Re: Why cling to old X10?

[RickH <passport@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 13, 2:50 pm, "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "RickH" <passp...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
> news:1189615039.736323.166490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> <stuff snipped>
>
> > I've had 2 homes involved with HA over the years, in both I felt I
> > needed to be concerned about the next owner and the inevitable home
> > inspection process at selling time.  In my first home I did remove the
> > X10 stuff as it was not reliable enough, (mostly signal thrashing,
> > relay chatter, etc), before home inspection.
>
> I'll be taking the X-10 gear out of this house before I sell it, but not so
> much as to save heartaches for the next owner but to either re-use or sell
> on E-bay!  The thriving X-10 market on Ebay tells me there's plenty of life
> left in X-10. Since I got hold of Jeff Volp's XTB devices, bad signal
> strength is a thing of the past.  As for chattering relays, well, it's mass
> produced junk from China, what did you expect?  <g>   If it fails, $5 to $20
> gets me back in the game and I have another contribution to the junk box.
> (-:  I'm just happy, that unlike other Chinese products, it doesn't poison
> any of the occupants here with melamine or lead paint.
>
> But it's important to remember and easy to forget that everyone's HA needs
> are remarkably diverse.  I want to be able to control every major electronic
> doodad in my house via one remote.  So far, not perfect, but close.  X-10's
> breadth of remote control interfaces gives me more flexibility that any
> other HA system, and I believe that will still be true 10 if not 20 years
> from now.  That's not a typical usage, but it's turned out to be largely
> possible with X-10 and a little help from other sources.  I suspect yours to
> be the more typical HA usage pattern, and so Insteon is far more attractive
> to you than it is to me.
>
> >In this home I have about 55 Insteon devices that so far have been 100
> >percent reliable.
>
> I assume the 55 devices you describe are mostly lights.  I can't help but
> noting that X-10 was pretty much 100 percent reliable when it first came out
> 20+ years ago.  It was the incredibly expanding nature of the home powerline
> network and the advent of the switch-mode power supplies (mostly) that
> created so much trouble for X-10.  Had X-10 designers had all the IC's and
> new electronic technologies that Insteon designers had access to, I am sure
> they would have been able to design a better system.  The fact I have
> modules that are 20 years old that still work is a testament to how well the
> original X-10 was designed.
>
> The faster the pulses are transmitted, the less vulnerable they are to many
> problems that plague the slower X-10 protocol.  The sad part is that it's
> obvious that switch-mode PS's *can* be made so as not to interfere with
> X-10, but many of them aren't.  That's unfortunately why everyone running an
> X-10 installation needs a meter or analyzer to keep it running smoothly
> unless in a past life that person was a dog that liked chasing its tail.
> (-:
>
> Still, I won't be switching to Insteon any time soon.  There's the very
> significant sunk cost of having installed all this gear and learning to turn
> lights off by feel even in my sleep.  The XTB has given me the luxury of
> waiting until the market shakes out the weaker contenders.
>
> That "stall for time" is important because I don't think all the current
> X-10 "heirs apparent" will be around 10 years from now.  I'd hate to buy
> into something that would eventually become obsolete, especially if my
> house's operation depended on the availability of spares.  Worse, still if
> my heirs were faced with selling it, I'll bet an electrician might charge a
> pretty penny to restore an HA'ed house to original condition.
>
> I realize my house or even yours wouldn't be as bad as some (anyone remember
> the guy with three or four huge central lighting panels with true rat's nest
> wiring?)  but we've already seen some of what happens when people buy GELV
> houses (GE low voltage) from the 1950's.  I don't think anyone ever paid a
> premium for a house with an obsolete HA system.  A penalty for the seller is
> more likely.
>
> > These 55 are in the basement alone where there is an elaborate home
> > theater with a large number of accent lighting circuits and scenes,
> > and an adjoining dance floor disco with more effect lighting.
