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FAQs

These are questions we thought you might like to have an answer to, and questions we get from emails, and in our Users Group forum.


Questions:

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What is home automation?

Home automation means using a computer to control the functional areas of your home and office. Hooking home and office products to a computer gives you timing and event control over those devices. You can control when devices are turned on, dimmed, or turned off. Areas of your home can be linked together in a group of devices, and controlled all at once, or by events of time. And by linking your home and office to a computer, you can access your home or vacation home over the Internet from any where in the world. (back to top)

What are some of the things you can do with home automation?

Group your lights by event. If you want your many lights one way for a party, and another for a romantic dinner, at the flip of one button you can have all your lights adjusted to the right level depending on the event.

Have all the lights in a room come on automatically when you enter the room, and turn off when you leave.

Turn your kids TV off at the flick of a button, so they can do their homework, or go to bed on time.

Turn lights on at sunset, and off at a predetermined hour.

Rotate your lights when your away on vacation, so the same pattern doesn't occur every night.

Turn a room heater on in one room when the temperature drops, and turn in off when it gets too hot.

Close your drapes automatically at sunset.

Open your skylight blinds in the morning.

Readjust your thermostat automatically, so the kids don't.

Turn the heat on at your vacation home over the Internet. No more long trips because you forgot to turn the AC off.

Monitor your vacation home with a motion sensitive video camera. Record any intruders, even at night.

Make sure you turned the iron off before you left for work, from work.

Control your home by speaking commands. "Lights On"

All of the above, makes your life easier, with less stress, because of your life is automated the way you want to live. Yes, you can do it manually, why when the computer can do it for you. Welcome, to home automation. (back to top)

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How do I automate my home?

You can do it all at once. This is done mostly if your putting an addition on your home, or building a new home. This tends to be a very expensive way to go, because many times the contractor will want to wire your house in what is called, structured wiring. The other way, is to do it gradually over time. Gradually over time is in some ways easier, and it is less costly, if you do it yourself. It's also more fun, and can become a hobby as you gradually automate the functions and areas of your home.

More specifically, you need a computer designed for home automation, and devices designed to be used with your home automation control software around your home. See our product map for an overview. We would recommend you start with the computer, the heart of your home and office automation system.

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Why are home automation computers different from other computers?

Home automation computers have different requirements than other computers. For example, to access your home any time, any where, the computer has to be on. If you want to turn your kids TV off every night at 10:30 PM, the computer has to be on. If you want to monitor your home or vacation property with a video camera, the computer has to be on. In short, home automation computers have to be on all the time.

Having a computer that is on all the time means you want a computer designed to be used this way. Some of the requirements for this type of computer is consistent heat dissipation, and quiet. Quiet, because you don't want a noisy computer, if its running all the time. Ideally, you want a computer where you have to look to see if its on.

Computers designed for home automation tend to have special heat control devices, fans that run only when needed, and noise deadening components and cases. That doesn't mean you can't use them for your every day computer, in fact we encourage this.

Another area you have to be careful with for home automation is software. You want your software specially configured so that the computer does not install updates, and tend to do things that will cause it to shut down, or wait for you to hit the return, so it can go to the next step. So the software on home automation computers has to be specially configured for home automation and Always-On operation.

A side benefit for using this computer as your main computer is when a computer is always on, you don't have to boot the computer or shut it down. All you have to do is turn your monitor on and your ready to go. (back to top)

What does Always-On™ mean?

It means your computer has been specially designed, built, and configured for home automation to be left powered on all the time.


What do you mean by Custom Built?

Just like with our Home Automation products, we decided to take a different approach to building computers. Most of the Dell's and HP's of the world build computers by negotiating with various parts manufacturer's the lowest discount they can get for a particular part. This usually means the part has some sort of limited functionality. Then they use those parts to build the lowest price computer they can.

We don't do that. We want computers to last, and for you to know that you have something special. We use components that we have reviewed and confirmed to be highly reliable, and in most cases have the extra functionality you deserve. These are not your lowest priced components. Components that break, we tend to not use again, and replace with better components.

