Re: Mini-ITX PC's a the future of HA (was Re: X-10 Mister House Motion sensor problems)

["Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If you are going to use an Elk or Omni, then the standard scenario is to
connect everything (that you can) to the Elk or Omni and use CQC for the
high level stuff (touch panels, TTS, controlling and coordinating devices
that the Elk cannot, weather data feeds, media management, etc...) It's a
very common arrangement with our customers.

You can set up web based access with the CQC web server for remote access if
you want, which will provide access over low bandwidth connections. If you
have access to a broadband connection you can just run the standard
interface viewer, though you'll sometimes want to make some interfaces that
are more approprirate for that (i.e. don't use a few MB's of fancy images,
which is pretty common for locally accessed interfaces.) That gives you full
two way control and better security when you can do that.

The media stuff we can handle well now, but will do so much better in the
upcoming 1.7 release when we have our own media repository. Currently we
have drivers for J.River and DVD Profiler, and we'll continue to support
them, but having our own repository and CD ripping and metadata retrieval
will just make it a lot nicer and will get rid of one of the few external
bits that we still require to implement a media system. But you can browse
your media by cover art or text, select what you want, kick off the player,
see metadata on what's playing, and control the playback.

We have a fairly basic Russound CAV driver now, but a new one is in the
works for 1.7 that will take it up to full potential. So we'll be able to
push out metadata to the keypads and all that.

-------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
www.charmedquark.com

"Robert L Bass" <robertlbass@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:W6CdnTcFWPL3GhLZnZ2dnUVZ_vSdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Ftrjg.95451$H71.86709@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> I'm sorry, did I not respond to something? I did send you a message a
>> while back, but didn't hear anything back so I assume that was that. We
>> did change servers a couple weeks ago, and I'm sure a few e-mails might
>> have fallen into the black hole or something. Anyway, just let me know
>> what you need.
>>
>> We definitely work well with the Elk or Omni Pro II now, so whichever you
>> want to use would be a good choice from our standpoint.
>
> Thanks, Dean.  My plan is to install the ELK-M1G.  I have a media system
> and I'll eventually expand it to cover the whole house, inside and out.  I
> might use Media Server or a hardware solution like Russound or Xantech,
> depending on how much I have left to spend after we finish redoing the
> pool, spa and lanai.