Setup suggestions

[Tin Turtle]

I have a home that was built in 67. It is a tri-level with a large woodshop that is occupied mostly by just myself. Since 2009 I have also spent a lot of time in Beijing.

I run a modified Baby Dragon that has 3 virtuals on it, two Windows and one of Oracle Linux. There is a gig switch, and I pulled Cat5 through some parts of the house when I did some mods years ago. So there are two drops upstairs, one behind the AV center, my office etc. Wireless runs as well.

So I just put in a security camera in the shop along with Blue Iris. Amazing. I am hooked. I installed CQC yesterday and made a couple of templates, one with Blue Iris running. Works great, I like the flexibility.

My 3 non-camera devices that I feel are requirements would be Smoke, CO2, Thermostat. So the Nest products look pretty good in that regard. Easy, quick and a no brainer.

But... I would like to have water detection. And then it would be nice to have wireless open/close sensors on the windows and doors. Then it would be nice to have....

So CQC has some attractions. The dragon runs 365 and I tunnel in daily from China and manage the network. Works great with only one hang up over the last year (which was fixed with a replug by the neighbor). Since its already there, with lots of extra horsepower it has potential to really do some work in the house.

I can save money with a couple of features. One is auto shutting down the lights when nobody is in the room (I am terrible about this). The other thing would be putting dampers in the basement for some rooms in the house, not running the AC with the windows open etc, pre-heating the shop etc.

I am also looking at some other products too, mostly because I am concerned the drivers in CQC seem to be for older products. I have some flexibility because I am buying what I want with an eye to grow, but I need to make sure I have both wireless and hardwired options for areas of the house.

I am probably going to start by buying a piece of hardware to see how integration works. Luckily the demo period is long enough I should be able to figure out what to do.

[Dean Roddey]

There are a fairly infinite number of devices out there. Until someone actually needs a driver for something, unless it's a very high use product, it's not really practical for us to try to provide support for all of these devices. No one would probably use it until long after we'd completely forgotten all the details and whatnot. So to some degree drivers are 'on demand' as people need them. We can generally do drivers for a more than reasonable fee in return for being able to add them to the list of available drivers.

BTW, if you look in the 'Beta Drivers' section of the forum, there are more there that aren't shipped. Mostly they aren't really 'beta', so the section name is a little misleading. They are just ones not yet shipped with the product.

[SomeWhatLost]

also, just kind along the lines of FWIW, you know, you can always write your own driver to support whatever device you want...
if you are not a software guy at heart, it is somewhat easier to take one of the existing drivers and just change it up so it works with your device...
or you can see if there are any s/w guys who would be willing to write a driver for you...
and Dean has been known to accept bribes now and then a write a driver when time allows...

in any case, the lack of a driver for the most part just isn't really all that big of a deal...

[Tin Turtle]

I understand, I just want to pick a path that is common. After looking things over I am thinking of trying Z-Wave. The hardware selection is pretty good and it seems I can use a USB Stick plus the Leviton software on my workstation to connect to the Z-Wave network. From there I add all my devices and then connect CQC to the VRCOP via a serial port on the server.

I am reading this thread now.

So if deleting devices without removing them from the network is bad juju... what happens when the power goes out?

[Dean Roddey]

The power going out shouldn't remove any devices. A device being part of the network isn't really to do with whether it's running right now or not, but whether it's been added to the master controller (and hence to any secondary controllers like the VRCOP, and hence to any third parties like CQC) who will continue trying to talk to them though they aren't there.

If the power goes out, it's kind of a moot point since nothing is going to work anyway. The driver will just start failing to talk to anything, the fields for those units will go into error state and stay that way until the power comes on the devices start talking again. Actually, if the VRCOP isn't on a UPS, then it will stop talking and that makes it even more moot, since CQC couldn't even talk to it, to get to the various units.