Black / White MK2 Screen

Well Im more than happy with my cbus installation as part of the house renovation - each and every night I tinker further making it mine... From programming delays / hand overs / adding functionality to the touch screen - its all good fun !

At first the house reno only included standard cbus functionality with no touch screens, and through a misfortune I ended up buying 2 touch screens, one for upstairs, one for downstairs.

I should have included the touch screens as part of the original scope - the functionality it offers and conveniemce is just great!

BUt within 2 months of setup and using it, tinkering - adding things like the garbage reminder, birthday and holiday messages, as well as scenes / and general functionality - I have already found out that I have outgrown the use of the black and white mk2 touchscreen.


As I was never intending to use it, not enough research was done, and now I have it, I find it is becoming too limiting !

I cant access files / graphics / information from my network or the internet. I cant use nearly all the example pieces of code in the toolkit - as they all mostly use commands like clearscreen, or drawto commands that are only supported on the color screen.

No use of the major applications like email, webcams or anything else just limits the device...

Sure I have an RS232 port on the thing - maybe just maybe I could get some data through that, but its just to awkward to have a PC scrape BOM for weather and maybe access that info through RS232... Argghhhh...

So the morale of the story is - make sure a B/W screen is all you need, and check the limitations of piced and functionality you MAY want in the future.

I know that the BW screen CPU is probably a lot lower spec than the color screen, but just the ability to access data externally would improve the device remarkably - being able to get 3 lines of text information from a file or web page or rss feed would open up the device to more uses.

But for me - the decision is now... Do I get the color screen (which I think is way over priced), go the homegate way and the cost / integration issue of having a PC and touch screen, or wiser...

Hmmm... first I gotta find some more money (lol) - and add this upgrade to the list of chores one has in finishing their renovation....

 

Unfortunately very often you only realise what you really need after having hit a restriction in a current product... especially as you evolve to a power user , as it sounds like you are.

I use my Colour Touch extensively and I love it. I have managed to centralise almost every aspect of C-Bus control within it and I'm building great screen displays that are pulling external data like temperatures , caller ID along with names, weather, current music etc onto the screen. I do this over Ethernet (xAP).

One very key aspect of the CTouch for me is that it is present and operational 24/7 standalone , no PC required. This instils great confidence that the C-Bus functionality works first time every time. I do use a lot of external Home Automation control applications to supplement functionality but my C-Bus 'island' functions truly idependently, which is as it should be.

I too felt the screen was expensive, particularly in the UK, but when you add it up it really does offer quite a bit more than is first apparent - aside from the touch screen it's a silent PC with OS in it's own right and has inbuilt C-Bus interface and HomeGate and has upgradeable firmware (including latest HomeGate).

Another great incentive is that PICED and HomeGate are still evolving nicely and there are a ton of feature suggestions (on the long request list) that will make things even better .... especially support for multiple overlays Darren These will really assist in allowing the CTouch to integrate in very sophisticated home automation control systems that include other technologies.

K

 

Kevin I agree..

Yes didnt realise I would become that power user so quickly.

I like to keep things simple, and the color screen is favorable to me - as its a package that simply works... If I go the other way, I'll end up buying a PC, hiding it somewhere, a touch screen, worry about drivers for the touch screen - another microsoft licence, another device that continually needs patching every Tuesday.. Possibility of power supply failure, virus protection, the list goes on.

The color cbus screen is just neater from a support perspective for me - yes its my home and I could do lots of things on that PC, but I dont have the time to worry about whether the latest driver conflict caused a glitch or somehow it just got infected and doing DOSS on some russian military base.

I just want to automate the home, make the missus happy to see the weather radar as she heads off to pick up kids from school and the like.

Its just a shame that the color cbus screen is 2 to 3 times more expensive than doing a build your own, and the screen size is smaller than what you could achieve.

Stability vs Headaches I suppose.

I need to find a second job to afford the toys I want... lol - I'll bite the bullet and get a color screen before the year is out ! LOL

thanks Kevin - its reassuring I am just not going completely mad!

 

I am not sure how many 'other' sources of information you have already available and their complexity but as you crave larger screen size you could look at it the opposite way and say how about integrating the C-Bus functionality within another touch screen application (very do-able) ? You could still leave the logic, scenes, scheduling handled by the B&W MKII's.

If your informational sources require Flash / Java for display, are long or formatted text or are very involved eg music display / control then this might be worth considering. HomeGate is not overly adaptive to complex overlaid graphics as it is primarily a (very capable) button based interface.

I am new to Wiser so I can't as yet comment about including such types within that device.

K

 

Wiser is very tempting to me as I have been running multiple Vista / W7 Media Centers for a few years, in fact all our tv is distributed via IP and not coax these days. Having the wiser integration to this might be nice.

However - I can not see need for Java / Flash at this stage... Just some animated gifs and scraping of textual information....

(But then again I didnt realise that I would end up as a power user so quickly either!)

 

The B&W C-Touch does indeed run a much lower power processor than something like the colour unit. One of the requirements for the B&W is that it is C-Bus powered only, and as such it's power is limited. It only draws 65mA from C-Bus. Power... cost... ease of install vs features... it's all a balance.

Great to hear that you've found your C-Bus system to be powerful and flexible. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

 

Can you remind me what this idea was exactly? I think I know what you are talking about, but different people describe it differently.

 

Darren, you know what this is

 

Ah, we are talking about that old idea. I suppose I had better get onto it...