[subego]

I don't know how many Mac users know about the home automation program Indigo, which is not only awesome in its own right, but completely blows away the Windows competition.

Taking advantage of its built in web server, I set out never to worry if I locked the front door again...





If you have the proper interface box, integrating alarm system equipment with Indigo is a trivial procedure. That's how the "Garage" monitor works. My garage door is connected to a giant sized magnetic switch like you'd see in any typical burglar alarm type setup. If the switch is open, which happens when the magnet is moved away, it tells the web server the garage door is open. When the magnet moves back near the switch, the switch closes and tells the web server the door is closed.

The idea behind the sensor for the "Entry" lock is even simpler, though I executed it in a somewhat Frankenstein like manner:



Rather than having a magnet in proximity complete the circuit (like a normal door open/closed sensor) I have the deadbolt itself complete the circuit. The screw with the orange wire is one lead, and that mess of armature wire and a thumbtack connects to the white wire, which is the other lead.



To be honest, the hardest part was this bit right here:



This would be useless if I could only use it on my own wireless network.

Despite statements from me in the past, I'm actually super computer security paranoid, so there was no choice other than to set up a VPN. What made this so difficult is how much the Apple VPN client sucks. It's incompatible with almost everything except for the Apple VPN server. The only thing that saved this (other than taking the ridiculous step of getting OS X server) is that the Apple VPN server is built into the normal OS X installation, it's just a question of some light terminal work to get it running.


As a closer, though this doesn't connect to my iPhone, having the garage sensor allowed me to put the finishing touches on my parking laser (i.e. turning it on and off).

What's a parking laser? Glad you asked...



If I can see the spot on the far wall, I know the garage door won't hit the car.

[CollinG3G4]

That is pretty awesome. You must own some stuff worthy of stealing.

[Hugi]

Herr Fritzl - is that you?

[subego]

Originally Posted by CollinG3G4 

That is pretty awesome. You must own some stuff worthy of stealing.

All I'm admitting to is an iPhone.

Seriously though, this is more a cure for my forgetfulness. I just can't stand that "did I lock the door?" feeling.

In addition, the way the apartment is set up, people think it's an alternate entrance for the rest of the building. We get someone trying to open our door about twice a day.

Edit: and thank you for the compliment.

[- - e r i k - -]

I'm in awe. Some serious cool nerdery there. Kudos.

[Dakar the Fourth]

Originally Posted by Hugi 

Herr Fritzl - is that you?

Yikes.

[osiris]

Pfft. My 'home' automation includes numerous mounted dual turreted 50mm machine guns, and a few 350 watt lasers that are not for parking but for removing cars entirely.

Great work subego!

[subego]

Thank you all for your kind words. As I was doing this I was just as excited about sharing this here as I was about the project itself.

[vmarks]

What other home automation equipment are you using?
X10 or the other variety of switches?
How many of them?

Just doors, or also lights, a/v gear, and thermostat?


I'm thinking about doing this and thinking about how much wiring I have to make it all work.

[SSharon]

I have had X-10 in my parents house and always loved it, but that is an awesome project.
If it was a bit easier I might have tried to do it myself. I could see it being even cooler since I know some of the X-10 appliances let you call home and use voice automation to change the thermostat, etc.

All I can do now is dream of the day I can use my iphone to turn on and off all the lights and set up timers for them the same way I set an alarm on the phone.

[subego]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

What other home automation equipment are you using?
X10 or the other variety of switches?

I had X10 for a few years and then switched to Insteon.

The Insteon is far superior to X10. Depending upon your wiring, with X10 you'll need all manner of filters and boosters and still probably won't have 100% reliable operation.

The Insteon has worked flawlessly, with the exception of interference from old florescent tubes/CFLs. Replacing the tube/light fixes the problem. The same thing would happen with my X10 setup, only much worse.

Originally Posted by vmarks 

How many of them?

Somewhere in the 16-20 range.

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Just doors, or also lights, a/v gear, and thermostat?

Mostly lights. This was one of my first real non-light project.

I did have the "bow chicka bow bow" button for awhile. If I had the stereo in the bedroom on and set to the right input, you could hit the button and it would dim the lights and tell Indigo to run an AppleScript. This script ran our "bow chicka bow bow" playlist in iTunes.

It was a cute idea, but since you needed to have so many things already prepared, it made more sense to save the button and just run the music from one of our laptops.

