Mile High Automation will be closed Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving. Have a great holiday!

Posted in General

home automation, motion, detector, sensor, pet, immune

Posted in Product Reviews

One question that pops up every now and then is about customizing the HAI Omnitouch Touch Screen graphics. HAI has designed a nice interface that is well organized and very easy to use. This interface is perfect for 95% of the population, but some people like to be able to customize the look and feel of their screens.

At this time there is no customization allowed by HAI on their touch screens. While at first this seems like a negative, it is done for good reason. When an interface is customized the system becomes near impossible to troubleshoot if problems arise. With a standard screen, it is easy to walk through steps to diagnose and fix the iss ue. Another great feature of the current HAI touch screen is that changes made to the Omni Pro II or Omni IIe panel are automatically updated on the touch screens. With custom screens both the system and the screen must be updated independently.

Having said that, there are a few options for the hardcore DIY-er....


Software Based Control:


While we aren't able to customize the current (notice I say current, HAI does have some future plans...) touch screens, we can use 3rd party software applications to create a custom interface that sits on top of the HAI system.

My favorite is CQC (charmedquark.com). This is software that you can load on a wireless tablet PC, or a server. You then build the interface from scratch, right down to the font and icons.

In addition to the graphical interface, CQC also allows you to build the back-end system to control the HAI system. This takes a lot more work, and in the end does not provide the same amount of control that the standard HAI does. However, you do get a slick looking screen.

The downside:

2 years ago I created a spin-off business (5280automation.com) that would create these custom interfaces. The time to design and program a single system was about 200 hours, a good month of work. In addition to time, a dedicated computer and dedicated touch panels were also required. All of this brought a single custom design with 2 touch screens to around $15,000. Not exactly in line with our product offering or clients...

After a year we scraped the project. As a business venture it did not make sense, but for a homeowner with an extra computer laying around, a lot of free time, and a vision the result can be excellent.



Closing thoughts:

As you may imagine, my home is chalked full of the equipment we sell. I spent the 200+ hours to create a working interface for my home. I ran this custom system for 2 months, then switched back to the HAI touch screens. The main reasons were speed and reliability.

If I wanted to arm the security or run a lighting scene I did not want to wait for a network connection to occur, I wanted to instantly. Since the system ran on a Windows based computer, I would sometimes wake up to a blank screen or Windows desktop after a Windows update had occurred. Not the end of the world, but I like knowing whenever I walk up to the touch screen it will be ready and waiting for me.

* All custom interfaces were created by us when 5280automation.com was up and running.

touch screen, graphics, custom, cqc, charmed quark, main lobby, hai

Posted in Custom Interfaces

We have had a recent surge of questions regarding the Nuvo intercom and paging abilities.

Nuvo states in their manuals that their systems are compatible with paging and intercom systems. This is a half-truth...

What the system can do:
Both the Nuvo Grand Concerto and the Nuvo Essentia units have an optional interrupt module that can be added. This module is able to tell when the intercom is in use and will mute the audio playing so the message can be heard. After the page is over, music will resume.

What the system does not do:
Despite popular belief, the Nuvo system will not play the intercom message through the speakers in the room. It only mutes the speakers so the intercom (with its own speakers) can be heard.

Tying in with HAI:
With the HAI voice module, we can trigger the interrupt module, and play a basic message over the speakers throughout the house. These messages would be in the realm of "Garage Door Open", "Welcome Home", "Good Night", etc. We have a vocabulary of 1500 words that we can string together to create these messages.

This is where most of the confusion comes in. It would make sense that if we can play HAI messages over the Nuvo system, that we should be able to play intercom messages over the Nuvo system as well.

The key is that the HAI system has RCA audio outputs that we can bring to the Nuvo system. Intercom systems do not have this RCA audio output, and therefore have no way to send their message to the Nuvo system. The other consideration is that there are no microphones in the Nuvo system, so even if you could play the intercom over the speakers, you would have no way to respond.

Hopefully this clears things up a bit.

nuvo, intercom, audio, integration, hai, voice, grand concerto

Posted in Product Reviews, How-To

We have recently added a product for automated drape control. It will allow our automation systems to open and close drapes from any interface (touch screen, keypad, computer, etc).

We will also be able to naturally heat and cool the house by opening and closing drapes based on indoor and outdoor temperatures.

Last, we can tie these drapes into lighting scenes, as well as put them on schedules to automatically open and close each day at certain times.

We are still working out the final details, but we are hoping to be able to sell these for about $450/window. This is much less then half the price of the control system we research a year ago ($998 per window). At this price it is still expensive to automate an entire home, but doing several key windows will add a lot of value without breaking the bank.

motorized, drape, control, home automation, hai omni

Posted in Product Reviews

About a year ago we opened the website DiscountWireAndCable.com. The purpose of this site was to be a self-running, one-stop shop for any low-voltage wire you could ever need.

Now that the site has climbed the ranks in Google and has started to gain more business we have revamped the site with a streamlined shopping cart, more product information, and an overall better user experience.

wire, cable

Posted in General

MHA has moved it's quoting, support, and back end software system to a brand new, custom platform designed specifically for MHA.

This system streamlines the services we provide to clients, while saving us time as well. It also adds many new features to increase the quality of the systems we provide by automatically generating information that previously took hours and sometimes days to create.

For example, the new system will calculate exactly how much wire a system requires, how long it will take to prewire, to install, and to program.

I have personally spent the past 3 months developing and programming this system alongside our developers. I am very excited to see it in action and our clients are already seeing the benefits.

In the future I hope to move some of this system online, allowing clients to see their systems, submit change requests, and perform other actions.

mile high automation, design, system, backend, database

Posted in General