Ok this is gonna be a bit of a miss match, so I've put it in the Software forum as my question starts off with.....
Does anyone here have any experince with Harmony Home Automation Server (Pro)? Is it any good, is there anything better out there?
What am I trying to do?
Next year I start on building myself a house, which I would like to have some automation. Now from my searching I have found that X10 is the easiest way to make this work.
The plan is to have all lights, curtains and some plugs be controllable from PC, either locally or remotely. (May be even the central heating!). Also I will have amps and xbox's running XBMC for different rooms, which again can be controlled via a web interface.
In terms of local control I have two optionsm,
1) Build a booth style touch panel rig, running a simple Linux distro to run a browser. I have two Mini itx based p3-866's which should be more then enough. One for upstairs and one for downstairs.
Pros,
Will look srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy,
Large Screens,
I have some of the parts already,
Fun to build it all,
Oh did i mention looks srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy, .
Cons
Cost, (ok with the house build its actually not that much more to spend).
Redundancy, if some thing breaks its gonna be a PITA to fix.
2) Use a PDA with wireless
Pros,
Simple
Redundant (if it dies I can just buy a new PDA)
Portability, (I'd only need the one and i could take that round the house as i need it)
Adding some good IR Software, I can use it to control pretty much all my devices in the house
One off cost
Cons
Small screen size
Wont be as srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy or fun to setup...
Any thoughts/ comments would be appreciated.
Nims


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