Hello Everyone, Thought I would share some info about my Smart Home set up and repay the help so many others have provided 😀 Hope this will help others that are trying to do something similar to what I have done, and maybe save them a little time and frustration.
I will try to go into detail in many areas such as Z-wave basics, Blue Iris, Oregon Scientific, HS Touch3, scripting basics, etc. My goal is to grow this post over time with detailed instructions and configurations. Basically, I will be sharing my notes on how everything was set up. This won't be for the beginner and you will need to know basic topics (which are easily Googleable) such as using ssh, basic network configuration (IE assigning and finding IP addresses) and troubleshooting. This won't be an attempt to sell you anything, just show what I've done and how I did it. Topics will be posted in this thread and I'll attempt to keep them towards the top.
Before we get into it, here's a little of my background. In a previous life, lol, I did IT for 20 years. Mostly telecom, servers, and networking. Had my own IT business for 10 years and about two years ago decided to do something different. To keep my skills sharp and satisfy my tinkering need I found home automation. Oddly enough, I found out about it from my parents! My Mother was using a ZigBee based system to monitor and control her home greenhouse and had a completely separate X10 system (BTW they just switched to HS and love it). I was intrigued by the capabilities of her system but noticed it was slow and unreliable. I liked what they've done but the two systems weren't integrated and it had severe shortcomings, so I decided to do something different.
Started with Wink, wanted something more flexible and found Smarthings, then started looking for something faster, and more reliable and found HomeSeer. Overall I've been very happy with my HomeTroller SEL. I've had it for over a year and never really had an issue. It's been extremely reliable which was a surprise since the SEL is Linux and HomeSeer is primarily windows based. Congrats to HomeSeer for making a cross-platform system that is fast, flexible and reliable. Anyway, my story is pretty similar to many just getting started with home automation, started with something easy and cheap, then grew from there.
So this is my attempt to pay it forward and hopefully make a central location of info for anyone trying to do what I've done. Enjoy!
I will try to go into detail in many areas such as Z-wave basics, Blue Iris, Oregon Scientific, HS Touch3, scripting basics, etc. My goal is to grow this post over time with detailed instructions and configurations. Basically, I will be sharing my notes on how everything was set up. This won't be for the beginner and you will need to know basic topics (which are easily Googleable) such as using ssh, basic network configuration (IE assigning and finding IP addresses) and troubleshooting. This won't be an attempt to sell you anything, just show what I've done and how I did it. Topics will be posted in this thread and I'll attempt to keep them towards the top.
Before we get into it, here's a little of my background. In a previous life, lol, I did IT for 20 years. Mostly telecom, servers, and networking. Had my own IT business for 10 years and about two years ago decided to do something different. To keep my skills sharp and satisfy my tinkering need I found home automation. Oddly enough, I found out about it from my parents! My Mother was using a ZigBee based system to monitor and control her home greenhouse and had a completely separate X10 system (BTW they just switched to HS and love it). I was intrigued by the capabilities of her system but noticed it was slow and unreliable. I liked what they've done but the two systems weren't integrated and it had severe shortcomings, so I decided to do something different.
Started with Wink, wanted something more flexible and found Smarthings, then started looking for something faster, and more reliable and found HomeSeer. Overall I've been very happy with my HomeTroller SEL. I've had it for over a year and never really had an issue. It's been extremely reliable which was a surprise since the SEL is Linux and HomeSeer is primarily windows based. Congrats to HomeSeer for making a cross-platform system that is fast, flexible and reliable. Anyway, my story is pretty similar to many just getting started with home automation, started with something easy and cheap, then grew from there.
So this is my attempt to pay it forward and hopefully make a central location of info for anyone trying to do what I've done. Enjoy!
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