Originally Posted by vmarks 

I'm thinking about doing this and thinking about how much wiring I have to make it all work.

What do you mean by wiring? Running new wires or having to wire a wall switch?

[subego]

Originally Posted by SSharon 

All I can do now is dream of the day I can use my iphone to turn on and off all the lights and set up timers for them the same way I set an alarm on the phone.

Setting up the timers would be a trick, but turning the lights on and off from your iPhone would be waaaay easier than you think. That's what the buttons below do on my setup.

It's all based in Indigo. I'm tellin' ya, this application is bottled awesomesauce.

I went through the effort to make it look like the iPhone UI, but it's still at heart just a web page. The program makes a default web page that lets you turn on and off your lights. You point Safari at it and go. It comes with a widget too. Since you'll only want to access it at home you don't have to worry about the VPN part.

Literally, you would have to do nothing beyond installing the program (and the plug in USB control box) and entering in your lights (i.e. what their X10 address is), in a nice (and ultra-well supported) program that follows Apple UI guidelines. I should add that setting up the timers here would be a piece of cake, and is ultimately why I got it in the first place.

Likewise, the web page function (which it calls "control pages") is totally simple, GUI, and WYSIWYG. It even has a bunch of built in graphics, buttons, light bulbs, etc.

Edit: it does have to be on for you to access it though, that could be a problem.

[Jawbone54]

That is some SERIOUSLY cool stuff. I've been sitting here taking it all in for several minutes.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by osiris 

Pfft. My 'home' automation includes numerous mounted dual turreted 50mm machine guns, and a few 350 watt lasers that are not for parking but for removing cars entirely.

Great work subego!

350 watt wouldn't do much...it takes several several second for a 4400 watt laser to penetrate 3/4" steel at 1/4" away. Do you plan on your attackers pulling up and stopping so that you have time for your laser to properly pierce their armor?

[SSharon]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

350 watt wouldn't do much...it takes several several second for a 4400 watt laser to penetrate 3/4" steel at 1/4" away. Do you plan on your attackers pulling up and stopping so that you have time for your laser to properly pierce their armor?

obviously he is using one of those cool green lasers rather than the plain old red ones which were popular when I was in 8th grade.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

350 watt wouldn't do much...it takes several several second for a 4400 watt laser to penetrate 3/4" steel at 1/4" away.

You're thinking input, he's talking output.

[vmarks]

So, can you share with us the page you made for iphone?

graphics, etc., so the rest of us can customize it too?

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

So, can you share with us the page you made for iphone?

graphics, etc., so the rest of us can customize it too?

Heck, you could just give us the address and let us try it out ourselves, no?

[subego]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

So, can you share with us the page you made for iphone?

graphics, etc., so the rest of us can customize it too?

Sure thing. They're photoshop files, so gimme a sec to figure out how to host them. Edit: I could post the jpegs, but then they won't be as customizable.

Likewise, I downloaded a (clearly unauthorized) bundle of all the iPhone UI elements to make the buttons and the recessed look for the open/closed monitors, I'm not sure if it's cool for me to repost (undoubtedly copyrighted) material like that.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

Heck, you could just give us the address and let us try it out ourselves, no?

I'd have to give you my VPN login.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by subego 

Sure thing. They're photoshop files, so gimme a sec to figure out how to host them. Edit: I could post the jpegs, but then they won't be as customizable.

Likewise, I downloaded a (clearly unauthorized) bundle of all the iPhone UI elements to make the buttons and the recessed look for the open/closed monitors, I'm not sure if it's cool for me to repost (undoubtedly copyrighted) material like that.

In the sense that Apple wants you to make web applications that look like they belong on iphone, it's probably not an issue - especially since it's not something so unique as to really be copyrightable if it came to a test in court.

feel free to pm if you want to use my public idisk.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by subego 

I'd have to give you my VPN login.

I'm not seeing the problem here.

[subego]

Here's part one of my compendia, I'll throw up part two (w/downloads) this weekend.

This is the "official" iPhone RoundRectangle spec:

It creates lists that are 300 pixels wide and filled with white. Each list is contained in a rectangle with rounded corners, which is 10 pixels from both left and right edges of the iPhone screen and 17 pixels from the top of the button bar or from the next rounded rectangle. A list contains one or more cells divided by thin lines.

All text is 17 pixels, Helvetica, black and bold. Text is placed 10 pixels from the left edge and 14 pixels from the bottom edge of a cell within a rounded rectangle. Regular font is also used for content that is less important.

