Re: No more X10 at Radio Shack?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Jeff Volp" <JeffVolp@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:tjhbh.119426

<stuff snipped>

> RadioRA works well now.  Will it run into problems as more RF devices move
> into our homes?  Only time will tell...

The RF world's already pretty crowded in the average high-tech home and it's
only going to get worse as there's less policing and more polluting of the
airwaves. The choices aren't pretty if you become saturated in RF from an
unknown source.  (Radio direction finders, FCC complaints and copper-clad
walls come to mind.)

If your RF devices are labelled, as many are, "must accept harmful
interference" then your options are limited again.  Is it likely RadioRA
will get knocked out by some unknown EMI?  Well, it may end up in 30 years
that the airwaves become as troublesome to RadioRA as the powerlines have
become to X-10.

It's hard to design techology that survives 30 years in any enviroment and
in that respect, X-10 has certainly succeeded.  Yes, it took the XTB to
bring it into the 21st century for me, but the bottom line is that it DID do
it.  It's unreasonable to assume any engineering design can deal with severe
environmental or paradigm shifts unless it's as simple as a stone pyramid -
which is not really simple, but simpler than dual-core CPU!

In the case of X-10 overcoming increasingly noisier power lines, it took
some retrofitting, but it was by and large transparent - except to the bank
account!  Would they have done X-10 differently with 30 years' hindsight?
Maybe.  But let's remember how radical an idea the PIC was when X-10 was
born.  I think they did a damn good job for the price point they were trying
to reach!

--
Bobby G.