Re: XTB - the Future of X10 has arrived!

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Larry Moss" <moss@xxxxxxxxxxxx> & <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<stuff snipped>

>> No one ever enjoyed reformatting Wang documents for a PC or
>> trying to move a Ventura Publisher doc created under Gem to a
>> Windows system.
>
> My turn to challenge your assumptions.  I was doing computer
> support in the early '90s.  The common platform idea sometimes
> has merit, but when it came down to it, I preferred to help people
> with the appropriate software for their job.

And, back in the 80's and even early 90's the software and hardware
landscape was dramatically different than it is today.  Back then it really
was a hard decision to choose Quattro, Visicalc, Supercalc, Lotus 1-2-3 or
some other spreadsheet program.  If you were a law firm tech you had to deal
with Wordstar, Wang, Wordperfect, lots of wonderful shareware apps and Word.
I remember what it was like when every major app had a different set of keys
(mostly function keys across the type with ctrl/alt "extenders)? and all
came with keyboard templates.

Support groups in large corporate IT shops went through some nightmarish
times.  End users were switched from one SW app to another every year or so.
Users eventually revolted and that was part of the force driving people to
MS.  You learn *one* MS package and that made learning the next that much
easier.


> With very little truly cross-platform software, that usually
> meant multiple hardware platforms as well.  If all of your users are doing
> the same job it's easier to have them all use the same stuff.  But even
> putting them on the same platform doesn't standardize the software used by
> the art department and accounting, so much of the benefit is lost while
> possibly adding unintentional complications.

The art and accounting departments were traditionally the last ones ported
over to a common platform and only because they were the ones likely to
already be on graphics workstations or mini-computers when the PC revolution
hit.  But when their apps became old and dodgy, the next jump was invariably
away from the specialized hardware and software and towards the packages
that could "do it all."  Again, this reminiscing is only relevant as it
compares to how X-10 operates.


>> X10's not like an OS.  There's a lot more room for competition
>> in the HA arena that there is for a new OS to take hold.
>
> But only if you're willing to try the competition.  Your
> recommendation to newbies is still to stick with the installed
> base.  Then once they've gained experience, they already have an
> investment in hardware that they'll want to keep using.  So how
> will another product line take hold?

The same way it always has and the same way it's working with you.  People
who can't accept the shortcomings of the current big thing, seek out
something different.  The "next" big thing.

I don't doubt that of the many X-10 challengers, one of them has the
potential to dethrone X-10.  I think it's ZigBee because sometimes the last
entry into the game is the best.  They've had an opportunity to see, debug
and improve upon the competition.  Like evolution, it's a slow process.

Look how long it took Kodak to begin its death spiral.   They still believed
in silver-based photography until the consumer market began to shrivel up.
Now they're scrambling to catch up.


>> I'm a fairly frugal person. I'm not likely to abandon something
>> I've spent a lot of time and money on unless there's no choice.
>
> I'm not suggesting you abandon an installed system if a fix exists (which
> it seems to).  I'm just suggesting everyone stay open to alternatives for
> new installations.  I suppose I'm strange in that I started with a system
> that I planned to yank out.

No.  You're not strange.  X10 is a perfectly acceptable "start up" option.
It's HA 101 for a lot of people who could not otherwise graduate into the
Elks, Ocelot and Omni's of the world.  HA is both very simple and extremely
complex.  I believe if you start someone non-technical in the extremely
complex stuff, they're doomed to failure.

Think of everything you've learned by lurking here and having X-10 to "play
with."  I know when I started here I was lost - and that was with X-10!  It
took a long, long time before I understood enough of what was going on to
realize I needed an X-10 meter to ever have any hope of fixing my X-10
problems.  Should HA work without a meter?  Yes.  That's for the "next big
thing" though.


>> I also think it makes sense for a first time buyer with no HA
>> experience.  They start up costs are small and there's an awful
>> lot of support resources on the net.
>
> The start up cost is small.  That's why I started with it.

And that's precisely why so many other people started with it.  Entry path,
migration path, exit strategy.  Whether it's PC's, HA or fighting wars,
they've got remarkably similar pathways.  X-10 is so large because they gave
away millions of $ of product to "seed" the market.  Then, they duped some
poor guy out of his pop-under technology (there's remarkable irony there - I
want to feel sorry for the inventor of pop-unders but I just can't!).  As
despicable as their techniques were (sort of like MS forcing Windows on
every new PC) they kept building market share.


> But while the resources exist, I found myself with a lot of unclear
> and sometimes conflicting advice.  And it took a lot of time to put
> all the informational pieces together.  Out of the box, X10 is
> unreliable.

