Re: Upgrade HomeSeer to 2.0 ?

[Marc F Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 01:12:37 GMT, MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote in
message  <sarmi15q8hourkqru6en1v0m47sa80peb5@xxxxxxx>:

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:11:49 GMT, "Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in message  <VPLWe.1472$2J3.373@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Since CQC is fully distributed, and if you already have a PC there, we'd
>just say load CQCServer there and let it do control locally and all of those
>devices will then be available anywhere else on the network. That would be a
>better deal for us, since you've already got the PC there anyway.

This is what I am used to because it is also the architecture of CyberHouse
(since 1997 at least).  In the case of CyberHouse, the clients are/were
available free and downloadable by anyone and the servers are/were licensed
with additional fees for additional devices.

Frankly, the ability to for anyone to download valid clients of the net
(Homeseer, CyberHouse, Premise, CQS) is not helpful from a security
standpoint. Fortunately both CyberHouse and CQS have useful security measures.
Homeseer 1.x had too many security issues of various sorts to be considered
(by me, for my needs). Dunno about 2.x.

By "better deal for us" I hear you to mean mostly that it is more robust and
easier to hook into, not in any particular financial sense.

>> And I still don't see why MSTSC/RDC isn't a solution. If I have CQS (or
>> Homeseer, Cyberhouse, Premise) running on a local machine, why can't the
>> program use the comm ports on a remote PC as if they were native? Or
>> vice-versa? I use MSTS/RDC all day long with no problems. But I've just
>> assumed
>> that the comm ports work as advertised. Am I missing something?
>
>Customers might not want to give us that level of control. Our scheme just
>provides us access to serial ports and nothing else. And I'll probably set
>it up so that customer can limit it to particular serial ports. So we have a
>lot less 'liability' this way, since we can't possibly get into anything we
>shouldn't or do any damage to the PC if we are writing drivers late at night
>and are a bit foggy. Wouldn't want to erase their hard drive by accident or
>anything :-)
>
>The other thing is that unless they have Windows Server or something like
>ThinSoft, then in order to RDP into their machine we lock them out of it
>completely, AFAIK. XP only supports a single session, and if you RDP into it
>you lose the local session. This way we don't prevent them from continuing
>to use their automation system while we work on a driver.

Good points all.

Yours is a 'better way' IMO.

Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org