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  • Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 21, 2008 at 5:25 pm
    Post count: 23
    #39906

    I am certain this has already been brought up but I wanted to restress the idea. I think the key to any good HA product is to have software support. I know SH has said that they to do not have the resources to dedicate to developing software compatibility with the many different HA applications that are out there. I will be biased here because I am a HomeSeer user but I still think it is key to wide acceptance of a product to be supported by software applications.

    My suggestion would be to start with the most popular program or programs and the most popular SH products. My opinion is this is probably HomeSeer (HS) just judging from activity on their forums and number of users, and probably the EZIO and EZRain products (I own neither by the way).

    HS’s approach to the market is to be the flexible core to the HA system. They do leave a lot of plugin development up to third parties rather than tackling it themselves. The plus side of this is it is a surefire way to sell you product if there is a need. For example RFXCom developed a plugin with thier product that the sell separately. This has become a very widely used setup for RF. Plugin development I think is also very versitle and does not require a huge IT budget. There is also probably a couple of opportunities to make integration into HS less costly for SH.

    One approach might be to try to provide HS with what is necessary for them to integrate SH products into their Insteon plugin. This would be best for the end user so tap-add, etc. is just like any other Insteon product.

    Another approach might be to have someone write a separate plugin that has interest in HS and SH products. Maybe give them a free EZIO if they write the plugin. There are also independent programmers that have developed quite sophisticated plugins for HomeSeer. You may be able to outsource it to one of them with some kind of mutually beneficial agreement. Two that I am aware of are Jon00 and Blade’s plugins. You can search the HS forums or Google to find them.

    Some of the cost you put into a plugin could also be recouped by selling the plugin. I would bet a lot of the background code could be taken from you EZ Utility and coverted to HS.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 21, 2008 at 5:56 pm
    Post count: 18
    #41566

    @heatvent wrote:

    One approach might be to try to provide HS with what is necessary for them to integrate SH products into their Insteon plugin. This would be best for the end user so tap-add, etc. is just like any other Insteon product.

    I am pretty sure that the necessary info is available from the download page of the SHN support section (see the command set docs). In addition, I have found that the SHN team is very supportive in answering technical questions about their products…

    On the Mac, we have Indigo (an AMAZING program) that supports almost all of the SHN products in a nice way.

    This sounds like a great 3rd party opportunity to me…

    Mike

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 21, 2008 at 6:07 pm
    Post count: 23
    #41567

    @asw24b wrote:

    @heatvent wrote:

    One approach might be to try to provide HS with what is necessary for them to integrate SH products into their Insteon plugin. This would be best for the end user so tap-add, etc. is just like any other Insteon product.

    I am pretty sure that the necessary info is available from the download page of the SHN support section (see the command set docs). In addition, I have found that the SHN team is very supportive in answering technical questions about their products…

    On the Mac, we have Indigo (an AMAZING program) that supports almost all of the SHN products in a nice way.

    This sounds like a great 3rd party opportunity to me…

    Mike

    I guess I was thinking of providing more than just the documents. Perhaps updating thier plugin or providing code for their plugin so HS doesn’t have to do much. At the very least call them up and try to get them to do it rather than just making available on the website.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 21, 2008 at 10:40 pm
    Post count: 35
    #41568

    I currently support several SHN products through HomeSeer’s Insteon plug-in extension support script.

    It’s ugly, awkward, prone to error, and is just one more spot to remember to update things when the system config changes.

    I would love to see support for the EZIO modules built-into the plug-in. I’d still have to do scripting, but at least most of it could be from within HomeSeer events.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 22, 2008 at 1:17 am
    Post count: 408
    #41569

    I hear you guys – also, if anyone has a vote for something besides Homeseer please chime in. Please also direct people to this thread if you think they would be interested to cast a vote.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 22, 2008 at 11:14 am
    Post count: 2
    #41570

    I too requested that SHN make there own plug-in to Homeseer but completely understand the resources this would take. My post is here.

    I also think this is a great opportunity for a 3rd party to develop some code to make this happen. I would definitely be willing to pay for the plug-in!

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 23, 2008 at 4:25 pm
    Post count: 408
    #41571

    How is the following received?

    A plugin from homeseer for Insteon and our products, though it would have to go through the EZSrve. It would have a pricepoint of similar plugins for homeseer.

    This would greatly help our development if we went through the EZSrve – though it would involved the investment of the EZSrve for the interface, instead of a PLM or PLC.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 24, 2008 at 3:02 am
    Post count: 1001
    #41572

    I currently use Houselink Decktop but would be will to buy Homeseer (or anything else) if I could count on full and compatible support for Insteon and Simplehomenet devices. I actually stopped my migration to more Insteon devices when it was clear Smarthome was not going to update Houselink, even for third party products they sold. Eventually the interest in using the function of the Simplehomenet products pulled me back into Insteon but it is still pretty frustrating integrating Simplehomenet Insteon based products into my Insteon network. Using EZServ as the base is fine with me. My EZServ is still sitting in the original unopened shipping package because I thought I would have to return it due to lack of Keypadlinc button support. Think that issue is resolved so will get back to EZServ soon. The price point you pick must be large enough for sustained support, including new devices. Buying a “release upgrade” would be okay if there were substantial functional additions, not just recognition of new device codes. I would not want to have to buy something new just to get support for an EZIO6I just because it had more inputs than an EZIO2X4.

    Guess I should go take a look at Homeseer.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    March 24, 2008 at 3:15 am
    Post count: 35
    #41573

    I vote no for going through EZServ. I’d rather see Jon come up with some kind of sub-plug-in for the plug-in, so that third parties could write routines to handle their specific devices, yet everything operates under the aegis of HomeSeer.

    It could be as simple as a number of exported routines from the main plug-in, with some predefined entry points in the sub-plug-in. If I were writing something like this from scratch, I’d build a small API that allowed each kind of device to have its own controller, and keep the knowledge about that device within the controller. The main program would simply load the controllers, translate events into generic API calls into the controllers, and manage the PLM as a central resource.

    Adding new devices, or updating definitions of devices, would then be fairly simple and painless. There are only so many different kinds of IO operations possible with these devices, all of which can be genericized into inputs, output, status reports, sensors, and such.

    Anonymous
    Inactive
    August 2, 2008 at 11:25 pm
    Post count: 1
    #41574

    I bought EZUIRT as a Slinke replacement having confused the statement of support in HomeSeer for the EZFlora at http://www.simplehomenet.com/prods.asp?page_id=prodIrrigation for a general statement of HomeSeer support of EZnnnn . I didn’t read carefully enough, did I ? 😉

    Anyone want to buy an unused, latest version of EZUIRT cheep?

    (For what it’s worth, I think that polling for HomeSeer support anywhere but the HomeSeer forum will not provide a full picture of the level of enthusiasm for HS support of SimpleHomeNet INSTEON products. Having to sign manually up for yet another forum in order to weigh in is more than can be expected from most folks in my opinion. )

    Mis dos centavos Marc

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