Alternatives to Loxone Miniserver

[smartbusinesstools.be]

I would like to build a comparison table for smart home controllers that are alternatives to the Loxone Miniserver. Such a table would help to put pressure on Loxone to implement desired features in the Miniserver, or assess whether Loxone or an other product is the better fit for a particular implementation. To do this, we need a list of candidate alternatives on the market, and to select valid alternatives, we need to know the requirements. Therefore I also want to build a list of requirements defined by the community, see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/loxone-english/J9Wy6PRiNmg/O_McF7ksCAAJ

But for know I would want to start collecting a list of candidate alternatives.

I have come across these:

• EIBPort: http://www.bab-tec.de/index.php/eibport_v3_en.html
• LogicMachine3 Re:actor: http://openrb.com/logic-machine-reactor/
  

Let us know if you know of any other possible candidates, or even better, give us your review if you have tried any.

I will collect the information in a shared Google Sheet.

Filip

[Michael Maletich]

Another one that I considered when looking at Loxone:

https://www.openmotics.com/

[TomM]

I've spent approx 10 years interested in home automation and home AV.  For years I tried various platforms but didn't find anything that has come close to Loxone in terms of the following:

1. Flexibility out of the box
   
2. Robustness and reliability - this is excellent compared to most rivals
   
3. Integration with 3rd party standards
   
4. Value for money with regards to the core Loxone products (most Loxone 'accessories' are hugely overpriced)
   
5. Programmability
   
6. Integration with almost unlimited facets (e.g. lighting, heating, security, audio, video etc)
   
7. Does not require a full Windows or Linux server to be running 24/7
   

Other systems I tried:

1. LinuxMCE  (poor reliability, very much a DIY system)
   
2. AMX (incredibly high cost and difficult to enter the ecosystem as a non-dealer)
   
3. Crestron (same issues as AMX)
   
4. Systemline (LexCom) (this is AV control mainly, some 3rd party integration but is very flakey.  Also high cost)
   
5. Lutron (incredibly expensive and only really controls lighting)
   
6. B&O (only adding it because it does AV + lighting when combined with Lutron - silly costs involved)
   
7. X10 & ZWave (reliability issues and all a bit clunky)
   

I realise some of these aren't really competitors to Loxone but for the uninitiated they seem comparable products.  It took me a long time to find Loxone and even then I was so sceptical that it would deliver as promised, as was my wife, that we went to their office in the UK and spent hours discussing and demo-ing the product before realising that it is actually pretty unique in the industry.My install is far from finished but we're very happy with it thus far.

[yesimag]

I think (and hope) Loxone is going to edge ahead of this for me, but Leviton makes a very similar product called the omnipro II.  It was originally created by HAI, but they've been bought by leviton recently.  The system is very similar in terms of abilities, but I like the Loxone software approach better.  Leviton tries to dumb it down so that electricians don't also need to be geeks, which they usually aren't. More of a "git er dun" approach, but that comes at the cost of flexibility. 

http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/SectionDisplay.jsp?section=60578