Fw: x10, CBUS, and a VIOM - your views?

[Gareth Cook <g@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, I have servers (ie NAS) that stay up 24/7 - but I know it will fail
eventually :-) . The PC has a level of complexity that means that
something WILL go wrong at some point.

I'm happy that I only have Homeseer for logging Comfort and CBUS events -
ALL the logic is now done in Comfort for everything. I can happily switch
off the power and things just work. Could I say that about a lardy PC ?
Will it boot ? Will the HD have a hissy fit after being shut off ? Will
Windows barf with an auto update of somekind ? Will it get an IP address
ok ? Lots of things. Even power consumption.

If I'm away and there's a problem, can I fix it remotely ? Could the wife
? Prob not.

PC's are so much more flexible - but that's at a cost. So for me, I prefer
solid state wherever possible for house automation.

G.

Gareth Cook
Tools and Process Architect
IBM SWG Sales - Lotus Park, Staines, TW18 3AG
Office: +44 (0)1784 445166 - Mobile: +44 (0)7980 445166
AIM Chat : TheBoyG - MSN Chat : chat@xxxxxxx
email: g@xxxxxxx


----- Forwarded by Gareth Cook/UK/IBM on 08/10/2005 18:21 -----

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ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Today 16:57

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Re: Fw: [ukha_d] x10, CBUS, and a VIOM - your views?
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On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 16:29 +0100, Gareth Cook wrote:
> I dont want any PC shinnanigans controlling anything.

Out of interest, why not?

It's interesting getting the sales feedback from the call centre these
days. About half of our customers don't want to leave a PC running 24/7,
and the other half have no problem whatsoever, and don't understand why
the other half do :-)

I leave the servers running 24/365, and can't remember the last time any
of them crashed [1]. The desktop / laptops are a different proposition
mind - less stable - but I do tend to muck around with the configs on
those an awful lot, and accept loss of stability as the trade off for
"testbed."

[1] I run 3 servers -

1: the "live" server - Windows: music server (Rios), fileserver
(all
kinds of stuff), HA (Harmony)

2: the backup / Asterisk server - backs up the data volumes of the live
server once an hour over SMB. Also runs the * system (4 extensions, 1
analogue trunk, 1 external SIP "trunk".)

3: a client server, that runs their file sharing over OpenVPN. They have
3 field-based staff. In principle this is moving to their MD's house as
soon as he gets a round tuit :-) Thanks to Patrick Lidstone of this
group for introducing me to OpenVPN which works terribly, terribly well
in this setup.

Regards,

Mark