Labels, placed between the rounded rectangles, follow the default text size and font, but are not black. Their color is R=76, G=86, B=10(#4C560A). The background color of the area behind the list is R=197, G=204, B=211(#C5CCD3).

I'm pretty sure I cribbed it from the webapp design guidelines, but I can't remember, and most of that stuff has been yanked in anticipation of iPhone 2.0.

The only thing I'm absolutely sure I did to spec is the background color (C5CCD3), everything else I kind of winged.

The main exception is the title bar. I downloaded iui, which is a JavaScript bundle for designing webapps. I didn't actually use it to make the web page (Indigo takes care of that) but I edited one of the sample pages to get a proper looking title bar.

I then took a screencap of the edited page and chopped out the relevant part, like so...





More to come...

[Dakar the Fourth]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I'm not seeing the problem here.

HA HA! Security risk.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by subego 

Here's part one of my compendia, I'll throw up part two (w/downloads) this weekend.

This is the "official" iPhone RoundRectangle spec:




I'm pretty sure I cribbed it from the webapp design guidelines, but I can't remember, and most of that stuff has been yanked in anticipation of iPhone 2.0.

The only thing I'm absolutely sure I did to spec is the background color (C5CCD3), everything else I kind of winged.

The main exception is the title bar. I downloaded iui, which is a JavaScript bundle for designing webapps. I didn't actually use it to make the web page (Indigo takes care of that) but I edited one of the sample pages to get a proper looking title bar.

I then took a screencap of the edited page and chopped out the relevant part, like so...





More to come...

WOW.
really cool.

(although it's technically "vmarks' crib" in the possessive form)

[subego]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

(although it's technically "vmarks' crib" in the possessive form)

Huh? I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah. That's it.

[vmarks]

now i'm waiting for part 2 - and compiling the list of insteon switches i want...

[subego]

As promised...

Here are the graphics that I made. You'll need Helvetica for them to work.

Most of them are self explanatory, but I should note that the idea with this one:



is that it's a single cell, and you can paste as many together as you want and fill in the overlapping round corners with straight ones. The image is also the width of the iPhone screen for easy placement.

Other than that, I have to dig up a few lines of code that get pasted into the Indigo master web page template. One makes sure the page renders in full size on an iPhone, the other scrolls the page down past the address bar once the page has loaded the first time. A new version of Indigo was just released (which I don't have yet), and I'm pretty sure it takes care of at least one of these issues.

Edit: link to the iPhone UI graphics tarball (the whole thing, not my edits - about 7MB). I'd say that for whatever reason the colors are off on some of them, others seem fine.

RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

[subego]

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 

That is some SERIOUSLY cool stuff. I've been sitting here taking it all in for several minutes.

Thank you! As you can see, I'll gladly yammer away if you have any questions.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dakar the Fourth 

HA HA! Security risk.

HA! HA! Captain Obvious !

-t

[subego]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

HA! HA! Captain Obvious !

HA! HA! I'm using Forbes' insoluble dry plates.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Subego, that's awesome! That entry lock sensor is ingenious. I'm curious what actual sensor is your custom wiring connected to?

Having tackled all the lighting and such in my house, I've recently starting to tinker with home security. I've got things set up so that the security module will dial my cell if a door or window opens when the system is armed- but nothing advanced like your lock sensor. I was pretty stoked about putting in a motion sensor in the mailbox that lets us know "you've got snail-mail", and another that dials/emails me when anything is delivered to the front door and/or if the doorbell is pressed, and also sends photo-confirmation. (The later inspired after friggen UPS left a monitor on my front door in the blazing heat for several hours while we were out.)

Next , I want to rig up a chime to sound in the house whenever we forget and leave the garage door open -happens all too frequently. The standard blinking light garage door sensors are useless- I rarely look at them, but I'll definitely be annoyed by a chime.

I've been using ActiveHome, which works pretty well, but Indigo looks interesting and works with all the same hardware. I'll have to check it out.

Is it possible to have two-way functionality with the iPhone set up? Can you switch things on and off, arm things, monitor cameras, things like that? If someone say, opens your garage door, can the iPhone be made to buzz you as it happens?

[vmarks]

Ok, subego, I'm trying to put together my shopping list.

Take me through some of the items you have in your home, and how you have them connected to each other / usb / to the macintosh?

