Re: roZetta progress report

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> Look on the remote for the FCC ID number (e.g. B4SUR84A).

Since it's USB, is that going to help me or will I need a USB-serial
converter, too?  Anyway, it's moot, since I just bought and MS26A via Ebay
for $10.  I figure it's just part of the course materials for Professor
Dave's home automation design course and it would be cheap at three times
the price.

FTR, it's as you said, B4SUR84A

[Late breaking news: Someone contacted me off-line to offer me their used
BX24-AHT for sale at a price I can afford but they swore me to secrecy lest
you set their hair on fire for parting with it too cheaply, you old
curmudgeon, you.]

 :-)

I think the image of my poor wife fretting every time the solder fumes set
off the smoke detector and my drawer full of "lost souls" crippled by my
ham-handed attempts at small-component soldering made them take pity on me.
She wants me to throw the solder monsters away but I feel strangely attached
by guilt.  I was the one who crippled them. :-(  Anyway I think that the
gentlemen's switch to Insteon had somewhat more to do with it . . .  Anyway,
I can't wait!  If I have a well-soldered one in front of me it makes it a
lot easier to solder my own unit because I have some idea what a good joint
should look like.  What I'll do with two Biatzes I don't know (I can't seem
to type BX24-AHT very easily - how about a slick nick like Rozetta for your
older "child?"

Can they be put on opposite phases and not collide like the TM-751's sort of
do?  I'm trying to put together a rapid deployment X-10 kit so that if I
have to set up shop somewhere else temporarily, I can do so with ease.  X-10
ain't dead yet.  Sort of feels like that B movie with Sharon Stone as a
gunslinger.  There's going to a serious shakeout in the industry and at
least one protocol will go the way of the dodo.  I'm betting it will be more
than one.

Smarthome is a comer.  They push out a lot of fancy sales rags and evidently
do a thriving business even though they have high prices.  Some of the other
contenders have nowhere near that organizational "muscle" and they lack easy
to use websites.  They've also very smartly decided, like you did, that
parallel operation of X-10 and Insteon would be essential to Insteon's
acceptance.  Business survival is very much like jungle survival - you have
to have an edge on the competition, no matter how slight.  Time will take
care of the rest.

I'd go to work for Smarthome if they opened up on the East Cost just to get
an employee discount. :-)  I'm not sure which protocol will get the
inevitable kiss of death, but I'm betting it's not Insteon.

Oh boy new toys!  Long live X-10!

--
Bobby G.