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    Security, Homeseer, Dedicated Security Systems

    I have been using homeseer for over 10 years. Started as a way to eliminate multiple remotes in a home theater but has expanded to temperature monitoring, lights, etc. Now I am thinking more about home security in general. I have a house that is prewired for a security system and I know where most of the wires terminate. I could find the rest with a tone generator. As I began to think about home security, the only thing I really would like to do is activate lights and/or a siren if an intrusion occurs. I do not care about monitoring as by the time anyone arrived, the intruders would be long gone (rurual location). I have looked into dedicated systems but do not see why I would need all of their capability. I have X10 and have never ever had a problem with interference or unreliability. I just acquired z wave but have only one light module and right now have no reason to build this out into a wider mesh. The question then is, why not install X10 sensors with say powerflash receptors or x/10 with rf transmitters on doors and windows to create a system that focuses on homeseer's ability to activate things like sirens or lights flashing etc. rather than a separate security system interfaced to homeseer. Or does some simple way exist to take advantage of the existing wiring to create a homeseer centered security system that would be better than relying on either rf or powerflash transmission? Why add another layer of complexity when I only need simple intrusion detection? I would use zwave but understand that I would probably need to build out the mesh for this to be effective. Thoughts? If you would rather not post your thoughts, please e-mail them to me at masman@bgsu.edu. Thanks.

    #2
    You could but a DSC system is very affordable and would be much more reliable.
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      #3
      Originally posted by Rupp View Post
      You could but a DSC system is very affordable and would be much more reliable.
      Security systems do not have windows updates, firewalls to configure, reboots, crashes, or random GUI lockups.

      Security systems look for things to be in a good state all the time and respond to any deviation from the good state, provided it's enabled.

      homeseer responds to every state change and in any way you program it do respond, whether you programmed it to actually do what you want or intend - or not!

      homeseer is a complex integration of technologies all sitting on top of windows and PC hardware and some system BIOS.

      The least little glitch and homeseer's ability to respond is greatly diminished. Security systems are much more fault tolerant.

      That said, I think if you feel adequately safe with a simple "scare the intruder away" technique and your homeseer is stable enough for unattended use during long vacations, it wouldn't be that awful to give it a shot.

      I'd still suggest listening to Rupp. Every time I have listened to Rupp in the past, I've been very happy with the results.
      huggy_d1

      Automating made easy

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        #4
        Homeseer and security

        The reason I am somewhat willing to give homeseer a chance is because of the reliability that I have had with the system. For the last 3 years, we leave the house for about 3 months during the winter. My system has never failed during these time periods. I put a smart backup power supply on the Dell server and wrote a script to intelligently shut the system down in the event of power failure and bring it back up once power is restored. I turn off automatic updates when I leave cutting off that potential point of no return. The system is not used for any email or web surfing thereby greatly reducing the change of outside worms or viruses. I check in from time to time when I gone using my Ipad or Iphone or laptop just to make sure the system is still alive and so far, so good. But, I appreciate Rupps advice and will look into the DSC.

        The server is a Dell 400SC with 2 gigs (thats all it can handle) and Win Pro. I thought about a new server but this thing has just been a reliable workhorse running 24/7 now for over 5 years. I do have an external backup running but usually pull this in the winter and take it with me as we backup other machines through the server to this drive and perform this function individually during the winter. I do have a 2nd hard drive internally mounted and I change the server backup to this drive so that we can recover when the system fails (Unless both drives fail at once). I really believe in a dedicated server and so far, it has worked for me.

        I did have some router issues the first year with power outages but that did not affect the internal house functionality of homeseer. I switched out the router to another brand and have not experienced any problems with power outages not coming back on line since that time. My x10 has been 100% reliable in term of handling lights, etc. When I get home after 3 months, everything is still working normally.

        I have used a temp sensor (smarthome's templinc) for the past 3 years to monitor house temps and I have scripts that will text me if the temp falls below 40 but will need to change that out this year as I moved the server from XP to Win 7 pro and I cannot get the templinc to work. The old (no longer supported) plug in for templinc is still on my system but homeseer is not receiving any communication from the device through the Smarthome 1132U usb x10 interface. I know that templinc natively wants a serial interface but the templinc did work fine through the 1132U when I was running under XP. Initially, when i installed win 7 pro, I installed it to a second drive and had a dual boot situation on the server for a while for testing purposes. Everything worked fine including the templinc. When I eliminated XP, the templinc went south. I found a DLL related to templinc that was not registered and I did the registration. This gave me the Templinc setup screen but the device still does not work or the plug in is unable to get the signals. I am not sure which. If anyone has thoughts on this problem, I would love to hear them.

        Mark

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          #5
          I would roll back to XP Pro since all you use the server for is HomeSeer.
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            #6
            Originally posted by Rupp View Post
            I would roll back to XP Pro since all you use the server for is HomeSeer.
            Actually, Rupp I would except that then I have to support 3 different op systems in the house and I just no longer want to do that. Win 7 pro has been very stable for us and it handles our backups nicely. I believe that the support for XP is destined to disappear and so, for now, will stick with Win 7. I made the switch a month ago and have not yet had a failure of any kind. So far, so good. All of your homeseer stuff is working fine and that includes hs touch. I really like this product. If I was a bit younger, I would start a home automation business around hs and hs touch. I really like the way it works with the Iphone, Itouch, and Ipad2 apps. Keep up the good work. I think that the HS touch piece is what was missing for a lot of years. It was simply too difficult to make the HS system easily transparent to the end user. I tried the third party approach with girder/net remote but whenever you load pieces of different vendors together, life gets more difficult and reliability goes down.

            It will be interesting to see how all of this stuff works as MS brings out win 8. I suspect it will be buggy at first since they seem to believe they can stretch this op system over touch devices, phones, and PCs. Maybe Apple will emerge the long-term winner in the end. Who knows?

            Thanks.
            Mark

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              #7
              If you want to give HS a try as a security system, I'd suggest you take a look at the ACRF2 plug-in. It has the ability to emulate a security system using X10 RF devices like the DS10. X10 RF is much faster than power line control, and it can handle more devices without bogging down your existing X10 transmissions. There is also rudimentary device monitoring capability to report devices that are not updating or have low batteries.
              Mike____________________________________________________________ __________________
              HS3 Pro Edition 3.0.0.548, NUC i3

              HW: Stargate | NX8e | CAV6.6 | Squeezebox | PCS | WGL 800RF | RFXCOM | Vantage Pro | Green-Eye | Edgeport/8 | Way2Call | Ecobee3 | EtherRain | Ubiquiti

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