Looking to automate my home (security, a/v, hdtv and dvd dist., etc) and have talked to different installers. Looks like it comes down to crestron vs netstreams. Anyone with experienced advice?

Check out CQC - www.charmedquark.com

There are several custom integrators and you can DYI if so inclined.

I've DIY'ed CQC, and my advice is to at least get a pro to run your wiring. I am sooo sick of running wiring it's not funny. If you can handle the DIY portion, you certainly get a lot of power for your $$, but it does take elbow grease.

Then again, I'm turning this into a smarthome, so i'm predicitng somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 total runs. Some runs are especially hard, some are easy, so it'll probably end up being an avg of 2 hours per run just for the wiring bit. I have easy access to the basement & attic, so at least I don't have to deal with mounds of sheetrock patching.

I have screenshots in my sig if you're interested.

I have reviewed alot of your posts. Its exactly what I envision when I think of HA. Im doing an addition (rather large) to our home and its currently at the wiring stage. I would actually like to run the wire my self, but I want to be sure I run enough of the right stuff.

One very important thing to keep in mind is time. How much time do you want to spend doing this.

IVB - What is a total rough number of hours you have on your project. I'm talking wiring, understanding and working with CQC, installing the products,... the whole project. from mbarr1 first post his looking for AV/ HDTV/ DVD dist. etc......

Dean - If you are around should be able to help design the parts list to make HA possible. I'm talking everything to make HA work. If not many hours will be spend trying to make something work that may not work....

mbarr1 can pick his route of HA, but since I have lived and put food on the table from HA I know what kind of time this stuff takes and the parts needed. Just free words of advice since I hate when people don't understand the full scope of a project.

CQC isn't just a DIY product. We do have professional installers, so that's still an option if he decided to go with CQC. I think that a big advantage of CQC is that it can provide both the automation and media management in a single package for a reasonable cost. Netstreams isn't really a full automation system, so you'd be limited on the automation front unless you add a separate automation system. Crestron can do whatever you want of course, but adding all that media management stuff will increase what is already a pretty high cost.

You can DIY the whole thing. But, you will be doing a lot of work to save that money. As mentioned above, you may want to at least get professional help on the physical aspects (i.e. what wires to pull and to do that wiring and any physicall installation), then pick it up from there just doing the software configuration part, which is a considerably easier row to hoe, and lets you be in control of the automation system. Even there, there are lots of ways to go. I'd recommend signing up on our support forum and doing some reading there, where others have already gone down this road.

Or, you could get it all done for you professionally, whichever package you go with. Anyway, just go in with your eyes open, however you go.

One very important thing to keep in mind is time. How much time do you want to spend doing this.

IVB - What is a total rough number of hours you have on your project. I'm talking wiring, understanding and working with CQC, installing the products,... the whole project. from mbarr1 first post his looking for AV/ HDTV/ DVD dist. etc......

Dean - If you are around should be able to help design the parts list to make HA possible. I'm talking everything to make HA work. If not many hours will be spend trying to make something work that may not work....

mbarr1 can pick his route of HA, but since I have lived and put food on the table from HA I know what kind of time this stuff takes and the parts needed. Just free words of advice since I hate when people don't understand the full scope of a project.

Absolutely and totally true on the time - 99% of the HA I've done was in 2006, and figure an average year-to-date of 1-2 hrs/day plus 1 weekend/month@8 hours dedicated to it. (the rest of the time is spent post-whoring :) ). So I'd estimate probably 700 hours for it on my end. In addition, I'm not "done", nor will I ever be, so I'm hoping 2007 comes in at no more than 50% of that, so another 350 hours. I should probably add another 200 hours to learn & understand all this stuff, as that's probably accurate. Ballpark of 1200 hours over 2.5 years to have a very advanced smarthome and to learn how to modify it at will. (that last bit is the priceless portion for me).

The time spent for a DIY'er is at least 2-3x that of a pro, as we don't do this for a living and constantly make mistakes. In addition, the blessing of DIY customization is also a curse - i'm constantly tweaking things "because I can", not because they necessarily add huge value. For example, I spent an hour researching how to make the security chime that goes off when the door is opened automatically turn on at 8am and turn off at 8pm. I wouldn't have spent $$ on a pro to do this, but given that I can do it myself it was more for the enjoyment of learning.

If I had to do it all over again, I could probably save at least 50%, since I wouldn't make the complete dumb mistakes I've made. But, hiring a pro, I'd expect a minimum of 350 hours at $100/hour, potentially 500, so figure $35K-$50K in labor bare minimum for what I have right now, another $25K for what I'll do in '07. So all in, a MINIMUM of $75K in labor, and I could easily blow that out by asking for more stuff.

For parts, Below is an excerpt from the "case study of IVB's home" that I'm writing, with a scorecard of my parts list including some projections of what I'll do in '07. I'm at $18K in parts, but that's some of that is eBay at generally 35% of retail. Eyeballing it, if I were to buy new stuff, it's at least another $4K in parts. It's also all low-end parts, i.e., Fujitu 3400, low-end PCs, zWave (not RadioRA or HomeWorks or Vantage).

So for me and my house, that's $75K or more in labor, $22K or so in parts, plus the DIY'er curse of underestimating stuff, so to do what I'll do should be expected to run about $100K or more.

BTW, that makes me realize another reason I did a DIY job. I started down the a/v automation in late '04, and projecting a mid-late '07 completion, i'll have taken 2.5 yrs to spend that $$. I couldn't have afforded $22K all at once.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/scorecard.JPG

Thanks for being honest. We have projects that are 30 hours to 2000 hours. For one person 700 hours is something I would want to know up front. Since I own a home and as a DIY at heart I would want to know before I went that route.

