Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ecs] oops Bruce Prager Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:53:49 -0500

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I quite understand.  My spouse also has balked at most interfaces.  I've 
managed to automate many things using sensors etc so that its seamless.  
This has worked out well, but has been an integration pain as I have 
cats and needed to find very special sensors that they couldn't trigger.
While HS has a web interface which is easier to modify, it isn't easy, 
at least not by my stds.  It does have nice voice control by phone, so I 
outfitted the house with a full Engenius cordless system.  That way, my 
wife can just hit # and say what she wants.  But push come to shove, 
she'd rather just hit a button.
Unfortunately, my house design makes running touchscreen panels a real 
nightmare in terms of cabling and the cost of decent ones has put me off. 
I'm afraid that ECSL has somewhat spoiled me with its ability to write 
extremely complicated scripts with relative ease.  My thermostat logic 
is such that I've never been able to figure out how to move it to 
Homeseer as HS is event driven.  ECS holds many variables and states and 
I use comparisions of these with other data to make intelligent 
temperature decisions.  Haven't been able to figure out how an 
event-driven system can make the same decisions.

Bill Walters wrote:

> Bruce,
>
> Yes, I agree with you regarding ECS Legacy, I still love it and it 
> does everything I need flawlessly.   I just recently acquired a RS-232 
> interface to my Jandy Aqualink pool/spa controller and haven't yet had 
> time to integrate it to my system.  I've great confidence in being 
> able to make it work to meet my needs and just as sure that the newer 
> ECS would handle it fine, too...
>
> Actually, the --ONLY-- reason I have for changing to the newer version 
> of ECS is the ability (hopefully) to customize the web interface to 
> something more approaching the highly visual interfaces of Crestron 
> systems.... yes, the "back end" interfacing would still be 'techie' 
> compared to Crestron but I'm only concerned about the 
> displayabilit/usability for the end user.... My wife doesn't like, 
> can't understand and just plain won't use the ECSL web interface.  She 
> similarly won't use the R_Admin link to native ECSL screens, although 
> I've tried desperately to make them understandable/logical for 
> her....  Also, R_Admin at 5 screens/second seems to pump a lot of info 
> thru my network but perhaps I've just not designed my home network 
> adequately... Just hasn't been a factor as she has accepted/likes the 
> old plain X-10 keypads, with announcements/responses over the home 
> intercom!  She doesn't like them sitting around the house however and 
> would like one or two touchscreens (wall mounted, of course) instead...
>
> The original web interface of ECSL is just so difficult to modify, 
> it's light-years above my paygrade.  I've read success stories of 
> others and tried to read/understand what they've done, but just can't 
> seem for it to penetrate my thick skull..
>
> I've started/stopped so many times with different user interfaces that 
> just didn't pan out or don't make sense in my current house.....  Of 
> course, moving twice in the last 5 years has really put a damper on 
> all of it, too...   And I no longer need ECS to manage my TV's/VCR's - 
> I'm a true TIVO convert and have 2 Directivo units on my home network 
> - nothing like doing a little video extraction over the network, 
> deleting commercials, and burning compilations to DVD!
>
> Ah well, musings and ramblings, sorry to take so much bandwidth and 
> say so little...
>
> Bill
>


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