Any Motorola Premise Users on here?

[etc6849]

I just happened to follow a link from zwaveworld and ended up here. I had no idea there was such a large home automation club so close to my area (I live near Naperville).

Anyways, as my first post, I thought I'd share the home automation software that got me started in this hobby some 9 months ago (mainly cause it's free):
http://www.cocoontech.com/wiki/Premise

The dealer version was made completely free a few years back by Motorola and offers a well thought out object oriented IDE, vbscript interpreter, a nice web based gui and a SDK supporting C++ and .Net. A large selection of user built drivers for everything from the Vizia RZC0P, iphone interface, Elk M1 and tons of others are available in the forum section and many native drivers are included with the program (X10, Global Cache, RadioRa etc...).

It'd be a great program for someone getting started in home automation that doesn't want to pay for a program, but it's advanced enough to do whatever you want.

[The Pod]

Welcome to the CHAUG forum and thanks for the info on the Premise software. Free is always nice. I'm currently using HomeSeer as my main HA software, but I'm using the ISY-99 to manage my Insteon devices and also have an Elk M1G installed. I have a mixture of X-10, Insteon and Z-Wave devices installed throughout my home. Hopefully my goal will be to eventually replace all the remaining X-10 devices with either Insteon or Z-Wave modules (or find a hard wire solution as a replacement and automate it through the Elk).

Wish I would have known about the Premise software being free last year.... I did a Home Automation presentation to the Chicago Computer Users Group. I got some great reactions from the group and it would have been nice to show them a free piece of software to get them started with.

So you found us from a link off ZWaveWorld. I'll have to check it out and return the favor by offering a link to their site from ours too.

[etc6849]

Wow, someone replied that was fast!

Your set up sounds similar to mine.

I use a mini-ITX XP Professional computer as the Premise SYS server, aka SYS. There is also Premise builder software used to modify, backup and restore the entire system locally or remotely (even from a hotel room). I have used builder on several PCs ranging from XP to Windows 7 to access my SYS server remotely.

The SYS server connects to rs232 ports and IR devices via:

1. 8 port usb to serial adapter by Digi (from ebay $45)
2. Lantronix MSS4 Ethernet Device server (serves rs232 ports to SYS server over the network) (from ebay $48). Wireless device servers are also available...
3. GC-100-12 Global Cache controller ($150) The GC-100 in combination with a Xantech hub, Xatech receiver and RS232 IR capture device (GC-IRE) is how I interface with a/v devices for IR control. It works great!

A few devices I use with Premise:
1. MR26a X10 RF receiver ($10 from ebay)
2. X10 RF devices: UR47a X10 remote, X10 Palmpads, X10 MS16a motion sensors (all very cheap <$6 each). In Premise, you can program a palm pad to do whatever you'd like so they are handy cheap devices with 100% reliability unlike the classic X10 over power line modules
3. Leviton Vizia RZC0P RS232 zwave transceiver (~$90)
4. Various Vizia RF+ modules offering instant two way feedback ($50-$65 each)
5. Wayne Dalton zwave thermostat ($65) (driver support polling for this device, no instant two way feedback available)
6. Various two way rs232 drivers for A/V devices (a receiver, hd dvd player etc...)
7. Various one way IR drivers for DVD player etc...
8. Several IP based cameras that interface with SYS to display video
9. Weather module that gathers and displays XML weather data
10. SYS also comes with a built in feature called msense that will manage serving various content (mp3s, radio stations, tv stations and etc...) to multiple rooms if you have a matrix switcher.
11. PocketPC for mbrowser GUI
12. Samsung Q1 for automation browser GUI.

As you can see the tally above is a budget system with many used parts from ebay. The drivers are fairly easy to make in Premise if you are familar with vbscript and follow an object oriented approach (inherits from predefined classes) to save programming time. You can also make your own entirely custom classes too.

To splurge, I'd like to add some things in the future such as:
an intercom system, matrix switcher, media renderers that support intel PnP (as there is a premise driver for this), flood sensors, proximity RFID tagging, and an Elk M1 Gold security system. Most of these items can't be implemented until I move again