old one, install the cards & sw, and bada bing".


Yeah, not quite. I had some glitches:
Workarounds may be possible:

1) I use CQC for .WAV playback on phone ring or doorbell. But, I used a non-standardized location (C:\\Documents and Settings\\Vivek\\My Documents\\My Music). On the new machine, I hadn't created a "Vivek" user cuz I didn't think of it at the time. I changed it and setup a share drive so that now I point to \\\\cqcmaster\\sounds , and that will have my stuff. Still, there's gotta be a better way. I wonder if I can convince Dean to have a user files section of the \\ProgramFiles\\CQC directory, or perhaps have CQC store it's stuff in some other directory and have him create an official "backup CQC config" routine that captures that stuff. Of course, then he'd need to have a "restore CQC config" which puts it back in the same place.


2) 4) Random XP config settings, like the "sound scheme", comes defaulted to "windows default". As I have the HAPC sound-output hooked up to the Elk-amp input, I need it to be "no sound". I wonder if the "Files & Settings Transfer Wizard" would have that, and whether it would end up picking up extraneous crap too.

Workarounds unlikely or not easy

3) The new mobo has 2 COM ports on it, the old one had none. Hence, all my COM ports are different, so I had to drop/add the drivers that were on it. This makes me *really* respect the concept of complete standardization across all machines, with all PCs designed to the maximum that any one PC needs to be at. Or, *always* setup your systems to start with COM3, and use filler serial cards if the mobo doesn't have a COM1/2.


4) Although I now put a doorbell.wav file in the right place, it's still not working. Well, I just realized that the default sound device is probably set to the s/pdif out, but I need it to be the stereo headphone jack which is what is hooked up to the Elk speakers. Sigh. It's 44 degrees outside, and I have to go outside to get to the basement which is where the stuff is, or else I'd go fix it now. Plus it's night-time, kids are asleep, so I best not muck with the Elk speakers and wake them up.


I'm sure there's more stuff, but that's all i've hit in 24 hours.


I was contemplating using a hard-disk imaging program, but I don't think that route will work for me as I doubt I'd have the same hardware config on any servers given that years would pass and technology would massively improve. I.E., I don't know how an image of a HD built on a 2.8GHz cpu with no COM ports could even dream of working on a C2D RAID1 for boot PC with 2 COM's on the mobo.


----------



## video321

Imaging the server disk would be the easiest way to deal with your issues. Yes, you will have some "clean up" becuase of com port issues and the such when swapping mobos, but nothing major. Hardware isn't that much of any issue with regards to imaging. The "better" programs can handle RAID just fine and go from one hardware platform to the next if configured properly. In addition to that, Vista no longer has issues with HALs like previous versions of Windows.


What I do at work is create a single base XP image with every HAL/Kernel available so it will load on ANY machine we have (from a PIII to a C2 Duo to an Intel Mac). I'll then edit whatever needs to be done and let the custom apps load from the network. This process is even easier at home.


If this sounds like something you want to tackle (yes it is easy), let me know and I'll help you out.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *video321* /forum/post/12367486
> 
> 
> If this sounds like something you want to tackle (yes it is easy), let me know and I'll help you out.



Yes, definitely. The system is still unstable, something is making it randomly reboot itself but once I figure that out i'll def reach out to you. Thanks!


----------



## IVB

Schawing, the wife has a new favorite feature for CQC - it now automatically wakes up the kitchen touchpanel and displays the camera screen if the doorbell rings!


She told me a week ago when I was mounting that new camera that "do we need more? We don't really use the ones we have b/c it takes too long to wake up the touchpanel and load the screen".


Well, we had my daughter's bday party today, and had 14 screaming 6 year old girls and 2 screaming 6 year old boys over. I needed some quiet time after they all left, so I decided to poke around and see how to do this. I'm embarassed to say that it was ludicrously easy - I hadn't actually paid that much attention to the various CQC upgrades after V2.0, here's all I had to do:


1) Disable the screen-saver in XP

2) Add an "auto-blank-after-60seconds" to the OnLoad command for my main kitchen template. (This goes in the OnLoad section of my 'Wrapper_Touchscreen' template for those of you using my screens)


> Quote:
> IntfViewer::SetBlankOpts(60000)



3) Add a "CQC Interface Viewer" driver to be able to remotely control an IV. I called it 'kitchen-IV', which I mention b/c you'll need to know that for the next step.


4) Add a 2nd action to my doorbell trigger (it's hooked up to the Elk) to actually load the overlay. (For those of you using my stuff, the name of my overlay widget in the "Wrapper_Touchscreen" template is "Main_Overlay".)



> Quote:
> Devices::FieldWrite (kitchen-IV.LoadOverlay, Main_Overlay, \\User\\Overlay_Camera)


----------



## IVB

Here's the progress on the basement, of course I couldn't do it normally, I did some interesting experiments/problems:

I used sanded plywood instead of regular plywood.


In typical IVB fashion, I decided to see how using pre-sanded Birch 2' x 4' plywood (as opposed to the rough cut 4' x 8' that you usually see) would work, that way I figured I wouldn't have to cover/paint them or stress about splinters.


The icky thing is that it required 3-4 pieces per wall, as opposed to a single piece. I'll have to put some alignment boards behind it, so it looks flush on the other side. I'll also need to do something about the seams.

I got a bathroom fan, mounted it sideways for venting purposes.


It's currently setup to vent just to the outer room, but if it gets too hot I can use regular 4" pipe to vent to the outside.


Here's pics of the first 2:









Crap. I got a 23" rack

After I bought the rack off eBay, Steve pointed out why it was only $50 for a 20u rack: It was a 23" rack. I'm currently using 2x4's as rack reducers untill I get real metal ones.


Doesn't this just look purty...


----------



## IVB

Talk about god-damn irritating - I spent my kids naptime today trying to figure out why I couldn't pull up my house server. I'm on vacation in Hawaii, and the house-sitter was showing up tonight, I wanted to make sure everything was ok. I thought it was:


1) DynDNS being out, so I pulled up my account to find my latest IP address.

2) I hit the IP address directly, still didn't work. Hmmm. What is going on.

3) I pulled up SageTV PlaceShifter using the IP address. Well, that works fine. (god awful bad PQ as I only got 100kbps, but I did connect and stream The Simpsons).


So at this point I give up. Then, while i'm at dinner, the housesitter calls us, says he's outside the house. For the heck of it, I pull up the server on my Cingular PDA phone. Wow - it works! Whatever was wrong has been fixed.


So now i'm back at the hotel, decide to try it on the laptop again. DAMN - it doesn't work!


It's the identical URL, and on a known good laptop, so on top of all the other random points of failure for internet connectivity, I now have to add "hotel's ISP blocks/does funny biz with traffic going to my house server".


Yet another instance of "CQC works fine, but the stupid internet provider is flaky". Thank god I got the cellphone though, so i'm not totally out of business.


----------



## IVB

Today's lesson: Load balancing your battery backups, and redo your measurements 1-2x/year esp if you have a tendency to add sensors "because you can".


I was in a back&forth with someone on Cocoontech about battery backups of the Elk, when I realized I've added a bunch of stuff after doing my backup runtime calculations, more importantly beyond the headroom I had allocated. I've put a 3rd expander, 3rd keypad, wireless receiver, and output relay on the bus, and a few devices, which are probably adding another 0.5A or more draw. Suddenly my 20 hours of battery backup of the main board are closer to 7. Given that we had a 5 hour power outage 3 weeks ago, which admittedly is rare, I probably should do something to get a little more coverage. The really dumb thing is that I intentionally overspec'ed the 2ndary panel power needs & battery, so i'm currently at 65 hours of coverage there.


I can't simply switch the main & 2ndary batteries as my 2ndary panel would then be much lower than the mainboard, which is bad. Nothing like having the mainboard think that tons of sensors are suddenly going off cuz there's no juice.


Should be a simple & cheap fix though - I wired the Elk M1DBHR data bus hub to power off the mainboard. Given that it's easy to add a 3rd battery, I can just shift that single location to run off a new battery & power source, and then i'll be at least 35 hours everywhere. That's certainly overkill, but it's not like I can order the exact size battery I need for 24 hours, so it's either underspec at 8aH or overspec at 26aH. Since there's only a $50 difference, and since I'm bound to expand again, more headroom doesn't hurt.


----------



## IVB

What fun - I'll spend my remaining vacation fixing all the instability I've introduced by adding new stuff to a perfectly functioning system. I can't blame myself too much - I was trying to make the system more robust/stable, but I cut myself on my bleeding edge (y'all may know some of these things, but it's bleeding edge to me).


This is all made a little more interesting as i'm getting PRK on my 2nd eye on Thursday (had the first one done in September), and I need to be without contacts until then so i'm walking around only being able to see with one eye. It took 5 minutes to tighten one screw cuz it was tiny and I couldn't focus on it easily.


1) Fix the entire CQC system instability I introduced by putting CQC & CCTV on a mobo that, although is a fully Intel system, isn't one of the "approved AverMedia" mobo's, so it's rebooting itself a few times per day. It's the new DP35 chip, why is this CCTV crap so damn touchy!

Solution: See if the CQC Server, SageTV Server (no video rendering), and SQL*Server Express servers can live on the same C2D E6400 box without getting worse. Return CCTV to the cheapo 2.8GHz Intel mobo that I had working just fine for months.


2) Fix the HVAC I broke by adding a 2nd 8870 & Distribution Panel. I thought I wired this up right, but clearly not. The main thermo works, but the 2nd one isn't communicating with the first, and neither are with CQC or Hyperterminal.


3) Fix the CCTV that isn't working cuz I was moving around my equipment while rebuilding that server room and screwed up the RG6-BNC termination by mistake. The fact that I have the wrong ends for the cable, and that the cable is a POS isn't helping.


----------



## video321




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12640477
> 
> 
> 1) Fix the entire CQC system instability I introduced by putting CQC & CCTV on a mobo that, although is a fully Intel system, isn't one of the "approved AverMedia" mobo's, so it's rebooting itself a few times per day. It's the new DP35 chip, why is this CCTV crap so damn touchy!
> 
> Solution: See if the CQC Server, SageTV Server (no video rendering), and SQL*Server Express servers can live on the same C2D E6400 box without getting worse. Return CCTV to the cheapo 2.8GHz Intel mobo that I had working just fine for months.



Ya know....this is why I started to like stand-alone devices more and more.

I work in IT all day & night so I know what I'm doing around a computer. Still, there are so many issues to worry about when consolidating systems and compatability is one of them. Now, you have to start wondering if you'll always need an outdated system because AverMedia won't support anything new; either HW or SW.


Thanks, IVB.....you've reminded me why I started looking at a STB security DVR in the first place










Although I still need to add my 2nd story before I do anything


----------



## IVB

The issue I had with STB Security DVR's was that very few of them truly support mobile devices, and checking the cameras over the cellphone has been truly useful 3-4x/year. Matter of fact, we were in Hawaii for 2 weeks from 12/15->12/29, and used it a few times then.


Not always "mission-critical" stuff though - nearly all our neighbors were also gone, so stuff like "is that stupid free newspaper piling up on our steps, messaging to the world that we're gone". We probably get 1 super-sensitive CCTV retreival per year, but that's enough to make the wife feel good about having that ability for whenever we so choose to use it.


----------



## video321

Is that a feature of the AverMedia software or CQC?

I would, at least like to, think that if CQC can connect to the IP networked portion of the DVR for the image that it will do/scale whatever it is you need. The mobile connection is then made through the CQC server. Or do you just connect to the DVR server on its own bypassing CQC for the mobile device?


----------



## IVB

Avermedia can do direct streaming, I bypass CQC for that. I could set CQC up to grab screenshots regularly updated, but that would probably be 1fps vs the 5-10fps I get directly.


----------



## IVB

Note to self: When building a server room in the basement, don't forget to plug theh sump pump back in just in case you have a torrential downpower. My jigsaw is totally submerged, circular saw is halfway submerged, and tons of cardboard & other tools are pretty much destroyed. And, I have only my forgetfulness and laziness to blame










My basement has a raised portion and a lower portion. I have 3" of water in the lower portion (not where the servers are) cuz I never plugged the damn sump pump back in. I also have 2" of water in 2 different rooms in the basement, which the Elk warned me about via the Waterbug I bought. 


I also just had PRK on my right (dominant) eye yesterday, so I can't see quite clearly, and i'm not supposed to do any heavy lifting, plus I chose to let the kids stay at home today so this'll be interesting. Hmmm. Damn, why isn't there something AutomatedOutlet sells that would actually go clean up the mess!


----------



## ginigma

Super duper roomba time!


----------



## IVB

There are certain days where i'm very thankful that I DIY'ed, because this 96yr old house would have cost me an arm & a leg in hidden/future costs.


Turns out that the floor for the room in question has actually sunk on either side, and the middle is slightly higher. I never noticed b/c the old owners had put in this fugly outdoor carpeting on it, which was very visually deceptive. I only realized it tonight because I finally got sick of the carpet, ripped it out, and noticed these bizarre water pools on the linoleum that was below it. It's on 3 of the floor edges of the lowered floor. Neither me nor a pro would ever noticed, unless the pro happened to have experience in uneven basement floors. I'm bad with small measurements, but it could be as much as 3/4" or so. This is, of course, a very bad thing since I now have equipment located down there.


So now off to learn how to DIY something else - how to pour a 1ish inch concrete but slanted down towards the sump pump hole without any hard gradations that I trip over.


Yeah, that'll be interesting,


----------



## JinMTVT

is it on the first floor on in the basement ?

you want to pour 1inch concrete over? it is wodden floor?


be prepare to over brace the floor from below..

and i'd advise you to use 2" where it is lower so u can get at least 1" thic in the middle

anything lower than 1 inch o concrete don't usually last very long


and invest on a few wire-mesh grills to put in the concrete

doesn't cost much, and it makes the concrete a few time stiffer!!

( don't put it on the bottom..it needs to be in the middle of the slab )


----------



## IVB

Thanks for the tips. It's in the basement, so directly on top of the concrete foundation. I got recommendations for LevelQuik self-leveling. I'm going to get help from someone who has experience with this - I was contemplating hiring someone, but i've had a few different things break around the house in the past 36 hours as a result of the flood so i'm out of money. I'll ask him about this stuff. The hard part is that I need a slight slant, not too much, so it'll direct the water towards the pump. I won't be touching this for a few weeks, so i've got some time to research this.


----------



## IVB

Well, I had a rather frustrating 48 hours with the floods & random stuff dying around the house and being a total PITA to fix, so I decided to update my list of stuff i've bought for insurance purposes. Martin makes it so easy with his running automated order history, plus i've still got my original invoices from ToyMaster who I got my original stuff from.


As there's been a variety of threads lately asking for tips on Elk parts, I figured i'd put the Elk portion here. This doesn't have the zWave or Leviton SMC stuff on it, but I'm already at just under $4000 with this alone (although that's over a 2 year period). I have a feeling i'm missing a few things, but this is certainly 99% of it.


----------



## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/10699895
> 
> 
> Some techie details for those of you who care:
> 
> - Doorbells are rigged up directly to Elk zones using CAT5, so they're very simple open/close circuits.
> 
> - I'm using an Elk-800 amp which can handle 2-16Ohms
> 
> - For each zone, I used a relay on the M1XOVR relay expander
> 
> - I mounted 3 of the 32Ohm Elk speakers in parallel so I get a 10Ohm resistance on that leg
> 
> - I mounted 1 Elk 8 Ohm External speaker and 1 Elk 8Ohm internal speaker on two seperate legs.
> 
> - I *will* be added either a 32Ohm single gang speaker or an 8Ohm regular speaker on leg#4, haven't quite decided which form factor I want.





IVB,


I've really enjoyed your postings on the various forums regarding your HA project - and found them useful. We hope to begin construction in the next 2 months on our new home, and I am in the planning phases for structured wiring, automation, AV, etc. I'll try to be brief, but so far I think: Elk M1G, CQC, Insteon, used component matrix switcher, Nuvo GC.


My question: I plan to separate the Elk announcements / CQC wav's from the home audio speakers like you do. With your 32 ohm surface-mount speakers and Elk-800 amp , do you really get adequate volume? The amp is rated at 10 watts, the speakers at 12 watts. I get the whole calculation of impedance (8 of those speakers in parallel still gives a total 4 ohms - within the amp's tolerances). It just seems hard to believe that that little amp could power 8 speakers in parallel.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *AceCannon* /forum/post/12793423
> 
> 
> My question: I plan to separate the Elk announcements / CQC wav's from the home audio speakers like you do. With your 32 ohm surface-mount speakers and Elk-800 amp , do you really get adequate volume? The amp is rated at 10 watts, the speakers at 12 watts. I get the whole calculation of impedance (8 of those speakers in parallel still gives a total 4 ohms - within the amp's tolerances). It just seems hard to believe that that little amp could power 8 speakers in parallel.



I'll have to try it with all speakers on, with 5 speakers on I can't put it at full volume as it's actually too loud. Keep in mind that it's not for music, just a doorbell or person talking.


----------



## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12794120
> 
> 
> I'll have to try it with all speakers on, with 5 speakers on I can't put it at full volume as it's actually too loud. Keep in mind that it's not for music, just a doorbell or person talking.



Yeah, I hear what your sayin abt music vs talking.. .too true. That's very interesting about the sound level with 5 speakers!


What wire did you use for the 32 ohm speakers? I was thinking of running cat5e to the locations and maybe using a pair for those, 2pair for a motion or glass break, etc. in order to take advantage of the wire run. I guess I was just assuming the wire in cat5e is big enough. .


----------



## IVB

yeah, i used CAT5 too cuz that's what I had laying around and spanky (elk chief engineer) said it was fine. I used both wires in a pair for each side, in case I did something stupid.


----------



## IVB

Well, one more step forward: I setup JRMC to monitor, import, & convert my CQC-ripped repo to mp3, then sync with my iPod. CQC rips with all the valid .wma tags, so it was generally painless. I setup JRMC to monitor my CQC repo folder and auto-import periodically. At this point, all I do have to manually convert WMA to mp3, and JRMC takes care of putting it in a new location. As iPod's can play .wma files and as I have tons of space left on it, it's not that big a deal to do this rarely.


So that's cool then - a relatively painless way to have a quasi-single process for both iPod lossy and CQC lossless. It's near-invisible to me that JRMC is ripping the mp3 to a seperate location, all I gotta do is periodically select all the WMA files and run the conversion routine. It leaves the CQC repo alone, and populates C:\\Music\\Artist\\Album with the rips.


I suppose I could have used iTunes, but damn I really hate that package. It's just sooooo ugly and hard to use.


I still can't get my Aprilaire Distro panel to work, or SageMC to display a list of ripped DVDs in both of my 2 locations, but that's a vent for another posting. I'm sure they're both user error, but there's nothing like seeing how hard it is to do stuff in new packages to make you feel like a newb all over again.


----------



## shawnharper

IVB -


Considering your AverMedia issues (and we've discussed those in the past), have you looked at something like an Axis 2400 or 240Q video server? Another user here is using one for his home, and it just seems so ridiculously simple and easy (and doesn't need a PC).


I'm thinking of implemeting this approach, and am not aware of any reasons why not, so I'd love to hear your opinions.


-Shawn


Thoughts?


----------



## IVB

After my $325/month electric bill last month, I would positively love to ditch the PC and use a server. However, IIRC, the Axis servers don't properly support PDA cellphones, which is one of the wife's "must-have" options after a few false alarms (one where the neighbor called us to tell us our house was being broken into. Eh, she turned out to be a bit older and with worse eyes than we thought).


If PDA cellphone access isn't an issue for you, absolutely go for the server - they're something like 40watt devices.


----------



## CollinR

They also don't record they just stream, something else to consider in your choices.


----------



## IVB

yeah, don't get one that isn't also a DVR. That would be, well, silly










I don't know from model #s that do that though, as I never ended up going down that route. Some day i'm sure I will.


----------



## shawnharper

I run a media center computer 24/7 as well, so I intended to use THAT computer for recording the media. At that point, it could be served to any device, including a PDA, no?


----------



## IVB

what would do the recording and/or serving? Does Axis come with some form of software package for that, both on the PC and on the PDA?


In my case, I use the native AverMedia app to connect directly to the AverMedia s/w running on that PC. That way I get decent quality streaming, and the s/w is pretty feature rich.


If you use a webpage-based mechanism, you'd have to do refreshes or other funky stuff, plus I'd think it would be tough to switch from one cam to another, or perhaps a quad-view. I also have a cool option to go "fullscreen" on my cellphone, hence even though it's an 8125 with a 320x240, 3" screen, it's not too bad.


----------



## shawnharper

I'm not too clear on how it works, but there is a resident program on the computer (probably similar to your AverMedia sw). I'm going to ask the gentleman I've been discussing this with to chime in here.


----------



## jongig

When I get some time I'd like to go through this thread but I can provide a bit of information about the Axis servers as I'm the one that uses one, the 2400+. It's a Linux based, Mpeg2 encoder and it's very functional and is very feature rich. There is a companion software that comes as one package and must be purchased if you plan to use it for more than one feed. It also looses a few functions in the free version. Not enough to care about IMHO. The program resides on the PC as a TSR and it stays logged into the Axis server downloading the stream and saving it to the hard drive. It uses little resources and has many options for how much video to save and in FPS, or time, or upon detection and etc. One picture at my house has a USA flag in it and you can block out the area of the flag since it's always moving, very useful. I save 1 FPS 24/7 and then durring detection it saves at 1FPS and steps back down after 5 minutes with no detection. Useful and saving harddrive space. I have the system email me a picture of the detection so I get to see it on my phone. I've not tried to get streaming video on my phone but I do go to a web page that is java based that works on the phone and updates the picture on the phone every 30 seconds. I have 4 cameras so I go the the web page I've set up for each camera. I've found this very useful and at work I leave a small 320x240 box open on the bottom of my screen that updates the picture every 30 seconds. It's the underwater fish that I watch. I don't worry about the yard since the detection will let me know.


To give you an idea of the ease of saving the mpeg stream. I've used the program on my laptop connected by my cell phone to the internet and the cell is slow and I still could surf the net and not feel like my system was tied up. A lot has to do with the level of compression and the FPS and the resolution.


