90 days with MCV

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Hi all,

Wanted to quickly post my first impressions after using mcv for the last 3 months.

My background:
Moved from a house that was fully automated with Crestron. Every light, blind, AV component was tied into two separate (but connected) cresnets. There were no light switches in this house, but customized 8 button or 16 button pads that would control either AV or lighting/shades in a given room. In addition to this there were iPad, Touch Screen and physical remotes. I had the system professionally maintained (there was over 3 miles of cable in that house), but occasionally would code advanced functionality in concert with the crestron dealer.

Now onto the MCV Experience:

Stability: B+
I have found the system very stable, the only instability/slowness has been introduced when I add plugins. Not sure but it seems many of the plugins end up introducing 2-3 seconds of latency in my system. I have simply adopted the rule that I won’t use plugins I don’t code myself. I have not had to reboot the system after adopting the rule.

Programming Capability: B
The system meets many of my requirements, but seems somewhat restricted. I have to create many duplicate scenes to recreate the same effect in a different room, would be nice to seem the ability to have a scene subroutine that can apply to a given room. Additionally a programming language closer to perl would be great (or just expose more of the API). lua seems to have many restrictions in terms of programming (or maybe it is just my lack of experience)

Integration: B
All the devices I have bought have integrated well into the Vera, mostly consisting of Leviton Fan Relays, 600w, 1000w dimmers and GE switches. I have also integrated minimotes and ipads into the environment. The IOS apps seem amateurish at best when compared to what I came from on crestron. The minimote is a pretty cool form factor. AV integration is spotty at best, it seems like most folks are rolling a separate system all together (redeye, irule, etc). I am OK with this, but would like a universal (physical) remote that could control both. Ideally something like a Crestron ML600 that talks z-wave and something that irule could interpret.

I will also say that cp.mios.com has been great for remote control, never had an issue with availability.

My Zwave wish list;
An integrated occupancy sensor and switch (something like a zwave enabled IPP15-1LW). I have a ton of these in my house, would be great if they could double as my security/monitoring system when away.

An affordable fan control. Dropping $130 for a leviton fan control puts me back in crestron territory!

More wall mount scene and zone controllers (with engravable buttons). I would pay $200+ for a 8 button engraved wall controller all day long.

I must say that the user community here is great, although sometimes it is challenging to find if device X works (the post in 2009 says no, the post in 2011 says MCV is working on it, and no other info).

All in all, it has been great so far. But I still long a bit for my old crestron system :wink:

cheers and thank you all!

slow

2

Nice review :slight_smile:

What I like about Z-wave and Vera is that it is very DIY-friendly, and relatively cheap as a result. Don’t know about Crestron but in terms of setup, installation and requiring a professional installer, it sounds like KNX (awesome system but you’ll have to sell your soul to afford it)

I’ll second your wish list; I find the lack of certain devices baffling, although lately there seem to be a few companies that understand what their customers want out of Z-wave; most notably Fibaro, ZME, and Aeon (though the latter are slow to ship end products). Scene controllers? Here in Europe the selection is decidedly poor, the only multibutton scene controller I know of is the gorgeous but hideously expensive Vitrum. For that price, I can wall-mount an iPod touch to manage scenes. (which is exactly what I am planning to do)

3

Pretty much all you want to do can be done. Just not in a conventional way.
Try HomeWave for an iPad/iPod-Touch in home controller.

4

An absolute joy to read this post, slow.

Having recently switched (excuse the pun) from X10 to Z-wave + VeraLite, I’m coming at this from the other end of the cost/price spectrum. I wonder that in your comparison you have not included costs - I have to imagine that 3 miles of cabling and the Crestron system(s) didn’t come cheap.

My experience of the integration aspects is not so good as yours - definite failure to interact smoothly between TKBhome switches and Fibaro modules. But the lesson is definitely to get the basic hardware/Z-wave layer working robustly before adding sophisticated software control. I fear you may be right about some of the issues caused by third-party plug-ins.

Whilst I’m not craving too much sophistication with wall-mount controllers, I HAVE to recommend both the MiniMote handheld controller and HomeWave on the iPad (you can pay me later intveltr!). I do have a bunch of 4-gang wall switches that worked with an X10 four-channel transmitter module and I’m desperately missing the equivalent Z-wave item - which I would have supposed Fibaro to make, but apparently not.

I’d vote for a good occupancy sensor too.

The one thing I’m disappointed in is the range of the Zwave mesh indoors and the apparent fragility/delay in routing requests. I’m coming to the conclusion that I need 3 VeraLite systems dotted around and linked by ethernet to get a really reliable and fast response locally.

But again, thanks for the upbeat post which encourages me to persevere with this home automation route.

AKB

5

For fans, I found it more cost effective to get an Insteon USB PLM (2413U) with the Altsteon plugin and use FanLincs for $60 if doing multiple fans. It adds in an additional potential point of failure but I have had no problems so far for the few months I have been using that setup. Getting the Insteon PLM also opens the door for cheaper integration with the Insteon/X10 stuff too if desired