Thanks for being honest. We have projects that are 30 hours to 2000 hours. For one person 700 hours is something I would want to know up front. Since I own a home and as a DIY at heart I would want to know before I went that route.

NP. On the one hand, i wish I knew how hard the non-computer stuff was going to be to learn. CQC has very little to do with those estimates, it's mostly learning how all this hardware and various s/w, etc, bits work together. Why the heck did I have to learn what a resistor and capacitor was just to add zone-controllable HA speakers to my security system?

Not that I would have made a different decision, but I would have had a different mentality in the beginning, esp some of the opinions I used to have about professional installers.IIRC someone here (or the other "pro" forum) has a sig about "all you do is wiring, right".

Hey, at least I can count myself as part of the "enlightened", who now truly understand why the pro's deserve every penny they get and then some. They have to put up with idiocy like hardware manufacturers changing the serial protocol in different firmware versions of their product (ie Polk XRt12), and figuring out how to work with the right people make the system go regardless.

I'm not saying Dean deserves no credit, indeed coming up with a pro-level product that's also DIY-friendly package is certainly difficult. I'm just saying that this field is hard all around, much much harder than it needs to be, but that's the ugly side of a capitalistic economy and a fractured industry. At least there's competition, which is a good thing.

mbarr1

WOW! I am in exactly the same boat and I have been posting over on cocoontech.com. I have a rather large edition that I have added to my house. I currently have and HAI Omni that I will be upgrading to the latest Pro version. I was asking what is the best control and my A/V installer who is different from my HAI installer is pushing crestron, which I do not want to do because of the expense and you cannot tweak it yourself.

Thats what was leading me to Netstreams, Lifeware, Homeseer, Cortexa, Home Logic, CQC, MainLobby, the list goes on and on.

I have also been racking my brain regarding lighting control. I have been doing some X-10 with the omni. I want to make sure what I choose is going to be reliable and cost effective.

What other posters have said to me over on the other board is to use the Omni to control the security, HVAC and the lighting. Everyone has been saying that the UPB lighting is very reliable and cost effective. So with all that making sense, this is the first step in the automation process.

The biggest thing is I have been looking for a better front end to control the HAI as well as my audio and Video including switching in the various roms.

I want to have touchscreens throught my house. One of the most important items is to be able to access my music, pictures and moives that are sitting on my nas server, via a nice graphic interface and touchscreen capable.

Thanks

MainLobby can control Netstreams, Homeseer, UPB, the Omni, and HVAC via the Omni. Lot of choices here.

Netstreams, especially Digilinx is NOT a DIY product either. I doubt that Lifeware is very DIY freindly too.

Couple of comments: I have spends several weeks reviewing many of the same vendors cited in this thread. With regards to Netstreams, I just ruled it out for cost and lack of end user install/control. In my previous home, I completed a very small HA project that controlled lights, pool, TV, Ceiling fan via X-10 and the Pronto programmable remote. I have downloaded the CQC product and completed the tour. This will indeed leverage my background as a computer programmer and the lessons of the Pronto Device. I am now rapidly approaching a deadline to complete the wiring plan and now that I have ruled out Netstreams IP based product, I will move forward with a series of home runs to each room (2-CAT5, 2 COAX, 2 RJ11) In addition, I will have a separate CAT5 run for the in wall touch pads. I expect to have 6 sources and 12 zones (including outdoor pool and patio). I am leaning toward a CQC based HA foundation with UPB for lighting. Although I have not settled on any of the key hardware components.

Much thanks to IVB and Dean on the contribution to this board as well as all others that take the time to document experiences.

- Ed

np, check the webex thread i'm about to start here if you want to see a live setup.

BTW, run 3 coax to each room - component video. Also run the speaker wire plus an 18/2 and a CAT5 to each potential future touchpanel location. You can put an inwall vol controller right now, or just route it to the speakers, and drywall over it.

Couple of comments: I have spends several weeks reviewing many of the same vendors cited in this thread. With regards to Netstreams, I just ruled it out for cost and lack of end user install/control. In my previous home, I completed a very small HA project that controlled lights, pool, TV, Ceiling fan via X-10 and the Pronto programmable remote. I have downloaded the CQC product and completed the tour. This will indeed leverage my background as a computer programmer and the lessons of the Pronto Device. I am now rapidly approaching a deadline to complete the wiring plan and now that I have ruled out Netstreams IP based product, I will move forward with a series of home runs to each room (2-CAT5, 2 COAX, 2 RJ11) In addition, I will have a separate CAT5 run for the in wall touch pads. I expect to have 6 sources and 12 zones (including outdoor pool and patio). I am leaning toward a CQC based HA foundation with UPB for lighting. Although I have not settled on any of the key hardware components.

Much thanks to IVB and Dean on the contribution to this board as well as all others that take the time to document experiences.

- Ed

I know this isn't a wiring thread, and I hate to pull it off topic, but I love to throw my 2cents in. SO...

Don't forget about speaker wires for each zone.... and alarm wiring, smoke detectors, PIRs, blah, blah, blah...

I would probably run Cat5 from each light switch to a wiring closet as well (keep the Cat5 outside the box to avoid electrical inspection issues) to at least keep me in the game for hardwire lighting solutions.

I would actually recommend 4 RG-6 wires to each spot where there may be a HD TV in the future (three for HD video and one for digital audio), but that isn't as big a deal any more with all the HD over Cat5 wiring solutions that are out there now. But it will certainly save some money if you can simply hook up the RG6 wires for HD and digital audio feeds and forgo a Cat5 with balun solution.