RE: RE: Homeseer developments

[Paul Gale <groups2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mainlobby is really good once you get your head around the more
complex bits of linking it to all the other HA systems - I used HomeSeer
and the ML plugin to achieve this - ML then gets all the data you want from
HS (HS being the real interface with plugins to various kit). This way I
have repoting and control over various xAP devices, CBus, Comfort,
telephones etc etc. The graphic library is good too.

As you say though, the big problem is the cost of it all (they moved from
the enthusiast market a few years ago and re-priced to fit in with the
custom installer market). Hence they charge for absolutely everything and a
lot of upgrades too. The attitude of some of their support people to all of
this and other issues has been less than good on a number of occasions too
- a few lessons in good customer service needed I think! Apart from that,
it's very capable.

Would be interested to see how the HS touch product turns out though. One
of the biggest let downs of other products like this is the lack of
professionally designed interface graphics - as it takes a lot of effort
and expertise to design them. Even I haven't got a proper interface
designed yet and I have graphic designers in my company who do it
professionally! Just takes so long and is expensive.

Paul.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of Paul Gordon
> Sent: 20 November 2008 11:11
> To: UKHA Group
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] RE: Homeseer developments
>
> I think it's pretty good actually...
>
> I last looked at mainlobby about 3 years ago, and all I can remember
> now
> of the experience is a lot of weeping & wailing & gnashing of
teeth (&
> a
> fair bit of swearing too!), at the non-intuitiveness of the design
> environment, and of getting good integration with HomeSeer. I pretty
> much gave up on it when my trial period expired based on the
usability,
> and also I balked a little at the price at the time, - once I'd worked
> out that I would actually need to purchase several distinct mainlobby
> components, and what the total cost of those components was going to
> be...
>
> Obviously that was a long time ago, and I may not have given it a fair
> go at the time...
>
> HST (Homeseer Touch) supports pretty much any/all currently popular
> graphics format, although transparency is only possible with .GIF and
> .PNG files, - I suspect this is attributable to the abilities of the
> file formats themselves rather than any limitation of HST though?...
>
> The included set of graphics at this point in time is still fairly
> limited, but it has grown with each beta release... - the first beta I
> tried had almost no included graphics at all.
>
> It's utterly trivial though to use your own graphics. - just find a
set
> of graphic files you like, and put them into HST's skins folder, and
> they then appear in the IDE for you to simply drag & drop onto
your
> screen designs.
>
> If you're not "graphically challenged" (unfortunately I am),
then it's
> also very easy to use your own home-grown graphic elements in just the
> same way.
>
> Because everything is based on standard formats, any graphic you find
> can be used as any type of element in HST... - am I right in thinking
> that some bits of mainlobby are in some way proprietary?...
>
> Paul G.
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On
> Behalf
> Of
> > Paul Gale
> > Sent: 20 November 2008 10:50
> > To: UKHA Group
> > Subject: [ukha_d] RE: Homeseer developments
> >
> > What's the graphic support like with out of the box graphics
icons
> etc
> - I
> > looked at some of the screen shots - how does it compare to Main
> lobby
> for
> > example (who have some fairly good button design in places)?
> >
> > Paul.
> >
> >
>
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