Hey guys, I'm completely new to the home automation "hobby". I'm a die hard MAC user, it's the reason I have been looking at Indigo. I have a few questions. Is indigo as versatile and advanced as some of the other DIY programs. I've been reading as much as I can. Is there a limitation in hardware? As a complete newbie, where do I reference to start mapping out the most complete and reliable network? Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Hi boewalls. Welcome!

boewalls wrote:Is indigo as versatile and advanced as some of the other DIY programs.

Having never used any others, I can't say for sure. I've read quite a bit about other home automation software packages over the last 2 years that I've been using Indigo and it seems that Indigo is quite competitive with similar products on other platforms (such as HomeLinc 2 for Windows by Smarthome).

boewalls wrote:Is there a limitation in hardware?

That's a fairly broad question. There are always limitations in hardware with any software. However, Indigo natively supports most features of most INSTEON products available. It also natively supports the X10 communications hardware and protocol. As of Indigo 5, through the new plug-in architecture, it supports other non-INSTEON/X10 products. I believe Zigbee protocol devices are supported with a plugin (and compatible interface on the Mac). Various Oregon Scientific sensors are supported through another plugin (and other hardware interface) too. One hardware limitation that may be important to remember is that you have to keep your Mac with the Indigo server running in the background 24/7 for things to remain automated all the time, but that seems like a given.

As for the network architecture question, I'm not sure how to advise you on that. I just started with an Indigo Pro starter kit that included a 2413U PowerLinc Modem interface, a dimmer, a motion sensor, and an ApplianceLinc. I built up the rest of my home automation setup from there. Now everything from all house lights to the front door lock and the garage door, to the home theater system are automated with Indigo. You can add individual modules as you go without really having to worry about architecture a whole lot. It'd be best to avoid installing any whole-home surge protectors (as they tend to block INSTEON and X10 power line signals). You'll also want to get plenty of FilterLinc filters to filter out power line interference caused by any/all of your plug-in surge protectors and/or uninterruptible power supplies (battery backups). They have the same effect on power line signals (i.e. those devices eat signals for lunch ).

I am also a diehard Mac user and just started the whole home automation/network thing about a year ago myself. I did tons of research about home automation, home security, etc before I took the leap into Indigo. My general impression is that every technology/software/hardware setup has some unique features (some VERY desirable), but taken altogether the Insteon/Indigo combination is the most FLEXIBLE and inexpensive. All other things being equal, Insteon/Indigo presents the most economical and direct path to whatever you want to do. It is intensely DIY - but Matt and Jay (Indigo developers) set the standard in customer support/service. The forum as a whole has some great contributors and the plugin architecture for Indigo really opens up the possibilities. Smart users (NOT ME) are building plugins for Indigo that I am finding essential - indeed, some of those plugins are driving my purchase decisions.

Of course you have to start out with the Insteon controller, but as for the rest of your architecture you'll need to take it slowly. Buy a starter kit, plug in the controller where you intend it to be permanently, then start experimenting to see how much signal interference you have throughout your home, what lights/appliances you think you would want to automate, etc. Remember that the more Insteon devices you have, the more reliable your Insteon network. Dual-band devices take that up one order of magnitude.

Your desires will mature over time, too. I used to think I'd just have an iPod in every room to control lights/iTunes/Roku/Plex instead of "wasting" money on KeypadLincs - but now I'm realizing that finding the iPod (I have a 4 year old...), unlocking it (again, the 4YO), navigating to Indigo touch, to the control page/device I want is a PITA - not to mention training guests to use the system when they visit. Now I realize the KPLs are the way to go for the simple things (lights, fans, etc). All this will come naturally, because you will be layering in switches and devices over time.

Best,
Phil

Thanks Phil for the response and feedback. I too was thinking about iPods in every room. It's funny you mentioned that. Like wise I also have a 4 YO so I didn't think about that. I do have full access to my crawl space. I'm not sure what can be done with cat6 Ethernet cable. I will be using a top of the line Mac mini w/lion server to run the system. I will look into the starter kits. I've been looking through the forums. I was hoping that people showed off their systems a little more.

No worries...I have a Mac Mini i7 Lion Server in my basement in a server closet, running the whole show. I, too, had planned to run Cat6 everywhere (I have an unfinished basement and attic in my two story home), but when I started to look at it I realized running Cat6 everywhere was doing a lot of work for little real return. I have a Time Capsule in the basement as my router with a single Cat6 cable up to the first floor where I have an Airport Extreme as the wireless base - because from the first floor the wireless signal is strong throughout the house, front and back yard, and my shed (gotta have tunes!). Airport Extreme has three antennas for a theoretical total of 450Mbps - plenty of throughput for everything I need. I have a MF printer upstairs that is connected to another Airport Extreme (bridge only)- that way the printer spooling happens really fast as well. I only let the wired Airport Extreme act as the wireless base station because 1) it's faster and 2) I found that having multiples (even configured correctly) causes problems.