[subego]

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

Subego, that's awesome! That entry lock sensor is ingenious. I'm curious what actual sensor is your custom wiring connected to?

It's connected to this box here, which has 4 inputs.

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

I was pretty stoked about putting in a motion sensor in the mailbox that lets us know "you've got snail-mail"

All of your ideas are very cool, but I especially like this one. I may just have to yoink it.

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

Is it possible to have two-way functionality with the iPhone set up? Can you switch things on and off, arm things, monitor cameras, things like that?

Absolutely! The buttons below do exactly that with my lights. For some reason, this is shaky over the EDGE, but works flawlessly on my home network. I'm pretty sure (though not 100%) you can do camera monitoring too. There's a thread about Indigo with the iPhone on the Indigo forums, and I seem to remember someone getting that to work (along with animated buttons that looked like rippling water when you pressed them).

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

If someone say, opens your garage door, can the iPhone be made to buzz you as it happens?

I don't think there's any sound/vibration integration. Of course, I'd pay just to get the thing to vibrate more than once when I get a text message.

Now you can rig it so when you do realize your garage is open, you have a button on your iPhone that will close it. The same box you can use for sensor inputs has a set of relays. You run a pair of wires to it, just like the pair that go to the button on the wall. You tell Indigo to fire off the relay for one second, which can be triggered by anything (time of day, button press on your Indigo web page, etc.) and poof, it's just like you pressed the wall button.

In fact, the only reason I didn't do this was the worry about that potential pocket of time where my (or my SO's) iPhone is lost or stolen, and we haven't realized it, so the VPN would still be live. I'm not so worried about some ********* breaking into my house with the phone itself, but they don't need to be breaking in personally for their ability to open my garage to be a pain in the ass.

If I had my rig set up to work only on my home network though, I'd do that in a second and consider it my "key in the hollow rock".

[kman42]

I saw a number of months back that some company had actually made an iPhone interface for their home automation system. It even had multiple locations and the video showed what was happening at their house in HI and one on the mainland. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

kman

[kman42]

There's this: iPhone Home Controller - Home Automation from your iTouch and iPhone

But that's not what I'm remembering.

[kman42]

Here's the one I was thinking of:
YouTube - iPod and iPhone home automation controller demo

And another one I found: HAI iPhone (Safari Version) at DigitalDan.com

[subego]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Take me through some of the items you have in your home, and how you have them connected to each other / usb / to the macintosh?

Sorry this took so long... and is so long.



The backbone of any Insteon setup is a pair of access points:



They act as RF access points, repeaters, and a bridge for the two phases of your wiring (power comes into your house at 220V and then is split into two separate 110V lines). You get one or two in most of the starter kits. If you're controlling more than a single light, you want two.


Now, the next thing you're going to need to think about is how you want to control things. We're obviously going to have computer control, but trust me on this, you absolutely want some form of manual control. This is the way Insteon was designed to be used, and many things are way less of a hassle to set up manually. This isn't the case with X10, where having computer control greatly simplifies and speeds up the process. With Insteon, beyond the computer's ability to set precise dimmer levels, you should think of your computer more as an augmentation to your manual control setup.

In a similar vein, this is probably one of the biggest pitfalls of Insteon. Scenes are stored entirely in the control button. The result of this is that each scene requires its own button.

I haven't found this to be a huge limitation in actual execution, but it requires you to pre-think your scenes and how you wish to control them. An understanding of the limitations of the system is also helpful.

There are three basic choices for manually controlling things.

The kit I chose had one of the ControLincs:



It has 10 buttons, but they're grouped as on/off pairs, so the box can actually store only 5 scenes. This may not seem like a lot, and it isn't if you are thinking of it in terms of a master control panel. It's really more designed to control only the room it's in, and from that perspective 5 scenes is plenty for most applications.

It's a little smaller than a stack of 4 Blu-ray cases, and is fugly.

The RemoteLinc is completely wireless, comes in silver and black, and is another possibility for control:



I don't have one, but it seems cool. It has 6 scenes (12 buttons in on/off pairs). The black one costs $10 more for whatever reason.

The final choice are the keypads, and this is where your options and choices explode. It's the same basic keypad in all cases, but you can use them in all kinds of ways and have all kinds of color schemes. The Insteon Keypads & Touchscreens page at Smarthome are almost all the exact same keypad, just with different color options. These color options can be easily swapped-out/retrofitted. Changing a keypad from a six button to an eight button is a question of changing the button plate and setting the keypad to now know it's the other kind.

