Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've had the Homesaver for a couple of years now. I'm not using all the features but for several things that are critical to me, it works very well.
My Homesaver is located in what is currently a doublewide weekend/vacation home on 20 acres of oak woodlands in the Columbia Gorge. I live and work most of the time in the Seattle area. We visit the gorge most weekends in warm weather, but in the winter somtimes 2-3 weeks will pass without a trip. I have several panasonic IP cameras set up to keep an eye on the place and watch the critters. I'll often check the cameras on my laptop while I'm at work in the Seattle area (nice to see sunshine, hear the ravens or coyotes and watch the wild turkeys and deer, as well as neighbor's and their cat's and dogs). I also know it is raining, even at night, when the drops pound on the metal pumphouse roof where one of the cameras looks out from under a shed roof at our little fruit orchard and large fenced garden, pushing the range limits of the wireless router in the house perhaps 100 ft away.
Homesaver is set up with a temp sensor in the in-ground water valve vault which I insulate and where I keep a small light bulb going in winter, and I have an outdoor temp sensor. I wish the internal sensor wasn't heated so much by the electronics (it always reads about 3 degrees higher than what I have the thermostat set for) but that is not a big deal.
I use it most often to power cycle my internet router and the port 80 network camera which occasionally loses contact with the internet. To do that I bought a wireless switchable electrical outlet (http://www.amazon.com/Outlet-Wireless-Remote-Wall-Outlets/dp/B000G80V28/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297635381&sr=8-1) and soldered the remote button contacts to Homesaver's "output 2." I call the house phone and toggle output 2 on, then off to represent a push/release of the button (turning the power off), then repeat that to turn the power back on. It takes seconds and works every time.
It has been useful occasionally when the power is out, though I haven't researched how to change the time it waits before calling my cell phone. I usually use the cameras for listening, but when the power is out I have used the homesaver listen feature a few times. The cameras also allow me to see the lawn sprinklers and garden/orchard irrigation are running, to hear that the water pump in the pump house and the heat pump in the house are on occasionally but not constantly (I could hear the here the heat pump with the Homesaver listen mode too).
I have the cameras on in the background while I write this (in Seattle) and a dog just barked in the gorge, a rooster crowed, and birds are sqawking. This morning at 1014am a fawn was recorded walking past the master bedroom and this afternoon I watched live as a neighbor's cat climbed on the woodpile by the garage, probably looking for mice. The cameras provide a huge value, and without Homesaver they could be inaccessible for weeks out of every month. And the peace of mind knowing I can tell if the pipes might freeze or the power is off is priceless.
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