Running HAL and Homeseer?

[Jasedit]

I'm looking at running an HVAC system within an automated house that HAL will not currently support (multiple sensors in each room), and so I'm considering possibly trying to run Homeseer alongside HAL to handle the HVAC. I had a few questions about doing so though.

My first question is what all would be needed to get Homeseer up and running by itself. I've seen a few posts mention additional costs beyond Homeseer itself, so I was wondering what the general additions are so I could see roughly how much it would cost to introduce this additional system.

Secondly, I was wondering what all might be required to get these two to play nice. One of the big problems is that it would be really useful to control the HVAC via voice control, but I don't know if it'd be possible to have both voice systems running at the same time without confusing the heck out of them. Does anyone have any idea about how this might work?

Thanks in advance for helping me look into this option.

Jase

[Chas821]

Jase,

What functionality is HAL giving you that Homeseer can't provide? I tried out both systems extensively before I purchased HS and have never regretted it. If you do some looking around on this board, you'll find that Homeseer's expandability far surpasses HAL.

I would agree that running both VR systems at the same time would render VR almost useless in this case. Although you can trigger the VR in HS to listen when you want it to, I don't remember if HAL always listens or if it too can be trigered on and off.

As far as what's required to get HS to control HVAC, you'll need either a serial or X10 controlled thermostat. I would opt for the X10 controlled one as many folks on this board can help with the necessary scripting and interfacing. Look in the Plugins forum for "Homeseer Thermostat Plugins" for more information.

Good luck,

Chuck

[electron]

if HAL lets you execute javascript/vbs/php/perl based scripts, you can access Homeseer using COM, so no need to run HS's VR engine if HAL is your main application. I would however recommend completely moving to the Homeseer platform to avoid any potential issues in the future, unless there are features in HAL which you can't find in HS of course (but please to post them). Otherwise I can't see a problem doing this, except for running 2 VR engines at the same time.

[Jasedit]

The main problem is that I'm not the one in charge of dictating which automation systems are used within the house. This is a group project, and HAL has been what's been used for awhile, so I can't just go and dismantle other's work to make my system work. Instead, I'm hoping to use the best tool for my job (monitoring & reporting) and let them use theirs, and go from there. If you can turn off Homeseer's VR and communicate to Homeseer using COM, then I can certainly run Homeseer alongside and try and quasi-integrate the two as best as I can. The current issue is that I don't know much about programming either - I'm trying to decide what general setup to go with before I actually dig in and start programming things.

Jase

[electron]

you definitely can turn off the VR engine, TTS and other sound related options in Homeseer, so you should be good to go. The nice thing about COM is that many programming languages support it, which makes it easy to interface Homeseer. Do you know which languages HAL supports?

[Rupp]

Jase,
To answer you first question. Nothing. Nothing else is need to get HS up and running. What type of HVAC controls are you currently using? I use the RCS TX15B tstat. That along with a free script (very dependable) is all I ever use to totally control my HVAC system.

[Jasedit]

HAL allows you to run executables based on events and timers and such, but to my knowledge does not allow you to alter its functionality. You can code events and such through their scripting language though.

I'm looking at using the 1-wire system for sensors, but I'm still researching and seeing what thermostat to use in conjunction with it. I'm in the research stage of everything for my part, so I'm looking to see what my options are.

Right now I guess I need to start building a comparison for my co-workers and see what exactly the results of that are. Given what I'm trying to do though, I have a funny feeling I'm either going to be creating a massive custom job or working to at least run Homeseer and HAL together.

Jase