Jumping back in

[James Sentman]

Welcome Back! :)

> On Oct 18, 2019, at 9:17 PM, Chad Gard <chad at holeinthewoodsfarm.com> wrote:
> 
> Thus, a few questions, probably dumb ones for those still active members of the community, but I imagine I should come back up to speed before too long...
> 
> First, what is the consensus "best bang for the buck" HA controller computer, if one were looking at a computer budget of about $500-700 or so?  I'm inclined towards a used or refurbished mini, but don't currently know where the depreciation vs. performance lines intersect.

A used or refurbished mini is the way to go. I wouldn’t go further back than something that can run at last 10.11 or 10.12 as you won’t have much time before newer XTension versions can’t run on it anymore. I’m already starting to hit things that I can’t do if I still want to support 10.10 which is the currently oldest version supported. If you’re going to be running video through it then the newest and fastest processor and most memory you can find would be important. If not then it is less important. While a smaller system without much video support will run on 4 gig of RAM I would definitely recommend 8 as a starting place. More modern mini’s don’t have upgradeable memory though so make sure you either get one that is still upgradeable or get one that already has the memory that you want. The internal disk drive size is not as important as long as you can fit the OS on it and the few apps you want to use. My mini only has a 250gig boot partition. I keep all the recorded video and other things on external RAID arrays. If you go with a mini that has the capability to replace the internal drive an SSD is a wonderful speed boost for any system. They don’t last forever though so I would also invest in something like “Drive DX” which can watch the SSD lifetime indicator. XTension writes to the drive a lot to save it’s database and XTdb and video support do as well. An SSD has a limited number of writes it can do before errors start to creep in and XTension will use those up faster than not. I don’t know if a modern mini that comes with an SSD is replaceable or not, if you have one of those then I would place the XTension app on an external drive so that the database writes go to one you can replace. A small SSD in a good USB3 case is cheap and very fast as an external drive and you can watch it with drive dx or other software and replace it in 3 or 4 years or however long it takes for the program to tell you that it’s reaching the end of it’s life. My last one lasted more than 4 years before it got down to where the software was telling me there was about 10% left of it’s lifespan. It never threw any errors and I’m using it now as an external boot disk backup. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy of the internal drive every night so that if it failed I could boot from the external and be almost right back where I started.

I would also not run the latest Catalina OS version that Apple just released for any reason in any circumstances. Seriously, don’t do this to yourself.


> 
> Second, what's the status of insteon support?  On the website, it looks like the legacy Vera plugin supports it, but the UI7 version does/may not?  Browsing around at the different devices available, I'm thinking it's not unlikely that I'll want to run several protocols simultaneously, but a combo of the two being the backbone of my system.

I would not recommend Insteon at this time. I honestly don’t know what the current insteon support in the Vera is like but it wasn’t very complete in the UI5 version and as you mention took a hit in UI7 that I’m not sure they have fixed. I’d sneak around the Vera support boards if you really want to do this or already have a lot invested in Insteon devices. If not then there is little to be gained I think. Their prices are not significantly cheaper than ZWave devices and if you were going to get a Vera anyway as the interface then you have a much more complete implementation of ZWave already built in.


> 
> third, Is anyone aware of a reliable, but inexpensive, irrigation valve that plays well with XTension, and comes in 2" pipe size?

I’m not aware of any directly controllable irrigation valves, but there are many ZWave ones that will work fine with the Vera. All you really need is something to control relays to switch 24v to regular irrigation valves which are very inexpensive. If you’re going to be programming the runtime logic in XTension anyway though there is little to be gained from a complex irrigation controller. All you really need is a relay controller on ZWave or some other protocol that we support. Or even roll your own with an arduino on wifi and a very cheap multi-relay board. I have code for this as it is what I have one but have not completed any dedicated hardware for it yet. The downside to such a hack is that it doesn’t have things like maximum runtimes so that if your ZWave goes away while one is on it may just stay on forever, the upside is that it’s much cheaper. The code I’ve got for the arduino solution does have maximum runtimes. But to sum up ;) Any ZWave irrigation controller will work fine, and if they are not to your liking then any ZWave relay controller will work to turn on the cheap standard irrigation valves.


