Hi,
I am going to be slowly working towards my ultimate HA goals one device at a time as time permits. I played around with X10 in previous homes for fun and it was OK, but I'm going to be at this house for a long time and want to scale up with a serious HA solution over time. I've been lurking for a long time trying to get caught up with the latest offerings but I'm affraid I'm having trouble locating much discussion on what I'm looking for, or there just hasn't been that much. I am a software developer by trade, so you can imagine I'm drooling over the idea of eventually writing code tailored exactly to my needs at some point. In fact, I've had it all planned out on multiple occassions over the years but moves and free time would often wreck those plans. The big thing stopping me from moving forward confidently right now it hard to imagine sinking any time and money beyond tinkering with something that can't be scaled to meet my "big picture" requirements.
The biggest unknown for me is what hardware to go with. My biggest problem with all the main offerings like UPB, Insteon, Zwave, Zigbee, etc is they offer no encryption or 128 WEP encryption (which is trivial to crack). Clearly I wouldn't even consider putting door locks or alarm systems on such a network, but I don't even like the idea of investing that effort and money into systems with less implications like lighting and A/V. People are getting more sophisticated... be it kids trying to hack for fun or criminals with malicious intent, and these systems mainly go unaffected due to odds... but the odds do increase when the number of people using the solutions more and number of people who want to "explore" such networks go up. 99 people may never have a problem but you'd surely hate to be the 1 out of 100 to spend a ton of cash on a HA system only to someone in your neighborhood is capable of turning your lights, TVs and home audio on and off at will and you have no choice but to scrap it to get control back.
With that in mind, is there any powerline or RF based solution that has stronger encryption, or is hardwired the only way to go? Since this will be a piecemeal project I'm not really concerned with pulling extra cables to all my existing wall switches over time to replace them with something controlable. I'm just not familiar with any hardware that is hardwired based, nor the controller options (ideally PC based software - either Windows or Linux). Can anyone recommend options along these lines?
Actually... let me clarify... by hardwire I mean something like replacement wall switches you'd buy for a UPB or Insteon setup... where they work just like regular wall switches you can flip on and off manually at the switch, but also can control remotely also. In my mind I would assume a hardwire device like this would cheaper and basically be more or less a regular switch but with a relay that was flipped when a signal (maybe 12v or something?) is sent down the signal wires as opposed to being picked out of the power lines.
Or, are there only hardwire solutions out there geared towards new builds where all of the wiring to loads goes straight through the controller and you have no traditional switches anymore? A solution like that would not work for me, so hopefully there are hardwire equivalents of UPB and Insteon type switches.
Thanks!
I am going to be slowly working towards my ultimate HA goals one device at a time as time permits. I played around with X10 in previous homes for fun and it was OK, but I'm going to be at this house for a long time and want to scale up with a serious HA solution over time. I've been lurking for a long time trying to get caught up with the latest offerings but I'm affraid I'm having trouble locating much discussion on what I'm looking for, or there just hasn't been that much. I am a software developer by trade, so you can imagine I'm drooling over the idea of eventually writing code tailored exactly to my needs at some point. In fact, I've had it all planned out on multiple occassions over the years but moves and free time would often wreck those plans. The big thing stopping me from moving forward confidently right now it hard to imagine sinking any time and money beyond tinkering with something that can't be scaled to meet my "big picture" requirements.
The biggest unknown for me is what hardware to go with. My biggest problem with all the main offerings like UPB, Insteon, Zwave, Zigbee, etc is they offer no encryption or 128 WEP encryption (which is trivial to crack). Clearly I wouldn't even consider putting door locks or alarm systems on such a network, but I don't even like the idea of investing that effort and money into systems with less implications like lighting and A/V. People are getting more sophisticated... be it kids trying to hack for fun or criminals with malicious intent, and these systems mainly go unaffected due to odds... but the odds do increase when the number of people using the solutions more and number of people who want to "explore" such networks go up. 99 people may never have a problem but you'd surely hate to be the 1 out of 100 to spend a ton of cash on a HA system only to someone in your neighborhood is capable of turning your lights, TVs and home audio on and off at will and you have no choice but to scrap it to get control back.
With that in mind, is there any powerline or RF based solution that has stronger encryption, or is hardwired the only way to go? Since this will be a piecemeal project I'm not really concerned with pulling extra cables to all my existing wall switches over time to replace them with something controlable. I'm just not familiar with any hardware that is hardwired based, nor the controller options (ideally PC based software - either Windows or Linux). Can anyone recommend options along these lines?
Actually... let me clarify... by hardwire I mean something like replacement wall switches you'd buy for a UPB or Insteon setup... where they work just like regular wall switches you can flip on and off manually at the switch, but also can control remotely also. In my mind I would assume a hardwire device like this would cheaper and basically be more or less a regular switch but with a relay that was flipped when a signal (maybe 12v or something?) is sent down the signal wires as opposed to being picked out of the power lines.
Or, are there only hardwire solutions out there geared towards new builds where all of the wiring to loads goes straight through the controller and you have no traditional switches anymore? A solution like that would not work for me, so hopefully there are hardwire equivalents of UPB and Insteon type switches.
Thanks!