where should I ask solution design questions.

[pmowry911]

Short version is where is the best place to ask questions on how to address specific situations?  Until the HomeGenie user community grows, I would think to would be elsewhere.

For example my Hunter ceiling fans all have RF based remotes.  I would think there is a software defined transmitter I can use connected to a PC to do the same thing.  I could buy one transmitter for the 4 fans, instead of replacing them with Insteon units.  I don't get the confirmation, but would be just as good as X10.

Then there is knowing when a car enters my driveway.  Tried using motion detection with a camera.  Works great, except my house faces west. In the evening long shadows are cast over my driveway from passing cars triggering the motion detection.

So as you can see they are not HomeGenie specific, so they may already be answered by the home automation community in general.  My google skills are failing me.

Thank you,

-Patrick

[bkenobi]

I ask those types of questions at the X10 forums, but there are a lot of other places that would work.

http://forums.x10.com/
http://jvde.us/forum/
http://cocoontech.com/forums/
http://tuicemen.com/forum
http://board.homeseer.com/

There's lots of others, but I've reviewed all of these before.  Some of these are more focused on specific software/products but the users may be able to provide general guidance.  Also, there's lots of people who do home automation that are into Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, etc.  Those forums have lots of good info as well.  The Arduino forum might be best with your RF fan question.

[Automate]

@pmowry911,  I have the same goal of controlling wireless devices with proprietary protocols.  I have not done it yet, but have assembled some notes and links here http://www.opensourceautomation.com/wiki/index.php?title=Control_wireless_devices_that_use_non-standard_protocol

[pmowry911]

Thanks guys, those links help.  Hopefully I'll be better at hardware than programming =)