On my HP with a 3Ghz D925 which by todays standards is not very fast the PC will stay under 5% with the software saving the video. I play Bluray or HD at the same time and with the 8500GT I still don't hit 50%. You do need some harddrive and I use about 125Gig but that seems to be the only place it hogs and that's because I save 30 days of video.


In the software you click on the icon in the tray and opens the application giving you different views and options on looking for or playing the saved video which is saved in chunks. There is also a companion program which gives you the ability to view the saved video on yet another PC. So from another PC you can open a program and it will log into the PC that is saving the video and view it from there.


John


----------



## jongig

I'm sorry but I meant to say that the software upon detection saves video at 10FPS and then steps back down after 5 minutes to 1FPS.


I also find my post a bit confusing in that I'm discussing two parts, the Axis server and the axis software. They are not the same and the server has it's own html based software and can run independent of the software that I was discussing. You also can axis the server from many points at the same time and even have wars over who has access to the PTZ functions at the same time. I have three cameras connected to the server with one having PTZ function.


John


----------



## IVB

Thanks for the post. Does the Axis software have a windows-mobile client, so you can view it over your cellphone via the cellular network, or do you need to do that webpage thing? That's one of the things keeping me with AverMedia;

1) They have a WM5 version of their app that's pretty easy to use on my Cingular 8125 cellphone

2) Allows you to use a DDNS name (ie, i point mine at ivbhouse.dyndns.org so I don't have to worry about my home IP addr changing, as opposed to Kodicomm which only allowed IP addr's, so I'd have to pull up a different page, figure out what my home IP was as my DSL modem resets 1-3x/day, then type that # into the Kodicomm app).


----------



## jongig




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12984701
> 
> 
> Thanks for the post. Does the Axis software have a windows-mobile client, so you can view it over your cellphone via the cellular network, or do you need to do that webpage thing? That's one of the things keeping me with AverMedia;
> 
> 1) They have a WM5 version of their app that's pretty easy to use on my Cingular 8125 cellphone
> 
> 2) Allows you to use a DDNS name (ie, i point mine at ivbhouse.dyndns.org so I don't have to worry about my home IP addr changing, as opposed to Kodicomm which only allowed IP addr's, so I'd have to pull up a different page, figure out what my home IP was as my DSL modem resets 1-3x/day, then type that # into the Kodicomm app).



What fun, you're nuts, but you already knew that? I've really enjoyed your thread and after two cups of coffee a big cookie and a cheese thing that was very good I've come to the end. You have done so much work and although I've read a few complaints along the way I can see that you've had fun. I would have loved to help you with your bracket needs, reworking your 23 inch wide hardware mount and wiring. I have a metal machine shop, wood shop and everything electrical and really, eveything. I once ran a wire for a light switch through a wood beam, no big deal right, except that the hole was 5 feet through a huge finished center vertical beam in my house.


I thought about your aproach to home automation but about 5-10 years ago it wasn't feasable. I've used mostly APC commercial equipment, temperature, smoke detection, failure detection, leak detection. My concerns are different than yours. I live a mile back in the woods and my concerns are electricity to the house, keeping the driveway free of ice and snow, keeping the fish in my 3K gallon pond warm and safe, and getting pictures of any intruders. Where I live the homes get broken into when you're not home and so I chose the insurance route and the video route. Clearly from outside you can see the cameras so you know something is up but what you won't see is just as important. APC makes some really good power equipment that can be hardwired into the house and so control of electrical circuits is possible. I have critical systems connected through an APC backup system and with the software upon the batteries going dead it sends a signal to systems to shut down on their own. I have a couple days of backup and it's a 30AMP 220V system so it can power quite alot. I noticed you talked about this and I'd warn you against letting a backup fall below 50% of battery capacity. The batteries will loose capacity by letting this happen. You also need to replace batteries every 5 years even though they still read good, voltage wise.


The axis server. I don't see a problem with access on a cell phone and the axis has settings that may help. You can even see the video by motion jpeg which I think just about anything can use. My razor sucks for internet and I've not found that it can do anything well so I've not tried it. I've never been able to get it to wrk with pop-mail so I have to use text for otifiactions. On a different phone a friend of mine was able to connect and watch the video real time. The axis has a lot of functionality and one is to ftp images in anyway you want and so I have it ftp to my webhosting company a new image every 30 seconds from all 4 cameras. Two of the pictures end up on my website for famly and friends and with a small java app the webpage updates the pictures in the page every 30 seconds and everyone is happy checking us out. One of the 4 cameras is PTZ and the Axis has the ability to control two PTZ cameras. I wrote another web page which opens just a small java app which reloads the same image every 30 seconds and all interent options are removed so you only see the picture. I wrote this years ago when the cell networks were to slow for streaming video. It works so well that that's still what I use on my cell. I also use it at the office and keep the window at the bottom of my screen and I enjoy watching the fish underwater durring the day.


I tried the PC card years ago and I never got it to work right all the time and I'm sure they are better these days but it seems to use less resources going the way of the Axis. It's a small device that's smaller than a box of crackers and it never goes down. Another thought is where you're saving the video is important. I'm saving to more than one PC and one is not at the house. I have to leave on my HTPC for recording purposes so it's saved on that machine for one.


As for additional software on your cell or PDA there would be no need since the Axis has all the software built in. If you're on a browser that has no support for what you're doing the Axis will notify you and load it for you.


I could also have helped you with your signals problem with the wireless sensors but because of the low power these sensors are not that reliable. All you need is a microwave, cell phone, plasma globe, DC motor (mixer, drill), FL-Light, treadmill and etc. and you will have interference.


I noticed all of your wiring and I have a question for these alarm companies, WHY!!! The APC is able to use CAT-5 and run all the temperature sensors in series and you plug in a terminator on the last one and set a dip switch of each one and then label them in the software. In this day/age you should be able to cat-5 to every sensor throughout the house and maybe at different parts of the house have a module that will allow you to wire up maybe 10 windows with open/close loops. Another idea is coax and each device can speak through the newly run or even existing cable in the home. You'd just have to have a frequency band in the cable filtered out. I really don't get the complexity f this and I fully understand the resistanceand need for a resistor and after dsecting a system more than 10 years ago I thought even then this was dumb technlogy and to find out it's still used makes me shake my head.


Try a search for "view/view.shtml" in google and you'll find more video connections than you can imagine. You will find them all over the world and I've gotten lucky. I just did it and this one is nice http://161.7.8.248/view/view.shtml . It will give you some idea and some will be password protected and some will not.


John


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jongig* /forum/post/12990176
> 
> 
> What fun, you're nuts, but you already knew that? I've really enjoyed your thread and after two cups of coffee a big cookie and a cheese thing that was very good I've come to the end.



Thanks. It's a good thing you read this one, not the duplicate version on the CQC forum. That one is now 72 pages long  .

Some really interesting comments & advice there, but you'd need 2 pots of espresso to get through that.


> Quote:
> I noticed all of your wiring and I have a question for these alarm companies, WHY!!! The APC is able to use CAT-5 and run all the temperature sensors in series and you plug in a terminator on the last one and set a dip switch of each one and then label them in the software. In this day/age you should be able to cat-5 to every sensor throughout the house and maybe at different parts of the house have a module that will allow you to wire up maybe 10 windows with open/close loops. John



Actually, you could use CAT5 to door/window/speaker locations, and do multiple ones. The issue with motion sensors is that they need to carry more current than you can with the 24g CAT5 or 23g CAT6. 22g *might* work, but 18/4 is recommended. For smokes and some other sensor types I can't recall, fire-rated wire is required by NEC, not CAT5. But yeah, other than that CAT5 is just fine.


Of course the issue is where to terminate it, as the motion sensor will likely be in the top corner, away from the doors, which is away from the window, which is away from... You could run CAT5 to the room, and use 22/2 from there to each window/etc.


----------



## jongig




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/12990936
> 
> 
> Thanks. It's a good thing you read this one, not the duplicate version on the CQC forum. That one is now 72 pages long  .
> 
> Some really interesting comments & advice there, but you'd need 2 pots of espresso to get through that.
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, you could use CAT5 to door/window/speaker locations, and do multiple ones. The issue with motion sensors is that they need to carry more current than you can with the 24g CAT5 or 23g CAT6. 22g *might* work, but 18/4 is recommended. For smokes and some other sensor types I can't recall, fire-rated wire is required by NEC, not CAT5. But yeah, other than that CAT5 is just fine.
> 
> 
> Of course the issue is where to terminate it, as the motion sensor will likely be in the top corner, away from the doors, which is away from the window, which is away from... You could run CAT5 to the room, and use 22/2 from there to each window/etc.



In my utopian wiring scheme you'd use a terminator that is a RJ45 plug in type which is what APC uses. The APC motion sensor is just an rj45 plug as is most every connection with APC. It is not a IP-network device but uses standard RJ45 plugs and cat5. They had to do it this way because commercial buildings are wired this way. I had a Axis video camera that connected by one rj45 and used cat5 for both video, audio and power. At both ends was a power over cat5 device. In the APC enviroment most everything is rj45 and the back of the AP9320 that I use is mostly rj45 jacks.


You can run 24 volts over cat5 and my idea is that each device inteligently communicate and thus you'd be able to cascade devices or run them in series and run many of them. The devices you're using are probably 5 volt or maybe 12 volts and the lower the voltage the more limited you are current wise in the smaller gauge wire. I.e. you can run about 1-AMP in 22 gauge wire in a house and at 5 volts that's only 5 watts, not much. At 24 volts you can run 24 watts, nearly 5 times as much. I'm not sure how the power over cat5 works but they probably use more than one pair for power. In 18 gauge you can run 2.3 amps (amps x volts = watts).


Please don't take my response as a debate because this is your thread and I would only want to help if I can and I sure do respect all the work you've done. I tend to see things and say why is it done this way and many times there is a good reason.


John


----------



## IVB

You'd be the first guy to *not* debate me in any thread here










I intellectually understand what you're saying, but as i'm not an engineer all I can say is "eh, that's what the engineering-types told me". Hopefully one of them will jump in here and understand/respond, although typically they're more prevalent on either cocoontech or the CQC forums.


----------



## IVB

Soreness, incredible soreness. Well, maybe not *that* bad, but in yet another example of how Home Automation has led me down some widely tangential paths, moving the equipment ito the basement meant that

A) I would be down there more often, which

B) made me realize it had a tendency to flood, which

C) made me realize the floor wasn't level, and

D) I had to shore it up.


Oy.


Klindemulder (his forum handle) was going to be out here, and knows how to do this stuff, so he extended his trip so that he could help me with this job.


We just spent 2 days going the concrete route as one corner turned out to be 3" lower than the center, plus that way we could slope it. It turned out great, but it started raining yesterday and I realized


E) there's a crack in the foundation that's leaking water into that room.


Double-Oy.


I may have found it, so my next job is to confirm that, get some of the foundation repair goop, and smear away. There are a couple of "low" spots, but that means 1-2mm, after which the water drains into the sump pump, so it's totally cool. Plus if I patch that foundation crack, water really shouldn't be coming into here anyway.


We even had enough concrete left over to repair my broken step 


Check it out. Thanks Keith!

*Before*










*After*


----------



## shawnharper

Wow. Can't tell really what the problem was (or why that small section not being level would even be a problem) but hat's off to Keith for helping you out.


I'm constantly impressed with this forum's (and a few others') members willingness to do selfless things for others on the board, whether it's a very detailed post (or several) sharing their knowledge, or POURING CONCRETE. The ladder, you see less often.


Good luck with that patch job IVB. I have a similar situation down here (we may have the only two basements in the bay area) with water intrusion that I still need to get under control.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *shawnharper* /forum/post/13016694
> 
> 
> Wow. Can't tell really what the problem was (or why that small section not being level would even be a problem) but hat's off to Keith for helping you out.
> 
> 
> I'm constantly impressed with this forum's (and a few others') members willingness to do selfless things for others on the board, whether it's a very detailed post (or several) sharing their knowledge, or POURING CONCRETE. The ladder, you see less often.



1) GO GIANTS!!!

2) Heck, I didn't even post about how, while we were waiting on one patch of concrete to dry, I asked him to look at my furnace water leak. Turns out he knows about that stuff too, and was able to tell me within 30 seconds that the float switch on my condensate pump was bad, and that either I had to replace the entire $80-ish pump or just the switch (may not be seperately orderable).


So, yep, serious huge public thanks to Keith.


----------



## klindy




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13028706
> 
> 
> 1) GO GIANTS!!!
> 
> 2) Heck, I didn't even post about how, while we were waiting on one patch of concrete to dry, I asked him to look at my furnace water leak. Turns out he knows about that stuff too, and was able to tell me within 30 seconds that the float switch on my condensate pump was bad, and that either I had to replace the entire $80-ish pump or just the switch (may not be seperately orderable).
> 
> 
> So, yep, serious huge public thanks to Keith.



No problem IVB! Next month when I'm in your area let's try adding a second floor!










Seriously no thanks necessary. Like shawnharper said, many give selflessly to help others and you're no exception. This was a small way to help where I could. Anything I can help, let me know.


Keith


----------



## IVB

Well, I finally got off my ass and did some of the projects for which I had purchased parts.


1) Put in the SageTV HDExtender, hooked it up to the SDTV (haven't bought the 2nd HDTV yet). Required upgrading to SageTV 6.3 and upgrading the Extender firmware, but man all of that took mere minutes. I haven't really played with it much, but I did try streaming an HDTV program that I typically have issues with and it worked just fine. And *my god*, the new version of SageTV works lightning fast with CQC via the MX850->MRF300->USBUIRT->CQC->SageTV connection. I swear it's barely measured in milliseconds.


2) Switched the Elk reporting to use my DSL connection & ABN Broadband adapter instead of the phone line as the wife was bugged that it would seize the line and cut off the phone when it reported Arming. After my gazillion wiring mistakes, it was pretty easy. I ended up misreading the directions and pulling the full wire to my RJ31X, which I totally did not need to do. But whatever, I'm a DIY'er, of course I'm going to screw up stuff now & again.


3) Cemented the decision to use a single C2D machine for CQC/SageTV/db server, and a slow Intel machine for AverMedia. Some of you may recall that I got a total hookup on an Intel DP35DP mobo and E6850 cpu (C2D, 3.0GHz). I was going to use that for the CQC server & AverMedia CCTV machine, but I've been having massive issues with the AverMedia compatability. It would constantly freeze up, I ended up doing a daily automated reboot. But, my power bill still sucks, so I decided to move it to the office so at least Photoshop will run fast. I've got an old Intel machine laying around that I used to use as the AverMedia box which worked just fine but couldn't handle both CQC & AverMedia as the CCTV would hog the cpu. With any luck the power bill will be somewhat lower as the Intel is much lower power, and the E6850 will be in standby 90% of the time.


----------



## IVB

Interesting unsolicited feedback from wife who just started up the HDExtender to watch TV.


She said "hey, what did you do? The picture quality seems MUCH better." (I used to have an MVP in high quality mode).


I wonder if this means she's more likely or less likely to approve the 2nd Plasma purchase for the MBR...


----------



## pmilin

You should have never made it work with the SDTV in the MBR. Then when she saw how good it works with the HDTV she would have to approve of the HDTV purchase.


----------



## IVB

Hopefully my system isn't showing the first signs of age:


1) I just had my first zWave switch die of natural causes. So that was what, a little over 12 months? Not too bad I suppose, but I hope it isn't the beginning of a wave. (no pun intended)


2) The wiring or insulation for my outdoor speakers has gone bad as one speaker is always on low volume when the power is on, although admittedly the Niles outdoor volume control was pretty tight and I had jammed it all in there when I ran the wiring (2?) years ago. I'm just going to re-run the whole length since I moved the mzone amp location from when I did it.


3) My 3 year old HTPC is acting flaky. It randomly won't play the volume on DirecTV (some stupid audio filter thing), and TheaterTek randomly won't respond to IP control. Reboots take care of it, but that's not a viable answer. I'd switch to the HDExtender and go "client-less", but that means a UMPC in that room for non-TV purposes. I am contemplating doing that, as I hate these a/v or firewall type issues.


----------



## IVB

Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh.


I broke out my Kill-A-Watt, the HTPC is running about 150W on average. At a 30 day month, that's 111 Kwh, which means that PC alone is costing me $39/month.


My god man, suddenly I get ROI on a Sage HDExtender plus IP-Serial Server or miniITX in


----------



## ginigma




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13444940
> 
> 
> I just had my first zWave switch die of natural causes. So that was what, a little over 12 months? Not too bad I suppose, but I hope it isn't the beginning of a wave. (no pun intended)



The switches are pretty expensive for you to think a year is a good lifetime for them. What's the warranty on them? Some people left Insteon for Zwave due to the Insteon switch problems. At least they have a 2 year warranty.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *ginigma* /forum/post/13459022
> 
> 
> The switches are pretty expensive for you to think a year is a good lifetime for them. What's the warranty on them? Some people left Insteon for Zwave due to the Insteon switch problems. At least they have a 2 year warranty.



Sorry, I was unclear. There is zero chance I think 12 months is an acceptable timeframe - at that rate, RadioRA is a bargain as I don't have to keep swapping them out.


My point was - I went 12 months without a failure, as opposed to the Insteon crowd. The next 6 months will be very interesting, I do have 2-3 extra zWave switches that I purchased, but if I use them up as more switches blow, i'm going to look elsewhere. I might even try and get HomeWorks RF, but i'll defer that decision until the fall/winter, when the economy and my wife's job security are better known.


----------



## Joelc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13453527
> 
> 
> Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh.
> 
> 
> I broke out my Kill-A-Watt, the HTPC is running about 150W on average. At a 30 day month, that's 111 Kwh, which means that PC alone is costing me $39/month.
> 
> 
> My god man, suddenly I get ROI on a Sage HDExtender plus IP-Serial Server or miniITX in


----------



## Somewhatlost

 this is a sage HDextender a small, somewhat cheap media extender, that unlike MS Media Extenders actually extends media... strange concept, Microsoft should pay attention to this... but they wont...


IP-serial server is just a box with a bunch of serial ports on one side, and an Ethernet connection on the other... simple really...


minITX is just a really small, low power PC motherboard...


----------



## IVB

Yeah. I'm going client-less, but I got 6 RS232 devices in the media closet that need controlling. I can get:

- Sage HDExtender to render the live TV or ripped DVDs

- IP-serial server like this one so I can control those devices through a serial-over-network connection

- or, option B would be a tiny, low-powered PC ie 60watts, with a USB-serial expander to have a "pc" in that room but with much smaller power draw.


----------



## Joelc

Somewhatlost and IVB...thanks, I obviously have a lot of learning an reading still to do...


----------



## IVB

You and me both, brother, it never ever ever ever ends...


BTW, if you really want reading, the CQC version of this same thread is up to 75 pages. Obviously a ton more chatter over there about specific questions to how i'm doing what.


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13453527
> 
> 
> Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh..



If I were paying anything near that price, I would be covering every inch of my roof with solar arrays! You didn't explain how your bill is calculated but at almost $.35 per KWH, even a partial solar system with a grid-tie inverter should be a no brainer business case.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *maddogmc* /forum/post/13464345
> 
> 
> If I were paying anything near that price, I would be covering every inch of my roof with solar arrays! You didn't explain how your bill is calculated but at almost $.35 per KWH, even a partial solar system with a grid-tie inverter should be a no brainer business case.



Baseline is ~300Kwh/month

Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556

Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139

Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708

Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555

Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190


I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.


----------



## Joelc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13464002
> 
> 
> 
> You and me both, brother, it never ever ever ever ends...
> 
> 
> BTW, if you really want reading, the CQC version of this same thread is up to 75 pages. Obviously a ton more chatter over there about specific questions to how i'm doing what.



IVB, thanks for the link...that said, I have enough trouble finding time to pour through AVS and the two or three other forums I frequent on a daily basis let alone add another...now, if only I did not have to work to pay for my toys...


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13464384
> 
> 
> Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
> 
> Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
> 
> Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
> 
> Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
> 
> Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
> 
> Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190
> 
> 
> I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.



That is a killer rate structure! I would go broke with that pricing! My electricity (around 2100 Kwh/mo. in the summer) is a single flat rate close to your tier 1 rate! I would certainly be looking to find a way to at least replace the Tier 4 & 5 power with an alternative.


----------



## IVB

Yeah, suddenly power conservation is *much* more important to me as it's the quickest & easiest path right now.


Would you believe that one of my neighbors who doesn't have much less equipment than I do claims to only do 245 Kwh per month? The woman is an environmental nazi though, hat's off to her for that.


----------



## WayneDB123




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13464384
> 
> 
> Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
> 
> Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
> 
> Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
> 
> Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
> 
> Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
> 
> Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190
> 
> 
> I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.



If you are planning to add another floor, you might want to look at Solar Shingles.
http://www.oksolar.com/roof/ 
http://www.solar-components.com/pvshingl.htm


----------



## smoothtlk

Looks like you need to put several meters with seperate billing on your house to get Tier1 pricing on each


----------



## IVB

Hehe, yeah that would be sweet revenge.


What I *really* don't get is why, when I posted to my neighborhood's Yahoo Group about the 6x cost per Kwh differential between CA and most other states, everyone replied with "you need to conserve more". Folks are suggesting that "appropriate" consumption is closer to the 300Kwh->500Kwh levels, any more and i'm wasting power. I don't see how it's physically possible to do that with 4 people in a household.


I mentioned what many of the cocoon'ers said were there consumptions (3000Kwh->7000Kwh), and it didn't seem to phase them.


No shocker to many of you who've seen my posts for the past few years, but good lord do I get bugged about living so close to Be-zerk-eley. They get all worked up about the wrong things...


----------



## lorenkoeman

Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.


FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and


----------



## WayneDB123




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *lorenkoeman* /forum/post/13474138
> 
> 
> Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.



Southern California has a lot of alternative energy plants. I still have a solar panel from one that closed.


We have giant windmill farms and several Solar plants.

Where I live I can see 6 10kw bergey wind turbines that people are buying for home use.


