Inexpensive way to control devices from a PC?

[apostolakisl]

While true - that's a great unit, that's $150 for a used one - I still think this one wins: http://www.digital-l...rs.com/lpc.html it's designed for remote control and scripting.

Hmmm, that does seem like a pretty sweet deal for $109.

 

[trevorp]

I generally prefer to lurk and almost never post on forums, but I have to chime in on the Digital Loggers stuff.

Before I do though, let me say that I have nothing but respect for Work2Play, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading his well informed posts for quite a while, and he may have an entirely different experience with their gear.

I do some work for a guy who has gone through 5 Digital Loggers devices over the years. Eventually, for no reason, they stop responding on the network. A reboot of the devices usually fixes this, but it's pretty hard to reboot one of these remotely, and requires you to have physical access to the equipment, as well as taking down all of the connected equipment. The 5 devices haven't died, he has actually upgraded when new ones come out, hoping that the issue has been fixed..

We've just replaced the Digital Loggers switches with APC ones, and couldn't be happier. They've only been in service for a couple of months, so I don't have any long term data as to whether they're more reliable than the DL ones.

 

[tmbrown97]

Thanks for the info trevorp, and absolutely no offense taken. My experience with the DigitalLoggers devices is actually pretty limited - I've known about them for some time... I finally installed one on a job about 6 months ago, and it was a lifesaver for rebooting access points that were locking up in an apartment wifi installation - saved me the 40-mile drive and I could reboot from my phone from anywhere. Based on that experience, I have one of the new Web Power Switch 4's sitting next to me right now that's being installed at the base of a WISP tower next week for a site that's 2.5 hours away - which should pay for itself very quickly (at 13mpg that's $60/trip).

I do have many, many, many years of experience with the APC MasterSwitch PDU's and would honestly never build a server rack or data center without them. In my former life running a large scale IT department, every single piece of equipment in every server room was connected to one - they're absolutely critical for proper sequencing of servers, SAN's and networks after a full scale outage, and a marriage saver when it comes to managing a data center or remote offices with no local IT presence. I saved a lot of travel, mileage, and late-night trips to the office thanks to those things.

I appreciate the feedback - I'll watch my installed units more closely now with that in mind - hopefully they'll continue to perform as expected. I mainly started buying them because they were designed for easy remote control and scripting, and their price point is hard to beat.

Also, I think Electron might have bought a bunch of these - If I'm remembering that correctly, I'd sure love to hear his thoughts on the matter... I know the WISP community buys a lot of products from those people - they have a ton of units sold... hopefully your friend's experience is a fluke!

 

[tadr]

Given the application of computer monitors, I'd between two options... one is something like a DigitalLoggers Web Power Switch if the devices are together, or getting into some sort of scada related relay; it's easy to switch power.

That said, specifically for computer monitors, I wouldn't go that route... I would use monitors that have super-low standby power and I'd find a way to make the PC's connected to them trigger standby mode. There are plenty of windows apps you can trigger to do this; you didn't specify what's connected to the monitors.

This was my original inclination as well. If you have recommendations for a device I could put in-line with an HDMI cable and toggle the HDMI signal with something like a 12v control signal, this would work great. The displays are connected to a HDMI splitter with cat5/6 baluns. I want to be able to remotely control displays in individual rooms.

Since I haven't found anything like I described above, I decided to go the route of controlling the power to the display directly.

 

[tadr]

These two things are generally mutually exclusive. ;-)

Least expensive is probably an X10 firecracker and transceiver- http://www.x10.com/a...18a_s_ps32.html, for example. You can probably find someone on here who will sell you the firecracker and transceiver for less (maybe even me ;-), and appliance modules are pretty plentiful and cheap. There is free SW that will let you drive the firecracker.

What is the zwave/Insteon equivalent of this?

 

[tadr]

These two things are generally mutually exclusive. ;-)

Least expensive is probably an X10 firecracker and transceiver- http://www.x10.com/a...18a_s_ps32.html, for example. You can probably find someone on here who will sell you the firecracker and transceiver for less (maybe even me ;-), and appliance modules are pretty plentiful and cheap. There is free SW that will let you drive the firecracker.

This is what I'm going to do, for now. I picked up the firecracker on ebay for $6 and I already have a wireless transceiver and a few appliance modules laying around. This should be good enough for a short term solution, but I'd really like to transition to zwave/insteon in the near future so I can reliably control other stuff (I plan to eventually add zwave or insteon to my Elk m1).

I found this command line software to drive the firecracker: http://www.ubasics.com/adam/electronics/cm17.shtml

 

[mdesmarais]

For Insteon I use something like this as my PC interface. It can send Insteon as well as X10. I'm slowly (very slowly) migrating from X10 to insteon as I find the need for finer control (two way, controlled ramps, etc), or when my super cheap X10 switches give up the ghost. Insteon has appliance modules too, but the X10 ones are hard to beat! I don't kow what kind of SW is available for controlling the PLM, I use Housebot. not free, but pretty darn cheap. Easy migration from X-10 to insteon, at least for me.

 

[electron]

I have many Digital Logger units deployed, and in order to drop cost even more, I recently started deploying the Web Power Switch 4, and am very happy with it (v4 offers the same software features its bigger brother does). You just can't beat the price point of this power switch, and it's still easy to hide in a rack. I have tried many power strips in this price range, and they are almost all junk, the Digital Loggers are the only ones I have positive results with.

One thing I have noticed with many embedded devices is that they choke on malformed packets/collisions (even with devices using the Digi Ethernet chips, which is a very popular chipset). I wouldn't be surprised if the person trevorp is talking about experienced this type of issue, so an upgrade wouldn't really fix it (unless they upgrade the ethernet chip itself).

I personally would recommend them anytime, and their staff is very friendly as well. The only downside is that if you want the latest version, you have to order from them directly, and since they are located in CA, it can take a while if you are on the East Coast.