While it would be nice to have Cat6 upstairs the wireless solution works just fine. Best of all, when we sell this house and move on (I'm in the Navy) my network moves with me instead of leaving all that investment behind.

In my server closet, I have the Mac Mini i7 Lion Server, an unRAID data server, a Time Capsule (backup the Mac Mini), a VOIP adapter, the cable modem, and the base station for my cordless phones. The Mac Mini operates 24/7. It's all tied together with my Vista 21IP alarm system. Indigo rules most of that. I use iTunes to share out music from the data server, Plex to share out movies/tv shows (music portion of Plex is immature), iPhoto to share photos, Address Book to share contacts, etc. Wireless throughput has never been an issue as long as the older or slower pieces of gear are plugged into an Airport Extreme/Time Capsule.

One piece of advice - I don't recommend getting Lion Server. With the changes coming in Mountain Lion, and iCloud, the Lion Server solution becomes 1) overkill and 2) expensive. It's overkill because I just don't need all the wiki, web, and other services, and expensive because I use a third-party firewall (Intego Virusbarrier). For Lion, it's about $80 a year. For Lion Server, I got a deal from Intego but it is still $160 a year. Lion Server is not easy to use and if I tried to start using some of the services I would be spending a lot more time just managing things.

Best,
Phil

I stared back in March of ts year. I purchased a starter kit from machomestore. Been adding devices for months now. I also researched for months. When you have never had any experice with home automation, as in my case, it is hard to know what you need, until you see what works for you.

Start with the kit and add on as you go. It's fun!

Just thought I would chime in too. I'm using a 2 ghz core 2 duo mac mini (did a chip swap from 1.6 Ghz solo) with 2 gigs of Ram, running 24/7 running Indigo and Security Spy. I use screen sharing from my imac to setup the mini. The mini serves its purpose just fine. Not a whole lot of processing power needed for either. Thanks to PA for keeping the requirements low enough that I can use the mini that I have.

I got into X10 basically with a 2414U and a x10 lamp module. And then it took off from there. While my home automation (lights, thermostat, sprinklers, etc) isn't as sophisticated as others I really get into it and enjoy seeking new ideas.

So like the others have said, just start with what you can afford and build from that when you can.

The power of Indigo really is amazing. So many great people on this board have a been a great help to unleash what Indigo really can do.

Thanks to all and keep up the great work!

Also check out the competitive comparison chart that compares all the commercial Mac-based systems. It's quite extensive.

Not to be a wet blanket, but a lot of the really cool stuff that Indigo (and other HA software) can do will remain closed to a large segment of the population until somebody can come up with a single source, 1 or 2 clicks away method of helping folks get the syntax right and find the methods, functions, and variables available in Applescript and Python dictionaries for the various applications that they want to link through scripts. Sure, if you use this stuff every day (or even every week or so), "set up a new schedule that runs every night at midnight to execute an action group which contains an imbedded script that creates an sql query to generate a new database daily holding just the weather device states" can be done almost without a thought, but if (like me), you haven't written an sql SELECT query in the past couple of years and you have to go digging around in the Wiki to try and figure out the table entry names and the syntax required to submit the query to the Indigo Server, it takes a ton of work on the front end to accomplish, which isn't worth it for a one shot project. And this isn't specific to Indigo, but rather a comment on the 'state of the art" in Applescript and Python relative to VBA, where I have the "References" window that in an instant tells me every function available for the object I'm working with and what the arguments within it are with the ability to copypaste it in the editor... I very seldom compliment MS on anything, but on this one, they got it right.

Can you illustrate with an example what you type of integration you are talking about? The idea/goal is that for a majority of cases the user can use plugins and their UI without having to do any scripting at all. Of course, there are scenarios where this isn't the case, but the hope is that since plugins can populate both Indigo variables and Indigo device states, the user can then just access those values/states using Indigo's GUI for constructing the logic (Triggers, Conditionals, etc.).

johnpolasek wrote:Sure, if you use this stuff every day (or even every week or so), "set up a new schedule that runs every night at midnight to execute an action group which contains an imbedded script that creates an sql query to generate a new database daily holding just the weather device states" can be done almost without a thought, but if (like me), you haven't written an sql SELECT query in the past couple of years and you have to go digging around in the Wiki to try and figure out the table entry names and the syntax required to submit the query to the Indigo Server, it takes a ton of work on the front end to accomplish, which isn't worth it for a one shot project.

John,

I think you have missed some basic functionality in Indigo.

1) Open Indigo
2) Click on Schedules in the left hand list.
3) Click New
4) The Create new schedule window opens.
a) Choose the Time to Run the new event at
b) Choose the Date, and/or Days of Week, Month, etc
5) Choose Actions
6) Select the Device, Action Group, AppleScript, etc, that you wish to have modified, run, etc

You don't need to do a raw SQL query, or anything similar to have a event occur at a specific date...

