Recent content by hobbes487

I recently moved into a new (to me) house that has an existing Moose Z1100R security system.  From what I can tell there are some wired door sensors, a motion sensor and a siren.  I would like to replace it with a newer system that I can integrate with my HA system (Home Assistant).  Is there...

I recently moved into a new house so I am in the process of setting up a HA and security system. I have the HA part figured out (Home Assistant), but I am not sure what to do with regards to a security camera solution. There are so many different options out there and I am having trouble...

The port on the back of the camera indicates that it should be a 5v supply.  I tried it with a 5v supply that I check with a multimeter and it doesn't work.  I'll try taking it apart to see if there is a fuse

I have a bit of an odd question.  I may have accidentally fed 24v to my Loftek CXS2200 IP camera that is supposed to take a 5v supply.  I can't seem to get it to function at all anymore.  I'm assuming I killed it, but wanted to see what you all thought.  Would putting 24v into it have caused a...

  Why do you need 220v 60hz 2phase devices if you are using ZWave?  Since ZWave is wireless it doesn't matter if devices are on different phases.  Maybe I am missing something here...

  There are many home automation solutions that don't require any sort of cloud.  I'm pretty sure the big players like HomeSeer, Elve, etc don't, but I could be wrong.  Our system, Open Source Automation, logs everything locally for analytics purposes and never sends anything to the cloud.  I am...

Radio Thermostat makes a WiFi thermostat that can be controlled directly by many HA systems without requiring any registration or using any proprietary web portal. OSA has a plugin to support it and I am sure many other systems do as well.

One of the things I do that gets the most 'oohs and aahs' from guests is having the lights dim automatically when a video starts playing on my media center. My HA system is hooked up to XBMC so it is alerted of when a video starts or stops so it can dim or brighten the lights. Not crazy in...

Just using the basic Leviton controller may suit your needs just fine, but combining that with some HA software will open up a lot of other possibilities like adding motion sensors to to have your lights in each zone come on automatically. The main thing you will be missing with the basic...

RFXCOM has a really good SDK and sample application to aid in adding support for their devices. They will give it to you if you tell them you want to add support for it . I have been using it to add support to Open Source Automation. It is basically just reading and writing to the serial port...

If you are truly interested in an inexpensive solution that will allow you to directly do development on your system in order to expand it I would suggest one of the open source option available. Open Source Automation is an option that is, obviously, open source and very extensible through...

I used to use a hardware RAID card from Areca. It worked very well while I had it all set up and the speed of hardware RAID compared to software (which most solutions out there are) is much faster. I actually just decommissioned one of my servers that was using an Areca 1220 RAID card in a...

I live in an apartment that has an old fashioned gas furnace in the floor. It is controlled with one of those old thermostats that looks something like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SL6NrWGzdGI/Swjo8yJjQUI/AAAAAAAAAUk/PD1IaFerzeg/s1600/OldThermostatCropped.jpg I don't really know anything...

If I were you I would go for a Z-Wave thermostat. There are HA systems out there that are free and will bridge the gap between X-10 and Z-Wave. Open Source Automation is one of them. It is 100% free and open source so you won't have to worry about costs later on when you decide to get more...

Thanks for the reply. Its good to hear that someone else has tried that 1-wire receiver too and you have been able to add additional sensor to it. My main question is what exactly do I need for a moisture sensor as far as hardware? Is this all I need...