Re: Survey: Home Control Software

["John J. Bengii" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was not aware of the RF missing factor on these devices. You are
correct on the overhype. They discuss this technique in depth and give
the impression all Insteon devices are "fully equipped" but when
examining their remote units, the RF is never mentioned.

The units are quite pricey and the slow replacement of X10 devices
seems attractive. Most of mine have been removed from service due to
several reasons
- I am building a new home and recovering units for the move.
- many operated unreliabily or not at all despite two powerline signal
bridges and neighbour blocking devices.
- too may light left on for days is costing me energy money on my
bill, despite software to shut them down a few times a day for "just
in case" scenarios.
- too many "all lights on" in the middle of the night from wireless
receivers (I think)

I short the three of four dozen units and 15 years of trying to
perfect the system has resulted in a complete distrust for X10 units
and there is only a few spots where flakey can be useful. Soon I will
retire and won't need my "sunrise" algorythm for a 300W halogen
anymore either. I was hoping Inteon may be an answer for a technology
hungry kid.

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4775911c.2425218@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unless you're using something that receives RF directly, you cannot
> see the
> RF messages. You only see powerline messages so the incorrect
> command has
> already made it to the powerline before your software is aware of
> it.
>
> Even if your software does receive direct RF messages, there are
> seldom
> collisions between RF codes and when there are, the result is
> garbage -
> there's no possible way to sort out what the two colliding messages
> were.
> The RF messages do contain data which allows a receiver to check
> validity
> but any corruption will merely cause an invalid message it will not
> cause
> one message to be transformed into another. IOW, corrupt RF messages
> never
> make it to the powerline from any X-10 transceiver.
>
> Bream Rockmetteller <bream(dot)rockmetteller(at)mac(dot)com> wrote:
>
>>Regarding the software, the reason it knows it has received a "bad"
>>message is because I told it so. When I have a light act in a
>>strange
>>manner, I look at the log that Indigo keeps.
>>
>>If I see that an RF switch somehow transmitted "turn on E10" instead
>>of
>>"turn on the kitchen lights" which are E1, I'll  add a script in the
>>"Trigger Actions" sections that says something like "If you receive
>>a
>>message to turn on E10, send a message to turn on the kitchen
>>lights."
>>That way, even if the switch or the receiver or some random noise
>>has
>>caused the message to go bad, the software will re-transmit the
>>correct
>>message.
>>
>>I hope this helps...
>
>
> http://davehouston.net  http://davehouston.org
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