HomeSeer HomeTroller Zee Home Automation Controller

I purchased 5 water sensors, the first one out of the box did not work. I emailed and called HomeSeer for help and never heard back.The other four worked fine. However i am trying to return for exchange or credit the defective one THEY simply don't care to return emails or phone calls. I would recommend to avoid dealing with HomeSeer because they do not stand behind the product defects or warranties.

Purchased refurbished one along with new 2gig CT100 Z-wave stat to monitor the temp at my lake home. Setup required you follow the directions. I'm also using their free MyHomeSeer to connect to the HomeTroller remotely on my smartphone. It only works for a few days at a time before it cannot be reached. My internet connection is live (can see cameras) but getting "connected but unable to communicate" when trying to access through MyHS. I have not contacted support yet since this is only the second time this has happened.Edit: My domain name entry was incorrect. Hoping this corrects the issue but since it was saying "connected but unable to communicate", I suspect the issue may not be related to ability to find the device but rather once it was found it was unable to talk. I upgraded the software on the Hometroller, rebooted and entered a dynamic DNS address I maintain for my cameras and it is working for the moment. In summary, be prepared to fiddle with this a bit to get it to work. Will update this review further as I learn more.

I really wanted something to control devices remotely, monitor energy in my residence, and automate all the things I need to do when I leave and come home. I looked at the Wink, SmartThings, and Vera hubs. Unfortunately, they all have bugs and limitations, and more importantly, everything with those is 100% in the cloud, so if their server gets hacked, or taken down, you stand to lose everything. HomeSeer really needs to add Z-Wave and X10 to the title of this product so it can be found easier in Amazon! Anyhow, I finally came across this and decided on purchasing HomeSeer software separately and a Raspberry PI (the HomeTroller Zee is a pre-built Raspberry PI with HomeSeer on it), though I setup and got the components myself with a mini USB wifi stick, micro SD card, Aeon Labs Z-Stick, and micro SD card of course. I also got an X10 CM11A and a TrendNet USB to serial adapter to be able to control some old X10 devices I still have. HomeSeer software is available for Windows, but that means you will always have to leave a PC on sucking gobs of power, vs. this little low energy Raspberry PI essentially acting as an appliance. HomeSeer also needed an appliance version of their software to compete with the other home automation controllers on the market.The setup was unbelievable easy, even with building everything myself. If you need to give it a static IP address on your home LAN, you may need some basic computer skills, a TV or monitor with an HDMI cable, a USB keyboard, and a USB mouse just for the initial setup of the network configuration. If you don't have any of that, they have setup an external web site that you can just browse to that will automatically take you to your HomeSeer's internal IP address after you plug it into your network and power it up (give it a few minutes to boot).You can access still access HomeSeer the dummy way through the cloud, like the devices I mentioned above, through their free service. For those of us non-lazy people who can make the effort to make one more click on our devices to VPN into our home network, we can completely bypass the cloud. The smartphone app actually lets you choose if you want to connect through their cloud service, or directly to your HomeSeer on your local network. Since you have root access to the box, you can adjust the system with Linux iptables or however you like to completely block cloud access if you're concerned about your privacy. In my opinion, one of the most powerful component of HomeSeer are events. An event is a combined set of actions that can be kicked off either manually, or based on numerous choices of triggers. HomeSeer is very tweakable and gives you details and information that no other controller provides. It lets you see and tweak things that the other hub/controller manufacturers hide since most people can't handle viewing that sort of thing. The guys at HomeSeer are also working on implementing energy management reporting with graphing. It's pretty buggy at this time though, and not very customizable. The bar graphs also needs to stack your devices with various colors.HomeSeer does have a pretty powerful built in web server, though you need to have an above average IQ (not saying much in today's world) to understand. The Android app is functional, but has some issues, has stupid annoying sounds, and takes way to many clicks to run events and view status, etc. and also is in serious need of redesign. It needs to have one screen where you can view the status of everything, then turn on/off or control devices from there, and one screen just to control devices or run events. There are no widgets available to run events or that will let you view status either. The other thing to note here with this version vs. the Windows version of HomeSeer, which I did not know, is that it doesn't support the host of plugins that are available for the Windows version. For the Windows version, there's plugins that even provide you with a third party Android app which is much nicer than HomeSeer's own app. Also, with the Zee / Raspberry PI, all you get is Z-Wave, Insteon, and X10 support. For the average person trying to one up the other controllers on the market, these might be fine. They also have a fairly active support forum with a lot of neat scripts. With a little bit of reading, I have setup my phone so that with 2 clicks, I can have my HomeSeer box turn off my heat, my TV, my lights, put my windows computers into suspend, turn on my security system, active cameras, and reverse all of that before I come home. Awesome!!

I like itits fan-less,disk-less and small,only you need a router and everything done!!only i found with Schlage Z-Wave Lock after placing order it will delay about 4-6 seconds

Do NOT buy this product! I consider myself fairly technologically savvy (work in the technology field) and have been using home automation for around 20 years. Products from 15 years ago were more sophisticated, more reliable and definitely more user-friendly. Right out of the box the supplied license and ID did not work. It took nearly 3 weeks to get a new ID issued and numerous times of being told they fixed it, but did not.Tech support gives you the runaround and just asks redundant questions and don't even know how their own product works. I have spent hours going back and forth with them asking questions but not resolving anything. And every time you push for answers they tell you to open a new support ticket for that particular item that it needs to go through another technician. And by the way, you only have live (i.e. phone) support for the first 30 days.The HS3 software is extremely buggy. Some of the features flat out don't work. I would give this product 0 stars if possible. myHomeSeer remote website intermittently connects. The only people who give this product good reviews are guys like Greg Hughes who just so happens to work for HomeSeer (Google him...he lives in Alabama) and poses as a typical consumer. I have never been so disappointed with a purchase as I am with this.