Custom built to Refined Automation means using components that work well together, are reliable, and have stable software drivers and utilities. We want the parts to purr together like a well built Ferrari.

We know we will not be able to match the Dell's and Compaq's of the world in price, and quite frankly, we don't want to try. We want our customers to come back to us, when they want a computer, because they know their getting something special. That's what we mean by custom built.(back to top)


What do you mean by Custom Configured?

Custom configured means what it says. We configure each of our custom built computers to each individual user's use and need. Something else the big boys can't spend the time to do.

When you purchase your Refined Automation Computer, we will ask you some pertinent questions about how you would like your computer set up, and how you would like it to run. We'll ask you questions like: how many users will use your computer, what type of network your running, is your network encrypted, what type of parental controls would you like, how many other computers do you have in your house, are they networked together, your router make and model number, and other questions along these lines. We have one goal in mind. For you to be able to take a Refined Automation Computer out of the box and be able to turn it on, and it will be configured and ready to run in your home.

Software installation and configuration takes time. Your system is only shipped to you after everything works together both hardware and software in a unified, up to date, computer system.
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What is the Refined Automation's VRAID™ disk array?

We have used our VRAID technology in "The Vault" and "The Master" computers. This is a specially designed disk array designed to protect your valuable data, music, and video from being lost. You don't want to lose any information that has taken you years to collect.

The traditional way to protect your information is to do back ups. Back ups have always taken hours depending on how much information you need to back up, and as soon as you do the back up, it's out of date. As your data expands, you find you need multiple DVD's to back it up, which means you have to be present at back up time, and sit there, and feed your computer disks.

We thought there was a better way. We gave up a little disk space to keep track of what's on each disk, so we can reconstruct a disk drive if it crashes automatically, and at the same time spread your valuable data across many disks to protect it even further. A side benefit of this technology is your disks provide information to your computer faster, than if every thing was on one disk drive. Our VRAID disk array is very fast. This means overall your computer is faster, and your not waiting for the computer to read in from the disk to get started.

We look at our VRAID disk array as a single disk, and in fact, it shows up on your computer as a single disk. Underneath the hood, there are multiple disks, and if one by chance should fail, you can install a new drive, and the rest of the array, will rebuild the new drive just like the one you lost, with all your data in place. Also, even if one of your disk fails, your system will keep running, a little slower, but your computer is still completely functional with no loss of data.

The other thing our VRAID technology gives you is a lot of disk space. The new high definition digital formats for TV and movies requires a lot of disk space for storage. The Refined Automation VRAID technology gives you that.

Bottom line, you may still want to do a back up, but now, maybe only once a year. We think this is a better way. (back to top)


What is a Master Controller?

One master controller is needed for your home and office network. It keeps track on all your home automation devices, polls them to see if their connected, and issues the commands that directs their action. It stays attached to your computer, when not learning your components, so it can interface with your home automation control software. When it learns your network it runs on batteries and you can walk around the house to your devices and add them or remove them from your network. It gives each device a unique node ID number. Your Master Controller is a fairly complex piece of equipment. We provide one with each one of our computers to get you started.

You can have many remotes in your home, but you want just one to keep track of changes to your network, otherwise things can get confusing trying to figure out which remote has which node in its memory. The other remotes are called secondary remotes. The secondary remotes learn your network by transferring the network via wireless from the master controller. (back to top)


How do I become a member of Refined Automation's Users Group?

Easy, buy a Refined Automation Home Automation Computer. We have purposely kept the User's Group exclusive. That way you know that every one in our User's Group owns a Refined Automation computer, and has the same equipment, and set-up as you do. Our User's Group is a community of users that help each other with new home and office applications, and solutions to problems. If your having a problem chances are one of our users can help you solve the problem. You'll also find out some of the unique ways our users have automated their homes, and you can turn around easily, and do that too. (back to top)