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *lorenkoeman* /forum/post/13474138
> 
> 
> Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.
> 
> 
> FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and


----------



## IVB

Heck, my family of 4 used 1025 Kwh last month, and y'all have seen my setup. Currently 3 PCs on 24x7, although I did just realize the 3400 is a touchpanel PC also on 24x7. The shocker for me was that the HTPC alone drew 150W 24x7, slightly higher while rendering (160ishWatts). That's 100 Kwh/month right here.


Time to get a Kill-A-Watt...


----------



## shawnharper

Here's another data point for you IVB. We're close by, so the climate/charges should be similar. I am kinda an energy freak at home, so take that into account. Just my wife and I. The dog uses little electricity. 2600 sqft 2-story house.


Baseline Quantity 352.8 Kwh

Baseline Usage 352.8 Kwh @ $0.11556

101-130% of Baseline 106.8 Khh @ $0.13139

131-200% of Baseline 93.3 Kwh @ $0.22708


Total of ~553kwh for a month (2/22-3/21).


I have 2 PCs running 24/7, a main fridge and two "bar" fridges. We have a radiant floor (electric) in the master bath, that runs 2hrs a day at ~600W.


Sure wish the Kill-a-watt could have your $/kwh programmed in so that it read in dollars instead (I know, a nit). I use it but it doesn't "hit home" as much as if it read "The thing costs you $x.xx a month to run."


----------



## shawnharper

Heck. More info

*Billing date kwh*

3/21/2008 553

2/22/2008 619

1/22/2008 888

12/21/2007 786

11/21/2007 652

10/23/2007 555

9/24/2007 673

8/23/2007 572

7/25/2007 623

6/25/2007 622

5/24/2007 504

4/25/2007 468

3/26/2007 575


----------



## IVB

Jesus; i seriously have something wrong in my house. No idea how your usage is half of mine, even though I have a family of 4.


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *shawnharper* /forum/post/13490954
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> Sure wish the Kill-a-watt could have your $/kwh programmed in so that it read in dollars instead (I know, a nit). I use it but it doesn't "hit home" as much as if it read "The thing costs you $x.xx a month to run."



I think the latest version does allow you to put in your rate and get a running $ total but it probably doesn't allow for a multi-tier rate structure.


If you want something that will provide for multi-tier rates and various other tools, look into Brultech, not cheap but does provide a lot of flexibility.


----------



## shawnharper

Well, we did just completely renovate the house. New windows/insulation, new appliances, etc, so we probably have some efficiencies you don't.


----------



## IVB

So I just checked the power usage one of my old PCs that I gave to my kids, my god what interesting results.


My Abit NF7S2 with the AMD3200 and 3 hard disks uses up 85W in normal mode, goes to 100W when checking the hard disk. Remember, my C2D was doing 150W/160W.


But that's not the interesting bit; I turned it off, dropped it down to 1 hard disk. Dang! It's now down to 65W normal, peaking to 80W when I'm accessing the hard disk! I'm going to slap a Moxa card in there to see what that does to the load but i'm sure it's less than yet another serial expander. So, it looks like i won't be going with the mATX PC in the media closet.


But, I *am* interested in seeing what CollinR's experiment with the Intel Little Valley and the NV5000 turns up; I may get one for that PC.


----------



## IVB

Ok, I asked for power fees from a bunch of folks, and the data received to-date compiled. I got 22 states, plus 2 canadian provinces and australia. It was seriously all over the map in terms of approach, so I uploaded the raw data here , but also created a list of what it would cost for 1000Kwh/month in each location. I'm #2, at least one location is higher prices. Then again, i'd rather be there than where I am, so I gues you get what you pay for 


Here's the surprise for me - Some states actually give you a bulk discount for higher tiers. Whereas NorCal starts at $0.11/Kwh and builds up to $0.36, Duke Energy of Ohio charges $.09/Kwh for the first 300, but $.044/Kwh for anything over 1000Kwh! (yes, there's not an extra zero there - marginal costs over 1000Kwh in Ohio are nearly 10x cheaper than CA!)


There's 38 entries as many states had different prices based on the season. Also, I sometimes got different prices for the same state as folks had different companies.


Let me know if there's info I didn't show that you'd like to see.


----------



## IVB

Dang, so what, 17 months later I *finally* use the surface mount sensors I have to hardwire my windows. (remember that wireless sensor debachle - still haven't lived that down). We just put in a patio, so now 2 windows are kinda within reach, hence there was a clear "change imperative".


didn't turn out too awful; certainly a little uglier than I would have preferred, but there's A/C wiring directly below the windows, so the recessed type would haven't been cost-effective.


Check it out.


----------



## IVB

Well, I took the day off work to run some additional network & telephone wiring in 3 different rooms, and just clued into what Zaccari was trying to tell me in the chatroom months ago. And damn, this will require re-running 2 telephone runs and buying/selling stuff if I want to "do it right".


For the phone, I've got a Leviton SMC that I've been running CAT5 to, crimping an RJ45 on one side and RJ12 on the other. Well, I just ran another length for the phone and it ain't working, and I keep screwing it up. In that location I had already run the network wiring completely, including jack and patch panel, so I had one working jack. But, I need a phone in that location today (don't ask).


Well, I suddenly remembered what Zaccari told me he does, which is to run all 8 pairs to RJ45 on both ends, and just run the patch panel wire to either the network switch or the telephone hub. My telephone & network switches are ~3' apart so I got a working network cable, moved the patch channel connect from the network switch to the Leviton, and Lo & Behold - It works!


Well avoiding crimps on either side and putting it into a patch panel is much more convenient for initial setup, and the ability to switch the port from telephone to network is also very nice.


But Stupid stupid vivek, i got a bunch of RJ12 and 6pin quickport connect thingeys. And dumber yet, the 2 telephone lines I ran are cut to length to the current telephone switch location.


It'll be pretty quick to re-run both those wires, maybe 30 minutes max each run since it's so easy to access, but it's the redoing of something I did that kills me.


Then again, perfect is the enemy of good, so I should have expected no less from me...


----------



## IVB

Well I'm screwed wife-wise now.


I was going to buy the 720p RS232-controllable Panny 50" commercial version for $1250 from visualapex. I walked into Magnolia yesterday., looked at the Pioneer Elite Pro1150HD (720p set).


- I looked at the 50" Panny 720p sitting directly next to it. ($1700 for the consumer model)

- I looked at the $2500 price tag, ie twice the price of the commercial Panny.

- I noticed the 6 month zero interest option.

- I noticed the detachable speakers, which could be used in my den as i'm currently one speaker set short of 11 rooms/zones of audio.

- I noticed that a CQC'er is succesfully controlling his Pro1150HD via the RS232 port even though it says "service only".

- I noticed that i'll probably not buy another plasma for 3-5 years, and really, what's an extra $1250 over that timeframe?


It'll be delivered Saturday, from 12pm-3pm.


I just called the wife to tell her. Unfortunately she works very close to the shopping district.


I wonder what she'll notice on her way home.


----------



## Joelc

You know...it is amazing to me how one sided realtionship can be because:


1. we as men are suppose to learn and adapt to female behaviour; BUT


2. we as men have no right to expect woman to do the same...


Time for stand..we are men and this is what we collect / do as it is in our genetic makeup...


Off of soap box now!


----------



## galileo2000




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13640821
> 
> 
> Well I'm screwed wife-wise now.
> 
> 
> I was going to buy the 720p RS232-controllable Panny 50" commercial version for $1250 from visualapex. I walked into Magnolia yesterday., looked at the Pioneer Elite Pro1150HD (720p set).
> 
> 
> - I looked at the 50" Panny 720p sitting directly next to it. ($1700 for the consumer model)
> 
> - I looked at the $2500 price tag, ie twice the price of the commercial Panny.
> 
> - I noticed the 6 month zero interest option.
> 
> - I noticed the detachable speakers, which could be used in my den as i'm currently one speaker set short of 11 rooms/zones of audio.
> 
> - I noticed that a CQC'er is succesfully controlling his Pro1150HD via the RS232 port even though it says "service only".
> 
> - I noticed that i'll probably not buy another plasma for 3-5 years, and really, what's an extra $1250 over that timeframe?
> 
> 
> It'll be delivered Saturday, from 12pm-3pm.
> 
> 
> I just called the wife to tell her. Unfortunately she works very close to the shopping district.
> 
> 
> I wonder what she'll notice on her way home.



Hi IVB long time no see.


Something less than 1080p in 2008? And wait another 3-5 years before getting 1080p?


Oh well.


----------



## shawnharper

Guess I'm not up on my FPTV's, but I really don't understand why you'd pay that much more (double?) for one. Especially since you seem to be programming CQC more than watching TV/movies!


Can you run down the rationale for those of us who may not understand? (i.e. I own a Vizio LCD from Costco and am completely happy with it)


I do realize this is AVS, and we're known to spend too much for our toys, but that purchase (lavish) is in direct contrast to using the detachable speakers from the TV for one of your zones (cheap).


----------



## chrisdias

If you get in trouble, you could point out that ... you could have been like me and paid $3500 in late january for the exact same TV. You saved $1000!


It is fantastic - it does a great job with non HD channels, which was one of the big reasons I bought it. The detachable speakers are pretty good. I plugged in a powered sub and I am good to go.


----------



## chrisdias

For me, I bought it for the picture... I read alot on the Plasma forum about this generation of Pioneer Kuros and many folks gave it great reviews. The contrast and picture are fantastic. It does an awesome job of non HD channels. I have the ability to tune the picture as well per the specs on teh Plasma forum, but have not gotten around to that yet. I went with the elite because I was hoping to control it thorugh the RS232.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *galileo2000* /forum/post/13641314
> 
> 
> Hi IVB long time no see.
> 
> 
> Something less than 1080p in 2008? And wait another 3-5 years before getting 1080p?
> 
> 
> Oh well.



Hey dude. Yep, no 1080p for me at this time.

1) I sit 12' back from the TV (opposite sides of the Family Room), and I couldn't personally tell the difference between 1080p and 720p. Sure, when I got to ~7' I could tell clearly, but there is absolutely zero chance I would sit that close. Heck, I'd never sit at 11'.

2) Given that there's almost no 1080p content right now and that I went the same path of "1 technology back" with my $3500 EDTV set back in 2005 which worked out well, I figured I'd go the same route.

3) The fact that the 50" Pio Elite 1080p was $4000 sealed that deal.



> Quote:
> Guess I'm not up on my FPTV's, but I really don't understand why you'd pay that much more (double?) for one. Especially since you seem to be programming CQC more than watching TV/movies!



I didn't look at it as "double", I looked at it as $1250 more over 4 years, assuming I ditch the EDTV then and put the 50" in the MBR, and get the 75" 1440p for the FamilyRoom. For $300/year, or $25/month more, I can get a TV that I would never look at and think "yeah that's pretty nice, sure wish I got the Pio though".


----------



## Somewhatlost




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13641762
> 
> 
> Yep, no 1080p for me at this time.



Heresy!!! your AVS Special Member privileges should be forcibly removed from you!!!









who would of thought we would ever see the day of: *IVB the Heretic AV guy*...




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/13641762
> 
> 
> I didn't look at it as "double", I looked at it as $1250 more over 4 years, assuming I ditch the EDTV then and put the 50" in the MBR, and get the 75" 1440p for the FamilyRoom. For $300/year, or $25/month more, I can get a TV that I would never look at and think "yeah that's pretty nice, sure wish I got the Pio though".



I like Pioneer's, there is just something about them that is better then mere mortal TV's... I haven't looked at any of the newer ones, so my opinion is based solely on the old RPTV's... but they just looked/worked better...


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Somewhatlost* /forum/post/13649045
> 
> 
> I like Pioneer's, there is just something about them that is better then mere mortal TV's... I haven't looked at any of the newer ones, so my opinion is based solely on the old RPTV's... but they just looked/worked better...



Not just you; when I looked at it live, literally next to the Panny TV, it was clearly a more "polished" look. Certainly wasn't 2x as good, but given that I only get one more bite at the apple in the next 4-5 years, I went for it. There's a solid money-value to "zero regrets".


----------



## galileo2000




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Somewhatlost* /forum/post/13649045
> 
> 
> Heresy!!! your AVS Special Member privileges should be forcibly removed from you!!!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> who would of thought we would ever see the day of: *IVB the Heretic AV guy*...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Second this.


IVB, behave yourself


----------



## Somewhatlost

Just to be clear, I was being just a tad bit sarcastic....









720P on a screen smaller then 70" at a reasonable viewing distance well look just fine 99.99999% of the time... its only on AVS where people are more concerned about some random number than they are about the actual picture quality that these things come up...


----------



## jac7788




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *lorenkoeman* /forum/post/13474138
> 
> 
> 
> FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and


----------



## IVB

Hmmm. I don't actually know much about virtual machines, i'm not really that techie.


----------



## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jac7788* /forum/post/13707335
> 
> 
> Have you considered using VMWare to host all three machines on 1 power efficient multicore server? I use an 8 core server to host virtual machines for video server, file server, transcoding server, and automation server. It makes more efficient use of processing power as one virtual machine is idle, other VMs can use the cpu resources but keeps each function separate from each other.



Hmm interesting.


So what do you think of these rack-mount servers ? Could I grab one of these cheap and install a non-server OS on it to use for CQC? (XP Pro)


----------



## jac7788

Yes Xp should work well on those and those prices look really good as well.


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jac7788* /forum/post/13707335
> 
> 
> Have you considered using VMWare to host all three machines on 1 power efficient multicore server? I use an 8 core server to host virtual machines for video server, file server, transcoding server, and automation server. It makes more efficient use of processing power as one virtual machine is idle, other VMs can use the cpu resources but keeps each function separate from each other.



I'm interested in this approach but know very little about VMWare and operational efficiencies on a multi-core PC/Server. Can you provide a brief description of your hardware and software installation?


----------



## jac7788

Most of the software I use I wrote over the last 3 years from the ground up (in C, perl, and Visual Basic): dvr recorder and scheduler, web interface to dvr, XML based scripting engine and RS232 device driver framework, and the touchscreen user interface. (want to release as an open source alternative to CQC, but not quite done yet)


Server consists of dual AMD Opteron Quad Core processors running linux and vmware. There are 4 virtual machines that do the following: hosts media database (mysql), dvr recorder and scheduler, automation script engine and video transcoder (mencoder w/ x264), and windows server 2003 to serve touchpanel ui using RDP.

VMWare gives me all the benifits of running 5 (4 virtual + 1 host) seperate computers with the cost saving of running just 1.

vmware.com has alot of good info and there are alot of how to's on the internet on getting starting using it


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jac7788* /forum/post/13723026
> 
> 
> 
> Server consists of dual AMD Opteron Quad Core processors running linux and vmware. There are 4 virtual machines that do the following: hosts media database (mysql), dvr recorder and scheduler, automation script engine and video transcoder (mencoder w/ x264), and windows server 2003 to serve touchpanel ui using RDP.
> 
> VMWare gives me all the benifits of running 5 (4 virtual + 1 host) seperate computers with the cost saving of running just 1.
> 
> vmware.com has alot of good info and there are alot of how to's on the internet on getting starting using it



Thanks!


That is what I wanted to know. What version of Linux are you using as the base operating system, how much memory on the system, can you handle multiple video adapters/streams, etc?


----------



## jac7788

Im using Centos 5.1 with a 2.6.24 kernel and 4GB of ram. Its got 2 cable boxes connected by firewire, 1 ATSC card, and a Hauppauge PVR1600 for analog s-video capture. It has no problem recording 3 HD streams, streaming 3 HD programs to different rooms, and transcoding an MPEG2 to H264 HD program at once with out any hiccups.


----------



## video321

Hey guys.....

I can tell you that VMware is great and will run smooth with little fuss (just don't expect much/any 3D support). The best thing about running virtual is using snapshots for testing and recovery. Have an issue....just select a snapshot to return to. I use it for all of my Internet surfing. I no longer care about getting adware/spyware or any viruses installed. I just restart the VM and it's a fresh install just like that! We have it at work for the servers and I just use the free player for home use, which the site even has "appliances" for. VMware for server installs is free. You can also check out Microsoft's desktop version which was free the last time I checked, but no USB support.


And since I know that some people are concerned with their electric bill (right, IVB







) consolidating servers makes better use of power management.


----------



## IVB

I'm ignoring these posts as I just bought that Pio plasma a week ago, and a Dell laptop last night to replace the one that's dying.


I can't afford to think about dual 4 core cpu's...


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *jac7788* /forum/post/13724235
> 
> 
> Im using Centos 5.1 with a 2.6.24 kernel and 4GB of ram. Its got 2 cable boxes connected by firewire, 1 ATSC card, and a Hauppauge PVR1600 for analog s-video capture. It has no problem recording 3 HD streams, streaming 3 HD programs to different rooms, and transcoding an MPEG2 to H264 HD program at once with out any hiccups.



I have been looking for reviews/test of dual processor motherboards without success. If you don't mind, could you possibly give me a few more details on your system? If you are happy with it, the motherboard and the PS used in your system would be very helpful. Also, you covered your HD stream handling ability but can you also directly supply HD video via the internal video card without impacting your record streams?


The functions I am looking to integrate are:


HD Recording OTA and Cable (2 simultaneous)

Direct HD Playback (1 component stream)

Audio and Video server

Home Automation

Video surveillance system ( I have a 8 port board currently in a system, don't know how well this will work in a VM system since they seem to be picky about exactly what MB/processor they will work with in a stand alone system.)


Any guidance will be greatly appreciated!


----------



## asteinmetz

Be aware that these 1U servers are screaming banshees, in my experience with 2 Dell machines (Poweredge 1650 and 1750). They run multiple 40mm "squirrel cage" fans to push a lot of air through narrow channels. If I run 'em in the basement I hear them on the main floor. I have to raise my voice to be heard if I'm standing next to them.


----------



## maddogmc




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *asteinmetz* /forum/post/13745772
> 
> 
> Be aware that these 1U servers are screaming banshees, in my experience with 2 Dell machines (Poweredge 1650 and 1750). They run multiple 40mm "squirrel cage" fans to push a lot of air through narrow channels. If I run 'em in the basement I hear them on the main floor. I have to raise my voice to be heard if I'm standing next to them.



Thanks for that insight. I worked in noisy telcom environments for years and have no desire to import anything like that into my home! I plan to use a full size PC case with the quietest fans I can find. It will also be in a totally enclosed cabinet with a slide out rack for service.


----------



## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *maddogmc* /forum/post/13745952
> 
> 
> Thanks for that insight. I worked in noisy telcom environments for years and have no desire to import anything like that into my home! I plan to use a full size PC case with the quietest fans I can find. It will also be in a totally enclosed cabinet with a slide out rack for service.



My plan is to use these racks in the back of an insulated 4'10" by 7' closet on the main level. I assumed noise from within would not be an issue, but I've never tinkered around with a piece of kit like these 1u machines. . .


I read a 2005 review of a Tyan GS12 rackmount server (1u).. It said


> Quote:
> "It's cooled by two ferocious 40mm fans at the front of the casing, which spin up to full power when you turn the server on, and may frighten small children. The fans are thermally controlled, though, so a GS12 without much CPU load shouldn't make much more of a racket than a regular desktop PC."













I'm thinking about trying one of this type of server . The price point is enticing enough that I am going to risk the noise issue.


----------



## AceCannon

Ergh Just saw a review of a more recent 1u server (Enlight SR-1074 1U Server Chassis).. ELEVEN 40mm fans.



















From the review:


> Quote:
> "Be warned, the noise levels from the fan unit will cause small children to cry and the entire box may take off into space when all fans are running. With all 11 fans running there is so much air being moved and so much noise coming from them that it is hard to hear other people talk!"


----------



## jac7788




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *maddogmc* /forum/post/13745171
> 
> 
> I have been looking for reviews/test of dual processor motherboards without success. If you don't mind, could you possibly give me a few more details on your system? If you are happy with it, the motherboard and the PS used in your system would be very helpful. Also, you covered your HD stream handling ability but can you also directly supply HD video via the internal video card without impacting your record streams?
> 
> 
> The functions I am looking to integrate are:
> 
> 
> HD Recording OTA and Cable (2 simultaneous)
> 
> Direct HD Playback (1 component stream)
> 
> Audio and Video server
> 
> Home Automation
> 
> Video surveillance system ( I have a 8 port board currently in a system, don't know how well this will work in a VM system since they seem to be picky about exactly what MB/processor they will work with in a stand alone system.)
> 
> 
> Any guidance will be greatly appreciated!



The specs of my server are below. Yes so far I like the system alot. I couldnt get my old PVR150 card to work with the MB, and I'm pretty sure it was a 5V card and the board only has PCI-X slots which only take 3.3V cards. I had some issues with the 4 port eSata not being recogonized by the OS randomly and Supermicro tech support (they are really good and respond quick) couldnt figure it out, and finally the manufacture of the card sent me a new firmware which resolved the issue. I also had the IPMI remote management card die on me, but the sent me a replacement overnight and has been good ever since. Currently I do not have a video card installed in the system, it just has the onboard ATI card that I use to administer it so I cant say for sure, but capturing HD tv as MPEG2 then writing to disk is very easy on the CPU and the program which is responsible for this never goes about 2-3% cpu time, so im sure it could record and play multiple streams no problem. But I wouldnt want to transode MPEG2 to H264 while watchin live or recorded HD, that is much more CPU intensive. The case is extermely loud and I keep it in its own room. Alot of cases that are made for extended ATX boards are going to be loud though and keeping them in a bedroom/media room will be unbearable.


What Automation Server, Surv System, Music/Video Server software are you looking at using?


Based on the functions you are looking to intergrate, you would only be able to use 1 virtual machine for the automation server and have the rest of the software run on the host machine, since for video catpure VMWare doesnt have direct access to the PCI bus.


