Home Automation

After moving into our new house at the end of September, for my birthday in October I invested in some “Home Automation” stuff. I had been doing some research periodically over the past year or so, and had been following some of the INSTEON and Z-Wave news. I had decided that Indigo looked like the best option for Macintosh-based home automation, and it supported interfaces for X-10, INSTEON and Z-Wave, so it had lots of flexibility. I had been planning to go with INSTEON, but our new house came with a Schalge lock with a keypad entry that is Z-Wave enabled, so I went with Z-Wave devices instead. I ordered a copy of Indigo Pro 6, along with an Aeon Labs Z-Wave USB stick interface, an Evolve plug-in lamp dimmer module and two GE/Jasco Z-Wave On/Off wall switches to get started. The Schalge/Nexia starter kit that came with the lockset included a Z-Wave lamp dimmer module as well, so I have two of them to work with now. After my friend Jerry Nieman helped me install the wall switches to replace the front porch and patio light switches, I was able to install the Indigo software and drivers for the Aeon Labs USB stick on my MacMini server, and start up Indigo as a server process so that its always running. I can connect to Indigo from my MacBook Pro using a “client” installation of Indigo or from my iPad Air using their Indigo Touch app. Once I had Indigo setup, I linked with each of the Z-Wave switches and modules, so that i could control them through the software. […]