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Author Topic: How much effort  (Read 1559 times)

November 25, 2015, 02:53:51 PM
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[email protected]

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Maybe its just be getting frustrated, but I am finding that each release seems to be buggy of this product.. I'm still having issues with it hanging on loading program data.

I work in IT, so I'm more than capable of making things work / reinstall write some code , but I was more hoping for a fit and forget product and at the moment I don't think this product meets my requirements.

So how much effort do you guys have to put in to system maintenance and troubleshooting? Part of me thinks other products will have their own weaknesses and I need to persist.

November 25, 2015, 03:37:52 PM
Reply #1

mvdarend

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I've tried a few different solutions, including HomeSeer and they all have their problems. (You can't even run HomeSeer as a service on a Windows machine... ::)) Reading in other forums (Domoticz, Miscaverde etc.) I'm seeing the same sorts of problems that HomeGenie users are experiencing.

I feel that HomeGenie is pretty good as far as that goes, going from version 1.0 to 1.1 has been a bit rockier than I'm used to, but that's to be expected, Gene's put in a lot of work and there have some major changes in re-factoring for v1.1 if I remember correctly.

Basically it's a one man show, with a little help here and there from others, so I'm pretty impressed at what Gene has achieved with HomeGenie and as far as I'm concerned it's one of the better Home automation systems available. And it's pretty stable if I don't tinker with everything too much :) usually if something has broken in HG it's because I broke something.

Edit: And don't forget that HomeGenie is open source, if you're in IT you can always help out in GitHub.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2015, 03:40:09 PM by mvdarend »

November 25, 2015, 04:31:06 PM
Reply #2

kevin1

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I tried Wink Hub a year ago, it has horrible history of problems.  Still don't think they can connect to secure wifi.  And now bankrupt(?).

I have been planning to get SmartThings once the v2 hub (with local processing) came out since it has capability to customize software with some hacking.  The new v2 hub and mobile apps have been very problematic for them though past couple months.  Still getting bad reviews on the apps/hub.

So to add to what mvdarend says, other home automation systems are having problems too.  I think there are too many "standards"

Couple days ago I was leaning to SmartThings since they have a decent kit sale going (but all the sensors are zigbee which would not be useful if I had to jump back to HG in the future).

At the moment, I'm leaning to getting the z-stick finally and sticking with HG.  But then I'd really like to get HG off the laptop and not sure if I am ready for Pi (seems like issues with mono and suspicious of performance based on my experience with HG on intel i7 processor).

Confused...  :-\

November 25, 2015, 04:35:39 PM
Reply #3

mvdarend

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At the moment, I'm leaning to getting the z-stick finally and sticking with HG.  But then I'd really like to get HG off the laptop and not sure if I am ready for Pi (seems like issues with mono and suspicious of performance based on my experience with HG on intel i7 processor).

I've been running HG on a MeeGoPad T04 for a few weeks now, and it's surprisingly good for such a small cheap device:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Meegopad-T04-Windows10-World-First-Intel-Atom-Cherry-Trail-x5-Z8300-CPU-Z8300-14NM-2MB/32463751648.html

Much faster than the BananaPi I was first running. (Compile of the Philips Hue app in 4 seconds instead of 10)

November 25, 2015, 04:40:13 PM
Reply #4

bkenobi

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I haven't reviewed what's available in a couple years so the playing field may have shifted.  However, when I was looking for an automation software to replace AHP, my requirements were such that I had only ~2 choices (Domoticz and HG).  Perhaps I'm not a typical user (I seldom am), but I wanted something that could run X10 CM15A on a small form factor system (RPi, Android stick, etc) and, most importantly to me, included a robust programming language.  Coming from AHP where standard "programming" was dropping icons on a linear action list (using the AHP SDK you can interface with outside tools like vbscript), I required something that understood what an if...then...else statement was.

That said, HG has improved from pretty basic operation to a very robust system in the last couple years.  The refactoring of the code in moving from v1.0 to v1.1 has seen several pretty major issues IMO, but Gene has done a good job to work through the ones I have seen.  I can't say how other software is with bugs and patches, but there's always a solution you might consider that works with every single software out there... keep your HA system on a stable version and test with a different setup.  I only have one RPi, but when I was initially testing HG I used a WinXP box for testing new features prior to updating my stable system.  If you update at every release, you are bound to have bugs at some point.

November 25, 2015, 07:21:50 PM
Reply #5

[email protected]

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I think you are probably right with the above comments, and given what you are saying regarding the scripting I think I would rather stick with a real language (c#) however I would much rather be able to use a proper IDE so I don't get unhelpful messages when I mix If and if.

I suppose these are all minor issues that can be worked through.. and as for helping out, I have already fixed an issue I found in the gpio module and then knocked another version up to support different revision boards.

With regards to the speed, I have issues with latency between input and output and I guess thinks like mono don't help here either.. be nice if the MIG gateway could be ported to IOT on ARM but having converted some apps and developed some for the PI all I can say is that's not an overnight job - especially when external dependencies are involved.

I think if I can get it more stable then I will invest in some better hardware to run the main node :)