- Supermicro H8DME-2 AMD nForce motherboard ( http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/moth...55/h8dme-2.cfm )

- (2) AMD Opteron 2350 Quad Core 2.0Ghz cpus

- (2) Western Digital Raptor 160GB system disks in raid1

- (24) Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500Gb data drives in 3 software raid5 arrays

- (1) SIIG 2 port PCIe Firewire card

- (1) pc5000HD ATSC capture card

- (1) Hauppauge HVR-1600 capture card

- (1) Addonics Sil24 4 port eSata card

- (1) Supermicro 8 port internal sata card

- (1) Supermico SIMLC+ IPMI Remote KVM/Management card

- (1) Supermicro 4U tower case http://www.supermicro.com/products/c...C942i-R760.cfm with 760 Watt triple redundant power supplies.


----------



## maddogmc

Thanks for the detailed breakdown of your system. The more I understand about VMWare and coupled with your comments, the more I think the applications I want to integrate won't benefit or even work in the VM world. I may be able to load up a single OS/multi processor system with most of the apps but probably not everything I want to do.


More research needed!!!


Thanks again!


----------



## video321

As mentioned by jac7788, VMware cannot use expansion cards, but can use USB 2.0 devices. Keep in mind that only 1 "machine" may use a usb device at a time. However, there is a way to force connect a particular usb device to the same machine without worrying about machine focus issues.


----------



## IVB

Tangible progress after the break. I'm *this* close to being client-less, and using Sage HDExtenders for everything.


I just put in an extender in the H/T media closet. Of course, the second it was done, the wife decided she wanted to watch a netflix DVD that we had so we had to resort back to the HTPC to play that back. So, today I went & got a Marantz DV6001 DVD player with RS232. It was on clearance @Magnolia for $170 so it seemed like a decent deal. I wanted 2way for superior logic-coding ability, but given how rarely we watch physical DVDs I wasn't going to spend much on it.


The hardest part has been figuring out how to use a hardbutton remote control for everything. I'm sure the pros have this figured out as they do it 100 times, but this is the first time i've had to think through this. I've been crutching on the Bluetooth mouse for the mentally difficult stuff. Although I have an MX850 with multi-page support, I didn't want to use more than 1 page as the wife & 6 yr old kid will get baffled and call me, which defeats the point.


Here's what I came up with. I used line #s on the picture, i'll explain those below.











The system is wired such that the 3 component video & audio streams run to the Denon3805, which does the switching.


Line 2/4/5 select which component video stream you want, and sets the Denon to that.


Line 1 is just there for while I run redundant systems, hopefully it's pulled out within 7 days.


Line 3 & 6 are specific to Sage, and either go to the home menu or the recorded shows.


The rest of the buttons rely on CQC to determine what the current device is (as determined by the current source input on the Denon), and only pass it the appropriate command (ie pause/play).


Line 7 is an example of some pretty cool usage of the 2way Sage TCP driver. As you may know, there's 4 different right arrows on the standard SageHDExtender remote , which do:

While on a menu:

- move cursor right

While playing video:

During Video Playback:

- Fast Forward

- Skip Ahead 30 seconds

- Skip Ahead 3 minutes


So the big question is how to simplify that. Too many damn buttons on that Sage remote for me. I decided that

1) we never need to FFW as we are content with skip ahead.

2) I can use the 2 current MX850 buttons (right and next) for the 30 sec/3min/right by first checking to see if the HDExtender is in Play mode. If it is, then the right button must mean skip 30secs. If not, then it must be in browse mode, so move right.


The volume buttons act directly against the Denon, but everything else is analyzed by CQC to determine where it should send what.


I just finished that up an hour or two ago, so i'll sit with this to see how it feels. I already found some holes in the logic that you see as fixed, who knows what else is out there.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Tangible progress after the break. I'm *this* close to being client-less, and using Sage HDExtenders for everything.



And it is now done. I just removed the SageClient and Theatertek drivers from the HTPC, and I am now only using the HDExtender/777/Marantz as video sources in the H/T room, and only the HDExtender in the MBR.


For the rare occurrence that we watch one of the Sony-777 DVDs, I've been using CQC on my laptop. The wife has her own laptop now too, so she can do the same there. But honestly, 90% of our TV lately has been recorded TV, another 5% is ripped DVDs, the final 5% being a netflix DVD that we watch same-day (as in, don't waste time ripping).


I wonder if this means I gotta redo my whole Intro-To-HomeAutomation powerpoint now...


----------



## syner

we run an esx 3.5 host and 27 vm for 2003 server with no problem. keep in mind though these are not sql servers or any dbase vm nor are they video servers. i would expect less than half of the vm from an esx host if i was using these types of servers.


one thing i was thinking about using it for but was told no during training from vmware, was to have multiple hosts running different audio so i could have say 6 vm's as 6 sources of music. unfortunately as of esx 3 they could only support 1 virtual audio stream out the physical card at a time and they could not support mapping to multiple physical cards. if anyone has been able to do this more recently i would really like to hear about it.


vmotion and HA (high availability) are really good selling points but probably overkill for a home server environment. also, it has a balloon driver for another layer of memory support. multiple o/s support is great. even has support for 64bit.


the ability of snapshots are great for rolling back to previous states. and as mentioned, the ability to just turn off a vm or more importantly, roll back to a previous snapshot and just turn it back on saves so much time when the box crashes.


----------



## IVB

A few weeks into the HD100/no-HTPC, and life is settling in. I had to tweak the CQC IR-receipt logic to be a little tighter when it receives the MX850 signal, so the remote is a little more intelligent about being context-sensitive.


1) One of the RAID5 disks died, I didn't notice for a few days and couldn't figure out why SageTV-live TV or recent recordings weren't working. Once I noticed the tiny little system tray icon that said "raid error", I got another disk and let the array rebuild itself. Damn well took 28 hours, but it's now fine.


2) I'm debating my "use a megachanger for rarely watched DVDs" as it is a little PITA to turn on the touchpanel just to select a DVD. 1TB hard drives are getting pretty darn cheap, and I could swap out the RAID5 500GB x 3 array with a 1TB x 4 array, not increase power costs by that much (~$2/month). I would have to learn how to break the 2TB filesystem limit as that would be a 3TB array. It would also take *days* for *when* a disk dies, so i'd need a 2nd SageTV recording location in case that happens in the middle of a "Lost" season.


I also just got the HD-PVR installed, still need to connect it to Sage. If that works, my hard disk consumption will go through the roof as much more will be at the 10GB/hour for HD versus 2GB/hour for SD.


----------



## video321

Hey IVB....

Does the HD100/Sage app support IR passthrough?

Basically, can I point a different remote (assume same frequency) at the HD100, have the Sage app pick that up, and pass it through a USB-UIRT to control another device which isn't normally controlled by Sage?


----------



## IVB

Not that I know of, although I haven't paid much attention since mine is in the closet & controlled over TCP by CQC. (my MRF300 repeater catches the MX850 and rexmits to the USBUIRT)


----------



## IVB

Schawing! Sorta.


After several user-errors due to the total lack of instructions in how to setup an HD-PVR, it's both recording HD inside SageTV and playing back through the HD100 extender. Only watched 60 seconds so far, done some skip ahead/backs, no issues yet. I did set output resolution to 720p.


The one thing I didn't get working was control of the STB. I bought an extra Paterson serial-USB controller hoping it could handle the HR21, also couldn't get IR blasting to work. Didn't try much though.


In the end, here's what I should have done:

1) Install & connect HD-DVR

2) Install all software on the CD

3) Upgrade SageTV to latest beta (6.4.4)

4) Upgrade HD100 to beta firmware


I know, it all sounds simple enough, but it took a while to figure out #2 & #4; i initially only thought the drivers were needed, but the ArcSoft decoders are also on that disc, they're just labeled as "Software" which made it sound optional.


tomorrow i'll deal with the channel changing. As of now, i'm stoked that i've got USA-HD getting recorded.


The odds of a 3TB RAID5 array in the near-term have just gone up tremendously....


----------



## Cerulaen

IVB,


Maybe I missed it or I'm misunderstanding, are you passing the outputs of the HR21 to the inputs on the Sage server and then sending it to the Sage extender? And why is the DVR necessary if you already have Sage? Couldn't that be used as the DVR? I'm asking because I am trying to find a way to do distribution to a bunch of TV's in my house and Sage might fit the bill with the extenders. I want to use Cat5 for the distribution but did not want to do the whole matrix switcher, baluns thing because it seems like there are still too many issues with that setup. The only issue I see is one you brought up, that you would have trouble watching a DVD on the fly if it hasn't been ripped yet. If you really wanted to though, couldn't you hook up a DVD player to a capture card on the Sage server and play it that way?


Thanks in advance for any info.


----------



## IVB

I might have the model # wrong, I don't have the D* DVR, just the regular STB. I pass the output of that into the Hauppauge HD-PVR component capture device. It's not really a PVR, it's just a component capture device.


For DVDs, if you have ready access to the server you could just put it in the DVD drive of the server and you'd be set. No capture card needed there. For me, the server is in the crawl space which requires me going outside, so that's not a realistic option. What I did was to run my Extender/Wii/DVDPlayer into my Denon that has component switching, and only one input to the Plasma. That way I have a "local" DVD player in the H/T room.


I quote it because it's technically in the next room, and CQC decides which device to send a "pause" command to if I hit the pause button by looking at the active Denon source input and sending it to that device. Works pretty well.


----------



## Cerulaen

Oh ok, apologies for mixing up the DTV units.


Just so I make sure I'm reading this correctly: So if I had a Sage server in a reasonably accessibly place, I could just stick the DVD in the drive and I'd be able to play it from there? Is this possible at the extenders as well, meaning if I stuck the DVD in the server drive I would be able to watch it on the extender? What about the DVD's you'd ripped to the server? Sage has the ability to play these as well I assume?


----------



## IVB

yep. That's what I hear, anyhow, never actually tried it.


----------



## Cerulaen

Thanks for the info. This should make building out A/V distribution much easier.


----------



## nishan




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Cerulaen* /forum/post/14206603
> 
> 
> meaning if I stuck the DVD in the server drive I would be able to watch it on the extender?



I've been doing this for the last two weeks, and it works great. We typically take a few nights to get though a movie, so I just pop the DVD into the server in the lower floor, and I can watch the movie on any of the extenders through the house. The only issue I've had is that when I sit down to start watching again, the movie sometimes starts where it left off, and sometimes from the beginning. Not sure why...but it's such a minor point. Otherwise everything including FF/Rew, etc., works perfectly at the extender.


Nishan


----------



## IVB

Well, i've been taking my HD-PVR setup in baby steps. As mentioned above, step 1 was to install the HD-PVR and hook up the DirecTV STB, leaving it on USA-HD. Step 2 was going to be to enable the HD-PVR IRBlaster, but after some SageTV forum threads reporting hassles with that I may wait another week when I won't need the USB-UIRT anymore on my other PC, and move it to the server room.


It recorded fine today with several hours of Law & Order, but there was no channel changing needed.


It plays back *almost* fine on one of my extenders, there's a slight judder perhaps every 7-10 seconds, enough to be annoying. It outputs optical to my Denon, i'll try again later tonight on the HDExtender that is hooked up via analog to my TV. There's some reports of folks having better success with different audio/video filters.


All in all, pretty decent for baby step #1, now I just need to get the channel changing and the judder eliminated.


----------



## IVB

One really good improvement: I put an IRA IR receiver connected via CAT5 in the home theater/family room because I was sick of the unpredictability that the MX850->MRF300->IRMan had. If the batteries were weak at all, it wouldn't work well. Plus, it wouldn't work perhaps 10% of the keypresses, it appeared that a different IR code was being received by the IRMan than what was being sent.


My god, what a big difference. Not only has it been highly predictable, it's also faster; i wonder if the MRF300 has been putting in a slight delay when doing the retransmit.


----------



## IVB

AARRGH! PAIN IN THE ASS!


My Concerto & Expander have been out of commission for 6 weeks as they were being serviced by NuVo cuz they weren't working. It cost me $300 to ship them there (3 boxes, some heavy stuff).


I just got them back, set them all up again. When I connected it up, it seemed to work. When I attempted to upload my config via RS-232, it's back to being hosed.


This all happened when I attempted to connect to it via NuVo Configurator through the Lantronix COM over IP serial server. Both the first time and this time. I've got a feeling that's the issue.


God I hope NuVo tells me I can field-reset this thing, and I don't have to ship the freaking thing back to them.


----------



## IVB

This weekend can only be described by how little progress I made across the board. Here's what *didn't* happen:

*1) I wanted to be able to change channels on the DirecTV HD-STB.*


I tried:

- Serial connection. Damn paterson tech cable wouldn't work.

- USB-UIRT. Didn't want to learn the H21 IR codes or take the .IR remote code file that came with SageTV.

- HD-DVR IR Blaster. Works fine with the Hauppauge app, but can't get it to work with theSageTV.


So that was a total bust, i'm still stuck with a single channel enabled (USA-HD). At least I'm getting HD versions of the L&O marathon.

*2) I wanted to be able to kick off custom logic via IR in the MBR (ie, turn off all the lights as we're always forgetting one at bedtime.*


Finally found the IRMan, but it wouldn't work via either CQC or the IRMan application.

*3) I wanted to build out the high capacity RAID5 array, so I could decommission several other hard disks and reduce my overall power load.*


Yeah, that just sucked. I still can't get the RAID card to even recognize the hard disks.

*4) Re-install the NuVo, as it just came back from 6 weeks in the shop.*

As said above, the second I plugged it in it died.


So, now i've got:

- An email into Paterson Tech to swap out the nonworking cable.

- An email into NuVo to see what the heck is going on.

- A call into LSI to figure out the MegaRAID card.

- A new IRA-3 just ordered, cuz I know that'll work.


Hopefully next weekend will be more fruitful...


----------



## IVB

Happy Days are here again! Turns out the NuVo Concerto configurator doesn't like connecting via the Lantronix/IP-serial server. When I hooked it up direct to my laptop (via a dock as that houses the com port), it uploaded the config fine, and now it's working peachy keen through CQC via the Lantronix port.


Still can't figure out how to flash the LSI RAID bios - I must be looking at the wrong file. The firmware is 1.16MB zipped, 2M unzipped, which clearly won't fit on a bootable floppy drive. I've been trading emails with LSI in the morning, so i just pinged them again to see if i'm looking at the wrong location.


----------



## IVB

WooHoo, things are flying now! I just got the USBUIRT working, now I can tune DirecTV-HD! I'd still love to switch to the PatersonTech serial, but i'll need to wait until i get the new one.


Here's what I found out, and what was needed:

Th


> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *gplasky* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> As far as the USB-UIRT you should see a light blink as you learn the code. Your remote must be very close-an inch or less-to the USB-UIRT.



That was it; not only did it have to be "very close", if I was left/right by even 3/4", it wouldn't learn. Needless to say, I wasn't that precise in my first attempt.


----------



## IVB

Yesterday marked a big day; I took the day off work, and pulled the Sony777ES DVD megachanger from duty and started ripping the 100+ DVDs that were in there. That meant there was only the Denon3805, Sage Extender, Marantz DVD Player, MRF300, and Wii left in the 42U 7' tall rack. Given that it was taking up tons of space, I pulled it out, spent hours cleaning up tons of wiring, and wallmounted the Wii & MRF300.


I'm surrendering the media closet back to the wife, and will use only a 2' high shelf space for the rest. But I wasn't content with that - I also went to Home Depot and got one of those wallmountable 5 position "pole holder thingeys", so the wife could put the broom/mop/duster/2nd mop/some cleaning pole thingey on it.


I had very rare 3thanks response from the wife: "Thank you thank you thank you, i'm going to put both vacuum cleaners and all the cleaning stuff in there now".


Since i'll be selling the rack & Sony777 shortly, perhaps now she'll get over the dozen boxes that UPS delivered over the past week, or the handful of boxes that will be coming over the next week.


----------



## IVB

There are days when I don't know whether to pity the professional installer for the crap work they must do, or mock them for willingly engaging in a far-too-difficult job for far too little money. I know you guys are doing what you love and I envy you for that, but oy this crap is a PITA sometimes.


Today the Hauppauge HD-PVR stopped working. I have to go out of town for 24 hours tomorrow, no chance of me leaving the wife without this, so down into the crawlspace I go to see what's up. Didn't seem to want to work, regardless of what I push & press.


So I turn it off & turn it back on. Et voila, it works fine now.


How the hell a pro can make any money putting together a disparate system with equipment that is inevitably touchy is beyond me.


Then again, it is literally the first batch of HD-PVRs made by Hauppauge and has only been out for


----------



## rgroves

Been there done that....


Many years ago I used to want to be on the BLEEDING EDGE of PC hardware. And with that I was building PC's for everyone and their brother as a side business. Now, I'm 2-3 steps behind the crowd that's the lagging behind the crowd, and tell all my friends that want PC's that I'll give them a few ideas and help them pick out the parts, but it's up to them to buy it and build it. And I will only provide minimal tech support.


I've had a WHS server for many months, and finally started working on getting the web page working. Now, I have an HD-100 finally setup (and currently replacing my HTPC in the living room), and just last night had to reconfigure my WHS to run headless so I can use the s-video output to pipe the video and audio to my HD-100 so I can stream Pandora radio.


The wife still roll sher eyes every time I go to setup up "something new". Her theory is as long as the TV , and dvd player work, the world is just fine. Recorded TV, streaming media, ripped dvd's, etc... are all just non-sense, and something she'll NEVER use.



I thought of something you could install that might help with having to go into the crawl space to reboot things. Where I work we have some managed power outlets that let our network guys remotely reboot (power cycle) that are on the device. They can reboot individual outlets or the entire power strip. I have no idea of what they cost, but if it wasn't too expensive you could install that, and if anything needed to be rebooted while out of town, you could remote into your network and fit it. Anyway, just a thought....


----------



## video321




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *rgroves* /forum/post/14358047
> 
> 
> I thought of something you could install that might help with having to go into the crawl space to reboot things. Where I work we have some managed power outlets that let our network guys remotely reboot (power cycle) that are on the device. They can reboot individual outlets or the entire power strip. I have no idea of what they cost, but if it wasn't too expensive you could install that, and if anything needed to be rebooted while out of town, you could remote into your network and fit it. Anyway, just a thought....



I'm sure Z-Wave has a power switch you could use.


----------



## MurrayW




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *video321* /forum/post/14358070
> 
> 
> I'm sure Z-Wave has a power switch you could use.



I bought one of these serially controlled power strips for what I considered a reasonable cost of $115.
http://www.cpscom.com/gprod/cps.htm


----------



## video321




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *MurrayW* /forum/post/14358150
> 
> 
> I bought one of these serially controlled power strips for what I considered a reasonable cost of $115.
> http://www.cpscom.com/gprod/cps.htm



Yes, that is reasonable for a strip with individually controlled banks.


----------



## IVB

My general angst is that it's not just the power, sometimes it's other stuff. The bleeding edge really is just that, cuts me up something fierce. I suppose I don't have to do all this crap, but this is worse than crack - once your whole house is automated, and you/wife/kids can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, all in HiDef, it's tough to imagine life any other way...


----------



## personalt

sage can play dvds ripped to the server. I don't think it can play dvds right from the drive though.


----------



## IVB

Actually, it can just fine if you load AnyDVD on the server. Folks have even gotten the Sony firewire DVD megachanger to work using that, of course those are discontinued now so I can't find one anywhere.


----------



## IVB

It's either HA to the rescue, or HA making me spend time on stuff we could train ourselves around.


In the past few months, the Sage HDExtender driving the H/T has started putting itself in standby if not used for a while. I know I upgraded the firmware some time ago, but whether that's related or not I don't know.


Well, the issue here is that it's in the next room, and the family uses the MX850 to switch between video sources. CQC picks up on the command, and turns the TV on, turns denon on, switches to the right stereo input (which is the video switcher also). Imagine your angst if you hit the Sage button below, but the TV is blank.











Should I put in a power-toggle button on that empty spot? Seems like such a waste. Wouldn't it be much nicer if CQC could tell whether the HDExtender was in standby mode, and powered it up if it was.


Oho, enter HA.


With the help of this cocoontech.com how-to article about photoresistors and help from BraveSirRobbin who wrote it, I went to RadioShack, got the $3 pack of photoresistors, and now I can tell if the LED is on or not.


Well, it was a little more complex than that. Turns out that the plastic front panel was dimming too much of the LED for the photoresistor to pick up enough light. I had to disassemble it and drill out the panel. On the upside, I made the hole just big enough to hold the photoresistor. This is much larger than lifesize:











I put that in the hole, and ran a wire to an Elk zone. I setup that zone as an analog zone, and wrote an ElkRP rule that sets digital output #180 to true if the voltage is below 10V (it's 8.8V when on), and false if it's above (it's 13.3V when off).


The mod doesn't look bad at all, especially when you consider this is in a closet and is never actually looked at. This is with zero effort to clean it up.











I'm not done, of course. All I can do now is tell whether it's on or not. The next step is to use an IR blaster to send the power-toggle if it's off, and the user presses the Sage button. I've got a GlobalCache GC-100-12 that I was going to sell off, but I could use that. Seems like a waste as I only need the 1 IR command, esp since I have to buy the damn IR Learner to get that one freakin command.


But, at least it will be possible to automate yet one more thing, and remove one more point of manual entry so the family can watch TV. And most importantly, the 6 year old won't wake me up on Sat mornings because she can't get the TV to work.


----------



## IVB

(reposting this)

Well, *that* euphoria was short-lived. Every remote file I had seen for the HD100 had a power toggle, but no discrete on/off, which is why I started this project.


I just found discrete on/off codes for the Sage HDExtender. I didn't think they existed, thought it was just a toggle. So now, all I have to do is alway send a power-Extender-on command along with the Input-sage switching command and it works fine. No status lights or funky monitoring needed.


Well, at least I learned about Photoresistors and got to drill holes in perfectly functioning equipment today...


----------



## IVB

I used to spend all my time working on CQC screens. Now I've got a 2nd IRA-3 for the MBR, and am now spending my time on MX850 screens. Oh well, the right tool for each job, I suppose.


Here's what I just created. Now that I can control anything in the house, I figured I'd do a few things that are most needed - lighting, alarm, and Concerto control.


Note how "house" is on the bottom right - that's b/c the 6yr old uses this remote often, and we want to keep this away from her accidental presses.










If you press TV, you're taken here. Pretty boring stuff, we use the TV speakers for TV, but there's a speaker on/off, and CD or XM button to change the NuVo input settings.