I'll agree - with some caveats.  It always seems to fairly work well for the
first light module and controller kit you buy.  Especially if you are just
turning the overhead bedroom light off by a bedside minicontroller.  It's
the scaling up that kills X-10 because every transmitter is also a signal
sucker.  And that's where the genius of some of the new systems lies.  Every
transmitter is not only a signal sucker, but a signal repeater.  That little
technotrick overcomes the very serious "more is worse" problem of X-10.
Unfortunately, it makes the transition from X-10 somewhat more problematic
in some cases.


> A new, non-technically inclined HAer has to learn that you need
> pieces from X10, Inc, including filters or other third party products
> (like Jeff's) just to > make the system work as it was originally
> advertised.

Oddly enough, we're back to MS because who would have thunk you'd need a
spam filter, a virus filter, a worm filter, a firewall, spyware killers and
weekly updates to keep that "easy" MS system running?  :-) The Dark Side of
the Force, to be sure.

> Someone walking into Radio Shack to buy stuff off the shelf
> isn't handed any of the reference material you're referring to.
> They just see a display that says they can  automate their lights
> by plugging in these few things. You have to know
> that you need that information first.  I know a few people that
> tried X10 before, didn't get the results they expected, and then
> gave up on HA without doing any research.  Creating a working
> X10 system may be easy with  the right knowledge, but it's a
> confusing path for a newbie any way you look at it.

There's no magic pill that makes you smart about something.  Radio Shack
would sell plutonium to Osama if it were legal and they could make a buck.
The support he'd get would be the same as what an X-10 user gets:  An acned
high schooler who knows the buzzwords but not the real skinny.  Look at this
from the rapacious capitalist viewpoint:  If you're selling the stuff like
hotcakes, you wouldn't want to queer those sales by announcing that your
produce it hard to use or unreliable.  So they don't.  Car companies have to
be dragged through the courts, kicking and screaming, just like drug
companies, to acknowledge what they often know to be a bad product.

It's up to responsible buyers to at least investigate what they are buying.
Type "X-10" and "reliability" in a search engine.  Read and learn. You've
done that.  And you've lurked long enough to feel comfortable discussing
your views.  That means there was a lot of learning that you've done just by
reading along.  That's the true beauty of Usenet.  It's almost like the
fabled "sleep learning!"

The problem is, what you've done is not what most people want.  They want
"point and shoot" and "don't bother me with the details."  It's why newer
cameras are so frustrating to me.  Too many "stupid people" options with
pretty icons that only get in the way of the experienced user.


> Now if X10 wants to start selling Jeff's device as part of a
> starter kit, things might be different.

They might have to consider an option like it to stay alive in the face of
increasing competition that takes aim at X-10's Achille's heel - poor signal
strength.


> One thing I have to say never confused me and I wish it existed
> across the board is code wheels or some other way of
> programming things right on the device itself.  You can set the
> device in your hand quickly and easily and  look at it later and
> know how it's set.  Like many people in this group, my
> greatest concern about Insteon is the current lack of an easy
> way to set up > the network.  (I haven't look into any of the
> software that's been mentioned here the last few days to solve
>  this.)

There are lots of reasons to love code wheels.  Probably more reasons to
love them than to hate them.  It's a touchy problem.  Codewheels can't be
set remotely, which is sometimes a problem.  More importantly, codewheels
take up a lot of space compared to the tiny chips that replace them.
Codewheels expose the innards of the modules to dust and grime.  But, and in
my view it's the biggest 'but' in the bunch, codewheels DON'T RESET
THEMSELVES MAGICALLY!

That's an incredible flaw in some of the Smarthome (and other) gear and it's
been reported here time and time again.  They've GOT to fix that to truly
"conquer" the codewheel technology across the board.  The may have to adapt
a something like Gigabyte motherboards use with dual BIOS chips.  If
something's wrong with BIOS A, you can automagically boot via the backup
copy and instruct the machine to automatically copy the backup copy over the
corrupted original.  Whatever they have to do, they'd better do it quick
because it's a well-known issue that scares potential buyers away.  Once you
get a bad rep for something on the internet, it can follow you for years and
years as it's repeated.


> > In reality, Larry, I *am* going with new technology:  Jeff's!  That's
what I
> > think is lost here.
>
> But it's a patch on an old system.  Apparently a good patch, one that's
> needed by a lot of people, and something I believe he deserves lots of
> credit and money for.

He's got over $200 of my money.  He convinced me, at least, (well his
product did) that it would fix the problems in my X-10 setup.  It's a patch,
true, but it's a patch that I believe will enable me to "wait out" the HA
protocol wars.  When it comes time to upgrade, and it will, I will have
(hopefully) missed the shakeout period and the possibility of picking one of
the inevitable losers.


> But until it's integrated into starter kits (or the X10 devices
> themselves), it's still going to be applied as a bandaid.  As
> someone that has been following changes in the HA market
> for a little while, that has read many of the online references,
> and has already invested money in X10, it may well be the thing
> I choose to use.  I think it's going to be a hard sell to a newbie.

