Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd. - Support Forums and Community

I need better web interfaces for my HAI and Elk systems for now I am concentrating on our HAI Demo House as time permits. Specifically a few of our clients want to use there ipad, iphones and various pc to control there environment, It use to be enough to use the HAI screens or sell them a pronto and configure it but no more I need custom solutions on there interfaces, so here are my questions and environment please let me know if CQC can handle this and the stumbling points.

Sorry for the huge scope on this question but I figured I would just put it out there.

Environment:
HAI system and all the toys with it, thermostats, temp sensors, HAI UPB lights,
I would like to display if zones are open or closed like garage doors and occupancy sensors.

Nuvo Gran Concharado

GEO Vision PC based DVR 20 channel. We would like to see the web cams and manage them, also push a front door pick up to the display when the front door bell is rung.

AvCast, AVAtrix Video distribution system

I tunes music server

Logitech Squeezebox

Somphy shades

Other Needs:
Rss feeds to whether, house temp etc, displayed on one screen
Intercom to the touch pannels. I dont' have a solution currently in place for this.
Family Messages, shopping lists, and display email have been other requests.
Different screens for different interface devices, iphone, ipad, pc, blackberry etc.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Most of that is fairly core stuff. Some of that hardware I'm not personally familiar with, like that DVR, so I can't say for sure. Some other folks may have real world experience with them and can say for sure.

iTunes sucks as a media repository. It's not designed for automation so at best it ain't very good.

The other stuff should be doable I think.

Dean Roddey Wrote:Most of that is fairly core stuff. Some of that hardware I'm not personally familiar with, like that DVR, so I can't say for sure. Some other folks may have real world experience with them and can say for sure.

iTunes sucks as a media repository. It's not designed for automation so at best it ain't very good.

The other stuff should be doable I think.

iTunes is fine if you connect it to the Squeezebox server and then use the Squeezebox driver on CQC. Squeezebox will import your iTunes music and pick up changes on the fly.

Another stumbling point to keep in mind is that CQC doesn't naively support access via a web page and html. Access via iPhones and iPads require client application. Access via a PC requires a PC application and the full-featured interface for the PC only works over a LAN, not the Internet. Access via a MAC is non-existent.

Web-Link 2 and Web-Link 3 are not very full featured, but they do allow access without client software.

I use HAI and CQC, and am still forced to access my system remotely (outside the house) via Web-Link as opposed to CQC. The iPad/iPhone client works good remotely, but once you get beyond those platforms, choices are very limited with CQC. If all the access you need is via PC in the home, or iPhone/iPads in the home or remote, then CQC works well.

Cqc does have a webserver that with cml programming allows you to control the system from a browser.

Yeh, it doesn't have a canned web interface. But you can certainly use our web browser to create interfaces for web access. Any web based interface though is going to be a little clunky compared to what you can do with our interface system.

jkish Wrote:iTunes is fine if you connect it to the Squeezebox server and then use the Squeezebox driver on CQC. Squeezebox will import your iTunes music and pick up changes on the fly.

I've actually had a ton of problems with the SB & iTunes, outside CQC. SB keeps losing touch with my iTunes. I ended up switching the SB to a file scanning approach, then linking to that via CQC.

Maybe a bit OT bit perhaps will help. I set up iTunes on a PC but put the actual repository for the iTunes library on a NAS box. I've had iTunes lose its library but no problem with Squeezecenter. Only issue I've seen here is that SC won't display artwork downloaded from the iTunes store. Works if you copy it in manually for each album.

Still just using the web interface for SC. To come is a Duet and setting up CQC with jkish's driver etc. I wouldn't expect this part to effect whether or not SC can keep track of iTunes.