The Christmas meet....

["Mark Harrison" <Mark_Harrison_UK@xxxxxxx>]

Meeting Minutes from HA Meeting held in London 13th December 2000:

Present:

- Graham Howe
- Paul Gordon
- Steve Gordon
- Nick Broughton
- Ray Barnett
- Mark Harrison

The conversations were wide-ranging and spent as much time on home
networking as on HA proper (gosh - just like the list, eh?)

Sadly, no-one had brought a digital camera.


Key learnings: Home Networking

- BT are strongly mis-representing ADSL, some of their literature
descibes it as an "upgrade" to ISDN. It patently isn't - it's a
complementary product aimed at meeting different needs.

- Wired systems still seem to be prevalent for networking - none of
us had wireless for our data.

- The Plug and Play support in Windows ME is apparantly significantly
better than in Win98. As such, keeping an ME PC on the network as a
"digital camera plugin server" is a good thing.


Key learnings: HA

- letsautomate.com are clearly _very_ well respected, and everyone
had had good experiences with them.

- Comfort seems to require a bedding in period during which false
alarms get triggered. Ultimately it gets stable, but the bedding in
period is not improving WAF.

- Win 9x is not a stable platform for HA servers. Windows NT has the
problem that some HA programs don't run over it. Win2k seems to be
better, but telephone connectivity (IVR) is somewhat dependant on
modem manufacturers releasing decent TAPI drivers, since the ones out
of the box don't seem to do the business.

- One specific problem that was discussed was the question of how one
could use X-10 to reboot a PC on the "safe" side of a UPS (which
blocked X-10.) This was an issue for HA PCs that were stored in
remote areas (eg cellars, loft spaces) and need occassional hard
rebooting after a hang. The best solution we came up with was to put
an Appliance Module on the "house" side of the UPS, and wire up
the
module to control a relay that cut off, and then restored power to a
switch in between the UPS and the PC. No-one knew of a product to do
this, but thought that it could be a seller if someone wants to
market one.

- Another problem was that one member had a PC in the loft
controlling a CM12. The CM12 did not work reliably when plugged into
the loft main (but worked fine on the first floor ring main) so the
member had bought a long RJ11 extension cable to run down from the
loft-based PC to a CM12 down on the first floor. The CM12 top slot
was slightly too small to take the plug on the extension cable.


Key learnings: General

- Paul Gordon cannot sing.


Actions arising:

- We all want to know what Mark McCall actually does for a living.
The automatedhome site is laudably free of any advertising for his
business, but inquiring minds want to know.


Regards,

Mark


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