RazBerry - is it for me

[TimJWatts]

Hi folks, Please excuse the probably newbie question. Did have a read around, but I need to assess this quickly and I could not draw a conclusion.

I like Z-Wave - I have an Aeon 4-1 Multisensor and a TKB TZ88 UK socket switch and power meter. I am inspired.

However, the Vera Lite I ordered with these got sent back because it was not exactly a shining example of stability or good design (nice hardware, shame about the software). I'm reading similar complaints levelled at the HomeSeer Zee and the Fibaro Lite (HC2 to way too expensive). They all seem like you have to hack on them to get anything to work (I certainly had to reflash the Vera with an awful Windows XP tool trying to run on VMWare in my linux laptop before I could even get it stable).

So, here's what I want to do - be very grateful if you could tell me if a RazBerry and maybe OpenRemote is a good fit for me?

1) I need to get something simple up and running very fast, like in 2 weeks. Simple remote control of the TZ88 and remote monitoring of the Aeon and TZ88 including from an android phone.

2) Simple time/date scheduling of the TZ88 (about 4 eventually).

Later next year, and no objections at all to spending some time on this:

3) Graphs of power readouts from several TZ88s and graphs from the sensors in the Aeon (probably get 2-3 of these).

4) More advanced control logic.


I'm a linux sysadmin - that's not a problem. I also code a bit (Perl, C, but can turn my hand to anything that has some semblance of documentation or enough examples).

I have plenty of public IPs on my home net - so this will be sitting direct on the Internet (possibly behind an Apachy proxy on my other server) and will be reachable by me from anywhere.

Do you guys reckon a RazBerry setup with maybe OpenRemote would get me 1+2 in a stable fashion with not much effort?

I don't have doubt that I can get 3+4 done - but I'd be interested in an opinion of how much effort it's likely yo cost me

Many thanks for any opinions

[TimJWatts]

Noone?

[PoltoS]

I you like flexibility, RaZberry is the best one!

[TimJWatts]

But do you guys think I could be up and running from cold in a week for some very simple control?

Or to put it another way, is this 1995 linux where "it will work, eventually, but you are going to have to work at it" or is it more like 2005 "stuff generally just works"?

No disrespect intended - it's just right now, a lot of tinkering to get *any& results is a deal breaker

[skiv71]

I prefer the z-stick (with z-way-server).

When it's plugged into a network/usb server, my system detect's it automatically and starts the z-way-server for you.

Plug and play.

[leonmf]

I'm a relatively recent RazzBerry - Z-Way user and I had it up and running in a few minutes and fully configured for my use case within an evening of work. The image is pretty much auto configured and the only thing I did to it was setup an assigned IP in my router so I'd have an easier time of finding the device on my network. They even have a simple web console available at <IP>:8084 which allows you to define a static IP if you wish. From a basic setup standpiont, your Linux admin skills are overkill.

I'm even able to use the iPhone app to control my home from anywhere.

To be fair, though, I only use the lighting/dimmer functions and I don't know anything about logging and graphing sensors but the simple control is trivial and rock solid.