A few questions on CM-15, Vera and mochad

Plugins & Plugin Development General Plugin Discussion
1

Hi all,

Just registered here after reading a lot, because I have a few questions left…

I currently have X10 (Marmitek) in my home, and it is crap. Their quality is soo poor! I’ve started with X10 because I know people in the USA who are happy with it (and have been for many years), but the quality in the Marmitek modules is well below par IMHO, and the pricing is much higher here, on par with Z-Wave. (Shutter switches that spontaneously start opening and closing shutters, without any signs of commands on the powerline, pieces of internal (plastic!) mechanical parts breaking off in wall-switches, etc.)
Additionally the powergrid seems to be so “dirty” (despite tons of filters and an XBT-IIR in my net) that signal transmission is just unreliable.

I have evaluated Insteon and Z-Wave, and Z-Wave has my preference, but given the investment in place in X10, I’ll need to also support that while they last, and replace on a per (broken) device basis…

So reading up on the forum, there are 2 options, the USB RFXCom (Rfxtrx) and the mochad route. Given the price, I am leaning towards mochad! :wink:

However, I’ve not been able to figure out these things, and I may just have missed it in reading, but here goes nothing:

  1. There was mention of integrating mochad in to vera firmware. Did that ever happen?
  2. There is mention of X10 security support for mochad and the vera plugin. Is that actually supported, and if so, are these things possible:
    2a) Turn On (Home/Away) the X10 compatible alarm system
    2b) Receive and recognize ARM/DISARM for said X10 compatible alarm system
    2c) Recognize and act on event from X10 Alarm modules (door magnets, IR sensors)
    (All three of those are possible in the ActiveHome app, piss-poor as it is otherwise…)
  3. If 1 is a no, and I need to go the pogoplug route, would any pogoplug work? Amazon had great pricing on the “Pogoplug Backup and Sharing Device” right now…

Any answers (and experience info) appreciated!!!

2

Replying to myself, for the benefit of others:

  1. Apparently mochad is still not integrated in vera
  2. There is RFSEC receive capability (not tested the presence of any sending capabilities yet)
    2a) unkown yet
    2b) should be possible , but not tested yet
    2c) yes
  3. yes, the pogo mobile works, if you install ArchLinux on MMC… only 1 usb port, so no usb boot (booting doesn’t work on a USB Hub)
3

There are four options;

  1. Mochad,
  2. CM11A plugin
  3. X10 2013 or 2014 plugin
  4. RFXCOM, using rfxtrx; note two different device lets call it EU and US freq.
4

I’m using mochad on the pogo mobile, and got to most of these answers by experimenting with the two… :wink:

The only real problem I have at this time is receiving X10 Powerline commands… It seems my CM15Pro is having issues receiving/showing the PL commands! :frowning:

Anyway, like I said, I was replying to my own post for the benefit of others that may be searching for the same answers and will update as I learn more…

5

Here are some other threads for the alternatives:

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=23686.0

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,10817.0.html