The CD/XM buttons will take you here.











Talk about lazy, this is for when we don't even want to get out of bed to change the XM station using the NuVo touchpad 


Finally, the "house" screen. This just has "put alarm in stay mode", plus "set maglocks" (which happens in stay mode) and entry light. I added the 2nd two mainly b/c the "put alarm in stay mode" button looked so lonely by itself.











so there you have it. I've used it for all of 5 mins so far, time will tell how this works out for me.


----------



## digitalcontrol

IVB,


1. Did you get the Sage HDTV recording working? How are the extenders working - do you still have the shudder?


2. A key question I have is what's the type and quality of the recorded HDTV file - and secondly, how it works locally on your Sage box vs. Extender vs. a format capable media player. That is, once recorded, what format are the files and how portable are they - for example, can you start a format-capable player (MPEG4/H.264?) on your laptop and watch recorded TV? Any DRM issues? I'm asking this because I'm wondering about the library that I would build and how it would work with other solutions 2-3 years down the line. If it's only works for Sage than that would be a downer.


3. Also, last you mentioned, you were ripping your DVDs - have you got any ripped-DVD playback happening on your Sage extenders? What's the quality like?


4. Does Sage have anything like Vista MC's WebGuide?


I know, I know, too many questions - I'll let you respond.


dc


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *digitalcontrol* /forum/post/14448012
> 
> 
> IVB,
> 
> 
> 1. Did you get the Sage HDTV recording working? How are the extenders working - do you still have the shudder?



Nope. It's probably in this thread, but i don't actually recall having shudder. It was probably user error. My HDTV Extenders and HD-PVR are both working great.



> Quote:
> 2. A key question I have is what's the type and quality of the recorded HDTV file - and secondly, how it works locally on your Sage box vs. Extender vs. a format capable media player. That is, once recorded, what format are the files and how portable are they - for example, can you start a format-capable player (MPEG4/H.264?) on your laptop and watch recorded TV? Any DRM issues? I'm asking this because I'm wondering about the library that I would build and how it would work with other solutions 2-3 years down the line. If it's only works for Sage than that would be a downer.



Eh, sorry, no clue. Good question for the SageTV forums, i'm not sweating that as i don't hold on to TV shows once I watch them. (except for kids shows, which are ever changing and easily replaceable via purchasing DVD)


> Quote:
> 3. Also, last you mentioned, you were ripping your DVDs - have you got any ripped-DVD playback happening on your Sage extenders? What's the quality like?



Sure, tons. Quality is awesome, better than the first HTPC I had a few years back, nearly as good as the mega-HTPC with the mega-videocard I decommissioned.


> Quote:
> 4. Does Sage have anything like Vista MC's WebGuide?



I'm not familiar with WebGuide, but there's been some threads about VMC on the Sage forums lately, perhaps that would help.


----------



## video321

Why the need for a 2nd IRA-3? Isn't the MX-850 RF enabled?


I can also say that I've "outgrown" the whole touch screen remote setup and would prefer to go back to a HTM. Creating screens & working with wifi is such a hassle. However, I'd never give it up for music control as there is simply no other way to browse and make selections without a TV on.


----------



## IVB

I prefer to leave the remote in a given room otherwise i'd never find it. Hell, I have a hard enough time finding the MX850 in the room i'm in!


I have an MX800 for the MBR, those are the screenshots above. I put the 2nd IRA-3 in the MBR so I wouldn't have to setup the MRF150 that I have, nothing like a local IR receiver. (I use the MX850 editor as it also works for the MX800, so life is a little simpler, which is why the screenshots show an MX850).


I do like the touchscreen for the kitchen, which is mainly CD/XM/lighting/irrigation/etc. I may put a 2nd touchscreen in the kids room so they shut up about asking me to play a gazillion different kids CDs (or high school musicl/hannah montana a gazillion times). But i've never liked a touchscreen in the H/T, too much of a PITA.


----------



## video321

I understand what you did, but only have 1 thing to comment on (like you need to listen to me







)

Another computer-based IR receiver means more overhead. I have a regular IR target in my MBR, which the wife mostly uses, to control everything and send commands to the PC to control the autopatch and a media front end. However, if the server is down she still has control over everything else (sat boxes, DVD, etc.) If I used a PC-based receiver then I would have to set input command triggers (receive this IR/send that IR) which only complicates things. Right now its only a reliable Xantech system sending to a USB-UIRT (which also feeds into the Xantech system). I know I could re-route things if needed, but I'm only gonna get grief if it happens when I'm not home; not like I have the time when I'm home either!


.....So, why did you decide to do it that way? I do see the receivers you bought are RJ45/serial compatable (which is nice), but no cheaper than Xantech units which you could even get small enough to be hidden.


I know that was long, but I'm trying to get into the mind known as IVB


----------



## IVB

Cut out everything but what I *think* is the relevant bit.


> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *video321* /forum/post/14455110
> 
> 
> ...However, if the server is down she still has control over everything else (sat boxes, DVD, etc.) If I used a PC-based receiver then I would have to set input command triggers (receive this IR/send that IR) which only complicates things.



Ah, that i get. what you don't see is this: I have everything connected via RS232, I have no more only IR devices left. Plus, what I have to control is a single DVD player, a Denon receiver, and a SageTV extender. I use a single PC for SageTV & CQC, and there is NO way to watch TV if that PC is down. The only thing you can do is watch a single DVD, which is pretty rare. Hence, the programming complexity isn't that big a deal, and the value-add of the logic I can setup via CQC is worth the risk.


I used to have a DirecTV STB in the MBR as the backup, but after 9 months of a SageTV/CQC combo that never went down I felt safe enough to remove that backup plan.


Has it ever gone done? Sure, once or twice, and was I in trouble? Yep. (See Netflix' current issues at time of this writing).


But what I reminded her about was that any piece of equipment can fail at any time, including the TV, but it averaged


----------



## IVB

There are peaks and valleys in a DIY'ers on the HA road, and i am patently in the middle of a valley. Over a 2 day period:


1) My Water sensor on the Elk blew, which (I think) resulted in a false alarm.

2) A motion sensor seems to have stopped working. Either that, or the LED is no longer working, I need to debug.


But *Most Importantly*

3) SageTV isn't working anymore. It seems to record fine, but I can't achieve playback on any extender or HTPC. I get this weird stuttering.

4) The CCTV/file server is randomly not talking to other PCs on the network. This is a newly reformatted box.


If I could just get the SageTV working, i'd be a happy guy. It is curious that all this happened over 2 days, too many different bits to be a coincidence. I did run some new wiring, but that couldn't have resulted in some of this behavior.


Sigh, guess what i'm doing today during my day off.


----------



## rgroves

Hmmm, weird. My guess is some kind of critter chewing on wires. But that doesn't explain the water sensor. Or you've got a bad network switch, which would explain the PC/extender issues. The others could be coincidence...


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *rgroves* /forum/post/14503698
> 
> 
> Hmmm, weird. My guess is some kind of critter chewing on wires. But that doesn't explain the water sensor. Or you've got a bad network switch, which would explain the PC/extender issues. The others could be coincidence...



Well, I spent all day on the SageTV thing, ended up blowing away the Sage directory and re-installing. Let's see how that goes.


----------



## IVB

As I was waiting on my SageTV stuff, I updated my architecture diagram so I could see how I could possibly reduce power consumption. Geez, this is *after* downsizing. I am making headway on cutting that power draw though.


----------



## IVB

Cool, just got the latest electric bill, it's down from 1048 Kwh to 791Kwh, so ~250Kwh and ~25% from 2 months ago. Only one data point so not enough to spike the ball, but that's certainly noticeable. And, at $0.30->$0.36/Kwh marginal rate, that's $70-$90 less (per month)


All I really did so far was turn off 1 PC (~70Kwh/Month) and replace half the incandescent light bulbs with dimmable compact fluourescent lights. I still got the other half to go, plus there's a variety of wallwart plugs that I could either leave unplugged or put on a power strip (ie, cellphone chargers). I don't know how much lower I can go, but every little bit I do saves money and reduces overall dependence on foreign energy sources.


----------



## ginigma




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/14518291
> 
> 
> ... replace half the incandescent light bulbs with dimmable compact fluorescent lights. ...



What brand of CFL's did you use? I haven't found a good CFL that provides the color temperature I want that dims well.


----------



## IVB

It's this generic brand that a dude @our local Farmers Market sells. It's called ULA, U lighting America. The color pretty much sucks, but at >$90/month I told my wife to suck it up.


I'm not allowed to change bulbs in the MBath or LivRm, though, due to the color temp issue.


----------



## darwin838

It appears these are available on Amazon


----------



## Foosinho




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/14505361



I only check in on this thread rarely, but *this* is brilliant. Helps me understand exactly what you are up to. Love it.


----------



## IVB

You cocoontech.com folks know, but for the rest of you, i've been having massive issues with my Elk for the past 2 weeks. It randomly reports all motions on my expander zones as being violated. I've been arming the system in Stay mode, so only the perimeter stuff is active (thank god i've got tons of those).


Well, some progress in id'ing the reason. They all report violated right now again, it's late (1am) but I still went down to the crawlspace to figure out why.


Turns out there's no DC voltage being supplied to the motions, which are being powered through an alternate source. I've seen this happen before, when one of the wires going to them was shorted, took out the whole damn 2ndary grid.


So tomorrow (not now, i'm falling asleep) i'm going to pull out the motion DC wiring one at a time, to see which one is the short. Then i'll re-run the wire to that location.


I'll bet I did something stupid in the attic when I was fishing the new NuVo/TTS wires, which happen to be in a rather nearby location.


THIS is why I keep harping on newbies to temper their expectations about how easy/hard HA is to do. Any serious HA person is rarely satisfied with the functionality they have, but the act of expanding functionality often leads to unstableness in that which was working fine. Anybody who thinks they're going to plug-n-play HA is sorely mistaken.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Foosinho* /forum/post/14542014
> 
> 
> I only check in on this thread rarely, but *this* is brilliant. Helps me understand exactly what you are up to. Love it.



Hell, i did that so *I* could understand exactly what I was up to  Glad you liked it.


----------



## IVB

it was the god damn maglock wiring that was screwy! Maglocks, damnit, that was the reason I couldn't arm my system normally for the past 2 weeks?


----------



## IVB

Here's the touchscreen I just on-wall mounted. There's an HP thin client in the closet which is directly behind this, and the monitor has audio line-in, so I was able to connect both the video, serial touchscreen, and audio.


This is *definitely* much faster response than the 3400, although given the cumulative cost of the $90 thin client & $200 touchscreen compared to a now $100 3400, I would hope so.


I'll probably sell both my 3400's now for a steal, but i'll wait until after a party @my house on 11/8 in case I decide to set up a "music kiosk".


----------



## IVB

My ability to use tons of wire amazes me. Of course, the primary reason is that my house is damn easy to wire as it's 1 floor with easy access to floor & ceiling. We're having a shindig on Saturday, so I decided to move the STF-2 subwoofer to the living room, and use the 2 plasma speakers for the Pioneer that I never needed as I had my Vienna Acoustics Weberns. I needed to run another 50' run of wire, but while I was up there I figured I'd permanently mount some more speakers in the Den.


I'm closing in on using up my 2nd 500' box of Belden 4wire speaker wire, and I had about 250' of 2 wire already. How the hell did I run >1000' of speaker wire in a 1650 sqft house!


On the upside, it's amazing how much difference even a 10" $350 subwoofer makes. I'm sure i'll be bummed about watching movies in the FamRm for the next week until I can move the subwoofer back.


----------



## dummptyhummpty

IVB,


That's cool! Any more info on the thin client?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *dummptyhummpty* /forum/post/14993865
> 
> 
> IVB,
> 
> 
> That's cool! Any more info on the thin client?



yeah, it's the one here that a little over a dozen CQC'ers bought in a group buy.


----------



## IVB

Well, my tolerance for software failure is clearly at an all-time low. I have a shindig coming up, and I was being cheap by just using the free SoftSqueeze player to stream Sirius via the PC.


Twice in the past 5 days it's been hanging at "Starting SqueezeCenter", which means no streaming Sirius easily. I have a pretty big & expensive party at my house on Sat night, so I just bought a Logitech Squeezebox receiver from Buy.com's eBay store for $150. Damn overnight shipping was $40 which is otherwise free, but I need this damn thing to work on Sat night, and I don't want to spend valuable drinking time debugging a piece of free software. After all, how much can I really complain about software, since it's free.


I didn't get the full Duet package with controller since I don't really need the control unit, let's hope the free perl script that allows you to config the receiver without it works as well for me as it did for others. It's a 1time need, so i'm optimistic.


Hoping it gets here on Friday, but I don't actually have much time on Fri afternoon/Sat am to do the setup, damn this better be fast.


----------



## Neurorad

What a great thread!


Thanks for sharing, IVB.


----------



## Neurorad

Seems like whenever I search on AVS or CT, I find a post from you!


New to HA (~1 year of reading), I'm looking at RadioRa, Z-wave, Elk, CQC, HomeSeer, MainLobby. I also have a 3 zone Denon AVR. I've been doing a lot of research, and no 'playing'. Ready to make my move...


In your experience, how well does CQC control the AVR? Do you have to write a lot of your own code for the control?


Keep up the great posts,


Joe/Neurorad


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Neurorad* /forum/post/15073421
> 
> 
> In your experience, how well does CQC control the AVR? Do you have to write a lot of your own code for the control?



I wrote zero code for my entire setup (not just the AVR), almost the entire thing was done via point&click. Hell, I didn't even have to remember funky command line syntax.


I'm 70% certain I used the Denon as the example for the CQC 201-Interface Editing webinar in this 100MB file , so if you download that you could watch as I build it. If you haven't seen the CQC 101 webinar, you probably want to watch that first, (it's in my sig), there may also be some Denon stuff there.


----------



## IVB

FYI, i'm going to do a quick webex tonight ~8pm PST to show someone how to setup a weather page. If neurorad is around, check the CQC forums for the link, i'll show you how easy it is to create a screen with Denon controls.


----------



## Neurorad

I'm somewhat hesitant to download the G2M3 WMP plug-in. Yeah, I'm just paranoid.










Maybe in a few days...have to go to bed, up at 5A CST. Working this weekend.










Great to hear that you've accomplished so much using CQC without writing code. Maybe after Thanksgiving I will download the free 30 day trial.


I have a VB.net for Dummies book in my Amazon cart - I'll hold off until after I try out CQC.


----------



## IVB

I finally got off my duff and figured out how to use the Nuvo keypad to tune Sirius Online stations (ie, control non-Nuvo tuners from a Nuvo keypad). I wrote up the howto guide for that here. 


And oy, the pain. My 6.5 year old figured out SageTV. We currently have 40 different shows recorded, and 21 of them are her/her sisters. What the hell was I thinking by showing her how to use this?


And for those of you who couldn't even name 21 kids shows, check it out:


1) Dragon Tales

2) The Berenstein Bears

3) Maya & Miguel

4) Charlie & Lola

5) Oswald

6) Caillou

7) Imagination Movers

8) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

9) The Backyardigans

10) Go, Diego, Go!

11) Dora the Explorer

12) Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!

13) Lazytown

14) The Wonder Pets!

15) The Upside Down Show

16) Higglytown Heroes

17) Little Bill

18) Clifford the Big Red Dog

19) Clifford's Puppy Days

20) The Cheetah Girls: One World

21) Madeline


that is wrong on so many levels...


----------



## IVB

I got bugged at some of the lights constantly going "offline" in CQC, so I decided to install ThinkEssentials and see how that went.


Oy, that was MUCH worse. Out of 22 devices, 4-6 go online/offline in CQC. In TE, 6-8 show that red question mark indicating offline. (ie, not online, just offline).


God damn, do I want to switch to a hardwired lighting protocol. I could even contemplate experimenting with RadioRA if I could get a money back guarantee if it didn't work well.


----------



## Neurorad

When's the remodel going to happen, IVB?


My basement remodel was pushed up unexpectedly, by a flood.


Maybe you'll get 'lucky', and an earthquake will require a remodel...


----------



## IVB

well, now i'm suddenly wondering whether I should hire that electrician first to run all new romex first while the access is still mega-easy. And while he's at it, maybe some LV wiring too.


damn scope creep.


----------



## Neurorad

RadioRa hardware would probably sell well on eBay (or Craigs List), slightly used. Basic, starter package to play with?


If you have good access from the attic, why not hardwired?


And if you did choose a hardwired lighting control system, which one would you use?


----------



## IVB

I dunno about which hardwired solution, but it would have to be one that had standard type wiring. For example, I learned on the CQC version of this thread that Centralite has the HV wiring run from circuit breaker to a centralized panel to the load, and a LV wire from the panel to the wallswitch. I don't think I like this as it forces you into using Centralite keypads at the wall.


My concern is what that would do to resale value of the house, and whether the existence of some neato tuxedo expensive lighting system would scare off buyers and reduce the price of the house. Not that i'm planning on moving anytime soon, but I don't want to take that level of "permanent" modification that eliminates my ability to pull all fancy-ass switches and plop in cheap ones if the market demands simplicity.


So, I gotta research what hardwired systems have HV wiring that is "normal", with the LV wire also run to the wallswitch. If the answer is "none", then that may kill off my lust for hardwired, at least until i'm filthy rich and don't care about resale value.


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/10512804
> 
> 
> I just got my qkits QK011 temp board & sensors in the mail (get temp over RS232 - CQC driver exists). My god these things are TINY!
> 
> 
> Here's a pic next to a business card. Honestly, the wiring is going to be thicker than the damn sensor, now I have a whole different problem to solve (how to patch up the hole in the wall without the sensor falling through).
> 
> 
> Bye bye big ugly elk temp sensor on the wall of the MBR that the wife hates, hello tininess!



I dont think you specifically mentioned it, I was curious if these sensors happened to be LM34's?


----------



## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15227578
> 
> 
> So, I gotta research what hardwired systems have HV wiring that is "normal", with the LV wire also run to the wallswitch. If the answer is "none", then that may kill off my lust for hardwired, at least until i'm filthy rich and don't care about resale value.



I am planning on OnQ ALC lighting.


I just finished structured wiring which includes cat5e to every lightswitch location. The cat5e is secured to the top of the boxes, but I plan to run it through the top of each box, straight down and out the bottom (inspection is finished). That should make it easy to fish out later and make connections outside / just above the box, or use the OnQ-provided 600volt sleeve to cover the connections and leave them inside the box.


I chose this lighting solution in part for the concerns you outline about conventional house wiring. Also, because it appears to be one of the more cost-effective hardwired solutions.


----------



## Neurorad

This week I'm leaning toward a HomeWorks wireless system. It seems a slight step up from RadioRa.


I don't know for sure if it would be more reliable or not, compared with the RadioRa, but probably. It has the advantage of adjusting dimming level, unlike the RadioRa (so I've read) - it's not just on/off.


Certainly, I can't afford to do my whole house at one time. Perhaps in select locations, slowly adding to it over the next 20 years.


I can't understand why this HomeServe HomeWorks wireless option isn't discussed more often, aside from the price. Lutron doesn't seem to really market it well. Herdfan is the only person on the forums who has it. He said he had 1 switch that wouldn't work ~1/20 times, and had plans to replace it with a timer switch (light in a closet).


HomeWorks wireless just seems to be a no-brainer for retrofits.


I'm betting it would do pretty well in your RF-scrambling home, IVB, despite the plaster lathe.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *drvnbysound* /forum/post/15243546
> 
> 
> I dont think you specifically mentioned it, I was curious if these sensors happened to be LM34's?



eh, what's an LM34?


On the lighting thing, I'll look into the ONQ/alc. I'll also look into the HomeWorks wireless. I'm just glad I went with zWave to start to demonstrate the value to the wife. Now that she likes it, she'll hopefully back the pricetags...


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15250730
> 
> 
> eh, what's an LM34?


 http://www.parallax.com/Store/Sensor...%2CProductName 


 I used these on a Senior Design project for my BS EE degree 2-3 yrs ago, I couldn't believe I remembered the model number of it when I saw the image you posted - I'm guess, but its likely the same model.


----------



## IVB

well, it certainly does look very similar. I can go look to see if there's a model # on it somewhere this upcoming weekend, work is a little nutzoid before that and the spares are in the basement where it's a little chilly right now


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15250975
> 
> 
> well, it certainly does look very similar. I can go look to see if there's a model # on it somewhere this upcoming weekend, work is a little nutzoid before that and the spares are in the basement where it's a little chilly right now



Ehh, doesnt matter a great deal to me. But if you did know what model they were, you could certainly pick up quite a few for cheap @ ~$4 ea. and have them all over the place if you wanted.


I used them on a Microsoft developmental 8086 board - all you really need is the A/D converter and some code to make some adjustments to the scaling.


----------



## Eddie Horton

Do you play DVD's from a hard drive based system? If so, what software do you use to play them, and to integrate the system into CQC? Same question for audio. I would assume that you would have to have a video card with component out to distribute the video to your displays. Thanks.


----------



## IVB

Yes, I do that. I use SageTV HDExtenders hooked up via component to my TVs, and a SageTV/CQC server. In one location, the extender is actually at the TV. In another location, all equipment is in a media closet. Both locations have an IRA-3 IR receiver, so I can control via CQC.


I used to use an HTPC, CQC's Media Manager for cataloging, and theatertek DVD software for playback, and it was *very* tightly integrated with CQC. But now, i'm moving towards using SageTV only as the TV display mechanism, and laptops or my touchpanel to render CQC. As such, the need for CQC to display DVD info is no longer there.


At this point, the primary means of integration is more of a "back-end" integration. That is, when I press the pause button on my remote, CQC intelligently determines what is being listened to or watched in that room, and routes the command appropriately. I have the SageTV Extender, a Marantz DVD player with RS232, and the CQC mp3 player that are all under control. The ability to have a single pause button work against whatever i'm currently watching/listening is really cool.


----------



## EST

IVB,


I know you use RF remotes (Can't recall what model) mostly now, is there a lag time from when you press a button to the command actually working...how long does it take to pause after you press the pause button? I am looking to move everything centrally and will most likely get an RF remote and run everything through CQC/SageTV and this is one question I have.


