IMHO this is one priceless idea… Think well about it
Given that you target consumer market (as an opposite to HA installers, etc), choosing gc100 for IR distribution doesn’t seem to be appropriate. It is costly, considering a home would need at least 2 or 3 of them, and it’s not easy to setup. It also requires an extra WiFi router/AP to have it connected to the network.
Make your own satellite device - take one of those less expensive routers such as Asus 520gu ($25 retail) with one USB port, flash it with OpenWRT, and set up in bridge/client mode. These could be Vera’s wireless clients to be placed into every room to provide all kind of services – particularly IR distribution. All you need is to make OpenWRT to support USB IR dongle, and to make this satellite to listen to Vera for commands that are to be IR blasted.
The key is to make them affordable enough for multiroom use, WiFi equipped, and talking to Vera natively - hence zero-configuration.
This way you can offer “every room” zero configuration device. Given how cheap the required hardware is, it’s a pity not to exploit this opportunity. Satellites can be made very affordable, but it will raise Vera’s value as “Entire Home Control System” enormously.
This sounds like a great idea. 50-60 a room vs 160 is much better. Granted the gc100 has serial support but I suspect most consumer systems will be IR only.
I hope to remember this when I get my system up and running. I have three Media Center PC’s in my house and being able to blast commands to all of them to shutdown when the family isn’t home, that would be priceless.
I don’t know how you guys prioritize your development targets, but affordable, easy to setup multiroom IR distribution is virtually nonexistent at this moment, and it is one of the features that IMHO can make a lot of people to start talking about you - a lot more then z-wave alone.
Is there an IR dongle out there that has a jack for an emitter? Otherwise there would be a bulky satellite sitting in front of the AV equipment. Not to mention that you could only point the dongle at one, maybe two, devices so if you have more than that you would need another satellite in the same cabinet
I definitely wouldn’t like to deal with wired emitters. Asus 520gu is all but bulky, and I imagined it sitting hidden somewhere in front of AV stack, NOT in the cabinet. You can always put USB IR emitter on a short (USB) cable, and put the box itself anywhere… under your sofa.
The USB/UIRT has a jack on the back for a small emitter. You could use a niles repeater to expand your IR blasters but niles stuff does cost some $$$. There are many other LIRC compatible devices so USB/UIRT would not have to be the only choice here.
Does vera need gated IR? (e.g. if there is a media closet with multiple tivos should IR only be directed to certain devices instead of a “blast all”).
Vera designed to be simple and user friendly - for gated IR there’s more then enough existing solutions. Simple USB “blast all” IMHO. Otherwise it will turn into another “installer” device
I don’t want to deal with wired emitters either but I also think it is going to be a hassle to try getting a USB IR dongle to control more than a device or two. What about those who have a lot of AV components in a cabinet? I guess if you backed the 520gu up a bit across the room it could hit everything. For that matter I would almost go with [url=http://www.automatedoutlet.com/_search.php?page=1&q=powermid]Automated Outlet - Smart Home Automation Solutions as long as you could figure a way to get the IR signal from Vera to the receiver. Then you could just buy a bunch of the receivers for $17 each and keep em put of site in the cabinet. There is also a jack for emitters so you don’t have to worry about it pointing at everything correctly. Any thoughts on this concept?
I meant to place it at bout the same location where I would use my remote, i.e. an opposite wall. This would cover the entire room, if placed under right angle.
If your cabinet is closed then you have no choice, but then it’s not Vera’s task to handle complicate HT setups with multiple emitters.
I didn’t even think about this at first. Kinda cheesy but you could hook the UIRT to Vera and line up the IR out of the UIRT to the IR in on the Powermid Transmitter (maybe some good old fashion duct tape to keep the alignment) and then just buy the $17 dollar Powermid receivers for each room and a couple emitters. Cheapest way so far and you don’t have to worry about anything obstructing the IR beam from across the room.
Either way you do it, is fine. I personally wouldn’t mind feeding Satellite’s IR output to a local IR distribution system of my A/V closet, especially, since I already have one…
Blasting IR signal from across the room sounds too cheasy for me
The benefit of a WiFi Satellite for me is the way to deliver signal (IR over WiFi in this case) from one room where Vera sits, to another root where A/V gear is.
