Re: Upgrade HomeSeer to 2.0 ?

[dicko <drwho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2005 16:42:59 -0700, George Pontis <gpontis@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>I have a current copy of HomeSeer and received the promotional offer to upgrade to
>2.0 for $39. I am wondering if my current version of the HAI Omni Plug-in would
>continue to work with the new version. (I sent email to HomeSeer asking this
>question a week ago but no response yet.)
>
>And what is everyone's feeling about having to install the .NET framework to
>support this new version ?
>
>George

I had quite a bit of trouble with the installation.

I dont have internet access on my computer running my house, and when
I need an update to homeseer, I can only plug in a modem.

So much to my surprise, everytime I went to install HS2 from a USB
thumb drive, it wanted to access the internet. I later found it wanted
the .NET framework. Not only that, it wanted .NET SP1 too.  I had to
download that directly from microsoft at a friends house and install
it via my thumb drive first before installing HS2. I'm not sure, it
may come with the CD version of HS2 but isnt included with the
downloaded version..

Once I had .NET installed, the install process died because us.txt
wasnt included in the download, so I had to dig that from my old HS1
installation.  BTW, I'm installing this on a celan "test" computer,
not my actual "production" computer.

I get everything installed, and then it wants to go back to the
internet to register itself (I'm getting really frustrated with this
internet addiction). HS2 is going with a microsoft type registration
process where you provide some computer unique information, and the HS
servers respond with the registration code. Once again, no internet,
so I followed instructions, emailed the license codes and received the
registration keys a day later and manually enterred them.

This is what really worries me. If I ever get this thing working to my
satisfaction, I'll have to go through the whole registration process
on a different computer and convince them I dont have two copies
running. And what happens if the computer crashes in the middle of the
night and I have to wait for them to send me a registration key to get
things running again.  I'm not sure I'm too keen to try this.

The actual program seems to run OK. I'm running build 1972, but my
setup is pretty simple. Just several events, no scripts.  From the
little I've played with it, it responds much faster than HS1 did.
Operation of the lights just seem snappier. My z-wave lights
definitely work faster.

Oh yeah, I've never been able to get the Updater to work at my house.
As I said before, I'm on a dial up modem and things download real
slowly at 28Kb. There seems to be a session timer at a minute and a
half that cuts the update session off everytime I try. It worked just
fine however when I carried the entire computer over to my friend's
house and connected it to his cable modem.  I can really see myself
doing that with the actual production computer every time I need an
update.

I've started looking at the other automation programs out there
principly because of this registration issue. Unfortunately there are
only a few on the market that handle z-wave, I havent liked their
human interface. So for now, I'm hoping HS gets their act togther and
things turn out OK and I can stay with HS. I'm sticking with running
HS 1.7 until things stabilize a bit more.

dickm