While the TimeCommander is a good product, it is an older product and doesn't have the newest technology that the Stargate has. If a customer's budget doesn't support a Stargate, I recommend the Stargate Lite. The Stargate Lite has all the features of Stargate except the telephony (voice mail, DTMF) and digital voice features. At a later time you can purchase and add the expansion board that will add all of those features. When the board is added you have a complete Stargate system.
One other thing to mention. The JDS equipment prices shown above are lower than what a customer would normally expect to pay for these products. Setting up a home automation system can be complex and I recommend that people purchase the products from a company that can provide you with the necessary technical support. A home automation controller must be programmed (via program code) to do what you want it to do. The Stargate (and Stargate Lite) have a capacity of 6000 - 8000 lines of program code. This is the code that the user must write to get things to happen. The manual that is supplied with the Stargate will get a customer started writing code (i.e. Events), but eventually a customer will need help with writing more complex code. This is one of the reasons I recommend that the purchase decision for a product like this include more than just the product's price.
Robert
RCI Automation
rciautomation@compuserve.com[Link: ourworld.compuserve.com]Robert
RCI Automation
rciautomation@compuserve.com[Link: ourworld.compuserve.com]