Thanks


----------



## IVB

Actually, I switched to a local IR receiver ever since I ditched the HTPC and moved to SageTV Exenders. But you're right, when I had an HTPC in the media closet, I used an MX850->MRF350->USBUIRT solution.


There was nearly zero latency, it was pretty damn fast. The big issue was that if the MX850 had even slightly weak batteries, the code being xmitted would vary and i'd have to hit the button twice to get the signal. Not an issue as long as I kept fresh batteries in it.


Since I needed to run new wiring after removing the HTPC, I decided it was just as easy to run a local IRA-3 IR receiver as moving the USB-UIRT to the server. And obviously a local IR reciever is mounds better then the repeater, so that's why I moved.


----------



## IVB

Oy, positively frustrating day HVAC wise. My system has been non-integrated for 12-18 months, ever since I added a thermo to my kids room and put in an aprilaire 8818 distro panel.


Well, i thought i got lucky, i was mentally prepared to run a new wire which would have taken hours. I started pulling the old wire out, and realized there was a kink/break in the wire 18" into the wall. I happened to have more than that in slack in the wall, so I got that dealt with. I ringed out all the wiring, and confirmed that it was copasetic. "Bada Bing", i thought, this'll be a quick fix.


That's where the luck stopped. First, I somehow shorted the 24VAC transformer feeding the Aprilaire, so I had to go to RatShack to get another one. Then, no matter what combo of wiring I tried (just thermo 1. Thermo 1 & 2. Thermo 2. Using 8818 distro panel. Don't use 8818 distro panel.), it just don't wanna work.


I really want to get this damn HVAC back integrated, this inability to turn it on from outside the house is killing me. Cranking it when we got 10 mins away from our house was one of our favorite bits about the system, and it's been down for too long. I don't get much of an oppty to do this, i still have 1 week off work, i may fedex a new 8811 from somewhere online to see if that's it.


----------



## stefuel

I did not think rat shack had 24VAC transformers with enough oooompf to run HVAC. Can you give me the spec of the transformer you got? A 40VA should do it. A 50VA would do it without cracking a sweat.


----------



## stefuel

Also, if I remember correctly, if you interrupt the distribution panel mid call for heat or cooling it may lock up. There is a re-boot button. Press it and walk away for ten minutes. It can take that long to sort its self out.

Are your zone dampers powered closed or open?


----------



## IVB

It's a 24VAC, 1A output. By my quick math, 1A = 120VA, so i thought it was plenty.


The bigger issue is that i pulled the 8818 out of the equation, powered the 8870 directly from the furnace's 24VAC (like it would be with only 1 thermo), then hooked up the comm lines direct to a single 8870, and still no love.


But perhaps I should leave the 8870 offline for 10 mins, then plug it back in, then wait 10 mins, to see if that'll clear it all out.


----------



## stefuel

Ooops, sorry, I was thinking of a different distrobution panel. However, if you have more than one low voltage transformer in the circuit make sure they are all in phase. If not, the smallest one will loose out to the larger one and burn out. I suggest re-reading the installation manual and double checking all your wiring.


----------



## IVB

Success! Of sorts, anyhow.


After re-re-rewiring and also getting a 2nd 8811 protocol adapter, i've now gotten 1 8870 to work if I wire directly to the 8811. Well, sorta, it'll work with my laptop's RS232 port or via the Elk, but not either of the servers. Clearly some form of com port setup issue. But at least it's functional.


Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work. If that all works via the Elk, then i'll see if I can get it to work via CQC and those fussy serial ports, which is what I really want as there's some add'l fxnlty possible.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work.



Hoho, schawing, it works! Well, it didn't in the beginning, it turns out the issue was that I had to strip the CAT5 A+/A-/B+/B- signal wiring @the 8870 waaay back, and I mean something crazy like 1/2 inch. Once I did that, it all started talking. It's still only talking to the Elk or my laptop, something crazy is going on with my server's RS232 ports, but at this point I'm content.


Well, by "content" I mean that my LSI RAID5 replacement card just showed up via Fedex, so it's time to see if I can get that working. All our shows are starting up over the next few weeks, and given that we have 3 HD OTA tuners, 1 DirecTV-HD tuner, and only 1 DirecTV-SD tuner, I suspect we'll be out of hard disk space very quickly. I need to get that 4TB array up quickly.


----------



## IVB

Oho, and the gifts keep on coming! Thanks to jrlewis and his help giving me a macro, i've added 3 buttons on my webpage to modify the HVAC. His macro-code was a wide-open, change anything, but all I had to do was clone it once per field that I want to change, and hardcode the driver & field names into it. Since it's been done inside the macro, even if someone bypasses the authentication, all they can do is turn my HVAC on & off. Not that much fun, not that much of a risk.


Check it out, here's the image. I tested it on my cellphone, works fine.


There is one issue, and that is that pressing the button takes you to a blank page. So I have to hit the back-arrow, then refresh. I'm looking into how to make that go away, but for a quick&dirty 1 hour thing, this works just fine!












NOTE:The last button "turn on and set to 75", is strictly my "coming home" sequence. I'll hit that when i'm 10 mins away from home so the house is nice & warm when we walk in, then i'll use the Elk rules to automatically turn down to 71 once the system is disarmed.


----------



## IVB

god-damn-p-o-s. Huge thanks to jkmonroe for spotting this and pointing it out to me on the chat room, but get this review on newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816118087 (search for user yettavr6), claiming that


> Quote:
> "Doesn't work with the x16 slot on intel boards. I tried it in two different intel boards with onboard video. The card is detected by the system, shows the BIOS screen, and immediately says "No Hard Drives Detected. Software RAID can not be configured". At first i thought i had either a faulty card or cable, so i RMA'd it. Same thing. I also made sure the boards and this card has the latest BIOS. Also tried 3 different brands of drives."



Who the hell makes a card that doesn't work with Intel brand motherboards with built-in-video? Thank god i didn't get the intel brand server mobo i was contemplating.


I emailed them asking for some relief since it's clearly unreturnable to amazon.com, but this was an undisclosed limitation that was their error. I've spent dozens of hours getting this to work, oy am i bugged.


----------



## IVB

Well life gets a little more confusing, hopefully in the save-money direction.


My zWave has been irritating me lately, a neighbor must have added something wireless, so I was torn between getting into Lutron RadioRA and getting the Elk-zWave controller for $300. Based on a tip on the cocoontech forums, I pulled the 900 MHz Baby Monitor plug out of the wall. We never use it anyhow, I don't know why we still have it plugged in.


Well, it seems to have helped. This weekend I may go through the major hassle of blowing away the whole zWave network, re-adding each module, and re-teaching CQC to see if I can get it more stable.


Good thing this happened too, I just ordered a dual PCIe 16x slot mobo and 4GB of RAM as a hail-mary to see if I can get the LSI RAID card working, and spent a little too much $$ in Vegas during CES, so I need to save some $$ somewhere...


----------



## IVB

God how much do I hate building systems now, this sucks! I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it! My life is too damn busy to deal with stupid B.S. like what you see below.


I got a gigabyte dual PCIe mobo from newegg and spent hours trying to get it working, only to find out that it too is incompatible with the LSI card. I sent LSI Support a totally bitchy email begging them to give me the name of one board that works, they did (SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SBC), so I just got that off NewEgg, and RMA'ed my brand new gigabyte. That wasn't the only issue - the gigabyte was refusing to acknowledge my USB floppy drive so I couldn't install the gigabyte & intel RAID drivers. And seriously, who wants to buy an internal floppy drive just for this one install, I got the USB which works in legacy mode with all my other mobo's so I wouldn't have to deal with this crap.


Man, if I had the $$, there's zero doubt in my mind that I'd throw it at Vidabox and get a 7TB CQC/media server with the BluRay auto-rip thingey from them, and let them deal with all this B.S. I swear i've spent 6 hours on this in the past 5 days, at least 50 hours all-in with the LSI card, and I'm about to go back to square zero.


But of course, I can't go back to square zero this weekend as newegg won't be here until next Tuesday, but I also gotta pack up this mobo and send it back.


The big issue is that i've only got 1.5TB for DVDs & TV on the current RAID, and all the TV shows are starting up, so i've got to be super-diligent and make sure the 21 kids shows don't suck up all the space. I damn well better not have to delete some movies and then have to re-rip them when I finally have this array built.


----------



## Neurorad

Cut back on the kids' shows.


But keep recording Yo Gabba Gabba - caught an episode last week.


I swear I heard some Flaming Lips during that show. Pretty trippy music featured!


How much is the VidaBox option, installed?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Neurorad* /forum/post/15584211
> 
> 
> How much is the VidaBox option, installed?



More than anybody on avsforum would spend. MSRP for 2TB with BluRay is $7K, I think the 7TB version runs around $10K.


But, for anyone who just wants something that works, has a drop-in-BluRay or DVD and auto-rip setup, and has the $$, it's a hell of an option. I saw it live at CES, it's really nice.


----------



## Neurorad




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15584807
> 
> 
> More than anybody on avsforum would spend. MSRP for 2TB with BluRay is $7K, I think the 7TB version runs around $10K.
> 
> 
> But, for anyone who just wants something that works, has a drop-in-BluRay or DVD and auto-rip setup, and has the $$, it's a hell of an option. I saw it live at CES, it's really nice.



I heard YOU were selling those at CES. How many orders did you take, IVB? Did you have a blast?


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Neurorad* /forum/post/15589399
> 
> 
> I heard YOU were selling those at CES. How many orders did you take, IVB? Did you have a blast?



Heh, yeh, that's where I got hooked on them. But alas, I was just the automation specialist in the Vidabox booth, as they needed manpower if folks wanted to know details about what was possible. I had about 5 minutes of cocktail smarts, after which I would either go into the automation side (aka, CQC) or pass off to someone who actually knew about the Vidabox side.


They were "off" the floor in a suite at the LV Hilton, so it wasn't a madhouse, but there were still a ton of folks interested. It was all pro's though, so no "sales" at the actual event. I'm sure Vidabox has a good pipeline of leads now, i'll be content to drool from the sidelines.


----------



## Neurorad

I'm sure Dean would give you a great deal on one. He seems like such a friendly, sincere guy. Good to hear he (and VidaBox) got some traffic at CES.


----------



## IVB

How the hell did "swap my server mobo so that i can use a $300 LSI RAID card" turn into "spend $600 so I can also uplevel to 4GB of RAM, get a 15-bay case so I can get up to 7TB if need be, and an 850W power supply"? It's all coming via UPS tomorrow, let us all pray.


I'm really hoping this mobo works - it's got integrated video and 5 PCI slots (although no PCIe slots), so I can put my MOXA serial, M-Audio, and VBox Cats Eye HD-tuner card back in, with 2 slots left over.


I'm also using the E6850 3.0GHz that I have in another PC, so if that all works fine, this would be a pretty nice server.


Or it could all fall flat on it's face.


----------



## IVB

Well, i'm finally getting places, and I have a distinct feeling this might be a "ends justify the means" where I forget the pain of setup.


I got the LSI RAID working, I documented my lessons learned here. I have a feeling that this was 99.9% nooby error, .1% manufacturer. I won't repeat what's in that thread, but the system is currently at 15 hours of initialization and it's at 28%. It'll be done sometime on Monday, after which I gotta do a format, which'll be another 2-3 days.


A few cool bits about the new rig:

1) The new case I bought (Antec Twelve Hundred) is an absolute BEAST. It's meant for high-end gaming systems with the watercooling thingeys, so it's got tons of room. Plus the 12 external 5.25" drivebays come with 3 hard drive cages that each hold 3 HDs, and have 120mm fans dedicated to them, and there's 2 rear 120mm fans and a 200mm top fan, so the sucker runs cool. I think my CPU is somewhere around 28deg C with 5 hard drives in it, which is probably 15deg cooler than it used to be.


2) The mobo has 5 PCI slots. This means I can put the Vbox HD tuner, Moxa 8way serial, and M-Audio Delta 410, with 2 slots left over.


3) The mobo has 4 RS232 slots on it. Well, one external and 3 headers. And, I have a 4way PCIe serial card that I got b/c I was jammed full beforehand. Between the 8 Moxa RS232, the 4way PCIe serial card, and these 4, I can sell (or re-use) one of the IP-serial devices I have. Nothing like having native RS232 ports.


But, two bummers:

1) I had to disable the mobo's ICH9R to get the LSI to work, so I no longer have RAID1 on the boot disk. Not a huge issue, this should be a relatively stable machine, so I can try my hand at Acronis TrueImage or similar.


2) I didn't want to waste another 5 days and blow another $200 on XP 64bit, so I'm stuck with the 2TB limit. I had to split up my 3TB into 2 logical arrays of 1.4TB each, i'm not sure how expansion will work if I opt to add another 1-2 1TB hard drives. Boy I hope that works fine.


But, progress anyhow, *finally*.


----------



## Mike_Boulanger




> Quote:
> after which I gotta do a format, which'll be another 2-3 days.



You might be surprised. I'll bet it does it in less than 30 seconds!


----------



## IVB

well, i am wondering whether i can just do a quickformat since i just did this 50+ hour thing, or whether I gotta do the big mega-format.


----------



## Mike_Boulanger

Many RAID cards run through even a full Windows format extremely quickly.


----------



## IVB

well how about that, you are quite right. It did a full windows format in


----------



## Mike_Boulanger




> Quote:
> It did a full windows format in


----------



## IVB

jesus life just got more complicated, and I brought it all on myself.


I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her. She wanted to learn how to use the kitchen touchpanel to queue it up. It's too high up for her, but I swear she was faster than that "Heroes" blonde girl in getting a stepstool. So of course, proud Papa shows her how to use the CD screen that mom (and mom's friends) thinks is pretty easy to find & add-to-queue. I had Blondie's greatest hits playing ($5 for the album on last Friday's Amazon mp3 download deal), so it went to the end of the queue. She wanted to listen to it NOW, so I showed her how to skip ahead.


Her response: "Daddy, that took too many clicks. Why can't I just press one button and have it play first, before your other stuff"?


Good god. Now I need to take UI/information architecture direction from my kid, who's already a pro at SageTV and adding favorites by herself, bumping my stuff down the list. What type of monster have I created.


----------



## smoothtlk

Can you create a "daughter" Genre, associate all her music to also be in that Genre and put a button to select Daughter? She can then navigate her stuff.


----------



## IVB

yeah, I already did that. But, she wants to bump my stuff to the bottom of the queue so her stuff is first.


I'm going to suck it up and create a 2nd CD source, and allocate that to her. Then she can listen to whatever she wants in her own room, and leave me to my Blondie/TalkingHeads/etc!


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15674639
> 
> 
> jesus life just got more complicated, and I brought it all on myself.
> 
> 
> I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her. She wanted to learn how to use the kitchen touchpanel to queue it up. It's too high up for her, but I swear she was faster than that "Heroes" blonde girl in getting a stepstool. So of course, proud Papa shows her how to use the CD screen that mom (and mom's friends) thinks is pretty easy to find & add-to-queue. I had Blondie's greatest hits playing ($5 for the album on last Friday's Amazon mp3 download deal), so it went to the end of the queue. She wanted to listen to it NOW, so I showed her how to skip ahead.
> 
> 
> Her response: "Daddy, that took too many clicks. Why can't I just press one button and have it play first, before your other stuff"?
> 
> 
> Good god. Now I need to take UI/information architecture direction from my kid, who's already a pro at SageTV and adding favorites by herself, bumping my stuff down the list. What type of monster have I created.



I am hesitant to centralize ALL of my equipment to a out-of-the-way or closet type rack for reasons such as this. Even though CD media probably wont be with us a whole lot longer, physical media in general will still be around for a while (BD, DVD, etc). That said, I have stated in my other thread, that I want to keep some equipment central to those rooms in which they are used (ie. PS3) so I dont have to go to the equipment rack to load a game or BD.


You stated above that you were using the Kitchen touchpanel to control playing the CD. I have seen pictures of your equipment/server room area, and (maybe Im wrong) dont see you going down there to load a disc into a changer/player in an equipment rack. Where did you load the CD to have it play / integrated with your system?


Just trying to get a feel for how to lay out hardware in my house - what to move, what stays, etc.


----------



## IVB

all my CDs (and DVDs) are ripped, so I don't bother with physical media anymore.


Hence, if I just add a button for "Kids music", or perhaps a custom screen for them, plus give them their own dedicated CD "player" via my M-Audio Delta 410 multi-audio-output card, it'll be all good...


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15685366
> 
> 
> all my CDs (and DVDs) are ripped, so I don't bother with physical media anymore.
> 
> 
> Hence, if I just add a button for "Kids music", or perhaps a custom screen for them, plus give them their own dedicated CD "player" via my M-Audio Delta 410 multi-audio-output card, it'll be all good...



Ok, so when you said, "I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her." My first impression was a physical CD, that would have have to insert into a player somewhere, either to play directly, or to rip.. Obviously you likely meant digital download. What about new DVDs or BD movies? Or have you somehow done away with ALL physical media all together, possibly use something like Netflix for new releases and just stream them?


We (my wife and I) find ourselves buying newly released movies quite often - usually either in DVD or BD format, and use the PS3 for these. Do you follow my desire to keep such hardware remotely located in say the living room? Or is there a train that I am missing?


----------



## IVB

Yeah, ruby happened to be a digital download, although I just bought a ton of used CDs so I'll be ripping them shortly.


I rip regular DVDs, BluRay is the one hole in the system. I currently have a BR player only in the H/T room, and my Denon 3805 handles the video switching for that. I only currently own 2 BluRays due to the hassle and the cost, but the SageTV HDExtender does a pretty good upscaling job with regular DVDs.


I am hoping that SageTV figures out how to do BluRay playback via the extenders soon, I know they're working on it. If not, I may end up getting that Netflix-enabled LG BluRay player, so I can do both V.O.D. and BluRay.


----------



## IVB

The most vexing HA problems are sometimes cured by non-HA paths.


I started modifying the GUI to accomodate my daughters desires and 2nd CD source. But the issue is that she's not allowed to listen to all the music we have. I started to learn about password protection/etc, then said "screw it".


She now has her own iPod Nano (blue chromatic, my did she squeal) & a dock, and the only songs on it are ones she & her sister are allowed to listen to. She can dance the night away listening to Katy Perry, Pussycat Dolls, Lady GaGa, and Kaiser chiefs in her room with her sister, and I got my Blondie & Talking Heads back.


And no GUI changes or password protection required. Life is good, all I had to do is throw money at the problem


----------



## IVB

The towel has been thrown in the ring, I've tagged out, i've come off the field for a set of downs, i'm benching it for a period, .


I tried swapping the current LSI card with the RMA one (i haven't shipped it back yet), same slow write performance. Read speed is just fine, so this must be a firmware/other setting, but I just can't deal anymore. I just sent Vidabox.Steve an email taking him up on that Highpoint RAID card offer for $750, then figured i'd buy a 5th 1TB drive and WHS while i'm at it. Plus, my HDHomeRun stopped workiing again, so I'm going to get 1 more Vbox Cats Eye for the server.


Assuming this whole disgustingly expensive experiment works, my server will be ~$3800 plus shipping. My wife can never know that, as I bought this stuff over time. Here's the replacement costs (i paid more for some stuff as i bought earlier)


Case: $170

Mobo: $150

RAM: $50 (4GB)

CPU: $200 (E6850)

850W Power Supply: $180

400GB Boot HD: $90

5 1TB Seagate enterprise level hard disks for RAID5: 5 * $170 = $850

2 1TB Seagate hard disks for RAID1: 2 * $170 = $340

RAID card: $750

WHS: $100

2 VBox: 2 * $130 = $260

PVR500: $150 (guess for what the replacement will cost)

HD-PVR: $200

USB Modem: $50

Moxa 8way Serial: $50

M-Audio Delta 410: $170 (for the 1010LT)


$3800 in parts and I still had to build the god damn thing myself? Man, this is one expensive hobby, puts those pro boxes that feel like they're so expensive into perspective...


----------



## amirm

Little confused about your choice of WHS plus RAID. Aren't you going to have double redundancy and lose a ton of storage?


----------



## Neurorad




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15722097
> 
> 
> Assuming this whole disgustingly expensive experiment works, my server will be ~$3800 plus shipping. My wife can never know that,



I thought the underline was a link, perhaps to a youtube vid of somebody freaking out, or the Psycho shower scene.











She doesn't read this thread? I guess I understand - my wife doesn't want to hear anything about HA.


----------



## IVB

shocker of shockers: An $850 retail hw RAID card is MUCH faster than a $300 retail hw RAID card.


I got the new Highpoint yesterday, ordered a 5th 1TB HD and another vidabox card while i was at it. I got the machine setup, 4TB RAID5 array initialized, installed WHS today, formatted the machine, and file copies are blazingly fast. I setup a GPT partition via the Server2003 back-end portion of WHS, so now i have a nice 3.8TB drive. (that's what 5x1TB Raw turns out to be). The MOXA & VBoxx cards work fine under WHS, that's nice too.


I'm reluctant to say the LSI sucks as I know 95% of my issues with it were user-created. And reads were smoking fast on that card, it was just the writes that were the problem, i'm sure it was some firmware setting but I couldn't hack it anymore. Plus, it was an 8way card, and I knew i'd fill up 8 drives within 6 months, the highpoint is a 16way which is nice.


I'm about to install SageTV-WHS version on it, and also CQC. I have a feeling this might take a while to get everything done correctly, this box has a lot of stuff setup (lantronix com redirector, squeezebox, etc).


The one big downer is that the M-Audio Delta 410 won't work on WHS. I'm not sure how crushing a defeat that is, I may explore USB audio options to see how that works. Obviously i'd love to find drivers that work for it, but i'm not holding my breath. I tried the XP and the W2K ones, no love.


Well, with any luck, in 36 hours i'll have a new Sage Server & CQC server.


