Remote monitoring of second house

[reidfo]

I'm looking for suggestions on monitoring a few specific things in a second house that is very remote. (Pete, you've had lots of ideas about this over the years...)

My family has a ranch house that is in a remote area in Texas. Due to a really good investment, the local telephone co-op has tons of money and is running fiber to every home. Yeah, the home in the middle of nowhere, down in a canyon, will get fiber before my house in the city that CenturyLink announced as one of their first... but I digress.

Since nobody lives in the house full time, I want to monitor a few key things like temperature and humidity inside, water sensor by the water heater, outside lights activated when someone crosses the cattle guard (think of it as driveway entrance several hundred feet from the house), etc.

We are really diligent in keeping the thermostat set properly for the season, but water heater leaks, turkeys crashing through the plate glass windows (yes it happened), and other things are what I want to monitor for. The turkey incident wasn't noticed for a couple of months, and there was significant damage because of it.

What do y'all use for remote monitoring? Should I put a Zee and a few z-wave devices in the house? What's the most reliable since if something crashes there's usually nobody there to reset it?

[Pete]

@Reid

A fiber connection should help making a decision on how you want to do this.

There using an OmniPro 2 first generation with wired everything. Here a newer OmniPro II with 4 Homeseer boxes. The two OPII panels have been running now for a few years with no issues or hiccups.

That said try a Zee-2 / Z-Wave devices / remote HStouch screen for it and see if that will work for you.

If you broke a remote RPi2 you could fix it via SSH or whatever. (well except if the SD card messed up).

[collegeboyslive]

i just did the same thing basically, home seer in your main home, a z-net at the remote location as well as a znet at your home, home seer connects to remote znet and its as if you have a home seer there.

been working flawlessly for a number of months.

[reidfo]

Thanks Pete and Zac. The OmniPro II is beyond my budget (other renovations and repairs are taking priority). I do like its reliability though. I have thought about putting a Zee out there but worry about it crashing. How reliable is the base hardware and OS? Could I realistically expect to have SSH available when the thing goes TU?

Zac, I like your idea too of a Z-Net. Do you need anything special at the site to make one connect over the internet to HS? Out there I'll just have a simple switch/router, and no ability to log in to it. I can do whatever is necessary on my side of the link.

[reidfo]

Forgot to include in my last post, any suggestions on a remote driveway sensor? I need something with a wireless and solar powered sensor that can stand up to very heavy blowing dirt. A beam break detector would be fine if it can handle harsh and dirty conditions.

[TomTom]

I'm about to do the same and have been researching this issue for the last few weeks. Houses are several states away. House is also prone to power outages due to weather.
Thrag had mentioned that his remote z-net would loose connection and then hs machine would backs up due to hs machine trying to connect to remote z-net constantly. System reliability became a problem. The solution that he was trying was to put the remote z-net and router on battery backup.
http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...ight=net+thrag

So far, remote z-net seems to be the most efficient and inexpensive way to go about this. I've tested a z-net through a dozen power outages( locally) and they always boot back up without any problems or any sd card problems. If you wanted to be extra safe copy the image of the z-net sd card on to a good brand name sd card like sandisk and you will have that extra protection. I've used them, sd/usb, on couple of devices where they were they held the os and haven't had any issues in 3 years of constant use.

[Pete]

How reliable is the base hardware and OS?

Could I realistically expect to have SSH available when the thing goes TU?

Not sure what TU means?

[TomTom]

Wondering if beam break would optimal in environments exposed to dirt and perhaps deer or other animals in rural area. Think a better a underground vehicle loop sensor. Thinking most folks out that far would most likely be in a vehicle. But you would have to rig the vehicle sensor to a z-wave device to trigger. The problem is with z-wave plus you could about 300ft( shouldn't be a problem in rural area). Plus about another 50-75ft wire on the loop detector wire. But think you said the driveway was several hundred feet?

[reidfo]

Not sure what TU means?

Tango Uniform. Or, T--s Up.

[reidfo]

Wondering if beam break would optimal in environments exposed to dirt and perhaps deer or other animals in rural area. Think a better a underground vehicle loop sensor. Thinking most folks out that far would most likely be in a vehicle. But you would have to rig the vehicle sensor to a z-wave device to trigger. The problem is with z-wave plus you could about 300ft( shouldn't be a problem in rural area). Plus about another 50-75ft wire on the loop detector wire. But think you said the driveway was several hundred feet?

Underground loop is a possibility. It's a dirt road, so digging is no problem. So how to make this Z-Wave and solar powered?

[Pete]

I used an optical driveway sensor in the late 1980's to 1990's and lightning would always trigger it.

[collegeboyslive]

Sent on a ups if you get a lot of power surges seemed to work great for me, the main has machine will keep trying to connect to the net unit so make sure you have the correct ports open on your router, it works great and had zero issues, of course back up the ad card just in case , it's tiny , uses almost no power and zwave is common cheap and reliable. So you can control lights, thermostats and have motion sensors as well as door locks on it.

[TomTom]

the last loop sensor I looked at had an option to connect to the gate directly. I believe it was just a contact switch. So my thought was to hook that up to a z-wave door window sensor( my everspring modules have that options). And I think these worked off batteries?? I dont remember all the details any more because I didn't end up installing it. The loop detc. would keep pick up my son's bike and wagon as he drove it up to the gate.

Solar power - I would look into gate solar power panels. Not too expensive. You may need to read up on this, but some folks that live here in rural areas use a car battery hooked up to a solar panel?? I 'm sure how good this is, but there are many I've heard of that do this. They actually use the car batteries for their gate openers, rather than the smaller regular 12v batteries used for gates.

[kevincanderson]

i just did the same thing basically, home seer in your main home, a z-net at the remote location as well as a znet at your home, home seer connects to remote znet and its as if you have a home seer there.

been working flawlessly for a number of months.

About to setup a second place. Is this still the best way to setup the second place - Z-Net at the remote house?

[wpiman]

I have a VPN router between my house and our family's beach house. There is a Z-NET down there..