The link to CQC:
[Link: charmedquark.com]

Nice stuff Dean - I'll take a look at your demo - could not find pricing any ball park numbers? I hope your not up there with Crestron, you could be a viable option to the high tech diy consumer. But the 44 page tuturial is a bit scary.

I figured out prontos ccf and pcf language just with samples. Are there any samples of your systems floating around?

The base package price is $200. The full package, with the current set of optional bits, is $275. So definitely less than Crestron :-) A couple of decimal place's worth.

The quickest way to do it is to go to the Try/Buy section, and then the Try It section. Download the product and the Quick Tutorial and go through it. CQC ships with a device simulator to simulate a small home and home theater that you use for the tutorial. So you don't actually have to hook up any devices to go through the tutorial. It's completely safe because it doesn't install any files in outside of the installation directory and doesn't update any system files of any sort. So if you remove it, it's gone and will not cause any problems for you. The quick tutorial will take you on a hands on, high level trip through the core product features, so you'll come out of it having a decent feel for what it does and how.

CQC is orders of magnitude more powerful than a Pronto, so it will inevitably have a steeper learning curve. But, once you get up the curve, you will be able to go far, far beyond what a Pronto can do. So, if you are interested in really automating your home theater and home, it's well worth the effort. You don't have to use all it's power up front, so you can do just what you immediately need, and then grow it over time as you learn more and want to do more.

Dean,

I'll look more closely at the try&buy later, but help me out.

As I understand it, CQC is a "software only" product, to be installed on a PC (compatible with which versions of Windows? 2003 ?).

So I presume one of the requirements in order to use this product specifically in a HT environment is to have a dedicated PC device next to me in my HT room to control things, right? To be practical, that device should be a wireless Tablet PC (uncertain future IMO) or a media remote touchscreen display, or a Windows Terminal device.

If I got it right so far, this requires a relatively susbstantial investment in addition to CQC's cost. In which situations do you see this cost justified?

It will run on 2K, XP, and should run on 3K though I've not tried it.

Some people use a dedicated PC, some run it on their HTPC, some use a wireless tablet and some use a fixed position touch screen beside the couch, some use a rack mount computer with a tablet. It all depends on your requirements and what you want to do.

If you want to use a dedicated PC, the performance requirements are very low. You can probably easiliy put together a machine in the $600 range, a fixed position touch screen for as little as a few hundred up to around $600 for a 15" one, and a couple hundred for some special purpose automation hardware, and you've got a quite powerful controller. You have to keep in mind that we are competing against products that cost in the tens of thousands to do the same things.

If you want to see my system, it's the Demo1 gallery in the Galleries section. It's a HushPC enclosure, 1GHz VIA mini-ITX motherboard, 40GB Seagate drive, a Planar 15" touch screen, a USB-UIRT for IR input, and a GC-100 for zoned IR blasting. Most folks could leave out the GC-100 and just use the UIRT. It has 3 onboard serial ports, which is probably enough for most folks. I also use a Z-Wave USB controller for lighting control.

All of that is less than $2000, and a lot of that cost is the HushPC enclosure, which is a pretty enclosure that is fanless and meant to be out front as a visible component. If you are doing a PC in the closet, you could do the same for more like $1200 to $1400 probably, depending on parts. That same system from say Crestron, professionally installed which is the only way you can really do it, would probably cost you more like $10,000.

If you already have an HTPC, some folks just run it there and don't use a dedicated PC. One of our users I know is running two HD PVR boards on an HTPC with CQC running and isn't have any problems. Most modern PCs have hugely more power than CQC needs, so they can do it in addition to numerous other jobs at the same time.

I find that having a fixed position touch screen, right there at my hand when sitting in the HT couch, to be an excellent and cost effective solution. But we just put out the first Alpha release of our .Net interface viewer, which allows you to get CQC's graphical interfaces into various .Net based devices, from PocketPCs to smart phones, and new crops of devices that are coming out now. You can use an Airpanel from ViewSonic or one of the Kube devices which is similar to the Airpanel but potentially better, one of our users is evaluating that. So there are a number of options if you want to use a hand held tablet. These won't depend on MS' RDP protocol since they will run the .Net viewer locally and be a standalone network node.

Anyway, there are a lot of configuration options, based on what you want to do, and how much you want to islolate the automation system from the rest of the system. Some folks very much want to be sure that the automation system is not affected by new software being installed or viruses or whatever, so they put it on a dedicated PC and strip down the OS to the base minimum required.

In terms of justifying it, that's a personal thing, so everyone has to look at it on their own terms. For me, to have my lighting and home theater all completely under control from a single touch screen is something that I very much like. Anyone can operate it so it makes the system very accessible to non-technical family members, and since almost all my devices are two way I can do very smart automation that looks around at what is going on and does the right and minimal thing to make what I want to happen happen. It also provides me with weather feed data, and with scheduled events and text to speech I can have it speak reminders to me to do things or turn lights on and off at sheduled times.

If you have an HTPC, you can also control applications, to put them under the automation system's control. So you can not only control the devices but also things like software DVD players or PVR software and the like. With the upcoming media control system, it will also allow this same system to be the front end to a media repository that lets you browse media and invoke various media renderers to play it.

So you can just get a lot of features from this one box, so the cost even for a dedicated box gets amortized across a lot of useful features.

Dean,

Described as you did, it does sound promising. I like the flexible approach of PC based software, given that it's customizable. Here, the Pronto is no match.

For me, the only issue would be the display device, which, in a HT environment, needs to be wireless and transportable (in mine, it goes back and forth between me and my wife). I know it can be easily done, but the cost level just reaches my pain level right now.

Thanks for the detailed info.

