C-Gate vs. Homegate

Hi All,

This is my first post here so please excuse any rookie questions ! I have read and learnt a lot from the forum but have not been able to find the exact answers I am looking for. I am a software engineer with an electronics background so hope I am reasonably competent...always fatal words though !

I have recently completed what has turned out to be an almost total rebuild of my house and have installed C-Bus throughout, at the moment this consists of 2 x 5508D, 2 x 5504D, 1 x 5504RVF being used for the heating/hot water, 1 x 5504AMP for my Daikin A/C upstairs, 5031TS for temperature control, various Saturn switches, DLT's and a couple of other Bus Couplers and sensors.

I have an office at home and an always on PC running Toolkit v1.11.4 and SqueezeBox server amongst other things. So far everything is running very well and other than the electricity board supplying me 195v for a while (!!!) the basic setup has been faultless.

I now want to improve what I have and am missing a few things, a scheduler, a logic engine and a software/web interface. Here is a short list of some of the things I would like to be able to achieve :

a. Schedule heating/hot water/AC
b. Set/display current and target temperatures
c. Cycle through 3 presets for AC fan speed
d. Apply some logic to alarm being set e.g. outside lights
e. Nightime and guest modes to control maximum light levels and All Off settings
f. View/control the system setup from various locations e.g. laptop in the house, tablet system in the living room, phone etc...

The PAC does not help with the viewing and after researching, installing and testing HomeGate it looked to covered everything however not the different locations...ServerX also appears a little clunky. I then put together a small test stub with socket connections directly into C-Gate which worked really well...this is where my questions start :

a. Does HomeGate sit entirely on C-Gate ?
b. Would I lose any functionality by writing my own solution/interface to C-Gate ?
c. Would there be any difference from the inherent Logic Engine to my own coded logic monitoring Event and Status changes ?
d. As above for the Scheduler ?

At the moment I am trying to make a decision on the best route, obviously HomeGate is incredibly comprehensive but with my configuration I would only be using a small amount of this and putting together my own interface will allow me to get exactly what I want.

Any thoughts and ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Swifty.

 

Is it only C-Bus devices you want to control with homegate?

a.I believe homegate sits on top of C-gate
b.the protocol docs that have been released are pretty comprehensive now, so probably not
c.?
d.no experience with schedule plus


If not you may need to look further afield or write your own.

Mick

 

Daikin

What is the type of the Daikin unit you have there?

 

Swifty,

I have embarked on a similar path - with slightly different gear, but not too different ...

I have chosen a Clipsal touch screen as my current C-Bus engine .. it is running all my schedules, a serial interface to my Inteligent Life air con, custom irrigation app, and also have a Ness M1 directly on the C-Bus, etc.

I use a number of inputs and outputs on the M1 to trigger various events on the lighting circuits, such as lighting in the garage, all lights off and away scenes on alarm set, etc .. also have some scenes set via the M1 wireless keyfobs ...

I also have configured IR Remote control on the screen itself as well as via series 2000 IR receivers in key locations around the house - allowing mutli function remotes to be setup to control various functions.

I have also set air con functions (including temp display) onto DLTs in key locations (parents locations!) and basic air con off/on functions for each room via 2 button switches (either 2000 series or saturn) ... one switch light, other air con room control.

I have toyed with the idea of using the iPhone/iPad and Android applications - but like the Ness screens for lighting control, look horrible and certainly dont appear to be able to meet 'wife' approval or usability!

I also have a keen interest in media centres and am heading more down this route ....

I have recently managed to get an Ubuntu server set up as my primary gateway. Aside from many IT functions such as Open LDAP server, file, print, filewall, web server, etc the system is also running as a C-Gate gateway and am getting close to getting interfaces with LinuxMCE running the way I think they should ...

Net result is that I should be able to install many devices around the house (or remote via the world wide wonder) that range from basic web browser through to fully integrated multi media stations on both shared and dedicated hardware to acheive the results I need. Some of these devices I have been playing with include XBox original running XBMC, some old in-car PC projects now running as test media devices, slate devices and others.

I have also built an app in C# .Net 4 that currently allows for around 25% of the Toolkit functionality (and a bit more) and is currently being investigated for integration with D-Tools and also embarking on my own web front end server project (currently also in C#, but may migrate to C++ or Java so I can run it on Ubuntu/Apache and not Windows/IIS!) ...

While not direct answers to your questions, hopefully gives you some thoughts and ideas on possible routes your project could head (most well outside the box!)!

Feel free to give me a yell if you have any questions ...

Cheers,

Mal.