Yes, it's a bandaid, but it really stops the bleeding!! It *will* be a hard
sell to newbies, just as a signal strength meter usually is.  They have to
come to it by their own needs, and that usually happens when they find out
their new TV has made the porch light X-10 stop working.  I do believe that
Jeff will find a large market in people like Bruce R who has a huge house
and lots of X-10 devices.  He's already discovered that Insteon has its
limits.  I can't wait to reads his reports about the turbo-charged Stargate.

In fact, that's really where the XTB shines.  It enables many controllers:
the Elk, Omni, Stargate, Ocelot, etc. that all use X-10 (among others) to
work better.  Once the word gets out and the feedback comes in, I predict
Jeff will be banging these babies out by the 100's.  I wish I could get a
cell phone booster that worked as well for dropped calls as the XTB does for
dropped X-10 signals.


>> Worst case scenario.  "XsteoPB4WaveBee" or whomever
>> goes out of business. Your house takes a hit but not all the
>> equipment is ruined.  Just the controller.  Well, if there's no
>> replacement controller, you've got to pull  the rest of the
>> switches - probably not covered by insurance because they
>> are still OK - and get something else.  With X-10 that wouldn't
>> happen. Loads of controllers from lots of different makers.
>> Probably a dozen NIB replacements available within days
>> from a number of sources.
>
> That worst case scenario is bad, but unlikely.  It's a gamble I think I
> would be willing to take.  (I know you already made a distinction
> between your own money and someone else's, so I already know
>  your objection to this.)  I wouldn't install a controller that's already
> off the market.  But I'd be willing to take the chance that a
> controller that *may* die, *may* be impossible to replace.  Using
> your own example of ebay, when this happens, there will either be
> someone else in the same position as you that wants to sell the old
> stuff or that will buy your old stuff.

Sadly, what I've seen from Ebay, is that if there's no more of something
being made, the price skyrockets.  Some old server CPUs cost more now then
they did new because the only other option to replacing the CPU is replacing
the server.  That can end up costing outrageous amounts of money so it makes
the premium price well worth it, but I don't like being in that boat.
Insteon and some other protocols are dependent on the fortunes of one single
company.  That violates the "eggs in one basket" common sense rule, at least
for me and a few others here as well.

>> The more complex you make a system, the less reliable it
>> becomes.  That's just the way things are.  I would not want
>> to mix protocols unless I absolutely had to.  I've had to help
>> maintain Apple and IBM on the same network.  What absolute
>> and utter misery THAT was.
>
> I don't see the problem here.  In those old networks you needed an
> Apple to talk to the IBM.  Here you just need a controller to send
> the right signal to each device and receive signals from those
> devices.  The devices aren't talking to each other.

No, I'm afraid it's much more complex.  I've been tracking Dave Houston's
Rozetta and Bruce R's problems getting Stargate and X-10 to coexist with
Insteon.  There are some incredibly complex "gotchas" involved with making
sure the transmissions don't interfere with each other, especially with
macros.  Dave could explain it in much better detail.


> Mixing protocols on the same branch of the network might be an
> issue since you can end up with one device being a signal
> sucker for another.  I have one server (think of it as the central
> controller/bridge) in my house that understands NFS, SMB, and
> AFP.  None of the non-server devices that use any of those
> protocols care about any of the others and there are no conflicts.

That's because there are 100's of millions of PC's and PC users and the
network topology is defined by a pretty well-defined set of standards and
technologies like the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model.  Yes, the
home wiring is a network, but it's very vague and ill-defined in many ways,
at least compared to an ethernet network.  Here's where AZ Nomad has a point
about bandwidth.  HA's bandwidth has typically been so low that
re-transmissions and long transmissions create issues that are not likely to
exist when packets are whizzing about at 1 gigabit per second.  It's
probably X-10's second most troubling flaw and one that the XTB does little
to help.  It will be the issue that eventually drives me from X-10.  Unless
Jeff can solve THAT problem, too! :-)


>> Well, that's a perfectly viable opinion to have when you're
>> spending your own money.  I wouldn't recommend any of the
>> new protocols to a newbie, still.  As Dave Rye said, and I
>> paraphrase, these new technologies all claim immunity from
>> the technical problems "plaguing" X-10 but in reality they are
>> neither old enough or well-tested enough to know whether they've
>> got problems all their own.

> And to paraphrase Dave Houston, "the XTB isn't old enough or
> well-tested enough to know if it has problems."

Touche. But I knocked the hell out of the beta for a few weeks dredging up
X-10 equipment that even Jeff had never heard of for testing.  His beta
device was the best I've ever run into it terms of "It does exactly what it
says it will do and doesn't do anything it shouldn't."  I've beta tested a
lot of stuff - probably just because I write a lot - and I was impressed
enough to buy nearly half of the first production run.

