Let me start off by saying that I’ve read a great deal of the posts in this forum… Much of it leads me to believe that without some programming ability I will have little chance getting Vera to do what I want it to do.
I have no programming aptitude…however I am an experienced electrician and I’m very mechanically inclined
My goals are:
- to be able to turn on/off lights remotely and check to see that they are off
- adjust my thermostat automatically when people leave the house and remotely monitor my house temperature
- check to see that my doors are locked remotely, and let people into my house remotely
- as a future project I would like to be able to see video of a person when they ring my door bell
Barriers to #2 are that I have a Broadview security system that is always armed when I’m gone…can Vera remotely shut off the alarm system?
I’ve been considering using Insteon light control devices…since they are cost effective and can access both wifi and wire signals
Are there better cost effective options?
Basically, the instructional video’s make Vera sound easy…however the forum seems to contradict this
Can I make this work?
- easy
- more involved because you have to have a way of telling Vera people have left the premises. You can have them press a switch [hard to remember to do] or sense the door opening [maybe they are entering or not leaving permanently] or sense lack of motion [maybe they are holding still] or set a timer [if schedules are predictable] so until we implement RFID or some other proximity sensor with ID, this will be a work-around. Monitoring and changing temp remotely is easy
- easy, but I’ll let the guys who have implemented security systems comment on your barrier to this one
- fairly easy, but this is not an integrated feature where the image automatically pops up when the doorbell is pressed. You can capture the image when the switch is pressed, but you’d need to navigate to the image in the UI to see the pic. I’d love to have this feature in my home, but it’s not in Vera/MOIS now.
Cost effective is hard to judge. The Z-wave devices are all very expensive in my view, but, with Vera, it seemed the most cost-effective choice for me.
No one else with info on brinks home security or cost effective hardware?
If your security panel has a RS-232, ethernet, USB, or other port and can be controlled through it (you’d have to check with the manufacturer) then it would be possible for a Vera plug-in to control it. MCV has said that they are working on plug-ins for security panels (no ETA), so they might provide it at some point. If you have programming experience you could write one or see if there are other forum members with the same panel that would be interested in doing so.