----------



## IVB

well jeez; after hours & hours of pounding on the hw side of things, the setup of a new RAID1 and a migration of nearly all software over to the new PC barely took any time at all. I even left the house from 12:30->8:00pm to go to the zoo & cheesecake factory with the kids. I got CQC, SageTV, Lantronix Redirector, 2 Vidabox cards, Hauppauge HD-PVR & DirecTV-HD via USBUIRT, and DirecTV-SD via serial all working just fine.


Well, I did have 3 issues:

1) I can't seem to get the US Robotics modem to show up in the MyComputer.Properties list, even though I added the driver and it seemed to recognize it all.

2) I completely forgot how to setup SqueezeCenter for the receiver I have. Oy, this'll kill me.

3) I had to pull a 2GB stick out; turns out this mobo is all hinky with 2x2GB. Now I just have the 1 2GB stick, but whatever, it works, i'll take it.


But hey, those are 2 minor issues, I was prepared for much worse. Heck, I can't believe it's basically done & migrated. There's just a few odds & ends left to take care of related to the re-do (ie, move some devices off IP serial server and onto direct serial connection now that I got the MOXA back in service, consolidate random data bits onto the RAID5 & RAID1 that I got setup. I can do that over VNC while I watch L&O with the wife...


----------



## IVB

and first major niceness of the new box and craploads of space:


I'm just sitting back, watching my ripped Dark Knight BluRay DVD via my Sage HD200 extender! There's a slight stutter on the HD100, but the HD200 is faster and can handle it.


Looks like these rips aren't 100% consistent, it's dependent on the disc. I've been trying to get my Iron Man BluRay to work, but it don't wanna. I'm using AnyDVD-HD to rip, and tsmuxer to convert it. Well, with Dark Knight, I didn't even need to convert it, the BluRay rip worked fine, i just had to pick the .m2ts file that was the movie. It was 32GB, so i'm pretty sure i got the right one.


If I can get this working reliably, i may very well sell off the Sony BD350 I got as I'll just stick with ripped BluRay.


Really, how do you go wrong when you have a single GUI for TV, DVD, BluRay, and you don't even need a touchscreen or alternate piece of energy-sucking equipment in the room to do it. This freaking rocks.


----------



## Mike_Boulanger




> Quote:
> Little confused about your choice of WHS plus RAID. Aren't you going to have double redundancy and lose a ton of storage?



I use WHS + RAID as well. I don't like WHS's built-in redundancy at all (I don't use it), but I do like some of WHS's other features.


----------



## IVB

ooops, sorry, didn't notice Amir's post.


WHS doesn't come with RAID, it uses drive pooling, and you can optionally duplicate. I bypass the WHS console in it's entirety, I just use it for the Server 2003 backbone. Higher limit on network connections, and some other stuff i've read about but not tried.


I had no choice really, as I have a 5x1TB RAID5, so a 4TB logical array. WHS won't recognize a drive larger than 2TB in the pool, so I had to keep it out of there. I converted to a GPT partition via drivemgmt.msc, then formatted it.


----------



## Mike_Boulanger

Plus, as far as I know, WHS offers no protection for the system partition - which I find silly.


----------



## IVB

there was this interesting thread about a CQC'er trying to restore his Vista 64 system from WHS , with some nearly frightening results.


----------



## IVB

And, I just got IronMan working. The basic process (for me) is:


- Rip DVD with AnyDVD-HD. ~1 hour (it's 43GB)

- Find the biggest .m2ts file above, see if it works as-is, if so you're done.

- If not, use tsmuxer to DEmux (aka, extract) the audio & video tracks. ~10 mins

- Use eac3to pull out the DTS audio track. ~25 mins

- Use tsmuxer to re-combine the video & DTS track (from above). ~10 mins.


So either 1 hour or 1:45 from end-end, and now I can really distribute BluRay. Bada Bing!


----------



## IVB

Well, I just ran into the first potentially unsolvable limitation of an overcomplexified solution that may require 2 PCs running as CQC servers to address my wacky audio needs.


Specifically, I use CQC to :

- play doorbell.wav through the Elk speakers. This requires the windows default device.

- play Text To Speech good morning announcement through the Concerto/Niles speakers. This also uses the windows default device.


As I don't think I can make PlayWav or TTS use non-default devices, it looks like i'll need 2 PCs. Well, assuming I don't want to route the default output to both the Elk speaker amp and the Concerto, and use relays with the Elk to open the circuit I don't want. That feels like an excessively brittle path.


Not a huge issue, as I have that CCTV server, and I suppose if I ever switch to a CCTV DVR box I can use one of those mega-thin clients to handle this.


----------



## dbroome

Have you looked at QSS? It should allow you to change the default device via command line (and therefore from CQC). I don't have either, so I can't be sure, but it looks like it would work:

http://www.toflo.de/Downloads/Tools/Soundcard-Switcher/


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> And, I just got IronMan working. The basic process (for me) is:
> 
> 
> - Rip DVD with AnyDVD-HD. ~1 hour (it's 43GB)
> 
> - Find the biggest .m2ts file above, see if it works as-is, if so you're done.
> 
> - If not, use tsmuxer to DEmux (aka, extract) the audio & video tracks. ~10 mins
> 
> - Use eac3to pull out the DTS audio track. ~25 mins
> 
> - Use tsmuxer to re-combine the video & DTS track (from above). ~10 mins.
> 
> 
> So either 1 hour or 1:45 from end-end, and now I can really distribute BluRay. Bada Bing!



Oooh, life gets better - the latest HD200 firmware fixed the audio stuff. The new process is:



> Quote:
> - Rip DVD with AnyDVD-HD. ~1 hour (it's 43GB)



No need to muck with audio track extraction. Good job Sage!


----------



## IVB

Did I say I'm using the NuVo & inceiling speakers for TTS, hence requiring a 2nd PC or audio source? Nah. Thanks to AceCannon for nudging me, I went downstairs and remembered that I've actually got an extra Elk 32Ohm speaker as I miscounted on my very first Elk order 2 years back. I just put that up behind my Elk single-gang keypad in the MBR, ran the wiring, and put it via an Elk relay so I can turn it on/off independently (mainly so I can have morning weather announcement only on that speaker, and not on all Elk speakers).


The good thing is that this means that since TTS and doorbell can play via the same source run to the Elk-800 amp, I can take that 2nd server offline (from CQC anyhow), and run the whole dang thing from the 1 PC.

The bad thing is that the TTS sounds much worse on the Elk speakers than on the Niles in-ceiling, then again look at the price difference and you'll understand why.


Of course, now for some reason the keypad cuts off the left 2 characters, not sure why that's happening, but it's really not that big of a deal. I'll look into that "one of these days".


And, in an attempt to get myself ready to try zWave via the Elk at a cheaper price, i just moved the Aprilaire back to being controlled by CQC directly. this means I can free up the serial expander that it uses, and use that with the Leviton zWAve thingey. I don't actually own that thingey yet, but soon.


I'll update that architectural diagram shortly, I just need to move a few more wires first


----------



## IVB

Grrr. I got excited about my earlier success with HA stuff, and moved the Intermatic USB stick to the thin HP client in the middle of my house. it now has damn well near line of sight to some of my harder to reach modules.


I'm beginning to wonder if I have switch hardware issues, because I have 2 switches that used to work just fine now acting up. Moving the USB stick didn't help at all.


I have to admit, i'm souring on zWave. I dunno if that's fair or not, maybe it's my lack of neutral, but at this point it certainly ain't distance or mesh strength. I don't really feel like swapping out zWave light switches that work manually but don't communicate well for other zWave light switches.


I may do my annual "what is the bare minimum cost for RadioRA I could try", and have both my legacy zWave and new RadioRA in the house. I would like to continue using fluorescent bulbs in many of the rooms, which might mean researching what the hell "Lutron Fluorescent Tu-Wire" is.


----------



## WayneDB123




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15940021
> 
> 
> 
> I may do my annual "what is the bare minimum cost for RadioRA I could try", and have both my legacy zWave and new RadioRA in the house. I would like to continue using fluorescent bulbs in many of the rooms, which might mean researching what the hell "Lutron Fluorescent Tu-Wire" is.




I wish Lutron would hurry up and come out with a RadioRA dimmer that works with dimmable CFLs, I am afraid that here in California we won't be able to buy incandescents much longer. I am not sure if Lutron has anything in the works but this story gives me hope. http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...ed_dimming/C96


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *WayneDB123* /forum/post/15941687
> 
> 
> I wish Lutron would hurry up and come out with a RadioRA dimmer that works with dimmable CFLs, I am afraid that here in California we won't be able to buy incandescents much longer. I am not sure if Lutron has anything in the works but this story gives me hope. http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...ed_dimming/C96



That is interesting. Well, except for the bit where they mention drivers being built into the fixtures, hopefully that's not required in the future. It was painful enough selecting fixtures the wife likes the first time.


----------



## IVB

I guess I have the zWave angst to thank, but I wanted to make some progress on a long-outstanding task which is to fix my personal website. I opted to use Joomla so I don't have to go months without updating it again; i used notepad to write HTML when I set it up, and not only was that a PITA to write, I don't actually know much HTML so it took me even longer.


I just finished overhauling it, i've now got:

- Screenshots of all my stuff.

- Complete equipment lists with estimated costs, both PC & non-PC, including a newegg wish list

- My architecture diagram

- My wiring suggestions for both AV & HA.

- Level of effort


I'm sure there's other stuff i'll think to write up as time goes on, but at least the staleness is gone.


The URL is myhometheaterpc.com, let me know if you find something wrong or want more info on anything.


----------



## syner

i went to lutron training back in October and they were showing dimmable cfl via RA except it was for a specific manufacturer. i don't remember the details but they state that they are only going to use specific manufacturers to support since it is such a delicate technology to incorporate and they do extensive testing to make sure the product is rock solid with their lighting solution. i can ask who it was if you are interested.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *syner* /forum/post/15949364
> 
> 
> i went to lutron training back in October and they were showing dimmable cfl via RA except it was for a specific manufacturer. i don't remember the details but they state that they are only going to use specific manufacturers to support since it is such a delicate technology to incorporate and they do extensive testing to make sure the product is rock solid with their lighting solution. i can ask who it was if you are interested.



Yes, please. That would certainly be awesome.


----------



## drvnbysound




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15940021
> 
> 
> Grrr. I got excited about my earlier success with HA stuff, and moved the Intermatic USB stick to the thin HP client in the middle of my house. it now has damn well near line of sight to some of my harder to reach modules.
> 
> 
> I'm beginning to wonder if I have switch hardware issues, because I have 2 switches that used to work just fine now acting up. Moving the USB stick didn't help at all.
> 
> 
> I have to admit, i'm souring on zWave. I dunno if that's fair or not, maybe it's my lack of neutral, but at this point it certainly ain't distance or mesh strength. I don't really feel like swapping out zWave light switches that work manually but don't communicate well for other zWave light switches.
> 
> 
> I may do my annual "what is the bare minimum cost for RadioRA I could try", and have both my legacy zWave and new RadioRA in the house. I would like to continue using fluorescent bulbs in many of the rooms, which might mean researching what the hell "Lutron Fluorescent Tu-Wire" is.



Does Elk/CQC support UPB? If so (which I assume to be the case), is there a reason why you wouldnt use it, rather than RadioRA? The reason I ask, is from what I've seen UPB is considerably cheaper.


Just curious...???


EDIT: I checked the Elk site, as well as CQC and both show that UPB is supported, so I answered my own question there...


----------



## IVB

Interesting discovery about my zWave stuff, as it's been doing a death spiral reliability wise. I bought the Leviton handheld controller and RZCOP, got it yesterday, started reworking my network.


Turns out the Leviton won't recognize 3 of my 22 switches, and another 4 have "FAILED to INCLUDE - see instructions". That means that 7 of my 22 switches may not be working right, which would certainly explain my issues. There's no "test" that I can find, i opened up a ticket with Intermatic and it seems pretty straightforward & easy to do a warranty fix. They may not even want me to return mine, not sure as the instructions are rather cryptic. Step 1 is to fax them my receipt, so i'll do that.


Oh, and my brand new Highpoint RAID card may be dying. Between fri night and Monday arm, my server went from "fine" to "won't stay up for longer than 2 hours". I'll be pulling some drives & cards & stuff tonight to test that hypothesis. Ugh.


----------



## Neurorad

OT, but what naming convention do you use for music files?


Someone suggested to me:


artist/year - album/track#_title.flac


Also, do you know if the Nuvo GC can play FLAC natively? Converting shouldn't be a big issue, but just an extra step (and library). I've searched online extensively for the answer to this - no love.


Edit - sorry about the unrelated questions sounding related. I know you use the CQC repository for your music, not WMP/iTunes.


----------



## IVB

Actually, I no longer use the CQC repo - as soon as I found out Amazon had DRM-free downloads, i've been buying more online music. And, since i hadn't yet finished re-ripping my repo and still had 200+ cds that were in mp3 format but not in .wav format, i ditched it.


For the naming convention, honestly, i have no idea; i just took the default JRMC ripping structure. I never actually look at it, so it's not relevant.


I also ended up buying some iTunes videos for a few parties, so now I do need to use iTunes for synch'ing with the iPods. But I just point it at the JRMC rip location and it's fine.


No clue about the GC media server as I don't have one, i just have a regular concerto.


----------



## IVB

The new Sage BluRay support works awesome. I ripped X-files/IWantoBelive in BR last night using AnyDVD-HD, had a crapton of .m2ts files. I'm on the latest Sage beta plus HD200 firmware beta, and got lazy and just pointed it the movie import directory. By lazy, I mean i didn't feel like using any other software to strip out audio streams/merge .m2ts files/etc.


Bada bing, it worked fine with the s/pdif hooked up to my Denon3805. I didn't check which audio track it was on, didn't watch the whole movie, but it sure as hell sounded like surround sound. (the bass is awesome in that movie, but the subwoofer was shaking the house a little too much at 10:30pm to watch the whole movie).


i'll try it tonight with the analog outputs to make sure that's also okay.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> The new Sage BluRay support works awesome. I ripped X-files/IWantoBelive in BR last night using AnyDVD-HD, had a crapton of .m2ts files. I'm on the latest Sage beta plus HD200 firmware beta, and got lazy and just pointed it the movie import directory. By lazy, I mean i didn't feel like using any other software to strip out audio streams/merge .m2ts files/etc.
> 
> 
> Bada bing, it worked fine with the s/pdif hooked up to my Denon3805. I didn't check which audio track it was on, didn't watch the whole movie, but it sure as hell sounded like surround sound. (the bass is awesome in that movie, but the subwoofer was shaking the house a little too much at 10:30pm to watch the whole movie).
> 
> 
> i'll try it tonight with the analog outputs to make sure that's also okay.



Well, the analog outputs are a no-go; there's no standard 2ch audio track on this DVD, the only options to select for audio are DTS-MA and AC3 5.1. Not the end of the world for this particular DVD, i'd only watch it in the H/T anyhow which can decode the AC3. But it is a bummer that there will be certain BR DVDs that I'll want to watch in the MBR via the analog audio out, so i'll still need tsmuxer for that.


----------



## IVB

Ugh. I plunked down $200 for the Leviton serial controller & remote, hooked it up to the Elk, turned out to be a dead end.


Turns out that the Elk doesn't actually poll switches to check their status. No idea why Spanky told us in this post that there was 2way status to the Elk when in reality it's only if you use Leviton RF switches, that's the first time i feel like i've been misled.


Hence, my RZCOP is a 1way integration as I can't poll my non-leviton devices, so i've got a decision to make about whether I

1) beg mikla to upgrade the rzcop driver to have polling, that's not trivial though.

2) go back to the Intermatic USB stick which didn't work so well in my house

3) stick with 1 way integration of lighting


I can't do 4) plunk down $1000 to rip out perfectly good $35 Intermatic switches for $65 Leviton switches, as they require a neutral and none of my switches have a neutral.


So, other than #1, none of those seem like good options, seriously makes me regret going with even bothering with automating my lighting.


----------



## Neurorad

5) beg Spanky to address the issue - lighting control from the Elk will be faster than with CQC.


With the continued rise of z-wave (despite the hiccups), this will be a significant problem.


----------



## IVB

yeah, just did that on the Elk forum on Cocoontech here . I'm not holding my breath though, upgrading firmware takes MONTHS.


And FWIW with the latency, i currently have my RZCOP via the Elk, but lighting rules inside CQC. It is way subsecond from the time i open my door to the time the light is on, certainly


----------



## IVB

Interesting findings on my zWave issues, looks like dead devices that I didn't know about were the issue. As mentioned in another thread, 7 of my 22 devices weren't discoverable by the leviton remote (ie, zwave communication wasn't working).


1) Upon further research, they weren't "exclude-able"/"include-able" with my Intermatic remote. Sure would be nice if I had some way of telling with the Intermatic stuff which pieces were dead and which weren't.


2) Mikla is writing a go-between app to do polling, so we can get the ViziaRF/CQC driver to have that. I used that with my Intermatic USB Stick, and found out that it thinks I have 40 devices in my network. Odd, as both CQC & ThinkEssentials don't see all that garbage. I blew away my whole Intermatic HA07 network, started over with just 8 devices that I know work. Holy crap, this network is really fast now.


So the question is: Stick with Intermatic and sell off the ViziaRF, or sell off the Intermatic and stick with ViziaRF.


I think i'm leaning towards ditching the Intermatic as soon as the ViziaRF driver does polling. It is newer, and replacing stuff with ViziaRF, although more expensive, would at least keep me at latest gen.


----------



## syner

all zwave devices can be polled. that is not vizia specific nor do they have any special polling rights over any other zwave device. the piece they support is an out of band auto-update feature for vizia devices. that and the + line has the newer firmware which is faster. in order to have the auto update feature on the rz or vrcop you have to create associations between the devices which is a pita.


----------



## IVB

Well this news about CQC pricing seems pretty intriguing...



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Dean Roddey* /forum/post/0
> 
> 
> Since version 3.0 is looming, and that of course will be a big deal, if for no other reason than I've not had a heart attack yet in all this time, we are going to be doing a pre-3.0 sale. In an effort to be probably overly clever, it's all threesie.
> 
> 
> There are three deals:
> 
> 
> 1. From now until the formal release date of 3.0, the DIY version will cost $333.
> 
> 
> 2. There is an option to buy 5 years of maintenance fees for $333, which I think is a savings of $142, for those folks who would prefer to pay ahead and save the money.
> 
> 
> 3. Being of the Vulcan race, I just named our new remote viewer product, ummm.... the Remote Viewer. We'd like a better name. So we'll have a naming contest. The one we pick will get three free years of maintenance fees.
> 
> 
> 
> The first two are already in effect on the web site. In the Try/Buy section, in the About CQC sub-section, there's the usual link for the DIY version (though it's been moved slightly and made more obvious than it used to be.) The purchase button has been changed to reflect the $333 price, and there is an extra button down the maintenance fees area to do the 5 year deal. We'll set up a naming contest thread later today or tomorrow.


----------



## barhoram

IVB,


Can you tell me if you can program the RZCOP with the Intermatic remote/controller?

I just got an RCZOP, several intermatic switches, and the table top programmer and have been trying to initialize it with the programmer. I'm having no luck. Any ideas?


----------



## IVB

I've never tried, i'll see what i can do tonight.


----------



## barhoram

Great. Thanks. Let me know. What device did you use to set up the RZCOP?


----------



## IVB

I bought a Leviton handheld programmer (the $120, discontinued version. AutomatedOutlet still has it).


It is a hell of a lot nicer than the Intermatic HA07 one, that's for sure. It allows you to name your devices, is much smaller, has a "test network devices & network" function, and other stuff too.


----------



## barhoram

Thanks. I was looking at that one, but didn't want to have to spend another $100+ just to set up the RZCOP. Any luck using the Intermatic one??


Also, can you recommend a wall switch to use with compact flourescents? We are almost 100% CF around the house now and unfotunately have a bunch of X-10 dimmers....that now don't look like the play nice at all with CF's. Trying to decide between X-10 or Zwave at this point.


----------



## project_x




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/15760135
> 
> 
> 
> The one big downer is that the M-Audio Delta 410 won't work on WHS. I'm not sure how crushing a defeat that is, I may explore USB audio options to see how that works. Obviously i'd love to find drivers that work for it, but i'm not holding my breath. I tried the XP and the W2K ones, no love.



I think I have the solution to this.

I need to reboot and test, but I finally got the driver to install using Microsoft Application Verifier to trick the XP SP3 driver into thinking WHS was actually XP.


I'll keep you posted.


----------



## project_x

On the reboot, it seems to have an issue with ntdll.dll, I'll plug away at it.


I worked at it some more, and got the driver installed. I need to collect my thoughts to see if I can do it again. I will post instructions once I remember exactly what I did.


----------



## IVB

Hmmm. I actually did get the M-Audio Delta 410 working on the WHS machine, but of course right now I completely can't remember how I did that. Damn, i should have logged that in this thread so i could refer back myself...


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *barhoram* /forum/post/16278846
> 
> 
> Thanks. I was looking at that one, but didn't want to have to spend another $100+ just to set up the RZCOP. Any luck using the Intermatic one??



I must be doing something hinky, as Hightest just posted on CT that he can do this. I *think* that's what it means, anyhow.


> Quote:
> Also, can you recommend a wall switch to use with compact flourescents? We are almost 100% CF around the house now and unfotunately have a bunch of X-10 dimmers....that now don't look like the play nice at all with CF's. Trying to decide between X-10 or Zwave at this point.



I'm using the intermatic HA06 with my CFLs, although they do randomly glow slightly.


----------



## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/16113179
> 
> 
> Turns out the Leviton won't recognize 3 of my 22 switches, and another 4 have "FAILED to INCLUDE - see instructions". That means that 7 of my 22 switches may not be working right, which would certainly explain my issues. There's no "test" that I can find, i opened up a ticket with Intermatic and it seems pretty straightforward & easy to do a warranty fix. They may not even want me to return mine, not sure as the instructions are rather cryptic. Step 1 is to fax them my receipt, so i'll do that.



One good thing: I emailed Intermatic support to tell them about my 7 dead switches. All they needed me to do was to fax a letter and the order receipt to them (easy since automatedoutlet keeps that order history). I sent it in, and 2 weeks later with no muss or fuss my 7 new HA06 switches just showed up.


