Re: XTB, reliablity, etc.

[craft.brian@xxxxxxxxx]

Robert Green wrote:
> There's a bigger issue here, though.  You're making what I believe is a very
> serious comparison error. You're trying to equate an entire house automated
> by X-10 (and the attendant problems) to pulling a single, new switch.

No, no, I'm not. Read the post. I'm comparing a single new wired switch
with a single new x10 switch. You might have saved yourself writing a
dissertation if you'd just read the post. It wasn't very long. I made
that comment because x10 devices are marketed that way: add a new
switch anywhere in just minutes! ... followed by weeks of debugging.

> Plugging in an X-10 module takes 10 seconds.  Debugging, ten minutes more.

This is just absurd. The very group you're posting to refutes this
claim practically daily.

Tell me how, with ten minutes and a meter, you would have discovered
that an IBM transceiver (from a retailer recommended on this group)
locks up when sent dim commands from certain remotes? Or that
installing an RF repeater because of signal range problems would futz
the x10 RF remote on the PC? Or that some modules dim continuously? And
why? Or that every night around 9pm the unit you just installed turns
on mysteriously. That'd be quite a trick to find in 10 minutes, unless
you were prescient enough to know when the erroneous signal would
arrive.

That's a subset of the issues I've had with just a few x10 devices, in
a fairly small house. If you lurk on here for any amount of time you
will see many others. cm11a lockups,  transceiver collisions, and
so-forth. You would find those in 10 minutes with a meter, too?

> Weeks?

Easily. You might even resort to designing and building your own signal
booster when nothing else gets the job done.

b.c.