X10 still around?

Thanks Mark. More to think about and follow-through with.

Reply to
Wayne Lundberg
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Oh shucks! Gotta get back to bottom posting.

Reply to
Wayne Lundberg

"Marc F Hult" wrote

Comes under the heading of, it's not a bug, it's a feature!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

"Marc F Hult" wrote

Perhaps the biggest issue with HA, as far as SWMBO is concerned. Adding filters to X-10 modules has pretty much been the last straw in terms of "wall wart creep." The next incarnation of HA in our house will have to be far more invisible than it is now.

Another very important issue if you regularly have house guests. Lots of HA setups fail this test. Sometimes I think that HA is just another hobby like maintaining a salt-water fish tank. You really have to enjoy fussing with a lot of different things to get it to work correctly.

An interesting question. I wonder if HA really contributes to lowering the national energy consumption in any significant way? Most of the existing HA technologies have a pretty serious "standby" current consumption that has to be considered. In the next iteration of HA, I am going to try to lower the standby power consumption at least 50%. If Zigbee arrives it time, it could be a big help since its design addresses standby power consumption.

From what everyone seems to say here, it's neutral, at best. It's probably very safe to say that no one but the original Capt. Nemo is going to enjoy his Nautilus quite like he will.

A serious worry with the plethora of X-10 replacements that have recently arrived. As long as it's backed by a lot of manufacturers, it's probably OK. I can see a lot of also-rans like Z-wave and Insteon falling by the wayside if Zigbee really catches on. The small shop technologies are usually the first to go when something relatively standard comes along.

Is *any* techonology secure? Unless you hire contractors and bury them in a pit after the installation, there are an incredible number of opportunites for security failures. Worse, still, HA security is like any other kind. To be effective it has to be so annoying it's almost not usable. There's been a lot of improvement, though. For instance, compare the garage door openers of today with the first remote models.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

If you are just doing lighting perhaps the benefits aren't that large over just light switches, I dunno. But for me, I'm using CQC to control lighting but all full control over the home theater. A system that no one but I could operate now becomes pretty trivial to operate, so it's definitely a benefit there. And I get weather data in so forcast data is always there on the touch screen. And I can browse my media to select music, and so forth.

So these days HA goes way beyond controlling lights. That means that if it's done bad it's probably far worse than when it just controlled lights. But, if done well, it can be extremely powerful and really make a difference in the ease of operations of the home and entertainment bits and pieces.

Lookie y'all, I bottom posted. My parents are so proud...

------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems

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Reply to
Dean Roddey

But that's an *incredible* amount of standardization!

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written by a design engineer at Motorola, describes how much of the hard work in creating a HAN (Home Automation Network) is taken care of by Zigbee. It offers every bit of what the X-10 protocol does, but with fantastic improvements to standby current use, transmission speed and reliability

*and* what X-10 could never deliver: devices "born" to interoperate at the physical level. Appliances that can relay their precise status, not just be turned on or off. That's *way* more than we have now.

Sure, maufacturers are going to try to find a way to force people to flock to their specific implementation, but that's usually a stupid move in terms of market penetration. Look at Sony and their memory sticks, their BetaMax and their pig-headedness when it comes to mucking up industry standards. It hurts them in overall sales in the hope of generating licensing fees. Someday they'll learn that other companies will simply outmaneuver them and deliver more standarized products like CF cards and VHS.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

ZigBee is only standardized at the radio network level. The standardization should keep costs low as manufacturers will not have to develop that technology but won't keep manufacturers from having their own proprietary communications protocols.

Reply to
Dave Houston

I agree that its likely to be beneficial but only because it lowers development costs and reduces entry barriers although each developer will still need to do FCC and/or CE testing.

End users and, more importantly, HA software writers will still have to deal with a myriad of communications protocols. It will not be "one size fits all" at that level.

RS-232 is a standard but there are thousands (millions?) of devices that have their own protocols that run over RS-232. 802.3 and TCP/IP are standards but devices still have their own high-level communications protocols. If I make a mistake and send a command meant for my GC-100 to the IP address of my laptop, the laptop is not going to output an infrared command. Do you think that the ZigBee devices announced by Eaton (now delayed to iron out unspecified problems) will interoperate with those from Crestron or Control 4?

uPnP may help with this but it requires that devices expose their capabilities and protocols to some supervisory controller (if the controller goes down, there goes interoperability) and also has some inherent security issues.

Reply to
Dave Houston

the way >of 'progress'.

This makes it seem that the software I use (CyberHouse) has vulnerabilities that it doesn't actually have, so being vague may be counterproductive.

The issue is that you cannot disarm the Napco security system through CyberHouse as coded/installed/intended. This was done on purpose, apparently at Napco's request/insistence. Even if you somehow break into the PC, you can't mess much with the Napco security system. This is not the case with all other HA software that support Napco (but that I don't use).