> 
> fourth, Now that there are lots of protocols widely available, instead of the good old days when X10 was about the only affordable option, what are people's experience over larger installations?  For context, we have 35 acres, a house, 4 current outbuildings (plus a walk in cooler that the county assessor says is also an outbuilding, because at 9 x 13 it has one wall longer than 12'...), 2 separate electrical services, with 5 sub panels on one of them.  A bit over 1/2 mile from the south property line to the north property line, and 1/3 mile of "driveway" (I mean, we drive on it, but only with four wheel drive vehicles.  UPS guy only venture up, and the propane delivery guy always threatens to never come back). I envision more monitoring than control happening -temp and humidity in the greenhouse, in various temporary season extension structures and the like, temp of water in a DIY solar drainback hot water & space heating system, and so forth.  But all spread over a large area. Also, no cellular or public wifi coverage, so we just have our slow DSL and our own wireless in the house presently.  While the house is a log cabin, the outbuildings are mostly steel, greatly resembling faraday cages...  In particular, we have had trespassing issues, and really want to monitor the end of that driveway…

ZWave is definitely the way to go. It’s a mesh network so devices will forward signals to other devices until they find their way to your remote devices. If you need to extend the network aeotech and probably others make very inexpensive, around $20 if I recall, network extenders that do nothing but that and work well. I’ve added a few for friends with dead spots in their setups. There are also plenty of battery operated sensors and such. They don’t forward commands so wont add to the mesh but as long as there is a powered device within their range that can forward the signal or a range extender they will work fine.  The good ZWave switches and other devices tend to be slightly more expensive than insteon or X10 switches, but not more than $5 or $10 bucks and I find them to be much more reliable. My current favorite ZWave switches are sold by the homeseer folks. https://homeseer.com/lighting/ they are the most expensive as well though. Any brand of ZWave switch will work fine. Wherever possible though I would use a switch that requires a neutral connection. They work better with LED and other lower loads. There are still switches out there that do not require a neutral if you have that limitation in places, but they may not work properly with all LED’s or CFL loads. I’ve got a mix of both around the house that work well, but for some of the non-neutral ones I’ve had to hack in a single regular bulb along with the LED’s or not run certain brands of LED’s or something to make them work properly. 

If you still have some wireless X10 sensors, the motion sensors or security sensors, there is no reason to get rid of those. Those are a lot more useful than the wired X10 protocol and continue to work very well for me and others. I’ve already brought the old plugin for the W800 receiver over to the new plugin API in XTension and so it is going to stay around forever as I use a lot of them personally. You can run a long serial cable or put as many w800’s as you wish on an ethernet line via one of the supported wiznet cards and place them wherever you need more reception. And of course all the old Antenna hacks are still just as good as they were. XTension will support any number of those receivers that you need to place around. Not quite as convenient as using something that will just jump into the mesh network but might be cheaper and believe it or not their battery life tends to be better than the ZWave ones. The advantage of the ZWave ones is that they all send a battery level so you can watch them in XTension rather than no battery level from the regular X10 motion sensors or just the single low batt flag from the x10 security units.

Something else to consider when buying ZWave sensors is that many of them use expensive and strangely tiny batteries. Things like CR123 or CR2 batteries. I would shy away from these in preference of ones that take regular AA or AAA’s. It’s just a pain to keep all those different battery types around to swap them out when they start to go dim. 

There are some more exotic devices that the Vera does not support well. You’ll find all sorts of notes on the list here and on the Vera support boards about problems with unusual devices but all the more standard things like regular motion/temp sensors, switches and dimmers all work great. I really love my Vera controller and ZWave in general.

Thanks,
 James


James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org		http://MacHomeAutomation.com




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