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HomeSeer Releases World’s Smallest Full Function Z-Wave Home Automation Controller
HomeSeer unveils its new HomeTroller Zee? Z-Wave home automation controller next week at the 2013 CEDIA Expo in Denver. The new controller is an ultra-small, ultra-powerful gateway device that works with the latest wireless Z-Wave products and offers remote home control via most popular smart phones and tablets for only $199.95 with no monthly fees.
HomeSeer unveils its new HomeTroller Zee? home automation controller next week at the 2013 CEDIA Expo in Denver. The new controller is an ultra-small, ultra-powerful Z-Wave gateway device that offers remote home control using the latest Apple and Android smart phones, tablets and other devices.
Although HomeTroller Zee is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, it is big on features and performance. The unit sports an energy efficient 700 MHz Linux platform that will outperform any other comparable gateway device.
As with other HomeSeer systems, HomeTroller Zee supports the latest Z-Wave products including light switches, thermostats, door locks and sensors. Alerts, announcements and reminders may be issued by email, text message or by voice (text to speech). Home energy usage may also be monitored and controlled with HomeTroller Zee.
HomeTroller Zee systems are slated to begin shipping on October 1st and will retail at $199.95 with no monthly fees. Apple and Android mobile apps are free
It looks like they’re about to ship the hometroller zee. It seems like it’s a raspberry pi unit with a z-stick for z-wave. It runs homeseer linux which does not support plugins (which is a pretty major issue in my opinion). But the sub-$200 price looks decent.
Would be great to get a feature comparison …
I see they have support for “Device Icons” … a feature a lot of Vera people have wanted.
I wonder how their Android and IOS apps rate ?
They say they supports spoken announcements, alerts and reminders … but no indication of how …
How robust is their Z-Wave support for devices compared to MCV ?
You give up a lot of integration possibilities without some form of plugins.
The remote apps are new and as such haven’t been properly put through their paces but the general consensus is that their main remote tool, HSTouch, is less than perfect. This appears to be one of the biggest weaknesses with HS.
The spoken announcements, reminders and such are all done through the event generator and delivered through the audio out port. It can easily play sound files or TTS. It can also send emails and SMS messages. Regular HS (and maybe a future iteration of this product) can also place phone calls.
The ZWave support is about on par with Vera in my experience.
They will be releasing a slightly more costly version which will support plugins. The issue is that the plugins for HS are .dll files. There is a more verbose explanation of the situation on their forum in the announcement thread for the product.
The real meat of this device will be it’s ease and flexability with event generation. The perk of this unit over their other packages, both hardware and software, is it’s price.
I think that if they can ship a similar product which supports their plugins for less than $350 it will be a game changer.
Price is good BUT I’m curious if, just like everything else Homeseer does - they will nickle and dime the user with add-ons and such thaat actually make the software useful beyond the basics. Homeseer software doe a TON more natively than Vera does, and MUCH easier and more intuitive… but will the Zee come with a fully functional version?
The response by HS to adding z-wave has been very good as have their tech support. What I have not seen is any testing on this. It does state mobile apps available so no need for HS touch which is a good thing and due to be updated sometime in the future after HS3 is released.
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