Other Commercial Product Experiences

EHA is providing links to Other Commercial Products that I find are kind of neat in what they do in relation to Home Automation, or ones that should raise a red flag. These are somtimes a stand alone products that provide a simple way to do something complex, or something that makes the simple really difficult.

If you have a product to consider, please send an email to Eclipse Home Automation.

Just my own experience with some stuff. Buy at your own descression!

Neat Stuff

Home Irrigation Controllers

Toro Ecxtra. This, by itself has a really nice feature. "Seasonal Adjust". With that, you can set a "program" to run a percentage of the defined value. For example, you program it to water the grass for 10 minutes, but with "seasonal adjust", you can say run it for 50% during the fall, and your grass only gets 5 minutes of water. No need to change the schedule as the seasons change, just a couple of button pushes to adjust it. A REALLY neat feature is the "Timepod". A little USB device. You set up your schedule on a Windows PC, plug in the TimePod, and send it your schedule. Then you take the TimePod, and plug it into your Ecxtra and transfer the schedule there. Not only will your irrigation schedule be backed up on your PC, but you can print out the schedule and have it next to the controller. The PC SW has some smarts to give you times for watering in your part of the world, but I've not really used that feature. Check it out at the Toro Ecxtra Webbage. I got one at Home Depot that was 4 zone ready, and you can add more zones.

"Not so" Neat stuff

OS WMR 200A Weather Station. I had one less than a week, and I'm glad to have it gone. The console was having problems reading the outside sensors, even though it was 50' closer to the outside sensors than the OS WMR968. I could stand at the console of the 200a, open a window, and throw pennies into the rain sensor cup, and the console kept dropping the rain sensor. (less than 15'), for example. Sensors inside the house, direct line of sight to the console, no walls, would work at 20' and fail at 25'.

All signs of a bad console, right? The OS Customer support call line just couldn't see it. I had gotten the WMR200A direct from OS I wanted a replacement console, and the (as it seems) third party call center just couldn't get approval of "corporate" to do it. Then they wanted me to send them the console to "see" before they would send a replacement. I offered to provide my CC number for a replacement, so I could try the old and replacement, side by side, and ship back the bad one for a refund. They said they "needed corporate approval" to do that. I then asked for the method to return the whole darn thing for a refund, and dropped it off at UPS the next morning. And ordered the Davis Vantage VUE the same day...

I will admit I don't know which was more broken, the WMR200a or the Customer Support Group!

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