>
> Dude, where's the party?  (-: I haven't gone Disco'ing since - I can
> remember the exact date if the neurons didn't die - wait - wait - November
> 1978!  When I die, emanating from my grave will be the song that's engraved
> there, "uh uh uh uh Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive."  Which leads to an even
> more interesting and strangely on-topic tangent of "dead ringers" which some
> say were people who sat in graveyards to listen for bells attached by
> strings to the hands of the recently buried just in case they really weren't
> quite dead yet.  In the modern age, we can do it with RF and MP3 players
> loaded with the BeeGees.  Now if pulling a string to ring a bell to bring
> you back from the grave isn't slick automation, what is?  Now where were we?
>
> > It's a 2 story home and I'll eventually add more Insteon to the main and
> > upper floors, and still need a few more in the basement for stage
> > drape control, etc.  After using X10 for years I feel confident now I
> > would not be sticking the next owner with an unreliable system.
>
> That's commendable.  If it's easy to understand and operate, and it's
> reliable, they might even pay a premium for the feature.  But if Smarthome
> goes bankrupt (and we've seen far bigger fish than them disappear from the
> world - think Pan Am Airways) then you'll be sticking them with something
> that they can't get spares for.  That's always a concern with something like
> HA because a close or direct lightning strike can destroy a lot of
> equipment.  You never know when you'll be suddenly called on to replace half
> or more of your installation.
>
> I think I'd be more comfortable with something like Z-wave or Zigbee that
> didn't lock the user into a single vendor but they've got a ways to go to
> catch up with Insteon reliability.  But low-power RF based installations
> have their own boogiemen, and they live in the unforeseeable future, too.
> If it's a "you must accept harmful interference" device, you might just end
> up having to do just that and replace all your devices with those that work
> on a different frequency.
>
> > Although there are a few things I still cant do with Insteon, like
> > dawn/dusk detection, but that will come.
>
> And when it does, the Insteon system will be far more attractive to me than
> it is now.  There's still nothing that compares with the breadth of
> offerings that X-10, from temperature senders to pool controllers to
> sprinkler systems to drapery controllers to dawn/dusk sensors to stand-alone
> macro controllers to sophisticated control systems like the Ocelot.  I
> suspect some contenders will never reach the bar set by X-10 because they'll
> just fold up.
>
> My candidates, in order, for bellying up by 2017 are UPB and Z-wave.  I
> don't know enough about Smarthome's corporate structure to know if, like so
> many other small businesses, they'll experience difficulty when the founders
> founder.  But all in all, I think they're a good bet because IMnsHO they
> have the greatest understanding of the HA market of all the contenders to
> the X-10 throne.
>
> > BTW I am also running 2 UPS systems on my computers and a moderate
> > number of CFL's, I have no signal bridge, just 2 RF wall repeaters on the
> > main and 2nd floors, I dont use any 24/7 computer control, just a desktop
> > application to  program the Insteon network devices occasionally.  I can
> > honestly say that I have never experienced a real glitch yet.
>
> I don't doubt that.  The reasons are complex, though, and they include the
> Insteon system's RF repeater, primarily, for getting the signals get through
> with greater reliability than X-10.  The RF repeater solved a dreadful
> problem with X-10, namely repeaters needing to be installed in the main
> circuit panel, hopefully by a qualified installer.  As I said previously,
> had the X-10 designers been faced with UPS's and CFLs, they might have been
> able to design around them.
>
> I'm just happy that I have ways to work around such problems, with Jeff's
> XTB earning the top spot as the most important weapon in my "work around"
> arsenal.  It's easier to plug in some XTB's and some filters than it is to
> yank every switch and module in the house and replace them with Insteon.  A
> new house would be a different matter, and I might very well follow in your
> footsteps with Insteon when the time comes.
>
> --
> Bobby G.


My wife and I teach ballroom dance on the side and I DJ at some local
ballroom dance studios, so the basement evolved into a dance floor
instead of your more-typical billiards room.  Yes, all the devices are
to control lights, with Insteon there are no more dedicated wall
transmitters, even the keypads can control a single load.  With 55
devices and growing I am sure I'm probably loading down the line for
good PL transmission already, so most of my communication, I would
gather, is taking the RF route instead.  But I like the concept of
having the same mesh network living in both the RF and PLC physical
domain, and the backwards compatibility with X10 (but that part was
marketing genious that probably a certain other company wished they
had followed, namely UPB).