Motorola homesight Home Monitoring and Security System Review

To begin setting up the Motorola homesight you'll need to purchase, at minimum, the Easy Start Kit (HMEZ2000) for $299.99 which includes the wireless system controller (the brains of the wireless networking system), a wireless camera, wireless door/window sensor, two power adapters, and the installation and configuration software. There are also some included options like an 8' AC adapter extension cable and mounting hardware for permanently installing the camera and door/window sensor.

The system requirements are easy to meet. Any Pentium 3 processor, or better, running Windows XP or 2000 will work just fine. The homesight software is not compatible with Macintosh computers. You connect the wireless system controller to your PC via USB (2.0 preferred) connection.

A Wireless Temperature Sensor? While you may not immediately know what to do with one let me just say that even if you don't have a wine cellar or dedicated cigar room, you can always put a wireless temperature sensor up in the attic where it will neatly detect AC leaks which could result in a huge waste of energy and money. If you live up north you could put one in a basement or cellar to ensure that temperatures don't exceed set parameters.

I went through a huge fiasco earlier this year where I was making the attic cooler than my home. As a result I have placed a temperature sensor in a convenient area to alert me if the main air duct springs another leak. This kind of sensor is nice because I can set up a schedule and notification to immediately send me an email or a page should the attic drop in temperature beyond what would be considered normal.

Motorola made all of their door/window/temperature/water sensors out of the same ABS plastic mold. The sensors then conveniently plug into the bottom of the unit and each sensor is, of course, correctly identified by the Device Discovery tool. I thought the inclusion of a water sensor was brilliant as I can think of no more important notification feature than one that tells me there is a water leak in the house. It can be the difference between hundreds of dollars worth of damage and tens of thousands.

I placed the Wireless Water Sensor upstairs in the laundry room with the actual sensor placed in the water heater drip pan. Should any leaks occur the sensor should alert me with at least some time to catch the problem before it spills over into the rest of the house. I conveniently mounted the actual transceiver unit on the wall and allowed the water sensor, which attached with a long wire, to dangle down from there. In this way I got a nice clean connection and signal while making sure the unit was out of the way.

The dedicated Wireless Motion Sensor is perfect for locations that do not require the use of a camera (not to mention you save a ton by not adding the video surveillance). I placed one in the stairwell to monitor motion going up or coming down the stairs as part of a whole home security zone.

I consider this part of my "upstairs" Device Group as it joins part of the security system to monitor traffic to and in the upstairs part of the home. Adding a motion sensor or two to your home is a very effective way to monitor and prevent intrusion to various areas that might be secluded or not have easy access to an AC outlet. The Wireless Motion Sensor runs off of two AA batteries (included) and can be stand-mounted or wall-mounted (we chose to wall mount it).

What good is a home security system, as a preventative measure anyway, if it doesn't have a siren? Well, Motorola provides one and it can be placed anywhere there is an electrical outlet. You simply insert it like you would an AC adapter and press the Discovery button to add it into the system. In addition to a siren, the unit features a strobe light that also goes off in the event that the unit is triggered by a disturbance. To ensure that the unit is always functional, it has an audible chirp in the event of a loss of AV power and also when activity is detected and the system is unarmed. It has an internal battery backup so the unit will continue to function if the power is out during an armed intrusion. The entire system, however, would also need to be on a battery backup for this to function effectively of course.

More creative folks might set up a schedule to turn on a radio or coffee pot at predetermined times of the day or use it to schedule or trigger an untold number of devices.

The Wireless Keypad Kit is hands-down the coolest feature of the Motorola homesight system. Instead of the traditional keypad where you must enter a numerical code to arm and disarm the system, the homesight uses encoded Keypad Keys that store your identity and tracking information on them. In this way the arm/disarm sequence is reduced to simply holding up your key ring to the activation button and pressing "arm" or "disarm". Now that's simple! The kit comes with two keys and you can buy additional keys in two-packs to use for guests, babysitters, contractors, etc.

Mounting the Wireless Keypad is simple and includes the option for battery powered use or connection to an AC adapter. I chose the former and mounted it just inside the doorway. This simple device arms and disarms the entire homesight system from one convenient location. Mounting hardware is included as is a template for drilling the holes to secure the unit to the wall. A desk stand adapter is also included in the even that you would prefer to set it on a table.

