Re: HA Primer - Pos and cons of X-10, Z-wave, Insteon, UPB

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46338129.1505095000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >> If the controller is centrally located, 4 hops in every direction
> >> can cover a home that is ~200 long by ~200 feet wide
> >
> >That's nice if it's possible to centrally locate the controller.
>
> If you're the owner of this specious estate and want to walk around the
> perimeter of your network while using a handheld remote to control it,
> you'll find that you can only control 1/2 (or less) of the network from
> anywhere on the perimeter as signals fall off the edge of the earth after
4
> hops.

I don't think they would have "broken the standard" to add three more hops
if real world experience didn't reveal situations like the one you've
postulated.   They didn't add huge steel reinforcements to WWII Liberty ship
hulls until *after* they began to crack in half and sink in seconds, in
especially cold, rough weather.

Same principle applies to Zwave, from what I can see.  The design theory
didn't quite mesh with the real world and had to be modified to cope.  It
sounds, once again, that people who are early adopters are really beta
testers.  One would think that any transmission range issues would have
surfaced somewhat earlier in a well-designed beta test and that seven hops
would have been used in all the production units from the start.  It seems
awfully messy to decide a range boost is needed after so many four hop units
have been sold to the general public.

I think it's ironic that Zwave has "scaling up" issues since it's designed
to replace a technology (X-10) that has its own scaling problems.  We also
have very little idea of what the RF spectrum will look like in 20 years.
Will RF turn out to become as problematic a transmission medium as home
powerlines have become for X-10?  Only time will tell.  These are "must
accept harmful interference" devices, aren't they?

--
Bobby G.