Re: Why cling to old X10?

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

RickH <passport@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Wow sounds like fraud more than hype, how do you know these things?
>Why has my reliability been so good?  The documentation says that each
>device is an RF repeater.  Also if it's not going RF why is it so much
>faster than X10?  I have no filters in the house and no SignalLinc in
>the basement at all, just on the 2nd floor.  On one branch circuit I'm
>running about 15 or more devices, it was my understanding that Leviton
>X10 recommends a max of 4 devices for a branch circuit before signal
>absorption.  All this evidence led me to believe it was going RF, now
>I'd be disappointed if it's not.  Are these bugs documented anywhere?

I didn't say it's unreliable, I just said there's no RF mesh network.

All of the Insteon details were thoroughly documented in a PDF white paper
that was available on http://www.insteon.net even back when it was first
announced which was about a year before it began shipping. They've totally
revamped that webpage since I last visited so the whitepapers are a bit
harder to find. Here are links to two...

     http://www.insteon.net/pdf/insteondetails.pdf
     http://www.insteon.net/pdf/insteoncompared.pdf

The second paper has a section titled "INSTEON Is a Dual Mesh Network" (p5)
which includes the following paragraph...

"All INSTEON devices that are plugged into the powerline communicate with
each other using the INSTEON Powerline protocol. INSTEON devices with
radios, whether they are plugged into the powerline or handheld, use the
INSTEON RF (radio frequency) protocol to communicate with other INSTEON
devices that have radios. Not all INSTEON devices are required to have
radios."

Which is highly misleading because, to date, only the SignaLincs (replaced
by Access Points) and Remotes have "radios".

Once they started shipping, I got a starter kit (on loan from a dealer) and
posted a serial review here in comp.home.automation over about a 10 day
period. There's a very brief synopsis on my webpage at...

     http://davehouston.net/insteon.htm

The review thread from July-August 2005 is here...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.home.automation/browse_frm/thread/7c73bf5f17684a8e/5cf9856480f5c0e5?lnk=gst&q=I+have+an+Insteon+starter+kit&rnum=9&hl=en#5cf9856480f5c0e5

Each device repeats the powerline signal but not as "through the air" RF,
only over the powerline. It's faster than X-10 because (best case) it only
needs 5 half-cycles of the powerline to send a standard command (plus
another half cycle to send it as "through the air RF" to the opposite phase
while X-10 needs 44 half-cycles to send a command. The only RF device is the
recently released remote (which requires the new access points).

If you mean the SignaLinc bugs, see...

     http://www.smarthome.com/2442p.html

I received an email months ago from Smarthome telling me about it as well as
the exchange offer but that may be because I'm a registered developer.

Signal absorption is not a problem for Insteon since each device repeats the
powerline signal. It is a problem for any X-10 devices in the system as the
Insteon devices absorb X-10 but do not repeat X-10.