The keypads can be used in almost as many ways. You can put them in place of a wall switch (they can control a load), or Smarthome sells a case that you can screw the keypad into and make a much smaller plug-in controller. You can program them to be 4 pairs of on/off switches (and thus 4 scenes) like with the other controllers, or you can have each button be an individual scene (if you do this, don't forget to make one of the scenes be off). You can set buttons to be on/off toggles for a scene as well.

To give you an idea of a problem and a solution/application, our bedroom is a good example. When we moved in there was a three-way wall switch connected to the light fixture on the wall. We yanked the light fixture and hung a painting over it, making the table lamps on our nightstands the only lights in the room. The main problem (there were others) was entering a dark room, and having to stumble over to one of the lamps.

So, I slapped in some keypads. The keypad when you walk in looks like this:

[Placeholder: I'll get these up later today]

It's ivory trim, ivory and black buttons, and a set of red diffuser plates inside the buttons.

"BRIGHT" turns on our nightstand lamps to 75%. If you double-tap it, it goes to 100%. If you hold it down it raises the dim level. This is also controlling power to the old wall fixture, but as I said, that has been yanked and capped.

"DIM" turns the lamps off, or lowers the dim level if you hold it down. It would likewise control the light fixture.

"MAIN" turns off all the rest of the lights in the house (which is why it's black) and has obvious uses before going to bed.

"LOW" is pretty self-explanatory, but what I decided to do with "ONE" and "TWO" is nifty. One turns on just my light at a low reading level, two turns on just her light.

I have more or less the same keypad in the other wallbox of the three-way switch. This is on my side of the bed. There's another keypad (in one of the cases I described above) on her nightstand. This eliminated a secondary but still irritating issue of one of us falling asleep with our light on, and the other having to get out of bed to shut it off... and then navigate back in the dark.

The final piece of the control puzzle, the computer interface, is mercifully simple. I'm only familiar with the PowerLinc, which looks similar the access points. It has a standard USB peripheral jack. Mine is plugged directly into the computer's (1.42GHz Mini G4) USB port, so I can't say if it's touchy when it's plugged into a hub. This wirelessly (and then redundantly through the powerlines) controls any Insteon unit.

You'll need the software to control it. I am only familiar with (and as is clear, highly recommend) Indigo. The computer I have it connected to is headless (Indigo uses a client/server model, clients are free). That computer happens to be on 24/7. If the computer can't be on all the time, Indigo can download a bunch of things to the interface's flash memory, like timers and other scripted functions, but not webpages.

For instance, if I shut off my computer, the webpage would die, but the commands that connect my parking laser to my door sensor would get downloaded and still continue to function.



With how to control things out of the way, let's actually control something, shall we?

For most applications, the first thing you need to determine is if what you are controlling can use a dimmer or if it should use a relay. Dimmers work with incandescent lights, relays work with everything else. The dimmers are essentially silent, but the relays make a (fairly loud) click when they engage or disengage. Most of my gear is dimmers, I only have relays for the under-cabinet fluorescents in the kitchen and for my parking laser.

I'm personally a big proponent of lamps over fixtures (they're cozier), so my workhorse is the LampLinc:



At last count we have 12. The ApplianceLinc is the relay version.

For light fixtures, the SwitchLinc is your plain vanilla, Decora style, 600-watt dimmer:



There's also a 1,000-watt model, a relay model, and a model witch fits into a normal (non-Decora) on/off switch (in relay and dimmer versions). All of these can also act as an on/off "button" pair for a scene.

Somewhat similarly to the Keypad page at Smarthome, the Insteon Dimmers & Switches page is mostly a combination of these five devices and their multitude of color combinations. Like with the keypads, you can change out the colors of the Decora switches without replacing the entire switch.

I have less of these, though I should note that Indigo tells our porch lights to go on at 30 minutes before sunset and go off at 30 minutes after sunrise. This is as good a place as any to mention that if you're going to do any in-wall wiring (this includes the keypads) you must have a neutral (white) wire inside the wallbox you're installing the unit into. You might not have them if your wiring is old.

The last item I have direct knowledge of is the EZIO2X4:



This is what the wires from the picture in the OP connect to (it's big brother is in the garage). The wires from whatever sensors you have go straight into the screw terminals. Any change in status gets reported to Indigo, which can then trigger almost anything imaginable.



