I am looking for some opinions on whether Vera is the right solution for my application. I have been researching many options out there and none has really seemed to fit until I found Vera. Plowing though the forums again left me in doubt if Vera is the best tool for the job so I would like some honest feedback from users.
My application is as follows:
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I am looking to monitor a vacation home. If the temp or humidity values should fall outside of a certain range I want to be alerted via email. I may also want to add a water sensor in the event of a burst pipe or some flooding.
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Additionally, I would like the ability to do some basic home security. A couple of cameras that I can remotely access as well as a motion detector or two. Again, I want to be emailed when the motion sensors trip. I also would like the ability to remotely view the cameras at will. Since there is a z-wave controller with Vera, I believe that I could even automatically turn on some lights in order to get some better video / maybe scare off the intruder. I know this isn’t going to stop someone but it will tell me that there has been a breach and I can dispatch someone to take care of it.
Criteria:
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A stable platform. This will be located in a remote location that may be unvisited for weeks at a time. I need something that is going to simply chug along doing its thing without fanfare.
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The ability to recover from a power outage. Again, since it is a remote location in the event of a power outage I need it to come back online when power is restored.
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Easy to operate. I am an industrial automation engineer so tech is just fine with me but this is going to be deployed and operated by others that are not so inclined. If it is easy to use my phone will not be ringing. The ability to remotely support, diagnose, configure, etc would be perfect.
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Cost effective. I certainly could sink thousands into an industrial hardened distributed control system running redundant hot swappable UPS backed processors and the like as I do this kind of stuff for a living. My budget does not allow for this nor is it really sane. The Vera system, some z-wave items, and a couple of network cameras should do what I want and keep the cost quite reasonable.
Other thoughts
I know I could use the motion feature on some Panasonic (for example) network cameras and serve them to the 'net but this does not address the other monitoring functions. Vera seems to be able to put it into one 'access point".
I though of a PC based solution but a form factor like Vera seems to make more sense. Less power usage and should be more stable.
The remote access could be either a PC (desk, note, or laptop) or an iPhone.
What do you think? Is Vera right for me or should I look in a different direction? Also please feel free to make some hardware recommendations as well.
Thanks all…