I found some difficult locations in my home and so installed two repeaters - one upstairs and one on the other side of the downstairs level. The results were immediate and the system was able to connect to all devices with no apparent difficulties. Repeaters require an AC outlet (they come with a 12VDC adapter) and have a convenient desk stand to allow them to sit on any flat surface. You can also wall mount them with included hardware.

Setting up the Motorola homesight system is both easy and complex. The prior Product Installation Notes assume that you have successfully navigated the simple process of placing the devices and running the Device Discovery Wizard to attach each item to your homesight system. As this is accomplished for each item, macros are automatically added to the system for each component - meaning that your homesight system is almost automatically configured for use as a home monitoring system without any serious interaction. To get beyond the basics, however, you'll want to take a look at some of the things you can accomplish from the main Motorola homesight control screen.

To get an instant snapshot of the devices in your system (a logical place to go after installing multiple items) check out the Device Overview screen. This area gives you a list of al sensors, cameras and devices as well as their status and configuration options. It even shows battery status or whether the unit is on AC power. You can view either individual devices, or what's known as "Device Groups" which allow you to group devices and sensors by area or purpose. I segmented my system into "upstairs" and "downstairs" for convenience.

The Event Archive is the place you go if you want to check the logs, audio/video clips and still images captured by a triggered event in the homesight system. You can view the video immediately in the window (uses embedded Microsoft's Windows Media Player to handle the video playback) or simply take note of the logged data for various events such as motion detection or activity on a door/window sensor. This list can be filtered by device or date to help you narrow the focus of any activities you are trying to take a look at.

Adding a new device at any time is easy with the Device Discovery page. Just click the "Start Discovery" button at the top and the system will ask you whether you are connecting new Motorola equipment or looking to create a new Device Group. The Discovery process will run for approximately 15 minutes - the length of time you have to push the "Discover" button on any new devices you are connecting to the system before you have to reinitiate discovery again. You can also delete devices from this page and view the battery/power status as well as whether the unit is armed, disarmed, and/or what state the sensor is in (open/closed, dry/wet, etc).

Want a down and dirty look at what's been happening in your system without all the fancy graphics? The Event Logs page is the place to go. Be warned, however, for some unknown reason, Motorola didn't prove a way to filter these logs, email, save or print them out. They integrated a way to save a ZIP file of the logs, however the generated files are non-standard and are more for technical support than for personal use or archival. Obviously, for those using their system for any length of time, this page will be next to useless by virtue of its unmanageable length.

The event schedule is the real meat and potatoes of the homesight system. This is where you will add a way to trigger events (really macro commands) to react to sensors, including the sending of notifications and recording of video and audio events. For example, if you wanted your living room's Wireless Motion Sensor to initiate video recording of the living room Wireless Camera for a period of 10 seconds upon activity, you could simply do the following:

1. Click the "Add" button
2. Enter a name for the schedule
3. Under the Condition tab set the condition type (device-triggered or scheduled). In this case it would be a Device Event
4. Select the Device (in this case a motion detector in the living room)
5. Under Event select "Motion detected"
6. Specify if there are time of the week limitations (weekdays, a range of time, etc)
7. Under the Actions tab select the device to be initiated (the one you want to do something - in this case the corresponding Wireless camera) and select the desired "Action" (in this case "Capture Video")
8. Click the "Add" button to add it to the list. Notice that you can have a single event trigger multiple devices to spring into action.
9. Under the Notifications tab select whether you want to receive an email notification for the event or a cell phone notification. Click the "Add" button after making your choices. (Also, be sure to correctly set up your Email, Cell and SMTP information at the bottom).

As you can see there is a LOT of flexibility here. This is one place that Motorola spent a significant amount of time and energy and it shows. You can have one device trigger any number of other devices, send any number of notifications, and even pay attention to when these devices are active in performing monitoring activities. I set mine to automatically record at night - covering any instances whereby someone would break into the home while we are still sleeping in the house.

In fact, without the use of a server you have a unique scenario: if thieves come in and steal the computer on which the Motorola homesight system resides - they also take all proof and evidence captured by the system. Oops. If that information is able to be uploaded via FTP to a server, however, then you have something that is securely storing your data on an off-location machine and you will be able to grab that information should a worst-case scenario occur.

I believe Motorola at this point is targeting those who would like to have an in-home monitoring system. This is not a completely secure suite of tools designed to fully protect against intruders, but rather a solid first line of defense that can enable you to do a measurable amount of home monitoring as well as out-of-town automating.

