Re: Laying out a new house - looking for Wiring and controller advise

["Robert L Bass" <robertlbass@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I'm not too concerned with the fact that only Smarthome
> currently builds product as they are making the chips available
> to all takers so new products should be forthcoming...

Does Smarthome claim that new products will be forthcoming or have other
manufacturers actually stated that they are developing products?  I'm not
entirely convinced of Smarthome's veracity.

> Worst case - it dies off - I can still use what I have and
> even reprogram them to work as standard X10 devices.

With what effect on other X10 devices?

> If I had to scrap the whole investment - as I've done with
> the X10 stuff I've removed - the cost to date has "only"
> been about $1000 (for approx 50 devices) due to some
> very special pricing offered for a very short time to those
> who signed up as developers (best $99 I ever spent!).

For you and I that's not a lot of money to lose.  For some it would be a
significant loss.  Also, since those prices are no longer available, new
opters face a considerably higher risk.

> Key to my decision was the ability to translate X10
> commands to Insteon (as can now be done with UPB
> too) to protect the investment and hours of programming
> in the Stargate.

That brings up another area of interest.  I havn't invested much time
studying Stargate because the dealer margins aren't worth my while.
However, you seem to have had good success with the system.  Would you mind
going over some of Stargate's strengths and weaknesses?  I'm particularly
interested in the kind of support you've had from the manufacturer, as well
as its ability to integrate with various sub-systems from other
manufacturers.  Presumably this will be of interest to others as well.

--

Regards,
Robert L Bass

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