new build

[charles]

Hi Guys

Looking for any and all advice. I've had CQC for 10 years and still use it every day, although haven't really touched it for 3 or 4 years.

I'm now doing a new build house completely from scratch.

I've been looking at all the new platforms out there and looks like CQC is still relevant in the market in that it gives you developer control of your interface, as well as the ability to control virtually anything given the ability to write drivers. Not to mention the events and logic control.

I want to control 

lighting
hvac
security
gates
pool/spa
various relays for other things
I do av with apple tv and cameras with another app.

What's your suggestions for the perfect setup? Especially with regard to lighting. budget not an issue.

thanks!

Charles

[Dean Roddey]

For lighting, unless you have the depth of pocket to afford a wired system, Lutron's Radio RA2 is pretty much the standard option for serious systems. That gets you lights, motion sensors and thermos at least.

[charles]

For lighting, unless you have the depth of pocket to afford a wired system, Lutron's Radio RA2 is pretty much the standard option for serious systems. That gets you lights, motion sensors and thermos at least.

What actually prompted this post is that we're doing the lighting wiring right now. In my old house I had cat 6 running to all switches which were just contact closures on an m1 connected to cqc. The lights themselves were all on relays in a board in the mechanical room. I could then apply whatever logic i wanted to control the lights and didn't use a lighting controller. So I'm a little ignorant of which is the best approach.

It meant no dimming and also I found the M1 slightly unreliable with power supplies and occasionally the relay boards would need to be reinstalled. This is a problem with the wife when she can't turn on the lights and you're out of town.

I'm looking at the homeworks QS but no point in spending money if it's not necessary. Hard to find the prices online without being a reseller.

[znelbok]

It depends on where you are in regards to lighting.

UK/UA/Asia then Schneider [Clipsal] C-Bus is the definite winner here.

The guys in the US did not support it well enough so Square D pulled it form the market unfortunately.

If in the EU then I believe KNX is big there and it would be great to see KNX support in CQC.  Companies like ABB are big into KNX - I'm sure there are many others in the market as well.

For security, everyone goes with the M1 but I would suggest you take a look at the Cytech Comfort system - very similar in concept to the M1 but more advanced (IMO).

For the various relay control - Go with a ClickPLC. So cheap and so flexible in what it can do. New Ethernet PLC's are now available so the driver needs to be updated for that.

HVAC - There is a company called Cool Automation that do modules for most popular AC systems. They do a HA interface that I have written the driver for but not yet commissioned. This may give you more options in selection of a system.

[charles]

For lighting, unless you have the depth of pocket to afford a wired system, Lutron's Radio RA2 is pretty much the standard option for serious systems. That gets you lights, motion sensors and thermos at least.

Hi Dean, just to confirm you do have Lutron drivers for RA2 and homeworks QS? Are they the same driver and if not which is more solid?

[Dean Roddey]

The same driver is supposedly valid for RA2 and HWQS, so it's the same driver under the hood, and even for Caseta (with some adjustments in the driver.) I don't know if anyone has actually tried it against a HWQS system. But of course if you get one and have issues, I'll look at it. That's a high end system we'd want to support well.

[charles]

The same driver is supposedly valid for RA2 and HWQS, so it's the same driver under the hood, and even for Caseta (with some adjustments in the driver.)  I don't know if anyone has actually tried it against a HWQS system. But of course if you get one and have issues, I'll look at it. That's a high end system we'd want to support well.

I think I am going to go QS.

When I had my lights all being controlled with an M1, rather than use the M1 logic to control the lights I used cqc to control function and just used the m1 as a dumb event generator (passing on contact closure status changes and switching relays as directed by cqc).

With homeworks being more sophisticated I can't see a reason to capture the light switch events within cqc, but presumably I could still do this if I want. I will still want to control all lights within the app and obviously see status changes. I have a lot of different types of devices in my setup: cameras, relays to control all kinds of things, hvac, gates, various samsung smart things appliances, etc so cqc is more my centralised hub for everything. If I go hwqs though I want to make sure we can get the driver really reliable to work this way, as there's nothing worse than a wife that complains about the technology!

[charles]

It depends on where you are in regards to lighting.

UK/UA/Asia then Schneider [Clipsal] C-Bus is the definite winner here.

The guys in the US did not support it well enough so Square D pulled it form the market unfortunately.

If in the EU then I believe KNX is big there and it would be great to see KNX support in CQC.  Companies like ABB are big into KNX - I'm sure there are many others in the market as well.

For security, everyone goes with the M1 but I would suggest you take a look at the Cytech Comfort system - very similar in concept to the M1 but more advanced (IMO).

For the various relay control - Go with a ClickPLC.  So cheap and so flexible in what it can do.  New Ethernet PLC's are now available so the driver needs to be updated for that.

HVAC - There is a company called Cool Automation that do modules for most popular AC systems.  They do a HA interface that I have written the driver for but not yet commissioned.  This may give you more options in selection of a system.

thanks for the advice and sorry for slow reply. I need everything to be IP. I took a look at the cytech system, it does look more modern than m1. Have you used the Click PLC on ethernet? very high reliability is definitely a focus for me.

[Dean Roddey]

The same driver is supposedly valid for RA2 and HWQS, so it's the same driver under the hood, and even for Caseta (with some adjustments in the driver.)  I don't know if anyone has actually tried it against a HWQS system. But of course if you get one and have issues, I'll look at it. That's a high end system we'd want to support well.

I think I am going to go QS.

When I had my lights all being controlled with an M1, rather than use the M1 logic to control the lights I used cqc to control function and just used the m1 as a dumb event generator (passing on contact closure status changes and switching relays as directed by cqc).

With homeworks being more sophisticated I can't see a reason to capture the light switch events within cqc, but presumably I could still do this if I want. I will still want to control all lights within the app and obviously see status changes. I have a lot of different types of devices in my setup: cameras, relays to control all kinds of things, hvac, gates, various samsung smart things appliances, etc so cqc is more my centralised hub for everything. If I go hwqs though I want to make sure we can get the driver really reliable to work this way, as there's nothing worse than a wife that complains about the technology!

You can pretty much do any combination of system vs. CQC based logic, whatever works best for you in a given sitatution. In terms of the driver it wouldn't know or care if you had some logic in the HW box itself. You'll still be able to control stuff and see status and such.

[gReatAutomation]

Nice thing about RA2 is that they do not require a neutral to the switch as is the case with ZWave, however, RA2 switches are expensive.