Let’s concentrate on convincing micasaverde guys to actually develop wifi satellites, and then we’ll discuss how and what exactly to feed from them. It may be much more then just IR.
And don’t forget - Vera is designed to be easy to use for… a housewife, or even my grandmother. Anything you’re suggesting should be sellable to the same mass market non-geek clientele. I don’t think “local IR distribution system of my A/V closet” is applicable here. So, cheesy or not, first of all it must be easy.
I think it’s a great idea. By setting them up you could possibly offload some of the work of Vera to the satellites couldn’t you. for example, set one of them up just for a specific task like handling all IR Transmit/Receive and maybe the other one to handle all the home security equipment hooked into the system. might offset the load for all this stuff we are all hoping to hook into it at the same time. Plus, for each one we link up to Vera we will also add another USB port. I we were utilizing bluetooth, we could use some type of signal strength meter and have a bluetooth dongle plugged into each one and have it use the signal meter to figure out where we are in proximity to each one…now we are stretching it a little. lol
I don’t know how you guys prioritize your development targets, but affordable, easy to setup multiroom IR distribution is virtually nonexistent at this moment, and it is one of the features that IMHO can make a lot of people to start talking about you - a lot more then z-wave alone.
Agreed. We’re trying to be very careful about biting off spreading ourselves too thin. We really would rather do a couple things very well than a bunch of stuff poorly. Definitely IR distribution is in our roadmap. But, if you look at it from a “normal” consumer, they don’t think about distributed i/r. How many distributed i/r systems are sold vs. how many tv’s are sold? On the other hand, cutting your energy bill and being green is something everyone has on their mind right now. So that’s why our first focus is to nail the Z-Wave energy management stuff and make it as simple as possible for a mainstream consumer. Next is the i/r control. And after that, the media playback.
No doubts basic functionality got to be polished first.
Well, they aren’t sold because there’s none available on the market – meaning self-installable and affordable, while well designed and reliable. Again, I don’t mean advanced gated IR, which belongs to pro HT setups, but rather simple remotely controlled “remote controls” placed in every room, similar to those X10 pyramids, but ones that can be reliably controlled by Vera, and not by your neighbor
Imagine – all user should do is to unpack the satellite, plug it into the power outlet, and login to Vera to enter AV control stuff.
When turned on, the satellite would find Vera’s WiFi network, register on Vera, and start some little background process listening to Vera’s messages. Config is easy to deploy, Vera can simply FTP config files, and issue remote reboot command.
For a person experienced with programming in OpenWRT environment the entire project IMO would take just a day or two – I suppose USB UIRT is already supported by some optware modules…
Imagine – all user should do is to unpack the satellite, plug it into the power outlet, and login to Vera to enter AV control stuff.
When turned on, the satellite would find Vera’s WiFi network, register on Vera, and start some little background process listening to Vera’s messages. Config is easy to deploy, Vera can simply FTP config files, and issue remote reboot command.
It would be even nicer to have an option to plug in a USB memory stick and copy required settings from Vera to it. You’d then remove the stick, plug it into the satellite (assuming it has a USB port) and it would autoconfigure itself without having to type in your SID, 64 character WPA2 key, etc.
This would also work to setup client PCs. Vista and XP SP2 already have a similar option to export/import settings and I’ve seen something similar in OS X. Now, if the Z-Wave USB stick also worked as a removable drive, you wouldn’t even need a separate stick and you could do the initial setup with that. It could even contain the initial settings. While you’re at it, you could also throw in other settings such as adding bookmarks to the (default) browser.
Obviously adding a small (what’s the smallest sold these days, 64MB?) preconfigured stick in the package would work, too. I’m not going to go into the costs associated with the actual stick & preloading it for each shipment, but at first glance it seems it might be a way to make the initial setup easier and this seems like an important goal for reaching the mass market.
Integration of universal remote controls into Z-Wave – another cool feature and potential selling point.
As we now have IR transceiver connected to a satellite, we can allow user to control z-wave devices using his universal IR remote control, such as Logitech Harmony. Prepare a set of IR commands, satellite receives them, and translates into a message to Vera sent over WiFi, which issues the required Z-Wave command. And this is fairly simple to implement.
Gosh, where all this comes from - am I in wrong business?..
