Re: HomeSeer vs. HAL 2000

[L. M. Rappaport <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Not certain what happened, but I don't see my last post here which was
my response to you.

Well, fwiw...

Yes, Rick Tinker did respond, (after an unanswered help desk ticket),
but he never fixed the problem.  It appears as if the problem is that
while the HAI plug-in might work with a regular OP2, it does not work
with an OP2 which uses expansion cabinets and/or extender.  All zones
are properly accessible.  The problem is that the list of flags is
incorrect.  His starts somewhere around the mid 200's and stops at
unit 393.  With two expansion cabinets and an extender card, the first
flag is unit 394 (all those numbers from memory and could be off a
little).

He asked me to check the model number specified in the plug in - and I
did that.  I answered him several times, but I got no response.

I realize that he is tied up working on v2 of Homeseer, but I think if
you are going to sell a piece of software that it is incumbent to see
that it works.  If it doesn't (and I know that happens) then you must
fix it.

I'm not blowing smoke here.  I've never gotten angry with them and I
personally have been involved with commercial software development for
over 20 years.  I own a company with 7 other developers, a few
testers, a doc writer and a few administrative types.  While that
doesn't give me any expertise in this specific area, it should
indicate that I know at least a bit about software development and
what it takes to keep clients.

Again, no flame intended...
--

Larry
Email to rapp at lmr dot com


On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:32:52 +1000, Ross <idont@xxxxxxxx> wrote (with
possible editing):

>Rapp,
>
>I followed your thread on the homeseer board, while you had some inital
>setup problems, it seems Rick was responding withing a day or 2 to your
>queries. As far as I can see, you didn't have any outstanding issue?
>
>Ross.
>
>(homeseer and op2 user)..
>
>
>L. M. Rappaport wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 05:37:10 -0400, "Kenneth Murphy"
>> <murphy.laurie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote (with possible editing):
>>
>>
>>>Everyone seems to be talking about HomeSeer.
>>>
>>>How does it compare to HAL 2000?
>>>
>>>I am interested in motion detected digital video recording.
>>>
>>>Also, I would like to be able to ask for the weather and have it read to me.
>>>
>>>It seems like HAL can do this out of the box, but HomeSeer would take some
>>>extra modules?
>>>
>>>Thanks for any reviews.........KM
>>
>>
>> I can't do a side by side comparison, which is what you're looking
>> for, but I can tell you that HomeSeer support is somewhat lacking.  We
>> were considering becoming a dealer for them and ordered the upgrade to
>> 1.7 for which we paid retail.  Then we ordered the HAI OmniPro module
>> as we have installed quite a few of them.  It did not work out of the
>> box.  I'm doing the testing.  I have tried to connect it to an HAI OP2
>> with several expansion cabinets.  While I can access the zones, I
>> cannot access the flags, so I'm better off doing all my programming
>> with the OP2.  HomeSeer has stopped responding to our email which has
>> been polite.
>>
>> They also have an online forum.  I posted several questions there as
>> well, but there was nobody there with sufficient knowledge of the OP2.
>>
>> No flame - just the facts.
>> --
>>
>> Larry
>> Email to rapp at lmr dot com
>>