Adding to Marks comments:

For the visonic PowerMax:

Out of the box X10 - Yes. Limited to one house code and 8 devices

Out of the box integration with house phone - Yes

Capable of complex routines out of the box No - you would need to combine with another system eg HomeSeer

System type Wireless - batteries should last for ~5 years

Easy integration with monitoring services? Yes

Easy integration with other X10 systems Yes

Ease of programming Very easy, as there is aren't many options

Cost cheap compared to comfort.

Personal opinion, if retro fitting I would go for the Powermax every time. If I was re-wiring anyway then I would certainly think about Comfort, which really is the Rolls Royce of the systems. The down side I see of Comfort other than cost is that aesthetically I think the keypads look very dated, small point I know but enough for me to look at other options. With the PowerMax you are getting an X10 capable burglar alarm. With Comfort you get a whole lot more as it is a complete management system.

Final point worth mentioning is you may need to differentiate between room occupancy and intruder detection. In my case we have two cats so we use Pet Immune PIRs, which are virtually useless for room occupancy - the solution in this case then is to double up and use 'Home' mode PIRs and 'Away' mode Pet immune PIRs

Hope this helps

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx class=GramE>]
Sent: 15 May 2002 22:16
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxxSubject: [ukha_d] Comfort vs. Others Summary - WAS X10 Heating & Security Automation - Another Newbie Q uestion!

OK, Quick summary...

Comfort advantages:

- Out of the box X-10
- Out of the box integration with house phones
- Out of the box integration with remote mobile phone
- Capable of much sophistication
- "The kind of thing we like playing with" :-)
- Easy integration with third-party monitoring / alerting services such as intamac

Comfort disadvantages:

- Cost
- Potentially too complex
- Use of some features (eg remote disabling) may make it impossible to get NACOSS accreditation
--- (accreditation = insurance discount)

Questions:

- value of integration with house phones in a world where (our) houses have many web devices and wireless LANs?
- Ability to make complex config changes potentially causes insecurity (not enough testing)

Regards,

Mark

.

The UK Home Automation Archive

The UKHA-ARCHIVE IS CEASING OPERATIONS 31 DEC 2024

RE: Comfort vs. Others Summary - WAS X10 Heating & Secu rity Automation - Another Newbie Q uestion!