I'm massively hungover from too much tequila last night after our company offsite, but some day soon i'll replace the switches. That'll be nice.


----------



## IVB

I'm going to (give credit? blame?) this HA progress for one more quasi-related thing.


I was having a conversation with my kids about gardening a few weeks ago as I guess they're doing something like that at school. I figured I could buy a planter at Home Depot/etc and have them grow stuff at home.


Well, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know i've spent $600 on parts to build a big-ass planter in my backyard and hook it into the irrigation system. I blame HA as, well, I'll come up with some reason. But I do have CQC controlling the watering. I only run it for 1 minute as it doesn't need more water than that.


In 20+ years of attempting to do physical stuff with wood, this is easily the nicest thing i've ever done. And if you look at the joke that is my inwall speakers, you'll realize how much I screwed that up. Even the wife was shocked by how nice this turned out.


Well, there are TONS of imperfections, but i'm sure i'm the only one who'll notice. Check it out...


----------



## Neurorad

1. Really nice looking planter.


2. Most people hide the 'stuff' they grow inside the house, and use grow lights. I guess it's different in CA.










j/k, IVB. I really like the redwood stain.


----------



## Wap

Hey IVB, that is a great planter, but hate to change topics.


I have the nuvo essentia w/ the standard volume controls (e6dkp-dc), i came across 2 of the the (e6gcp-dc), those are the ones w/ the small digital screens.


Can they work with my system? I'm assuming you still have the nuvo system, i'm on page 8 of your thread trying to catch up


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## IVB

sorry man, no clue; i have the NuVo Concerto and use the Concerto keypads. I have now exhausted my knowledge of the subject


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## Neurorad




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *Wap* /forum/post/16436084
> 
> 
> Hey IVB, that is a great planter, but hate to change topics.
> 
> 
> I have the nuvo essentia w/ the standard volume controls (e6dkp-dc), i came across 2 of the the (e6gcp-dc), those are the ones w/ the small digital screens.
> 
> 
> Can they work with my system? I'm assuming you still have the nuvo system, i'm on page 8 of your thread trying to catch up



Quickest solution: call Nuvo.


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## Wap

Hey thks guys, i will give them a call. Hey ivb i have a couple of old pc layng around i am going to setup my security system as you did.


I just finished the trial version of ML and now about to try cqc.


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## IVB

ML is completely different than CQC, so don't expect the same thing. ML is more of a pre-canned application, CQC is more of a toolkit.


If you're more of a MAC type person where you don't mind somebody else's opinion of what a screen/etc should look like, you'll prefer ML.


If you'd rather custom-fit your solution for a better fit, you'll prefer CQC.


Unfortunately, lessons learned with one are NOT transferable to another.


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## IVB

Here's a peek at what my new event management via the front-end screens look like. This one is just my irrigation, the screens got to be so busy that I created an overlay on the right, menu buttons on the left.


The upside of this, indeed the timeliness of this, is that my wife is beginning to harass me about the watering schedules. Esp with that planter I built. Now, she doesn't have to use the Admin Interface (she wouldn't) to modify the schedule, and my old way didn't let me alter the days, which you can now.











I'm still not done, only the first two zones are complete. This is taking me ~ 2 hours per event to fully complete, and you'll notice both a stop & start event. But, for what i'll get, and since this wasn't possible before and still isn't with most HA packages, I don't mind the time investment.


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## smoothtlk




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/16450007
> 
> 
> ML is completely different than CQC, so don't expect the same thing. ML is more of a pre-canned application, CQC is more of a toolkit.
> 
> 
> If you're more of a MAC type person where you don't mind somebody else's opinion of what a screen/etc should look like, you'll prefer ML.
> 
> 
> If you'd rather custom-fit your solution for a better fit, you'll prefer CQC.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, lessons learned with one are NOT transferable to another.



Using both, and developing software for both....IVB's comments are inaccurate. There is no difference from what one can customize ie: precanned vs. toolkit. The main difference (on that single dimension) is that MainLobby comes with a set of prebuilt scenes that you can start from. You can also purchase additional setups. CQC does not. But, MainLobby (like CQC) you can throw out the provided setup and start from a "white piece of paper" using the "toolkit". Users from both CQC and the ML community share their custom built graphics and setups. There is always modifications needed to tailer any default (or other user) setup to your house as the hardware and personal choices et al will always be somewhat different.


For example...I could readily duplicate the scenes that IVB posts above in MainLobby. I would just need his graphics and some time. It is not as easy to "duplicate" a MainLobby scene in CQC as ML supports Flash and CQC does not. This allows MainLobby to provide features that CQC cannot support from a UI perspective. MainLobby supports all graphical formats that CQC does. You can create very polished UI's with either system. Your creativeness and UI expertise will be the limiting factor with both.


The lessons are very applicable from one to another. There are definate differences, but the general ideas are very similar. This is subject to opinion on what constitutes similar vs. different.


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## IVB

From what the former MainLobby converts who are now using CQC tell me, CQC has a much richer toolkit and hence it's a lot faster to create new screens with much richer functionality. I can't speak to the accuracy of that statement, but given that it comes from folks who actually own both licenses and now use CQC, I don't see what reason they'd have to mislead folks. I don't think i've ever seen an ML screen that diverges greatly from the base, whereas CQC'ers have layouts that are all over the map, extrapolate whatever you want from that.


But as always, their opinion and mine should be patently irrelevant - it's not what's easier for us, it's what easier for you. Do what you're doing, download both packages, attempt to build screens using both, and see which one makes sense to you. For CQC, you'll want to attend one of the monthly/bimonthly User Group webinars. We typically spend the first little bit training the newbies on how to use CQC, then move on to how we're doing advanced stuff.


Anyhow, this thread isn't to debate ML vs CQC, there's plenty of threads to do that. I'm just here to explain the path I chose, and what the trials & tribulations I had there. If you want to use CQC, this thread (or the 115 page equivalent on the CQC forums - CQC'ers really are into HA ) will certainly help you understand what's really required, no marketing sales speak. Just look at the dates of the posts, you'll see how long it took me to do .


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## Wap

Thanks for the info IVB, did not mean to cause so much uproar on cqc v. ML. I just finished reading your entire tread, it was great. I learned so much from your thread as i am a true newbie to all of this HA. I am constantley googling words and products you mentioned in your thread. I will be heading over to the massived thread on the other forum to start reading that. For lighting i went w/ insteon need 7 more switches and my entire house will lighted by insteon. I been having them for about 2 months and they work great. I am also getting the aavatrix soon and have started wiring each room w/ cat 5e and 2 cat 6. I bought the nuvo essentia real cheap and will installing it today. Your tread has been so helpful. I have learnd about sage tv, M-Audio Delta 410 PCI pro audio card and much, much more. I like the ML trial verison and will try cqc next but i am leaning towards ML. Please keep your thread going i love reading your post. Also i have watched a couple of your webniars. there are great.


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## Wap

well guys off to read the 115 page thread see next year.


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## IVB

If you're leaning towards ML, you may want to save your time and confirm that path. That thread has mostly CQC-centric guidance, I don't think it'll add much value if you're using a different solution.


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## Wap

I think i am leaning that way b/c i tried it, i'm sure i might change once i go through the trial version on cqc.


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## IVB

Geez, at the urging of my wife, I consolidated my various parts locations into the basement. I needed to build 2 more shelves b/c I had so much random crap.


Here's a pic of the shelf dedicated to "toys I've bought but not yet installed, and want to install". There's a whole other shelf (shelves) dedicated to "stuff I'm not actively using or need, but I might so let's not throw it away".











In case you can't see it clearly, from left->right, there's:


- 1 Betabrite sign

- 2 zWave external lamp modules

- 2 zWave dimmer switches still in packaging

- 1 zWave outlet still in packaging

- 3 zWave dimmer switches out of packaging

- 2 zWave appliance modules

- 2 zWave 3way master switches, 2 slaves

- 1 Heat detector

- 1 600# maglock

- 2 CCTV baluns (go from cat5->BNC)

- 4 wireless Elk window sensors

- 2 Fire Alarm pull thingeys for the elk, with backboxes

- 1 Paterson USB->Serial adapter (for DirecTV box)

- 1 Elk Strobe light w/Wallmount box

- 1 Elk-800 amp

- 1 Water Sensor

- 1 CCTV

- 3 Bosch Motion Sensors

- 1 Brultech power monitoring thingey

- (in plastic bag) 5 recessed wired window sensors, 2 surface mount window sensors


Man. No wonder my wife gets bugged when more boxes arrive.


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## IVB

Well, I'm nearly done taking jkish's awesome squeezecenter screens and modifying them to better fit my look & feel, and needs. I'm finding that there's a few things that can be deleted as my system doesn't need as much functionality as his.


I put all my screenshots here , but this is a sampling. You'll see the biggest change is swapping the location of the track/album listings from the right to the left. I also deleted some of the list navigation elements as I only have a handful of playlists, and only 16 genres.


There's still a few things I want to change/add/delete, but i'll sit with this for a while to see how it feels. The wife is really happy about being able to create playlists in iTunes on any laptop, and view them from inside CQC.


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## IVB




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/16421417
> 
> 
> I'm going to (give credit? blame?) this HA progress for one more quasi-related thing.
> 
> 
> I was having a conversation with my kids about gardening a few weeks ago as I guess they're doing something like that at school. I figured I could buy a planter at Home Depot/etc and have them grow stuff at home.
> 
> 
> Well, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know i've spent $600 on parts to build a big-ass planter in my backyard and hook it into the irrigation system. I blame HA as, well, I'll come up with some reason. But I do have CQC controlling the watering. I only run it for 1 minute as it doesn't need more water than that.
> 
> 
> In 20+ years of attempting to do physical stuff with wood, this is easily the nicest thing i've ever done. And if you look at the joke that is my inwall speakers, you'll realize how much I screwed that up. Even the wife was shocked by how nice this turned out.
> 
> 
> Well, there are TONS of imperfections, but i'm sure i'm the only one who'll notice. Check it out...



Oy, glad to see that I can screw up non-HA projects by lack of research too. Turns out I didn't know about the chemicals in pressure treated wood, i knew they had removed the carcinogens but there's still wacky stuff left.


Dang. The garden is positively exploding too. So now, I gotta dig out all the dirt, pull out the pressure treated wood, put in redwood, buy new dirt, and start all over. Thankfully this is CA, so we'll get good sun for months, and it never gets that cold.


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## IVB

It is interesting how 'incidents' can suddenly reprioritize your life. I've barely spent any time on HA lately as work has spiked, plus other obligations like helping kids school prep for upcoming year, etc.


Fri night, a sign in front of my house was 'tagged'. I pulled up the video footage, and got some entirely too grainy and unable to make positive ID pics & video. Regardless, i distributed it to the neighborhood yahoogroup as it seemed to be a local kid; it was 3am, and walking towards the entirely residential district (the other way is where the businesses are). The kid seems like he's ~16ish, white, skateboarder, heavyset, with 2 scrawny friends, and there's not too many of those around here.


Well, someone is pretty sure they know who the kid is, gave me the address. I filled out an online police report, and this upcoming Thursday is the monthly community policing meeting that I normally attend so i'll have our local police rep pay the suspect a visit with the pictures, to see the reaction.


But, before that happens, i now suddenly need to reposition two of my cameras so that they'll catch any punk kid acts of revenge.


On the one hand, I still don't have time to attend to HA, but OTOH I best make time to act as a deterrent. I'm putting both cameras in patently visible locations, so the punk kids know they're on camera.


Sure wish I didn't get cheap cameras, though, if I had a hi-def one in the front I could have made a positive ID.


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## AceCannon




> Quote:
> Originally Posted by *IVB* /forum/post/10512804
> 
> 
> I just got my qkits QK011 temp board & sensors in the mail (get temp over RS232 - CQC driver exists). My god these things are TINY!
> 
> 
> Here's a pic next to a business card. Honestly, the wiring is going to be thicker than the damn sensor, now I have a whole different problem to solve (how to patch up the hole in the wall without the sensor falling through).
> 
> 
> Bye bye big ugly elk temp sensor on the wall of the MBR that the wife hates, hello tininess!



I hate to dredge up this >2yr old post, but any update on how these Qkit 1-Wire sensors have been working, if at all?


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## Dean Roddey

This bump might get him up to 200,000 views. Is that a record in this section?


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## Neurorad

He's Famous!


I'm sorry I didn't get your autograph at CEDIA, but it was great meeting the man, the legend.


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## daddyd1

I'v been using one of those Qkits in conjunction with CQC for 6 months with no issues. I have a couple sensors in the house, 1 in the attic and 1 outside. For the first little while I found myself at work wondering what the temp was in the attic....


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## Dean Roddey

Install a RIVA client at work, and open up the ports at your house and you can monitor your house from work.


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## IVB

Sorry for the delay, i'm on a mini-sabbatical until I get some stuff straightened out @work. I'm hoping to be back online & doing HA stuff by 1/1/2010.


The temp sensors are working like champs after all this time. I sold off my Aprilaire remote temp sensors as they were huge, these work much nicer.


BTW, i also use them via the cellphone client so I can check out the temp remotely, and turn on the HVAC if need be.


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## IVB

As mentioned above, I just took a little HA vacation to focus on the real world. It was very illuminating as for the first time in a long time, I didn't touch a damn thing on my controllers, indeed didn't want to touch anything. I learned that I hadn't designed for uptime as much as I thought.


Here's the primary things I realized:

1) The SqueezeCenter software manager for my SqueezeBox receiver isn't 100% reliably starting up on a system reboot. There's some form of race condition going on, and if it starts up too soon it'll never actually connect with the SqueezeBox receiver. I need to learn how to start an app when Windows starts up, but wait 5ish mins after bootup so everything else works fine.


2) The Intermatic USB controller really sucks donkey butt. It started degrading massively, so I ripped it out and am now using the Vizia one. That's rock-solid and super-fast, but the CQC ViziaRF driver doesn't poll for non-Vizia devices so I don't really have automated lighting. In my book, you need true 2 way to have automated lighting so you can trigger things based on manual modification of light status.


On the upside, the rest of the setup works like a champ. Then again, it's only been in the 'untouched' state for 2 months, so I can't crow too much. If it's still 100% stable in 6 months, then maybe I can say something.


CQC is also on the verge of releasing V3.1, and for the first time, I've not installed a single Beta version, and I think I'm going to pass on installing the release version. My system works the way I want it to, and since it ain't broke, I ain't gonna fix it.


I wonder if mentality that gets me kicked out of the DIY club..


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## IVB

Man, I wonder if I should be happy or sad that CQC now has a native iPhone client. My wife has an iPhone (I use an HTC), and her desires are different than mine. I've been up until 2am the last few nights tweaking a GUI that she would be willing to use.


I'm not sure she'll use it inside the house, she's been leaving her phone on the charger as the battery life is bad so otherwise it'll die during the day when she actually needs to use it as a cellphone.


But, we are about to cancel long distance on our landline since we have a bazillion rollover minutes, so I wonder if she'll be carrying that iPhone around more and just buying another 1-2 chargers for alternate rooms.


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## Anthony A.

post some screenshots of your iphone gui. that would be awesome.


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## IVB

Well, the interesting bit is that i will soon have another handheld touchscreen that's 240 x 320, so i'm currently planning to embed those screens into the iPhone ones so I don't have to fully reinvent the wheel plus I can get some recognition for the screens. Familiarity will hopefully generate more usage, as the wife will feel more comfortable using it.


Once i'm done and actually using these screens (aka, seeing if they're any use or not), I'll post the screenshots.


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## IVB

Well la dee da, i guess drunken mobile CQC adoption is better than no adoption at all.


My wife went to happy hour with her former co-workers, so I stayed home with the kids. At 8:45pm, random lights were turning on/off, I thought it was the automated lighting rules going hinky.


Turns out she decided to pull out the iPhone & putz with CQC while on the train home, and was pressing random buttons to screw with me. But hey - at least she didn't have any issues using CQC/the screens.


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## IVB

How maddening. I got 1 expensive toy fixed and 1 new expensive toy, but in the act of re-installing the fixed toy another toy broke. MF'er I hate this stuff sometimes.


Specifically, after 9 months I finally got my RAID card working again. That was the one that gave me a 3.8TB RAID5 and 1TB RAID1. I've been limping by on a 2x1TB JBOD. The only real-world impact was the DVD library. Between work & the kids and other stuff, the DVD library was a distant third. But it's fixed now, so i'm back up to a 7TB server. Well, 1TB is a 100GB partition for OS, 900GB partition for other so I try not to use that hard disk much if at all.


The PITA is that in the act of installing that, my USBUIRT that SageTV uses to control DirecTV has all but stopped working. Again. Not sure why. I even have a Paterson Tech cable running to it (had 2, only sold 1) but I couldn't get serial tuning to work on it. This is a pretty big deal and horrid timing as all our USA & my SciFi shows are starting up again. I might get another H21 DirecHD receiver @BestBuy today to see if that'll work with serial tuning.


But now the new expensive toy, which is always fun. A few days ago I got one of the Vidabox customized Nevo S70 remotes . If you haven't seen it, here's a pic:











The cool thing is that it has 19 hard buttons (note the 4 below the touchscreen), which is key to me as I hate touchscreen only whilst i'm watching TV.


The one hassleis that i've now got 4 different resolutions for touchscreens:


Nevo S70: 240 x 320

iPhone: 320 x 480

My HTC phone: 480 x 640

Wallmount TS: 800 x 600


As the iPhone & HTC are rarely used devices, I designed screens for the Nevo, and used overlays to render them into the iPhone/HTC. It's not that pretty, but hopefully it'll work as the wife will be used to seeing those screens on the S70 so recall & cross-training will occur on the iPhone. I really don't want to create custom screens just for the iPhone, as it's only used 1x/month or so.


I haven't had a chance to put the Nevo through it's paces due to the above SageTV issue sucking up my time, but hopefully this weekend.


Here's the first draft of the screenshots. These have barely been used, namely because i've only had the S70 working for 1-2 days, and haven't even gotten the hardbuttons working yet.


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## IVB

Well, I had to decide tonight between going to the gym and installing the USBUIRT that showed up in today's USPS for usage with the VS70. I was tempted to go to the gym, but I went yesterday, and am going on Wed & Thu.


Other than a few hassles (emitter means you use Z3; the 1/8" extender cable doesn't work), it's all good to go. The wife isn't terribly happy about yet another cable hanging off the plasma, especially as I had to use a USB powered hub due to the extender cable not working so the emitter wire is on a seperate run due to length issues. But for now, it'll do just fine.


I used the VS70 tonight whilst watching BS:G via Sage. I had CQC open next to me so I could tweak the screens as need be for no-look operation. Here's where i'm at, although I think I'll peel off the channel #s and put onto a different screen so it's not so busy.











The play is actually a checkbox widget, so it alternates between play & pause based on whether the extender is playing a show or not. Also, since there's hardbuttons below those Back2/Back1/etc text fields, the play/stop buttons extend all the way to the bottom. This means all I have to do is feel for the bottom right or bottom left of the screen, and I know i'll be hitting the button.


I think I can also intelligently hide the DVD-Menu button, and only show it if there's a DVD actively being played back, but i'm not positive.


And now, it's 1am, i need sleep. Maybe I should have gone to the gym tonight after all...


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## IVB

Pics as of 2/5, very much still a work in progress.


This is my revised GUI for the S70. Honestly, i'm not wild about the music layout, but the wife really digs her iPhone so I opted to clone that. The cool thing is that since the S70 has a jogdial on the right side, plus the 18 hardbuttons, I didn't have to waste screen real estate on up/down or alphabetic shortcut keys. Navigating through 530ish artists & albums is pretty damn fast.

*Main Screen:*

(The high & forecast on this screen show N/A since i'm taking the screenshot at 10pm, so it's no longer a relevant field.)










*SageTV Screens:*


This screen shows a play button, so SageTV must be in pause mode. Note also that the concerto (in-wall) speakers are off. Those are both checkbox widgets.


The "TV" and "Sage" buttons are IR controls to power on the devices, so they're not colored since I can't tell current state.











And now note that the speaker is colored green, and the play/pause button has changed.












Channel selection....










Heat...









*Security Screen:*




























*Music Screens:*




















this screen shows the dialog box that confirms the addition of something to the queue.




















this screenshot looks a little dark, but it's actually pretty easy to read on the physical device.











Finally, here's a pic that I photoshopped onto the actual remote, so you can see how the GUI would look on the remote and tell how the hardbuttons come into play.


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## IVB

Had a power outage. All worked as designed. My design skills suck. Had 3 different battery backups all chirping at different 30 second intervals at 1am. Didn't put my DSL modem or NextAlarm Broadband adapter *on* the battery backup so the alarm company didn't know about it until power came back at 4, cell went crazy. And the Elk battery is dying, it reported low battery within 3 hours, should have lasted 28.


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## IVB

Long engrained behavior is hard to change. I got that Vidabox customized Nevo S70 to replace my aging MX800. Wife *loves* it, but forgets to put it back on the charger. It dies within hours, then she gets pissed off and blames the remote when she wants to watch TV. But she doesn't blame her iPhone when it dies for the same reason.


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## IVB

You know what really sucks? Constantly shifting business requirements.


After my experiment in '06 with PDA-based touchscreens inside the house, I was sure I would never want to do that as the real estate was just too damn small.


My girls are now almost 10, and have gotten really into the two things I like: Playing soccer, & playing gin rummy. I played one with 1 this morning, and in the afternoon the other wanted to play the other. I'm sitting in the dining room for an hour playing, so I put on some tunes. I was in a pretty mentally unsettled state and kept changing my mind about what type of music I wanted to listen to. (okay, she was kicking my ass, so I was trying to find something that would calm me down and get my rummy mojo back). I had to keep getting up to go to the touchscreen, so I went & got my HTC PDA cellphone which has the CQC viewer on it to control the system.


Thing is, the music selection templates for the S70 are 240 x 320, and my HTC cellphone which is almost the same exact physical size is 480 x 640. It's a damn PITA to use the S70 screens on the HTC, so now I need to decide whether to suck it up or scale my screens up for something I won't even use 1x/month.


----------

