Scottmichaelj

What you probably need is a driveway beam sensor. Heres an easy way, there are hardwired options from other companies too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7oI1pTejUg&sns=em

Depending on the shades I can help you too. I am familiar with the Platinum Bridge. The power view is a whole other beast. Whenever your ready or if you need help installing the software let me know.

I think your misunderstanding me. I know "technically" cloud services are not free. I am not going to counter your points as I feel we getting off topic as to what the OP is after. You have made your point and I have as well. I think bringing up other alternatives is what was asked and depending on the person "man hours" can add up and maybe a valid point or may not. So while there is a benefit to the ISY portal if he did not want to go that route I offered him an alternative. I think your getting a bit over technical of what he wants. Sure you feel the ISY portal is a good investment, so by all means pay. I am not disputing you, this or the fee etc. However there are alternatives that are free to use and therefore wanted to point it out. It won't take that long to setup and then he can decide if its right for him or if he wants to pay. The other thing was justification of use/purchase. He may find like myself the novelty quickly wears off with the Echo. I am also putting my money where my mouth is to sorts by offering my time to help him over the phone set it up. Not to continue to push the issue, but does raise what I think is a valid point? Is the ISY a "Home Automation" controller or a HUB? I keep hearing people say I can tell it to turn on the lights or scenes or when I walk into the house do this. My response is, Home Automation is not doing those things but those things being done for you automatically. Whats the difference of telling the Echo to do something or hitting a switch? The INPUT is done by the USER, instead of truly being automated. Your just adding a "feature".

Then BWS software maybe the perfect solution for you! http://bwssystems.com Its super easy to setup and does everything you want, Echo to scenes, programs, etc. Best of all its free. PM me if you want with your name, email and a phone number and I would be happy to help you set it up if you need it. I helped out a few people on the forum with this. One guy uses it for controlling his Hunter Douglas shades with it! It can run scripts too, so if you want to run external commands outside the ISY you can do that too!

For me personally at first I loved having the Amazon Echo respond to my request and most of the time it works. However the longer I own it the more those times it doesnt work are adding up and annoying me more and more. Add to the fact that Amazon changes things in the background and doesnt tell anyone so while everything may work perfectly at first it could stop at anytime. Just read some of the echo threads, people complain about this often. So I actually use my Echo much less and prefer other input methods that work 100% of the time, like a KPL or remote control. You could spend your money better elsewhere say on a Harmony remote if you dont have one. Then using free software I posted above from BWS Systems, link the Harmony to the ISY and an Echo. Did you see my post above? Is that not an option? Its FREE!

You talk about cloud being free and services dying off because of that, thus making a point to pay for the infrastructure and I agree you have to pay to keep a service going if you like it. But then in the next breath you say you dont want your investment to become obsolete. So wouldnt this be the reason to pay once and be done so it can be on your local machine? I get your point and what your trying to explain but it also seems a bit conflicting. The ISY portal is great but I would like to see all this Polygot, RaspberryPi, ISYHelper, NodeLink, DDCLink, etc all move to the service in one place. I know I am tired of configuring and maintaining multiple services for my ISY. Then if that was to happen the portal sub costs would be less of a con and more of a pro.

What no one has said is there is also a Windows based program you can use for free too, called BWS Systems. The downside (to some) is you need a PC always running. This program works great!

Oh you two. Gonna call you the safety police! I say throw caution to the wind. The hot line tester worked fine for me in both my houses. Plus whats a 120v tingle between friends? Livens up a party! Lol Go out on the edge and snip the live wire too without insulated snips to get bonus points. #DontListenToMeIAmNotATrainedElectricianOrProfessionalLOL #ButIDoThis

The hardest time I had was learning three and four way switch installations. I bought one of those pen tools that tell you what wires are hot etc. Then learning the load wire and switch was easier. Working back from there. Glad your up and running. And yeah it's addicting for sure.

Yup sounds great but that wouldn't fly in my home. Thankfully I don't have tiers or "cost saving timeframes" where I live (or kids!). The Brultech has been great for me though to know what circuits use what energy and therefore change habits if I can. So far the only real change I have made is to turn off the towel warmers from midnight to 6am since they were using 350w and running 24/7. Saved me about $20-30 a month. I thought my HVAC split system was using the energy and it was the towel warmers that used more in the day! That was an eye opener for sure.

Teken should be sponsored by Brultech. LOL I agree though with Teken as I just put one in myself. However be prepared to fiddle with it and spend time setting it up. Depending how many circuits you have it could be hours. I still have to fiddle around with mine. Also the software on the Dashbox is a bit flakey, but tech support is very good. Some simple stuff like deleting my data took a email to tech support. Once you understand how things work it get much easier. It was very overwhelming for me at first for setup etc but Teken was a huge help. I still dont have any of the data going to my ISY but I really cant think of a reason for me personally to need that either.

Seems the portal is down for me as well.

Keeping us all drooling and wanting...

Love it. Your right for the masses this sign is perfect! For some of us though we may pay the $100 to learn how not to pay the $45! Lol Am I right? Pay a little school to learn it yourself. Gonna cost either way.

So larry what you need is a airplane bathroom sign above your bathroom door. Then when in the bathroom press the keypad link with the man or woman icon and it shows then on the outside

I can help if needed and ask around here. Not sure your location. PM and happy to help anyway I can including financially.

There are 3D printing companies out there can can print a item. Might have to either supply them with the file or have them design the file, print and test. I would be willing to donate direct to you via paypal to help pay the file design of the tray and have one test 3D printed for you then share the file with the community here. Then they can take that file to a 3D printer themselves to have made or use the same company. I would be willing to do one for the keypad buttons as well.

You misunderstood me. You said its more economical for the etcher to supply the buttons. My point is the savings is only a couple bucks. So with that being said does my post makes more sense now?

By what a couple bucks? Then the "etcher" lays out the money and then etches the button, collects cash, then its a business transaction. Thats when trouble starts in Michaels scenario.

Michael- You bring up legitimate points but for app sales it is different than this. BTW what is your app? Who here is talking about selling buttons anyway? At least I'm not. I would be happy to share my icons I like and buy personally and print them for free for anyone who also likes them as well. I would ask they send me the buttons and cover the shipping back, if I get good at it. Whats the royalty police gonna bust down your door cuz you printed a few buttons for a friend? Plus how is anyone going to know what icons were used between you and the other party? Lastly as long as your not mass producing them and selling them for profit your fine. For the repository I don't know the legal aspect here but thats normally a cease and desist letter along with asking to remove it and if you do just do it. Or put them on an anonymous account somewhere if your that paranoid. Also my second link for the icon pack specifically shows: Royalty-free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales. The google link is just an example of whats out there, for your personal use. No reason to get all stuffy and legal over such a small thing. I doubt Smarthome makes millions on etched button sales let alone a small forum like this. Hell this forum is smaller than the Smarthome forum! Go have a adult beverage and relax. Loosen your tie a bit.

Or do a Vector Home Automation Button search in google https://goo.gl/BNhLVX Edit: Or this: https://icon54.com/view-icons/

Maybe we can share a site like dropbox and dump in all our buttons to share with each other? I suggested this a bit ago too. If someone can help me add a way to upload them to my biz site we could use that. Im not a good html coder. I have basic skillz bit not with an upload dumping page.

Where did you get yours and what model did you buy? I do see USA sellers for them on eBay and I am probably going to buy one too.

For notifications I like Pushover, its almost instant, and can be sent direct from the ISY without a middleman.

Yes, Thank you for your time to share this with us. Very much appreciated.