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

When we bought the house, there was already a non-communicating, older Napco system installed. I moved the panel, upgraded to 9600, integrated with HA system, installed additional Napco relays, wireless, and inputs and added sensors. I bought most all of this through a mail-order company with which you are very familiar and had my questions answered by you when I got stuck.

But many of the original sensors and wires were indeed "recycled". Silly not to. They still work perfectly. I _am_ a little surprised that those somewhat dubious looking contacts have never failed after more than 20 years.

I have a change-over question. Is it 'acceptable' practice to have two systems on the same sensor? There are EOL resistors on most everything.

TIA ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

Eliminating buzzing from powerline and RF noise is primarily a matter of good design and especially the performance of the choke. X10 brand is particularly poor in this regard but most all wall-mounted dimmers are limited by the volume available in a conventionally-sized switch box.

Hence centrally located dimmers with big toroidal inductors are the norm in commercial and especially entertainment facilities where quiet and reliability are paramount.

I have an X-10 WS467 wall dimmer that controls outdoor lighting from inside my family/listening room. When dimmed, I hear a distinct buzz through my inefficient speakers (Magneplanars) and otherwise clean, modern Adcom pre- and power amps. That 467 needs to be ripped out but it's easy enough to include it the serious listening 'scene' and turn it off entirely along with the stream pump and HVAC.

RF emission regulations for dimmers are weak in US compared to EU. The use of centrally located, DIN-mount X-10 dimmers in Europe is apparently due in part to their much more stringent standards and the greater ease of designing quiet dimmers when space is adequate. We'll be needing more of that on this side of the pond as the cacophony from RF devices in the home increases.

Random-phase triac switching is by far the prevalent technology for dimming of home lighting here in US, but there are other designs, such as reverse phase with Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT) that are reported to make less noise.

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

Agreed. This isn't just an x10 issue. Among other gizmos, it is also all those Class 2 transformers. In a different article in this newsgroup, I used the example of the need for three wart-warts to supply a drapery control. Even when you do as designed, the %#& things will switch positions if there is a line glitch or power outage, so along with the wall warts, a battery and yet more wires are needed (non-standard). Not appreciated in my household. One part of the solution (for me) is distributed DC power.

And it not just AC stuff.

It's also

dimmers, sound distribution controls, speakers, intercoms, LCD panels, fan controls, thermostats, security controls cameras, occupancy sensors, smoke detectors other environmental sensors and so on

that adds to the acne. In some homes, that may add to a desired Hometoys/Jetstone look, but not in ours.

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

Much of this is simply a matter of insisting on competent, 'trangenerational' ("timeless") design.

We grew to accept the change from a simple on-off switch that was 100% efficient to to .. for example, an X-10 WS467.

Can we count the ways the WS467 violated good design?

It used to be that one could enter in complete darkness the majority of rooms in a typical US house and by reaching out with the hand on the side that the door was not hinged, find the switch and turn on the room light without much thinking. My house, your house, hosts' house.

Now?

Does all this stuff foisted on gadget-crazed consumers have to be so designed in such an ephemeral way? (Think: how often does one need to replace the 100% efficient wall switch most homes had installed in every room through about the 1980's.)

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

I once did a calculation of how many power plants could be 'eliminated' (hypothetically) if we just all reverted to 100% efficient wall switches from dimmers with their inherent semiconductor band-gap losses. Gave pause for thought.

Progressive energy policy in this country has been set back by the current administration. The change in the proposed January 2006 reduction in EER for new air conditioning from 16 to 15 EER is but one small example of attack by a thousand knives.

Stubborn, ill-informed resistance to change like them folks what are jist plain agin compact fluorescent because of what maybe usta kinda be is an example where 'we' are part of the problem.

Of course recognizing the cost of what we do and completing an adequate economic and environmental analysis is part of the responsiblity that we typically abrogate to the home builder for whom paying in the short-term fro long-term efficiencies can negatively affect their bottom line. Hence sprawl, inefficient design and a litany of societal woes reinforced by short-term profit by a few at the expense of long term benefit of society as a whole (Can we count the ways Katrina shined light on this too?)

There are many ways in which homes can be built to be more efficient, self-aware and self-controlling. Why don't discussions in comp.home.automation newsgroup more often include how computerized home automation could address this?

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

In a word: "hardwired" (or is it two words, as in "hard wired" ;-) ?

Nobody can break into _our_ garage ...

Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc F Hult

"Marc F Hult"

wrote [of RF garage door opener security or lack thereof]

That's the sort of unqualified challenge I don't think I'd ever want to make on the Internet, as "diverse" as it has become. Probably should be amended to read "using RF" for safety's sake lest someone think you're offering a prize to prove you wrong. :-) Unless, of course, you spend your evenings sitting in a darkened house with a pistol in your lap, *waiting* for challengers.

