Homegate 4 usb dongle

How does USB dongle look? Size of it is important if we use it in UMPC's

Should it be used during installation, or all the time?

Thank you

 

Nick,

I have nbot seen one of these units yet, sorry.

Generally speaking dongles are permanently connected.

HTH

Grant

 

is there any pretty pics available yet???

 

thanks!

 

Thank you!
PS. as I thought it's too big for portable devices, so v3 again..

 

any reason why a software dongle cant be used - such as that used by Autodesk etc.

Would definitely suit the above proposed

Mick

 

I haven't given the following much thought, so feel free to laugh at me and "shut me down", but here goes.

Recently there have been a few products released for the "Wireless USB" standard. And there are rumours floating around the IT industry that sometime in the future, certain mobile PC's MIGHT begin to contain the "receiver" circuitry for this standard.

So although it is certainly not an option right now, perhaps sometime in the next year or 3, you may very well be able to plug the Sentinel USB dongle into a wireless USB hub, and have your tablet/PDA/Touch screen/etc PC talk to the dongle remotely, without having to have it plugged into the side of the unit to run HomeGate on the PC in question.

Although with the number of remote desktop/remote server products available that can run Homegate on a remote PC in a cupboard or basement, and then access it over a wireless LAN, I'm still not really sure why you would absolutely HAVE to run it on your mobile PC...
Personally I have PCs/servers/network devices/etc that are well into the double digit territory running at home, and I only have my office desktop PC, media centre, and my laptop with a keyboard/mouse/screen attached. Every other device I either access via remote desktop or a built-in web server (so use my browser).
Far more convenient than having a ton of monitors and keyboards everywhere.

And even when it comes to UMPC's, you can easily get PCs for under $500 (Australian) that are a quarter the size of a shoe-box, have no internal fans, and pretty well sealed against dust/moisture and use almost no power, stuff it in a cupboard/roof space/C-Bus DIN Panel/wherever, run Homegate on that (more than enough power), and use a wireless LAN to connect the UMPC to Homegate, and therefore C-Bus.
This would also give the added benefit of being able to connect to HomeGate from any other PC, desktop, Laptop, UMPC, or remotely over the internet, 24/7/365.


Although I can see that it sounds like alot of hassle over one tiny little 3cm-long USB dongle...


EDIT: I apologise for my lack of clarity before, I did not mean that UMPC's are necessarily available for under $500, I was referring to sealed, silent, Mini-ITX sized computers.