New HAI lighting controls

[david.k.cornutt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Well, I was all set to pull Cat5 to all of my switch locations in the
new house that I'm building this year in order to accommodate ALC
lighting controls (OmniPro II).  But just now, I went over to HAI's Web
site (haven't looked there in a while), and they have this new UPB
powerline protocol.  Has anyone done anything with this yet?  Things in
particular I'd like to know:

* They claim good protocol reliability, but I'm generally suspicious of
all powerline systems.
* Does the protocol allow the controller to read the status of a
switch?
* I'm a bit confused by the description of the addressing.  As I
understand it, it allows 256 addresses on each of 256 house codes, for
16K addresses total.  Is this correct?
* Anyone seen any pricing on this yet?  I'm interested in how it would
compare with an ALC installation (roughly $90/device last time I priced
it).

I'm really interested in the possibilities here.  But that powerline
stuff... I've had very bad experiences with X-10 in the past and I
would have to get myself comfortable with that idea.