You might have hit upon the next reality show fad, "Betcha Can't Break n!" --- brought to you by Smith & Wesson, the ultimate security system.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

It wasn't until I was involved with spec'ing green PCs for some very large organizations that the savings became meaningful to me. The difference between a 60W PC and a 150W one really add up when you get into the tens of thousands. The differences between machines that put their components into standby mode and those that don't are also profound. Ecologists are quick to point out that the standby consumption of electricity in the average home and workplace has been steadily on the rise, but so have the capabilities. Manual typewriters drew no standby current, but that's no reason to embrace them!

We're oil addicts and the current administration seems to think that Alaska is the ultimate big fix for trouble that has been brewing for over 50 years. The upside of this $3 a gallon gas is that it's going to improve the solar payback equation and maybe even get solar into play in a big way.

CF's have their place, yet there are places where I'd rather not use them and, in fact, it pays NOT to use them because they fail prematurely if cycled too often, as in a bathroom light. I credit CF's and HA with keeping my bill relatively the same, year to year, even though the price of power has skyrocketed. Probably more credit has to go to the CF's though.

Katrina's going to shine a light on bad environmental practices just the way the dustbowl did early in the last century. Let's hope the Great Depression II doesn't follow Katrina and her siblings. There's already a great upheaval of people, just like dustbowl caused. Balloon mortgages are back, too.

I think it's because the bloom is off the rose for many HA enthusiasts and now that they've built their systems, they have to spend all their time updating, rewiring and fussing with their systems. That tends to turn newsgroups into help Q&A sessions, and not strategic planning ones.

It doesn't mean those sorts of discussions *can't* happen here. I'll be building either a new house or an addition soon, and I'd sure like to have a plan for automation that's affordable, effective and maintainable by at least one person other than me. One thing I've learned from a number of folks here is to document everything. It's a bear to do correctly, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier and easier.

I've become more and more inclined to examine what I really want an HA system to do for me. I think your background in sensors leads you ask why a house can't be made more "self-aware." It's a good question. Ever since we discussed lightning and thunder detection I've been thinking of what a truly complete home "nervous system" should look like. Recent weather events have led me to consider how to design those systems so they can run a long time from very little power - maybe indefinitely if there's enough sun.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Yeh, we support the Elk now, via serial or IP connection.

------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems

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Reply to
Dean Roddey

"Marc F Hult" wrote

Funny you should say this. I just finished replacing a bum switch controlling a garbage disposal after checking every other possibility first. Why didn't I start with the switch? Because switches fail so infrequently. This was a cheap, contractor-grade back-stabbed switch. Fortunately there was enough free wire to use a better quality switch via the screw terminals, not the wire holes.

I've replaced at least 6 X-10 wall switches. Another one's got a dead pushbutton, but it's the bathroom light that's on a Hawkeye, so no one ever uses the switch. The ones used as dimmers have a higher failure rate, probably due to the heat that builds up in the wall box.

In a perfect world, X-10 wall switches would be standard snap toggles that could automatically flip down when turned off remotely. Instead we got levers that had to be double-flipped and quirky push button switches. But they were CHEAP!!!! I just wish they were "grandma" friendlier.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Marc F Hult and Robert Green spoke of "wall acne"

It's ironic that Edison's vision of a DC world is beginning to appear through a sneaky back door. Take that, Tesla!

:-) I'd hate to count the number of Class 2 (regulated!) wall warts that are plugged in. I'm entering them all in my database as I check each one for X-10 "impact" and I have 36 toted up so far. That's just not right.

The newer switching supplies seem to be more efficient and less bulky, but up until recently they almost always interfered with X-10 signals. Smaller is better but it still gets the stinkeye from design-oriented half of the family. I'd love to dump them all and have a number of coaxial jacks on wallplates (4-8 to a plate) distributed throughout the house just like AC outlets are.

The rub is that not all 12VDC appliances want to play nice with other appliances.

Tootbrush chargers, phone charges, walkman chargers, power tool chargers, shaver chargers, dustbuster chargers, etc.

Plus, we're so upside-down, economy-wise I can buy a new drill on sale with two new packs for the price that B&D wants for one replacement pack. I've modded my 9.6V drills to use little 12V AGM deep discharge batteries. Way cheaper, interchangeable with every other modded tool and far more powerful. I had to learn to use a 1/4" quick connect crimper like a pro, but it's wonderful to have all DC appliances set up with slide on female connectors. I even learned you can make a very simple DC fuse by using a two-prong plug-in automotive fuse and two insulated 1/4" female quick connects.

I now use one charger for the whole bunch of vacuums, drills, lights, portable TVs, etc. What I lose in true portability having the batteries outside the case, I gain in having always charged spares that are totally interchangeable.

While I've met a number of women into HA, I've never met a woman who thought rat's nests of wires were attractive. No matter how neatly they are plugged into one of those special wide-body power taps, an outlet strip full of wall warts still classify as "those damn wires."

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

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