LOL S-F. You will find soon enough that your HA project starts one way, and ends another way. You will slowly be building layer upon layer on your original ideas. In the end the big picture looks daunting, but it all follows a logical progression.
BTW, I just got my multi zone audio bolted in. Playing with it as we speak. I’ll report on it’s success later.
[quote=“S-F, post:31, topic:179989”]Yeah. No matter how much they suck, they CAN’T suck as much as Z-Wave motion sensors!
Sorry to all those out there happily using Z-Wave motions.
I tried that route. Got burned.
Wire>Wireless![/quote]
S-F,
Just stumbled across this thread and wanted to say good work!
I agree hardwired motions are way better since zwave motion sensors generally suck. In fact, I went through a lot of hassle to avoid zwave motions for our install. The low latency of our hardwired setup is great.
However, I’ve recently been turned on to the Schlage RS200HC zwave motions. Have you tried them? If so, how did you feel about them?
They’re new to me, and IMHO, they are surprisingly good!
I’ve just installed three of them a few weeks ago, and compared to our wired DSC motion sensors, there is virtually no practical difference. Yes, if you do an empirical comparison, you’ll probably find the Schlage sensors to be a few tenths of a second slower (if even that), but this can be compensated by the more flexible mounting options afforded by wireless. For instance, you could mount the wireless sensors lower to pick up traffic into a room earlier.
For security, i still far and away prefer hardwired motions, but for zwave triggers, i’m really digging the Schlage motion sensors. Best i’ve tried yet.
No, I haven’t tried them. If they are indeed as reliable as a wired motion… then the only drawbacks are price and batteries. How much do those cost? something like $40 or so right? I just got 6 wired sensors for $50. Placement isn’t an issue for me as I am usually in some stage of pulling wire at home and have been for the past 5 years or more. Sure it’s easier to run a wire to a floor or ceiling but if you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve you can get by (magnet and toilet chain and so on). Even with WiFi, which has been around for a while, is used by millions of people and is pretty well standardized, there are still nightmares. I’ve got a pretty solid WiFi setup here and it is wonky from time to time. It’s a world of difference from the consumer stuff I had before but it’s still more problematic that plugging into a switch. So I try to use wires whenever possible.
And please don’t let me tell you to not love your Z-Wave sensors. I know that many people love them. There are also a LOT of people who get burned. I don’t know what the difference between these situations is but the fact that I see negative reports often is real.
Yup, the main drawbacks of batteries and cost you’ve mentioned are spot on.
Based on forum feedback and amazon reviews, the battery change (CR123) should only have to take place once per 2-3 years which isn’t too bad. I’ve only been using mine for a few weeks, but they’re still at 100%
Unit cost is higher, but price with install is dependent on each case. For some who can’t/won’t run cable, hiring someone to do the work would far offset the price of a single wireless sensor. Licensed electricians in our area charge rates starting from $100-$150 per cable drop (!). Of course, you’re doing your own wiring, so you’re already ahead of the game.
I certainly don’t take offense if you don’t like z-wave motions. I know you have tons more experience than I do, but if you’re anything like me or lots of us here, I may guess you feel as frustrated as I have running into loads of poorly made zwave devices over the years (prior to the Schlage, i HATED zwave motions. Zwave locks from 2-3 years ago? Ugh! GE light switches?! Arghhh).
I’m just happy we’re finally coming to an era where zwave products seem to be getting better, more usable and wanna spread the word for good products when I find them to hopefully help people with their installs 
Happy hacking!
Yeah. If I had to pay someone $150 for every single item I added I would have nothing more than light switches, thermostats, locks and… a FEW Z-Wave motion sensors. Certainly no whole house audio. Well, maybe I’d go the Squeezebox route or something like that.
$150! This slays me. I wish you all were neighbors so I could help out. Pulling wire and the like isn’t really difficult… It just sucks.
In other news, no new progress to report here. I’ve been busy doing other work around the house. I’ve included a picture my wife took of me yesterday while I was at it.
@ bucko,
Could you share some details on your Custom made whole house lightning arrestor?
Also, are you integrating you WHA system with Vera? If so, how and what are you doing with it?
This unit is built for China Telecom used in their phone utility sheds they install around the city. The company that builds the sheds for China Telecom is the one that I got the lightning arrester from. They are not available for sale.
It is all German components and has alarm zone contacts self test, and an LCD lightning counter. I paid $800 for it.
I will be integrating the WHA for control via Vera and also SQ Blaster. I’m working with the factory now to make some mods to their amp before I get it talking with Vera.
I seems like a nice unit. It is the exact one monoprice sells. The factory builds them for Mcllelland UK and monoprice. But as it stands, it needs some changes (albiet minor) to truly make it a killer system for HA use.