I create plugins for Indigo, and so far I have only needed to address the RAW SQL data for one plugin. Out of ten or more plugins....

- Benjamin

Hey Phil, I will be using lion server mostly because I have multiple Mac mini's in the house. I use it for other things. Shared iCal, website, file sharing.
     The cat6 is still in question because I'm thinking of future expansion. HDMI over IP? As much as I appreciate wireless, it's not 100 %.
     I was in the Navy. Submariner, I was a nuke on a trident class boomer. USS Nebraska SSBN 739 gold.
     In my sever closet. I have a Mac mini w/ lion server in a Xserve like rack mount enclosure. I7 16gb ram and 240 gig SSD. Super fast! I don't need time capsule because lion server backs everything up on 12TB OWC rack mount drives.
     I kinda understand the plug-ins. I understand they add more options and functionality. I'm interested in the GUI and eventually would like to learn to write some plug-ins. I have around 3K to play with and see what I can do. Thanks for all the replies. Also, some Indigo "how-to's" on YouTube would also help. 
     

bschollnick2 wrote:

johnpolasek wrote:Sure, if you use this stuff every day (or even every week or so), "set up a new schedule that runs every night at midnight to execute an action group which contains an imbedded script that creates an sql query to generate a new database daily holding just the weather device states" can be done almost without a thought, but if (like me), you haven't written an sql SELECT query in the past couple of years and you have to go digging around in the Wiki to try and figure out the table entry names and the syntax required to submit the query to the Indigo Server, it takes a ton of work on the front end to accomplish, which isn't worth it for a one shot project.

John,

I think you have missed some basic functionality in Indigo.

1) Open Indigo
2) Click on Schedules in the left hand list.
3) Click New
4) The Create new schedule window opens.
a) Choose the Time to Run the new event at
b) Choose the Date, and/or Days of Week, Month, etc
5) Choose Actions
6) Select the Device, Action Group, AppleScript, etc, that you wish to have modified, run, etc

You don't need to do a raw SQL query, or anything similar to have a event occur at a specific date...

I create plugins for Indigo, and so far I have only needed to address the RAW SQL data for one plugin. Out of ten or more plugins....

- Benjamin

which is exactly what I did to do my weather data logging (see the Indigo Software Help->Wind Data logging thread; But I was referring to Matt's suggestion of an "easier" way to start from scratch:

matt (support) wrote:It sounds like you are very close to a solution, but if I were starting from scratch what I would do is:

1) Use the SQL Logger plugin. Set the prune duration to 3 days.

2) Have a nightly python script that runs that queries the database (for the day that ended) for the variable value or device states you do want to keep, and with those values have it either: A) copy them in CSV format to a date stamped file, B) copy them to a different database file (I'd do this one).

Then I would have a historical database of the data I'm interested in that I can easily query (querying data from SQLite or PostgreSQL is easy from the command line, the plugin page has some examples).

There is quite a bit I'd like to add to the SQL Logger plugin, like the ability to select specific devices to log and GUI actions that do SQL queries on the database. We don't have time to add that now, but there is quite a bit that can be added to enhance it.

In MS Access, I can (as Matt says they are working on) pull up list of tables and fields and simply drag, drop, and add select ranges, and the UI generates the query complete with all the correct brackets, bangs, single and double quotes that drove me to distraction when I had to do it by hand for a PHP/Quickform project a couple of years ago. As I said, it's a state of the art problem; even if Matt DOES put a query wizard in the Indigo plugin, it's not going to help me with pulling stuff out of Weathersnoop, which does have a passable data custodian of it's own for simple data extraction (although it couldn't repair a broken record and lost me 9 months worth of data back in February). Instead, since I lived and breathed unix for decades and know ls and vi and awk and grep like I know my home town, I fell back on what I knew; once I saw how Berkinet posted a shell command, I used the alligator operator to append comma separated data lines to a log file and then renamed it to a date IDed file every night at midnight. But I can recognize that even that "simple" step 6 would drive my sister (who isn't a programmer) up the wall..." What's this 'do shell script' and '/bin/echo' and all these quotes and greater thans and other gobbledygook that makes no sense at all?" This forum is a great resource for scripting, but ask a geek is no substitute for being able to find the function on line.

Okay, so your complaint is that querying from the SQL Logger plugin isn't as easy as it should be. That is fair enough, and as I've said we have plans to improve that plugin in the future.

All that said, this forum thread is about about people new to home automation, so I think your complaints/suggestions deserve a footnote that you are referring to the SQL Logging plugin, which is an optional plugin only needed by users that are trying to store/track/analyze historical state information from Indigo. And as I mentioned, the goal is that if there is a need for historical information/tracking, as is the case with weather data, my hope is that gets added into a weather plugin with a GUI at some point. Given the rate at which folks are creating and enhancing new plugins, I suspect that will be the case.

Thanks Matt! I'll keep my other thoughts to my self!