RE: Comfort / Homevision- Galaxy

["Chris McGookin" <chris@xxxxxxx>]

I have a Galaxy 60 with Smart PSU, RF RIO and RS-232 which I've been
trying various things to interface for a while.

Currently I have it autoprinting via serial into a PC running ACE which
then run scripts to action and interface with Homevision. I was
originally going to use a Homevision serial interface but I've got quite
a lot of serial devices scripted in ACE now and it's been pretty robust
to date (plus I now acknowledge the HA server is 24/7)...
I autoprint the log from the alarm to avoid having to work out the
protocol, plus partly to create a diode type firewall for the security
system. You get zone status changes and arm/ disarm, etc plus user
information based on the RF fobs.

I use spare inputs on the Galaxy to set, etc from ACE/ Homevision...not
as elegant as using a proper control protocol such as SIA but it works
well and is a lot simpler (if anyones developing a SIA/ Microtech
contact format interface I'd be interested!).

The config I've got gives me 20 hard wire inputs and outputs directly to
the panel, plus the RF RIO can take up 32 RF devices- PIR's/ contacts or
4 button keyfobs.

The RF devices are very good- IMHO day and night to the X10 devices!

You can get two zone contact units (one inbuilt reed and a separate
terminal input circuit) and single zone PIR (normally these will only
trigger once every 2 mins or so to save power, but if you leave the LED
enabled they make excellent motion detectors.
I've used the RF contacts in the garage which is about 10m line away
through three walls and I still get about 80% signal strength (yes,
there are inbuilt RF power meters!).
The units also report supervision fail if they don't check in for a
period as well as jamming, battery low, etc.

I use RF keypads to arm/ disarm the system- this is one of the easiest
ways to meet the DD243 confirmation requirements which you now seem to
need if you want a monitored system. This also lets me track who's in
the house, there are two extra buttons on the remotes which I've set to
log only so they can trigger events through ACE/ Homevision.
The system uses 868.95MHz and lives happily with the Pronto, X10 and
X-cam RF I have buzzing about.

Another useful feature is links....you can map an input to an
output....so for instance an RF contact pair to a remote IO unit (system
bus is RS-485).

I did consider Comfort when I was buying Homevision (about 2 years ago),
but I liked Homevision and the Ademco is a very good *security system*
(it does have a couple of timers and the linking, but that's about as
clever as it gets as a HA 'controller'!). Ademco is also part of
Honeywell (as Caddx is part of GE) so they are well supported and
popular with the security industry.

I'm not too sure if the cost difference is such a big issue...you'd need
to work out what the whole solution looked like and what you're really
going to spend (and what you'll waste money on trying to get a solution
that works!)
I think the Homevision/ Galaxy solution is worth considering an
alternative to Comfort...just depends what you want.



Chris


---Original Message-----
From: Des Gibbons [mailto:des@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 17 July 2003 13:16
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Comfort / Homevision





> > Any other options I've overlooked. Comfort +
> > Homevision looks to be a robust but rather high price
> > system.
>
> As you NEED a security system I'd go with that first.  Comfort is hard
to
> beat.
>
> Des Gibbons has a much cheaper alarm panel that has a good serial
> out board
> which could be used with HV or a PC based HA system.  I'm not sure how
far
> on he is with it yet though.

Kevin Hawkins will have to take the blame for putting me on to the
Ademco
Galaxy panels. I was originally looking at the nappco panels.

http://www.ademco-microtech.co.uk/

Plus points:

Its a _proper_ alarm panel.
It can be monitored for Police response if you have that as an insurance
requirement.
Great expandability.
Ethernet interface available.
It doesn't have X10 ( To me thats a plus, to others its a negative ;)
Standard G60 upgradeable to 60 zones.
G512 upgradeable to 512 zones if you need that.
Supported by very big company.
KH is looking at xAP support
DB is looking at Homebrain support

Neg points:

It doesn't have x10 (see plus points)
Not very HA mainstream


Cheers, Des.