Home

Review of HomeSeer v2.0

Reviewed by HAI Staff



HomeSeer® Software v2.0


HomeSeer v2.0 is a very affordable controller for a whole-house automation solution.

Overall Rating: 6.8 out of 10


Home Automation Product Features

HomeSeer v2.0 is an advanced home automation and remote access software package that is designed to integrate the major sub-systems of any home. With HomeSeer, you can control and monitor lighting, appliances, security, HVAC, telephone and home theater from your Windows home PC. With the appropriate software "plug-ins", Homeseer can interface to IR-based entertainment controllers, a variety of thermostats including HAI, RCS, and Aprilaire models, lighting systems based on ZWAVE, Insteon, X10, or Lightolier and Lutron systems, and security panels including HAI Omni, Napco Gemini, or certain DSC models. HomeSeer provides a built-in web server you can access from your browser using a PC anywhere.

Perhaps the most unique feature of HomeSeer v2.0 is the telephone control module allowing you to:

  • Dial by voice,
  • Create message 'boxes' for the whole family,
  • Automatically email messages as MP3 attachments,
  • Use voice commands to control HomeSeer from any telephone anywhere in the world,
  • Listen to your messages over the internet,
  • and have HomeSeer call you when anything special happens in your home.


    • On the downside we noticed a disparity in features between plug-ins, and we could not get the Webcam plug-in to capture video at all.

    Rating: 7.0 out of 10


    Ease of Installation

    HomeSeer will run on Windows 2000, XP, or Vista and requires the Windows .Net framework. The base software installed without incident. Plug-ins are installed separately using the online Update feature. Some care must be taken to syncronize updates to HomeSeer v2.0 with the appropriate plug-in versions.

    HomeSeer has a number of configuration options you will want to review, as do many of the plug-ins.
    Once the system is configured and all devices are defined, you can then create the events you want to monitor and associated actions to launch when the event occurs.

    Rating: 7.0 out of 10


    Home Automation Product Reliability

    The base HomeSeer software is stable. Most plug-ins performed as described with the exception of the Webcam software which was very problematic and required interaction with HomeSeer Support to get the capture function working at all. Most discrepancies were corrected by updating to a newer version or a configuration change.

    Note HomeSeer Support can only be contacted via their trouble reporting system and email after the assigned tech responds to the report. This tends to delay the resolution of some problems, especially the ones corrected via a simple change to the configuration.

    Overall the reliability is only as good as the PC the software is running on. Conflicts can arise with other software running on the PC or Windows itself. To address this issue, HomeSeer does sell a standalone controller loaded with the HomeSeer software for those looking for the best system availability possible.

    Rating: 6.5 out of 10