Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems

[Marc F Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 9 Jun 2006 11:48:42 -0400, "Robert Green"
<ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<BM2dnQrdKs0kBBTZnZ2dnUVZ_qWdnZ2d@xxxxxxx>:
>  Bad things can happen to large areas of
>the country.  I want on-site spares.  Using a mini-ITX as a home automation
>controller makes that very practical.

Redundancy does _not_ mean duplication. PC + panel (and/or Security panel).
Belt and suspenders. Wearing two belts is way tacky and not nearly so
practical.

I have mini-ITX but my the HA controller currently is a 1.2 mhz that has
both PCI and an ISA slot -- no longer available. The smaller of my "junk
boxes" is about 15x20x8 feet. Its chock  _full_ of obsolete spares. Not
recommended. If you visit, drive a pickup.


>> Another runs MS Server 2003. The third is in the
>> junk box  awaiting an assignment or recycling through eBay.
>> Yes they are neat.
>
>How's the mean time between involuntary reboots been?

To the best of my knowledge, the server has never rebooted by its lonesome
-- lightning events that also took out phones and other hardware excepted.
Scheduled reboots for periodic MS patches is all that it has needed. Biggest
headache by far is Internet connection (cable + dsl+ dual wan router+
hardware firewall). But the HA PC runs XP SP2 (was SP1, was XP, was W2k Sp1
was w2K, was w98SE , was W98, was w95b, was w95 -- preceded by progs on WFW,
W31, W30 Dos 6.2 back to Compaq DOS 1.1 (no hard drive))

>
>> No they are not a cheap panacea IME.
>
>Who's talking panacea?  I'm talking about the future, which I am convinced
>will be PC-centric.
>Elk and HAI just can't give you the bang for the buck
>that a mass-produced motherboard like the VIA ITXs can.

I disagree because experience leads me to place value and cost on the OS,
application, programming the application, maintaining the OS and the
application and the programming, etc, etc etc . I believe that most folks
that have experience with  both will agree with the assertion that hardware
based panels have fewer reliability issues/problems and require les care and
feeding in general.

I have been running a federated PC based home automation system since 1999
(Napco, Slinke, Elks, Enerzone thermostats, IVIE mixers, etc ) so I find the
notion that PC's are the future to be very quaint.

They are here and have been here fer a long spell. And they coexist and
complement (belt and suspenders) with panels very well including
security-only panels (NAPCO, CADDX, etc) general purpose panels (Omni,
Stargate, ELK M1G) controllers (Adicon, Elk MM442) and other purpose-built
hardware.

>More importantly,
>with voluminous disk space, a PC-centric system is far better suited to
>dealing with logging requirements than any hardwired panel I've seen.

Oh dear. What has this got to do with the price of tea in China?  Some panel
systems (Elk MM443, Elk MM433 are ones that I have used)  have decent
annunciator modes, but are you suggesting that folks would somehow decide to
toss out the ipod and the media center pc and usb video cams and and and and
and -- because they got a panel? What might you be talking about?

Marc
Marc_F_hult
www.ECOntrol.org