Re: new z-wave gateway

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:r4ednW6Y1Me2AhfanZ2dnUVZ_v6rnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > I didn't see anything in the zControl feature list
> > that isn't doable with existing gear.  No "killer app" in other words.
>
> Existing gear is often a clusterfuck of mix-and-match complexity, or
> exhorbitantly overpriced.

Proprietary protocols are high on the list of causes for both problems.
What we're seeing now is an unprecedented balkanization of home automation
protocols.  With X-10 you can source from lots of different suppliers.  X-10
users are pretty much insured against being orphaned.  Virtually no other
player can make that claim, and it's an important one. With all of these new
players, and a recession that's not a recession, someone's going to get hung
out to dry when one of the players goes bankrupt.

> > I suspect the housing downturn and the threat of devastating litigation
> > may cause the shakeout of more than one player in the HA market.  About
the
> > only thing I'm sure of is that it won't be X-10.
>
> X-10's done nothing new, still sucks and is still a hack implementation.

That's certainly not true.  Jeff's XTB is new and extends X-10's
capabilities enormously:

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/New-Products/X10-Transmit-Buffer-XTB.html

WGL's new 32 bit super-sensitive V572RF32

http://www.wgldesigns.com/v572.html

covers the waterfront in terms of making all the stock X-10 RF transmitters
behave remarkably better in terms of range.  It's brand-spanking new.

and HACS's switching gear

http://www.hacs.com/

although a little bit older, shows the tremendous flexibility of the X-10
universe with video matrix switchers, remote X-10 speaker selectors and lots
more.  These devices all interoperate quite nicely and they're priced way
below competing equipment because the patent's in the public domain now.
Nothing in any of the new protocols even remotely matches the control
options X-10 provides.  Where are the Stargates, HomeVisions and Ocelots of
the Insteon, UPB and Z-wave world?  How prone to error will they be when
they arrive due to a small user base and lack of uptime experience?

> The market could certainly benefit from a more reasonably priced
> plug-and-play approach.

No disagreement, here, but that approach needs to be an "open standard."
That means, for the time being, nearly all the new players aren't really
players because they are all proprietary - except X-10.  The expired patent
is going to give X-10 an incredible leg up on the others, even with all its
problems.

Your experience is with stock X-10 and I heartily agree that it is no longer
good enough to race with the other, newer protocols.  But when X-10 is
enhanced by the XTB for PLC and by the WGL line of transceivers for the RF
portion of X-10, it's once again comparable to the offerings of the other
automation vendors.  Both are easy enough for armchair techies to deploy and
both offer incredible advantages over stock X-10 and, remarkably enough,
similar "enhanced" products from outfits like Leviton and Smarthome.

There are still plenty of people quite happy with X-10.  My guess is that
there isn't a single X-10 installation out there that wouldn't work a lot
better with an XTB-II/V572 combo.  Once you solve the signal strength
problems (both RF and PLC), X-10 works well and offers more controller
options than all its competitors combined.  Part of home control is having a
wide breadth of control options to choose from.  Most of the new protocols
suffer from serious deficiencies in the types of controls they offer beyond
the basic wall switch.

I'm still betting this big downturn in the economy is going to knock out at
least one of the also-rans.  Investors don't like to wait too long for a
return on their investment and the housing slowdown has really hurt every
aspect of homebuilding, including automation.  I'll bet no one is meeting
their sales projections with investors and that along with the credit freeze
could make the next big pot of operating capital very hard to come by.
Throw in a loss to Lutron on a patent suit here and there, and a borderline
company could easily become a bankrupt one.

--
Bobby G.