FW: Re: Newbie - controlling lights and creating scenes (Ocelot?)

["David Buckley" <db@xxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Kevin Hawkins" <lists@u...> wrote:
>
>
> Long debate on this one Helen as you will have seen.
>
>
>
> No I wouldn't call X10 amateurish, but I wouldn't call it
> professional either. It's an 'end user residential' product
> aimed at providing HomeAutomation control at a great price
> point with good features, a large established base, fantastically
> easy to retrofit and with good software and
> hardware controllers available

The reason for the sucess of X10 is based in my opinion on two
factors:

Firstly, it enables ad-hoc home control networks to be built, that do
not require additional wiring.  It is literally a plug and play
system.

Secondly, its dirt cheap.  Well, You may not think so here in the UK,
but an appliance modules in the USA are frequently available as
specials for under ten bucks.  Compared to any other HA technology
X10 is cheap - even in the UK.

X10 itself is a Power Line control Technology.  There is nothing
inherently wrong with PLT, but X10 is not a good example of how you
would do it.  Its drawbacks include low effective control rate (50
baud), fixed message structure with only a few bits of data per
message, limited official message types, its open loop, so you never
are sure if the receiving device got the instruction, and no formal
(as in published) collision detect and recovery handling mechanism.

However, most of the times, for most purposes, it is satisfactory,
and works _reasonably_ well.  Not 100% reliablity, but OK.

Almost everything else on the market is "better" than X10, in
almost
every respect except for the two killer points (ad-hocracy, no wiring
required, and cost) noted above.

And that is why X10 survives and will continue to do so.