Is Z-Wave on the ISY994 reliable or still kind of alpha/beta?

[johnnyt]

Word of advice if you get custom etched: use CAPS. Lower case is too small. They now say it the on the Smarthome web site but didn't always and I learned it the hard way.

 

 

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[johnnyt]

I don't have a pool or driveway lights or many areas where lots of scenes are necessary.

Don't underestimate your need for scenes. They are a very nice feature of insteon and needed to change keypad buttons programmatically.

 

Also, don't underestimate the value of good support and a helpful user community. As a veteran of homeseer that still uses it for a few things (forecast data and math functions) - and many other IT products - I will say ISY support is second to none.

 

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[paulbates]

Teken - I had "Release the Kraken"  on my button wish list. Think it would fit?

[bernieb]

Take it for what it's worth, but going back to the original topic, I've had Homeseer since 1997.  I am now making the switch to the ISY and Insteon for what I call "mission critical items" things that needs to work. Mostly for WAF and my own piece of mind.  I am not sure that HS3 is all that I was expecting and they are still ironing out bugs for a product that's been 3 years in development.  They've dropped a lot of other features if a 3rd party already has a plugin for it. (extra cost and at the mercy of a hobbyist that may not be there in  a year).

I've also had issues, since this all runs on a PC with Windows OS, that I had a hard drive crash 2 night before leaving for vacation.  Beleive it or not, I had that happen to me twice in the past 14 years, so now I have to rebuild a system in a hurry so that my house looks occupied when I am gone, one of the reason to have home automation in the first place.

 

Don't get me wrong, HSTouch is nice as well, but honestly, I never finished an entire project, 3/4 into it, I wanted a different look and started all over again, did this countless of times. My attraction to ISY + Mobilinc is that I just want to be able to trigger the hardware that I just added without spending hours designing screen for the different resolutions of my devices.  I am not a big fan of the Mobilinc interface, but it's a trade off so that I don't have to come up with a new screen design because I added a lamp module.

 

There is a plugin for Homeseer to ISY, so I will keep HS for the fun and "cutesie" stuff, but moving things towards ISY with Z-Wave board

[paulbates]

Take it for what it's worth, but going back to the original topic, I've had Homeseer since 1997.  I am now making the switch to the ISY and Insteon for what I call "mission critical items" things that needs to work. Mostly for WAF and my own piece of mind.  I am not sure that HS3 is all that I was expecting and they are still ironing out bugs for a product that's been 3 years in development.  They've dropped a lot of other features if a 3rd party already has a plugin for it. (extra cost and at the mercy of a hobbyist that may not be there in  a year).

I've also had issues, since this all runs on a PC with Windows OS, that I had a hard drive crash 2 night before leaving for vacation.  Beleive it or not, I had that happen to me twice in the past 14 years, so now I have to rebuild a system in a hurry so that my house looks occupied when I am gone, one of the reason to have home automation in the first place.

 

I'm in the same boat bernieb, was a HS user from 2004 and went through HS1, 2 and 3. I am now fully migrating to ISY. Its easier for me to organize my work and no windows server to care for. WAF has been better as ISY programming makes it faster for me to create things that work. I've an occasional windows server hang up with HS, and now that I travel I can't wonder about that any more.

 

I just went through a long brown out last week. Server and ISY plugged into the same spot. ISY came right back up, server didn't like the brown out and had to be visited and restarted. I also could not find myself in HS3.

 

I have a hydreon sensor to set up to move my sprinkers over and I will be 100% ISY.

[Teken]

Teken - I had "Release the Kraken" on my button wish list. Think it would fit?

That would fit perfect on a six button KPL! LOL, I might have to steal that one from you!

 

Promise to quote you on my wall of fame!

 

 

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[ravedog]

I was thinking of populating my with various dirty words that my dad will yell out when things don't work. "Oh you want to do that? Then press the *{#}^}+@$&" button." Lol

 

 

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[Teken]

I was thinking of populating my with various dirty words that my dad will yell out when things don't work. "Oh you want to do that? Then press the *{#}^}+@$&" button." Lol

 

 

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I have struggled with doing that but didn't want to explain it to the kids why dads a potty mouth LOL!

 

In the man cave I could slip a few in.

 

 

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[edokid]

Awesome thanks again everyone!  I'm using the Hub right now but getting the ISY soon or when I have more of a need for it.  I posted a long review here http://forum.smarthome.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15645 on the hub and what it does for me.  HomeSeer I think is out, as nice as it is, I just can't justify the price.  The keypad thing was a huge thing for me until I really sat down and thought, when would I EVER use this touchpad?  It's so much easier to have a Keypadlinc and just push a button than have to go through menus on the touchpad, because believe me if I designed it I'd probably make it way more complicated than necessary.  There is something pretty cool though about having a wicked looking touch panel up with "CLIMATE" "SECURITY" things like that, but aside from looking cool there's no real practical need for it.  I'll probably get more into scenes later on, although now that I have a bunch of LED bulbs, I find it cool to have Home mode set, where every lamp in the house (there's I think a total 4 or 5) comes on even dim just for some nice atmosphere.  

 

Has anyone done anything with Philips Hue?  I saw somewhere a plugin or something or people talking about it with the ISY but seemed spotty.  I don't have Hue yet, and wasn't going to get it since almost none of my lights other than lamps use the normal bulb socket, they are all those GU10 style.  Just saw though there's a new Hue product I forget the name but looks like its just a plug in lamp type thing that you could put behind the couch or xmas tree things like that, so now I think I'd have some cool uses for it as I think that's almost even nicer than an overhead lamp.  Just be nice if an ISY scene could trigger Hue also.  As I'm writing this I'm just realizing I could probably buy some cheap Ikea lamps or spotlights that do use the normal bulb and just use normal Hue lights and have a plug in dimmer attached.  I realize I wouldn't be able to change the colours and so on but I doubt I'd do that much anyway, I'd probably have a scene I really like in the Hue and set it on the Hue app, then just use Insteon to turn the scene on or off, and then the Hue app if I need to fine tune.  That's actually probably an even bigger benefit to ISY now if I did do the touch panels with android tablets like I was thinking, as yeah the interface won't be as nice, but I won't have to worry now about trying to integrate 50 systems into one UI with plugins and so on, I can just use whatever android app works best for that task.  Sorry for the ramble in this last paragraph, realized I posted a question then kind of found a solution on my own lol, but would like to know if Hue works properly with the ISY at all.

 

Edit: Omg!!!!!!!  What a good day already! http://store.apple.com/ca/product/HD394VC/A/philips-hue-connected-bulb-gu10-single-pack?fnode=0001050701

[Mark H]

Teken - I had "Release the Kraken"  on my button wish list. Think it would fit?

 

That's what I programmed to display on my Elk keypads, lol.