What's your pain level? There are a number of Airpanel 150s on ebay right now for around $400. You'd have to go with RPD with the 150 since they can't run Win.CE 4.2, which our .Net interface viewer requires. But lots of people use them that way, and that also allows you to run other apps on the wireless.

Dean

I am a pocket pc enthusiast, and am pulling the pronto from the last project I installed. You mentioned above its support for ppc. is that up and running? Have you success with the PPC range or would the signal be sent back to the pc to be resent through your ir blaster?

Do you all have reccomendations for which ppc works best?

We just put out the first preview release of the PPC support. It's quite useful, and Mark is running his system with it now. It just needs to banged on in the real world to wring out glitches. No matter how much you test, real customers are the ultimate abuse test.

The PPC talks to CQC via the network and CQC does all the control. That control could be of IR devices, serial devices, socket, Z-Wave, USB, etc..., whatever devices you have under CQC control. So the PPC (or other .Net device) is just a graphical user interface device, it doesn't do any actual control.

It's fully two way for those devices that CQC is controlling that provide feedback, so you can see the status of devices on the .Net viewer just as you can on the main CQC interface viewer.

I don't have a particular recommendation. You can sign up on the CQC support forum (link at the bottom of the page) and ask about that. There are other folks who are hipper on that kind of thing that moi.

Here are some snaps of users interfaces that Mark, the guy writing the .Net Viewer, created for his own system. Note that the look and feel of these is totally arbitrary. You can use any images and create whatever look you want.




The version of the .Net framework that runs on these very small devices doesn't support source alpha blending, so you can see a little jaggedness on the edges of the buttons and such. That's not an issue on devices that support that kind of blending.

Here are some snaps of some user interfaces for a standard sized device, these particular ones are from my own system:




They are reduced in size and quality for easier downloading. These are all done with images that ship with the product.

Here are some that show off the upcoming media support:

FYI, I'm going to be doing a live chat on www.cocoontech.com tomorrow at 6pm PST (9pm EST). It's in conjunction with a giveaway of a CQC license with all options. So drop by if you want to ask any questions. You have to post in the giveaway thread (see the upper right side of the main page for a link) if you want to be eligable for the giveway.

I write Win32 SDK for controlling CPU-XA by Internet, WiFi, local network for programmers. SDK is consist of 2 parts: client and server. Allow change all parameters on controller & send all x10 command, get info about X10 units, get full info about controller.



Client & Server included:
[Link: smarthouse.rostov.ru]

Server Setups:
Set com-port: base.mdb->setup->port
Values: 1 � com1
2 � com2
Set socket port: base.mdb->setup-> socketport
Default : 63336

Client component TCPUXAClientSocket for CBuilder6, Delphi6:
[Link: smarthouse.rostov.ru]
I have documentation only in Russian, but all headers for component included.

CPU-XA Client allows:
- To get and to change modules parameters (Secul6� ),
- To receive the modules data. (BobCat Data�),
- To receive and to change the value of variables,
- To get and to change the value of timers,
- To receive and to change the value of date and time,
- To receive the data on quantity and type of modules,
- To transmit Ir
- To receive and transmit X10

Field Login must be 5 symbols.
Field Password must be 10 symbols.

You can get more info in client application sample.
Client application with source code for CBuilder:
[Link: smarthouse.rostov.ru]

Full info about server only in Russian language:
[Link: smarthouse.rostov.ru]
Any question send to [email protected].

It is Components for Applied Digital Controllers: Ocelot, Leopard II :-)

And here they come Home Automation with wi-fi and bluetooth control:
[Link: dadammicro.com]

A great article on the next technology:
[Link: bluetoothnews.com]

Looks like CQS:
[Link: meedio.com]
look at all those interfaces!

And I lost the link but their is zigbee with z-wave.

I know this an X-10 forum, but we are doing a little Z-Wave giveaway on the CQC support forum:

[Link: charmedquark.com]

If you are interested in winning some Z-Wave stuff.

In addition to the Z-Wave giveaway (see previous post), we having another giveaway on the CQC support forum. This one is a complete setup for someone who is looking to do an 802.11b wireless Ethernet network. If you want to enter, sign up on the support forum and post a message to the giveaway thread. All giveway threads are in the General Automation section. A link to the support forum is on the bottom of the main web page at www.charmedquark.com.


* Winners of previous giveaways within the last 2 months are not eligible, so that we can increase other's chances of winning

* This equipment is 'open box' but all in perfect shape and [b]very[/b] lightly used. It is in original packaging and with documentation

This giveaway includes:

1. LinkSys WAP11 wireless access point. This is a box that sits on the wired network and provides the wireless access to the network. [Link: linksys.com]

2. LinkSys WUSB11 wireless adaptor. This is a wireless network adaptor that is for those places where a plug in card isn't quite enough. This one is an external USB box with a little antenna. So it could be used for a remote machine in a fixed position, or outdoors with the laptop where you need more power/coverage. [Link: linksys.com]

3. LinkSys WCF12 wireless compact flash adaptor. This one is a CF card that provides wireless access for a PocketPC or other device that takes a CF card and that has networking capabilities. [Link: linksys.com]

4. LinkSys WPC11 wireless PCMCIA card. This one is a PCMCIA card that provides wireless access for a laptop or other device that accepts PCMCIA cards. [Link: linksys.com]


So, there it is. A pretty good starter kit. Keep in mind that this is all 802.11*B* hardware, not the *G* varietal. So it's in the 10Mb/s range.

Paging Scott... You won the Z-Wave giveaway but we've lost you. Please PM me on the CQC support forum to confirm you are you, and send me an e-mail and I'll pass that on to Brian at Tech-Home so you can arrange to get your toys.