RE: Comfort vs. Others Summary - WAS X10 Heating & Security Automation - Another Newbie Q uestion!

[Scott Crowther <scrowther@xxxxxxx>]

Comfort is a great system (we have it ourselves in our building).
If you're into tinkering and are happy with programming, theres
no other alarm system thats a patch on it for Home Automation.

If NACOSS approval is important to you, whether for discount at
insurers
(which is typically 5-10%), or for guaranteed poilice response, then
you
won't
be able to use certain aspects of the system, including resetting the
alarm
remotely. 
Steve Gordon will be able to fill you in on this.

If you aren't worried about NACOSS approval, then our service gives you
remote access and alarm monitoring with alarms that are much less
expensive
but won't give you as many Home Automation capabilities.
But then if you're looking to running a dedicated HA PC, it might 
not be an issue for you.

One other issue that will open up a can of worms is stability.
Comfort and other dedicated alarm systems have inherant stablility
and in the event of a power cut they activate, so with monitoring 
you know about it. I can't comment on PC based security systems - 
maybe someone who has one could let us know whether PC failure is ever
a problem.

Again, hope this helps.


Scott Crowther
Intamac Systems Ltd

t: +44 (0)1604 679262
e. scrowther@xxxxxxx
w. www.intamac.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 15 May 2002 22:16
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Comfort vs. Others Summary - WAS X10 Heating &
Security Automation - Another Newbie Q uestion!


OK, Quick summary...

Comfort advantages:

- Out of the box X-10
- Out of the box integration with house phones
- Out of the box integration with remote mobile phone
- Capable of much sophistication
- "The kind of thing we like playing with" :-)
- Easy integration with third-party monitoring / alerting services such
as
intamac

Comfort disadvantages:

- Cost
- Potentially too complex
- Use of some features (eg remote disabling) may make it impossible to
get
NACOSS accreditation
--- (accreditation = insurance discount)


Questions:

- value of integration with house phones in a world where (our) houses
have
many web devices and wireless LANs?
- Ability to make complex config changes potentially causes insecurity
(not
enough testing)

Regards,

Mark



-----Original Message-----
From: David Sussman [mailto:davids@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 15 May 2002 18:14
To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] X10 Heating & Security Automation - Another
Newbie
Q uestion!



> BTW, there were some discussions last Friday about the merits and
> drawbacks of 
> integrating Home Automation with security systems, but I'm not
going
> into that one here!

I'd actually be interested in a quick precis of this. I'm struggling to
decide which way to go - Comfort or a standard alarm system, and I
can't
make my mind up. 

Dave


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