The factory is receptive to tweaking it for some HA market share $$. Basically I want ir control on the panel itself. Not just via the keypads. Also I want to be able to control other rooms from each keypad. Right now each keypad is addressed and only controls the amp zone for it’s own address. I also want them to have “All off/On” command. So basically some firmware tweaking would about do it.
You can do this stuff now using the serial i/o or via the triggers, but I want it to do everything via IR so I can set up my SQ Remote with it.
Update of the day:
Adding many many wires to a single port on the DSC panel bus sucks! Every wired zone as well as things like the Evil-3 need to tie in to the 12v + and -. After more than 4-5 wires it becomes a serious PITA to keep them all connected when adding new wires!
Sounds like you need a little terminal block to split out the wires.
I cheated, and just added a few to each of the bus-expanding items in the same cabinet … probably not the best for reliability, since they’re effectively daisy chained, so they’re just that much further away from the power, and signal source, but it works 
[quote=“S-F, post:49, topic:179989”]Update of the day:
Adding many many wires to a single port on the DSC panel bus sucks! Every wired zone as well as things like the Evil-3 need to tie in to the 12v + and -. After more than 4-5 wires it becomes a serious PITA to keep them all connected when adding new wires![/quote]
If I was you, better rethink your wire connections. I would not connect anymore than 3 wires max to a single connection. You are looking at trouble down the line. Use a terminal block to connect multiple wires. Then run a single wire to the panel connection. It’s cleaner, insures good contact, and makes future troubleshooting easy and organized.
Actually my rule is no more than 2 wires to a single connection. I have seen 90% of ALL device failures, falses, weird intermittent problems related to bad low voltage connections. If I go onto a site with multiple issues, the first thing I do is rewire the connections properly before I even start to troubleshoot a problem. So save yourself many headaches down the road.
Just my 2 cents…
Ahhhhh. Terminal blocks! Very clever.
Would some kind soul please help me out by giving me a link to these? Preferably from Amazon? There are about a million of these and, unfortunately, I don’t know enough about such things to sift the wheat from the chaff. It seems like many of them aren’t used for aggregating multiple wires, but splicing. Am I correct? 
Good Point … I am planning on adding some Terminal blocks just for the +/- connections of the powered wired zones.
I was cussing like S-F … I need 4 little nimble hands to get mine connected and I only had two old shaky ones!
I though about terminal blocks … but I did not have any … and I did not want to stop … Just ordered some … I will be ready for the next install … or problem … which ever comes first
Check Digi-Key …
Daisy chain one side … connect to zones on the other side.
i used old fashioned brute force…
:-X
[quote=“Bulldoglowell, post:54, topic:179989”]i used old fashioned brute force…
:-X[/quote]
LOL, that’s huge! I can just imagine an installers eyes when they open the box and see that 8)
[quote=“Bulldoglowell, post:54, topic:179989”]i used old fashioned brute force…
:-X[/quote]
Jesus!
What kind of sensors do you use? Do they kill elephants when motion is detected?!
I used these recently:
I tried to use the ones listed near the top of S-F search…but it was a 1 to 1 junction. Not too familiar with them…but the one above worked. Just wish it was more covered.
[quote=“AgileHumor, post:57, topic:179989”]I used these recently:
I tried to use the ones listed near the top of S-F search…but it was a 1 to 1 junction. Not too familiar with them…but the one above worked. Just wish it was more covered.[/quote]
Looks like it wold be easy for it to short to ground.
EDIT:
Actually that one looks pretty good! I can buy it in a combo with a cigarette lighter for a discount! So I can chain smoke cigs inside the house (to relieve the stress of having to deal with all of these damn wires!) while I screw up my system!
Just have to throw an Ian Mercer quote out there to keep people lucid!
A smart home as I define it is one that can act autonomously to increase homeowner comfort, reduce energy consumption and generally just do the right thing. If you have to repeatedly tell your house to do an action that would be obvious to a human being then it?s not smart.
:o
And can’t forget this one!
it can explain why it did it! Any complex system is going to have unpredictable behavior, that?s almost guaranteed in a Goedel-esque kind of way. But when your smart home does something crazy it?s no good calling the author and saying ?it went wrong last night, why?? unless the author has what I have in my house which is a log of what happened and an explanation by the house as to why it happened. My house can, for example, explain that it turned the driveway lights off because it was 9PM and there were no visitors at the house and all of the people who lived there appear to be home.
Eat your heart out Vera.
Yes, he’s definitely the man. That’s why I’m implementing ‘VariableWithHistory’ on all my key sensors [url=http://blog.abodit.com/2013/02/variablewithhistory-making-persistence-invisible-making-history-visible/]http://blog.abodit.com/2013/02/variablewithhistory-making-persistence-invisible-making-history-visible/[/url]
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