Well, that's my setup. If you have a specific idea in mind, I can definitely try and estimate its feasibility, as well as point you towards the proper devices.

[Mac User #001]

Just what I needed!

Question... if you didn't lock the door, shut the garage door, etc... Do you think you could make a way to do it from the iPhone? Tap "Unlocked" in the Entry section, and by some marvel of technology it sends that through the server to your house to make the door lock? Then the iPhone reads "Locked".

Because then.... well, you can see my excitement.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Mac User #001 

Just what I needed!

Question... if you didn't lock the door, shut the garage door, etc... Do you think you could make a way to do it from the iPhone? Tap "Unlocked" in the Entry section, and by some marvel of technology it sends that through the server to your house to make the door lock? Then the iPhone reads "Locked".

Because then.... well, you can see my excitement.

In theory, this would be no problem for the garage door. The same box that you'd plug the open/closed sensor into has a set of relays too.

The best way to think of it is like you were adding another button on the wall to open your garage. You'd run a pair of wires, and they'd go into the garage door opener just like the wires from the button on your wall do now. The difference would be that rather than have the wires end with a button, you'd put them into the relay, which you can think of as a computer controlled button. You can tell Indigo to "press the button" (close or open the relay, depending upon how your garage door opener is set up) for one second. This would be exactly the same as if you had pressed the button yourself.

Likewise, Indigo doesn't have any problems setting up something on the webpage that you can click and trigger an action.

Where things get problematic are security, which is solvable but somewhat complicated, and the fact that IME, triggering actions over EDGE is shaky.

If you only need local control (i.e. access things solely from your own wi-fi network), this takes care of both the security and the EDGE problems.

As for the door-lock. They do have remote deadbolts, but at a minimum you'd have to yank the deadbolt you have now, and maybe drill a bigger hole for it.

The other issue would be bridging it to your computer. None of them are Insteon compatible, they all seem to use a proprietary key fob.

If you'd be willing to smoke a few fobs to get it right, I would imagine all you need to jerry-rig it to the relay would be some time, some wire, a soldering iron, and an AC adaptor from Radio Shack (you don't want your fob running out of batteries at an inopportune moment).

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally Posted by subego 

Sorry this took so long... and is so long.

Lots of helpful info!

[OreoCookie]

This is so cool.
How much did you invest, if I may ask?

[subego]

Hard to say since it's ben spread out over a couple years, and I switched from a (pretty complete) X10 system to Insteon.

Maybe $1,500, spread out, closer to 2 if you count the X10.

If you can keep away from the custom etched buttons (I can't) that will save you a bunch in the long run.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Mac User #001 

sends that through the server to your house to make the door lock?

Not Insteon, but exactly what you asked for...

Schlage announces web-enabled Z-Wave door locks - Engadget

[@pplejaxkz]

That is really cool, if I must say so myself.

[macintologist]

Just a small comment. I think when it says "unlocked" it should be green and "locked" should be red. Agree?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

Just a small comment. I think when it says "unlocked" it should be green and "locked" should be red. Agree?

Not necessarily.

Do you want red to denote that everything is ok, or that there is an issue ?

Locked = ok, no problem - green
Unlocked = potential problem - red

-t

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Not necessarily.

Do you want red to denote that everything is ok, or that there is an issue ?

Locked = ok, no problem - green
Unlocked = potential problem - red

-t

Point taken.

[subego]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

Point taken.

turtle nailed it with my thought process, though I did consider it the other way around.

I think the button I have for the kitchen lights is a much better contribution to poor interface design. It tells you the status of the light in two different ways but gives you no indication what will happen when you press the button, which is to turn the lights off.

[thepainter]

One of the best articles I've read on Indigo/Insteon in awhile, great job. You actually pushed me off the fence and I went ahead and ordered my starter kit for Fathers Day. I'm working on my control Page(Any tips would be appreciated). Anyway , the reason for my response - I just went through a broken A/C in South Florida (not good in the middle of Summer) and a leaking Air Handler on the 2nd Floor on Wood Floors (Not Good either). My A/C technician recommended a 'Flood Alert' Alarm that would go off once water touches it. Which is a good thing but not so good if someone is not at home. That made me think, can I use one of these, the EZIO2X4 and one of these Amazon.com: Reliance Controls Sump Pump Alarm and Flood Alert #THP205: Home Improvement to send an e-mail or text message if there was a leak? Or any other Suggestions.

Thanks,

Paul