As I mentioned, the Wireless Keypad is the coolest part of the homesight system. Simply come home (or leave), press your key into the Keypad and the system arms or disarms with ease. No confusing passwords or access numbers to memorize and each key is assigned to a specific person or function. In this way, the arm/disarm logs and events are tracked by the system and you always know who is responsible for activating or disengaging the system.

Each key is uniquely serialized, so when you add it to the homesight system for the first time it can be renamed and designated for use by a family member, babysitter, guest etc...

Macros simply allow you to enable an Event Schedule (macro) immediately. This includes arming or disarming the system, or running a record-on-event/sensor command.

The Help menu consists of a searchable index of help topics, organized by task, device and product. It includes a Quick Start Guide as well a step-by-step "how-to" guides for typical tasks undertaken in setting up and using the homesight system. There is also a significant amount of detailed information on each device and feature within the system. Overall I found it easy to use, though I preferred to search topics rather than use the linear navigation

The video camera performance on the Motorola homesight, unlike their pristine website graphics, is not as good as I would have hoped. While I would assume that daylight video with perfect lighting would be much better, I had hoped that interior shots would have been at a higher resolution (video appears to be at around 320x240 pixels, 8-12fps. The wired cameras do not fare any better than their wireless counterparts, with rather choppy video and only 1/4 NTSC resolution. With a wide angle lens, such as the cameras feature, you would have a very hard time identifying any "suspects" (or even the pizza delivery person at your front door) at the resolution provided. In order for identification to take place it seemed as if the subject had to be within 3-4 feet of the camera itself. It would be nice to see better performance out of the wired cameras at least and I would love to see an option for higher-quality cameras (we'll pay for them) with selectable resolutions up to the capabilities of the Motorola's 802.11g network.

The camera quality is adjustable to some extent in that Brightness, Contrast, and Quality can be adjusted from 0-100. The default settings are about the best you will get, however and I did not see any difference between Quality settings of 75 and 100. In fact, on further experimentation with both the wired and wireless cameras, I didn't see any difference between a setting of 1 and 100, indicating to me that this function doesn't alter the real-time video settings.

Camera audio was rather disappointing, with most cameras having a very clear and present buzzing and being easily affected by any nearby magnetic interference (for example a fan motor). Periodically, audio would pop as the video camera (both wireless and wired) would glitch and jump. While they were certainly sufficient for capturing any needed audio in terms of getting something on disc, the quality could be much improved. It seemed as data flow increased (more motion and greater signal to noise) the video jumpiness increased as did the frequency of dropouts and audible pops.

• PC-free system with bios/OS on the router itself (with support for Internet dial-in)
  
• Wireless thermostat
• Garage door sensor
• In-wall lighting control and dimmers (replace typical Decora-style plate switches)
• In-wall power control (replace typical Decora-style outlets)
• Outdoor motion detectors with flood lamps
• Humidity sensor
• Vibration (glass break) sensors

These are just some basic suggestions and do not reflect a deficiency so much as they reflect our desire to see the Motorola homesight system elevate itself to a new level and provide some serious competition to the existing wireless home monitoring solutions on the market. In particular, the addition of a thermostat and in-wall lighting and power controls would take this system into the area where we feel a truly robust home automation system needs to be and make Motorola a force to be reckoned with.

The Motorola homesight system is an effective whole home automation system that has some room to grow. While it excels in many areas (configurability, ease of use and expandability), there are some quality and growth areas that we look forward to seeing improved in future upgrades and iterations. For the price, this system is hard to beat; and to be honest, we could be accused of 'nitpicking' by anyone familiar with any of the competing home automation systems. I can recommend this without reservation to anyone looking to obtain a home security system with some automation capabilities that doesn't want to break the bank or deal with expensive monthly service fees and long drawn out contracts that are difficult to get out of. The Motorola homesight is a simple, expandable solution that doesn't overcomplicate the process of getting a home automation and security system. This is a product line to be watched carefully as it matures in a marketplace that is growing at a considerable rate.

Motorola homesight
http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/

About Motorola
Motorola, Inc. is a global leader in wireless, broadband and automotive communications technologies that help make life smarter, safer, simpler, synchronized and fun. Sales in 2003 were U.S. $27.1 billion. Motorola creates innovative technological solutions that benefit people at home, at work and on the move. The company also is a progressive corporate citizen dedicated to operating ethically, protecting the environment and supporting the communities in which it does business. For more information: www.motorola.com.