:-) And what if Jeff stops selling his device for any reason?

I bought four, will probably buy more and he's made the plans, the circuit
boards and the parts list available.  That's an open system dream!  If I buy
a stack of printed circuit boards, I should be good for the next 50 years.


> If you're dependent on his hardware to make your
> whole system work, you're in the same boat as if you
> went with something else.

As I just noted, that's not the case with the XTB.  I could build one from
scratch (assuming God touched his finger to mine and made me a perfect
solderer!).  I couldn't ask for more future-proofing.


>> There's no other protocol that offers so many different types of
>> controllers so cheaply.

> This is true and disappointing.  If I could get Insteon motion
> sensors, that might have changed my decision to start with X10.
> (Actually, I don't recall if Insteon was selling yet when I bought
> my first modules.)

Breadth of product line is hard to ignore.  Sundowners, mini-timers, phone
responders, integrated motion sensors, cameras, repeaters, whole-house
controllers, Palmpads, keychain remotes, Supersockets, 220VAC heavy-duty
modules, in-line modules, etc.  It's going to be a long time before any
competitor reaches that array of products and I predict that a few of them
never will.  The worst part is that because the competition is dealing with
such a smaller market, they can never bring the price down to X-10 levels.
All the folks who were ever involved in manufacturing here can attest to the
value of economies of scale.

> > Why, exactly, would you choose another protocol, Larry?
>
> Well, for one, I have the same distaste for X10 Inc as I have for
> MS.  The spam and pop-up/under crap they pulled early on was
> more than just an  irritant.  I know that has nothing to do with
> protocol, but that distaste has me wanting to find a decent
> alternative from a company that has more user friendly business
> practices.  I can buy smarthome modules, but I haven't had the
> best of luck with them (which does have me worried about
> Insteon).  I didn't realize that some of the other stuff I bought was
> indeed made by X10 until after I got it.

The "new" X-10 isn't a company that anyone can love, but they were not that
way to start.  I've also had trouble with Smarthome gear.  And yes, X-10
makes the majority of X-10 gear as an OEM.  But it terms of support, their
website does present a lot of technical data and user forums.  Newbies can
often get their questions answered there and pretty quickly and accurately
from what I can tell.  That's why I would recommend it to newbies over
something newer that doesn't have the netwide support options that X-10
does.

> It's not really the protocol I'm deciding on anyway.  It's the overall
> system. Can I get the pieces I want (a plus for X10)?  Is it reliable (not
> just the communications, but the hardware itself)?

I have 20+ year old X-10 (actually BSR) gear that's still working (through
many a storm that's killed other electronics).  In my mind, the reliability
question was settled a long time ago.

> Can I get the status information I want (I like 2-way
> communication)? Will other advances in technology potentially
> cause problems down the road? (I prefer wired to wireless if
> I'm building new since wireless has a greater chance of outside
> interferences.)

X-10 has two-way modules.  They are not as useful as some other two-way
protocols, but they are there.  Hardwired is always preferable to wireless
for reliability and security reasons.  But it's not always the right choice.

> A keyless doorlock system is also important to me.  No way
> I'd trust security stuff to X10.  But right now, I'm using X10
> along with my own hard wired keypad.  Hey there's an example
> of mixing protocols with no interaction between them.

No one in their right mind would use X-10 alone for security.  As you've
found, you can mix technology suited for the job like a keypad into your
X-10 setup with very little consequence.  And, no, it's not an example of
mixing protocols exactly because the keypad is not in contention with
anything for access to the network wiring.  That's where the HA protocol
gets troublesome but I leave that explanation to the experts like Dave and
Bruce.

> Aside:  One thing that really bugs me about what I have right now
> may be due to X10, it may be due to MisterHouse, or it may be
> that I'm doing something wrong. I'm open to any suggestions.

> When I walk into a room with a motion sensor, it may take several
> seconds before my lights turn on.  I don't have the lights on the
> same code as the motion sensor. Instead, I have MisterHouse
> respond to a message from the MS by turning on the
> appropriate lights at the right times or otherwise logging activity.  Is
> this delay of a few seconds normal with X10?  with other
> protocols? or do I have something screwy I need to debug?

Dave's already given some excellent advice, BTW.  I'll try to add to it if I
get a minute.  It's almost time to do real work!

>> Thanks for sharing your views, Larry and for giving me the
>> opportunity to explain my reasoning in a little more (and maybe
>> excruciating) detail!
>
> Same here.  I appreciate the discussion.  I will somehow figure out
>  what I want to do when I build the new house.

Well, despite the ever-decreasing traffic, there's still an incredibly
"knowlegdeable" brain trust here in CHA that can help you sort through the
jungle.  (-:

--
Bobby G.